Wednesday, November 05, 2008

This will serve, though ...

... Adam Zagajewski explains why I Can't Write a Memoir of Czeslaw Milosz. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was also struck by a constant, energetic quest for the invisible in his poetry, a quest that arose amidst the most concrete, sensual images, not in an ascetic monastery chapel. In his oeuvre, ecstatic tones mixed with sober reflection; there was no easy way to classify this poetry—it burst taxonomies. It was not "nature poetry," it was not a "poetic meditation on History," neither was it "autobiographical lyric"—it was all of those. The ambition of this poet knew no limits; he tried to drink in the cosmos.

No comments:

Post a Comment