Quotes from Czes?aw Mi?osz

It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.

The work of human thought should withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is worthless. Probably only those things are worthwhile which can preserve their validity in the eyes of a man threatened with instant death.

The divinization of Man, when one abhors the order of the world as essentially evil, is a risky and self-contradictory venture.

Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colorful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom and complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness.

The creative act of the artist lifts him above himself by demanding full surrender. No one puts words on paper or paint on canvas, doubting. If one doubts, one does so five minutes later...

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

But there is nothing in me, just fear, nothing but the running of dark waves.

Contradiction is an inseparable part of the human condition, and that suffices as a source of miraculousness.

Misfortune simply is. And when you wall it off, you do not have a clear conscience, because perhaps you are supposed to dedicate all your efforts and all your attention to it. And all you can say in your own defense is 'I want to live.

Most distinguished voyager, what was your eon like? —Comic. Terror is forgotten. Only the ridiculous is remembered by posterity. Death from a wound, from a noose, from starvation Is one death, but folly is uncounted and new every year.

This World" It appears that it was all a misunderstanding. What was only a trial run was taken seriously. The rivers will return to their beginnings. The wind will cease in its turning about. Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots. Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror– They are children again. The dead will wake up, not comprehending. Till everything that happened has unhappened. What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much.

I still think too much about the mothers And ask what is man born of woman. He curls himself up and protects his head While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running, He burns with bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit. Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.

The bright side of the planet moves towards darkness and the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour, and for me, now as then, it is too much. There is too much world.

If only the stars contained me. If only everything kept happening in such a way That the so-called world opposed the so-called flesh.

Love means to learn to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things for you are only one thing among many.

The real, by which I mean God, continues to remain unfathomable.

Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

I said so little. Days were short. Short days. Short nights. Short years. I said so little. I couldn't keep up. My heart grew weary From joy, Despair, Ardor, Hope. The jaws of Leviathan Were closing upon me. Naked, I lay on the shores Of desert islands. The white whale of the world Hauled me down to its pit. And now I don't know What in all that was real.

How to resist nothingness? What power Preserves what once was, if memory does not last? For I remember little. I remember so very little.

When it hurts we return to the banks of certain rivers. — Czeslaw Milosz, from "I Sleep A Lot," The Collected Poems 1931— 1987 . (The Ecco Press; First Edition edition 1988)

Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep and, what is strange, I understood more or less an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue: day draws near another one do what you can.

Though not for certain, perhaps in some other year, It shall come to completion in the sixth millennium, or next Tuesday. The demiurge's workshop will suddenly be stilled. Unimaginable silence. And the form of every single grain will be restored in glory. I was judged for my despair because I was unable to understand this.

We are an echo that runs, skittering, through a train of rooms. – Czeslaw Milosz, from "The Wormwood Star." The Separate Notebooks . (Ecco September 21, 1986) Originally published 1984.