Unattainable Earth

by Czesław Miłosz, Robert Hass (Translator)

Poems, journallike entries, and musings--by turn lyrical, meditative, and philosophical--make up this new collection by the Polish poet, essayist, novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Polish Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Czesław Miłosz was a Nobel Prize winning poet and author of Polish-Lithuanian heritage. He memorialised his Lithuanian childhood in a 1955 novel, The Issa Valley , and in the 1959 memoir Native Realm . After graduating from Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium in Vilnius, he studied law at Stefan Batory University and in 1931 he travelled to Paris, where he was influenced by his distant cousin Oscar Milosz, a French poet of Lithuanian descent and a Swedenborgian. His first volume of poetry was published in 1934.

After receiving his law degree that year, he again spent a year in Paris on a fellowship. Upon returning, he worked as a commentator at Radio Wilno, but was dismissed, an action described as stemming from either his leftist views or for views overly sympathetic to Lithuania. Miłosz wrote all his poetry, fiction, and essays in Polish and translated the Old Testament Psalms into Polish.

Awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author "who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts."

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm shelving this as poetry because this isn't Jeopardy! and there's no Hodgepodge category. Milosz was a poet and yes, poems of his are here, but he also stacks this deck with lots of what he calls "Inscripts," or quotes he likes from learned types. Often the wisdom has to do with the poems they follow and precede.

What really makes it unique for a "poetry collection" is how Milosz also adds poems by the likes of D.H. Lawrence and Walt Whitman. That makes for an interesting mix! And not always the most famous titles by these "guest poets," either.

A lot of the material focuses on theodicy, God or no God, good and evil, the afterlife, the wiles of the past, spirit and flesh, and so on. Meaning: philosophically-bent, this little collection. And the switching up made it all the more interesting, I think.

Here's a little ditty by Czeslaw:


My-ness

"My parents, my husband, my brother, my sister."
I am listening in a cafeteria at breakfast.
The women's voices rustle, fulfill themselves
In a ritual no doubt necessary.
I glance sidelong at their moving lips
And I delight in being here on earth
For one more moment, with them, here on earth,
To celebrate our tiny, tiny my-ness.

[Caroline]

Milosz looks back on his life, examining his sense of apartness, the role of belief in his life, love and Eros, purpose. The interplay of his own poems with those he has selected to play off of (mostly by Walt Whitman and D. H. Lawrence), and with extracts of writing by his distant cousin the poet Oscar Milosz, lend depth and interconnectedness to this work. It is not difficult writing, but rewards the reader at once while inviting repeat visits when one is in a different state of mind.

The theme of feeling ‘different’ and ‘apart’ even as a child is poignant for a poet who spent much of his adult life in exile. Milosz states his principle of resistance without insisting on heroics. He ponders Poland and Polishness. He asserts himself as a poet of the city, and of the celebration of physical love, as believing it is an intended part of creation.

Some of his comments provoke reflection on events that he surely didn’t foresee, as when he writes:

I don’t like the Western way of thinking….the transformation…..the disappearance of a distinction between the enlightened—the knowledgeable, the progressive, the mentally liberated—and the so-called masses. That great schism has ended and we are returned to a united world view, as was the case in the Middle Ages when a theologian, a cooper and a field hand believed the same things. Schools, television and newspapers have allied themselves to turn minds in the direction desired by the liberal intelligentsia, and so the victory came: an image of the world which is in force for all of us, under a penalty equivalent to the ancient penalties and stake: that is, ridicule.

One could say that some of those so coerced did feel that they were ridiculed if they diverged from the liberal dogma, until someone gave them permission to say otherwise. I want to reread this section of the book to think again about what Milosz was getting at.

I was particularly engaged by section five, titled I, He, She. Milosz examines his faith in the process of trying to plumb the state of his own soul and state of grace. He says of sin:

The notion of sin, abandoned to keep pace with progress, was needed and useful. For I, a sinner, bore a burden and was able to throw it down, it was not myself. Now my guilt is laced inside, it is my genes, my fate, my nature. And yet I know from experience that I am like the water of a river, reflecting the changeable colors of the banks it flows between, storms, clouds, the blue of the sky, colorless itself.

.
The excerpts from Whitman use liberally in this section are particularly beautiful in counterpoint to Milosz’s own thoughts.

I have quoted mostly from the prose paragraphs that share the space with borrowed and his own poems. But I will close with the first and last stanzas from a poem late in the book:

The Poet at Seventy
Thus, brother theologian, here you are,
Connoisseur of heavens and abysses
Year after year perfecting your art,
Choosing bookish wisdom for your mistress,
Only to discover you wander in the dark.
…
And all your wisdom came to nothing
Though many years you worked and strived
With only one reward and trophy:
Your happiness to be alive
And sorrow that your life is closing.

I recommend these thoughtful poems from maturity, wise but not preachy, inviting one to rest in the cradle of these poets’ art.

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It is a durable achievement of existential philosophy to remind us that we should not think of our past as definitely settled, for we are not a stone or tree. In other words, my past changes every minute according to the meaning given it now, in this moment" (122).

A brilliant and challenging read. Thank you, Dr. Nonaka, McKay's Books, and a slow day at work for making this adventure possible.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poemas con una profundidad espiritual pero también terrenales, que me han conmovido hasta lo indecible.

https://liblit.com/czeslaw-milosz-tie...

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting short snippets of thoughts and poetry from milosz and other interesting writers. Here are the best bits:

I am not what I am. My essence escapes me. Here A does not equal A. It is a durable achievement of existential philosophy to remind us that we should not think of our past as definitely settled, for we are not a stone or a tree. In other words, my past changes every minute according to the meaning given it now, in this moment.

Let man be noble,
Kind to his neighbors, good!
For only then is he different
From all the creatures we know

To absorb with your eyes the inside of a flower shop, to hear the voices of people, to feel on your tongue the taste of just-drunk coffee. Passing by the windows of apartments, I invent stories, similar to my own, a lifted elbow, the combing of hair before a mirror. I multiplied myself and came to inhabit every one of them separately, thus my impermanence has no power over me.

And I drink wine and I shake my head and say: "What man feels and thinks will never be expressed."

"If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grow to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond measure; rise above all time, and become eternal; then you will apprehend God.

"There is not and there cannot be anything more precious for any thinking creature than life. Death is an oddity tearing the spectator away from a huge stage before the play, which infinitely interests him, is over."
- CASANOVA, Memoirs

Always in doubt whether it was we who were there, you and I, Annalena, or just anonymous lovers on the enameled tablets of a fairyland.

I passed judgment on that. Though marked myself.
This hasn't been the age for the righteous and the decent.
I know what it means to beget monsters And to recognize in them myself.

I was liberating myself and that was bitter. Having been eminently susceptible to words, to all propaganda. Then from year to year the language of chronicles, lectures, speeches, poems, tragedies, novels grew thinner and thinner, till it took on the consistency of smoke, completely different from that of the tangible though incomprehensible reality.

"Rabbi Levi said:
If it is the world you seek, there can be no justice; and if it is justice you seek, there can be no world.
Why do you grasp the rope by both ends, seeking both the world and justice?
Let one of them go,
for if you do not relent a little, the world cannot endure."
—Hammer on the Rock, A Short Midrash Reader, edited by Nahum Glatzer, 1962.

Who will assure me that I perceive the world the same way other people do? It is not improbable that I am a deviation from a norm, an oddity, a mutation, and that I have no access to what they experience. And if that is the case, what right do I have to pronounce general opinions on man, history, the difference between good and evil, society, systems; as if I did not guess that my difference, though hidden, influences my judgments, , changes proportions?

Our social self on which the feeling of our existence practically depends is always and entirely exposed to every possible hazard. The center of our being is bound to those three things with fibers so tender that it feels their wounds, to the point of bleeding. What diminishes or destroys our social prestige, especially our right to consideration, seems to alter or abolish our very essence, so much so that illusion is our very substance."

Though for the dogs it is we who are like gods Disappearing in crystal palaces of reason, Busy with activities beyond comprehension.

"Whatever one knows, he knows for himself only and he should keep it secret. As soon as he reveals it, contradictions appear, and if he begins to argue, he will lose his equilibrium, while what is best in him will be, if not annihilated, at least shaken.
—GOETHE, Wilhelm Meister

"To wait for faith in order to be able to pray is to put the cart before the horse. Our way leads from the physical to the spiritual."

"For me the principal proof of the existence of God is the joy I experience any time I think that God is.
—RENÉ LE SENNE, La découverte de Dieu

Whoever maintains the contrary simply asserts that the unembraceable kaleidoscope of time is present every quarter of a second in a super-mind which sees past, present and future simultaneously. In other words, he believes in God. Such seems to be the foundation of objective truth, searched for by the agnostic Orwell.

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually
met there who detain'd me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has
long been forgotten by me,
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to
me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.
—WALT WHITMAN


O Living Always, Always Dying
O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead (I lament not, I am
content);
O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn
and look at where I cast them,
To pass on (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.
- WALT WHITMAN

The torture of dying for weeks, months, sometimes years. It is waiting for the majority of us. And nothing? And we accept such an order of things? But how can one accept monstrosity?
A decent man cannot believe that a good God wanted such a world.

Every one of us, leaving this life, preserves from his past, from memories, from quotations by which he lived, no more than a few words that he salvages from a receding memory.

Since she lacks faith and because of that may find herself in Hell, could I, having such tenderness for her, leave her there alone?
Were I to do that, I would deserve Hell, all right.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly one of the best contemporary books of poetry ever written. Reaffirms one's faith in poetry and its power to move us.

[Matt Maielli · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal."

"In my dream I was traveling, probably by car, through a hilly countryside, little valleys where everyday life is lived, a so-so one, and a voice reproached me for squandering my time on trifles, instead of writing about the essence of life, which is so-so-ness."

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Why not include in one book, along with my own poems, poems by others, notes in prose, quotations from various sources and even fragments of letters from friends if all these pieces serve one purpose: my attempt to approach the inexpressible sense of being." Intriguing, ambitious attempt to capture the unsayable.

"Waters close over us, a name lasts but an instant./ Not important whether the generations hold us in memory./ Great was that chase with hounds for the unattainable meaning of the world."