Book Review: Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism and Paganism in the Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz

Abstract

Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism and Paganism in the Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz. By Charles S. Kraszewski. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2012. ISBN 9-781443-837613. Pp. 277. $67.99. The 1980 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Czeslaw Milosz, influenced literature far beyond his native Poland. Although most of his poetry was written in Polish, it was so widely translated and admired that those who otherwise might not have nodded toward that region heard his voice and took notice. As Charles S. Krawzewski of King's College in Pennsylvania notes early on, Milosz is one of the few peers ofT. S. Eliot among contemporary poets (13). In 2004, Milosz died at the age of 93, having returned at last from being an emigre in the United States to his homeland. Upon his death, controversy ensued that serves as the framework for this study. The poet had wished to be buried in his family's plot in Lithuania (which at the time of his youth had been within the borders of Poland). However, powerful voices in Krakow insisted upon an elaborate funeral and then burial at church near Wawel Castle. More to the point, however, one detractor published the charge that Milosz was not enough, much to the dismay of the many who venerated him and nevertheless gave him grand funeral. The question that unsettled others and haunted Milosz himself--as his works demonstrate--was not so much if he was Polish enough, but if he was Catholic enough. To resolve the latter question, telegram from John Paul II was read at the funeral and countered the belief of some that Milosz was thoroughly heterodox. The Archbishop as well sought to defend the great poet from attack. The question concerning Milosz's worldview and personal faith brings us to the sound approach of Professor Kraszewski: by considering Milosz's poetry in chapters arranged chronologically, Kraszewski seeks to map the spiritual journey of this serious seeker--his struggles, his stumbling questions, his confusion, and his triumphs Gnosticism and despair. The inner orthodoxy, it seems, informs even his rebellious outcry against God and the Church, and the outer orthodoxy finds its philosophical expression in later years. At the outset, Chapter One: Youth and War: 1933-1945 demonstrates why the chronological approach to Milosz's poetry and to questions about his worldview makes sense. Growing up in Wilno (Vilnius), Lithuania (also Poland, due to shifting borders), Milosz witnessed the tragedy of wars, revolution, and fifty years of occupation. As he does in later chapters, writer Kraszewski quotes sections of one poem after another, each followed with some explication and commentary, not to mention copious endnotes. In this chapter, for example, he assesses Milosz's ideas of that period--whether Gnostic, or metaphysical, or dualistic--by employing selected lines; he also locates these ideas within the cultural context of Milosz's peers. As poet, translator, and critic who specializes in Polish, Czech, and Slovak texts, Kraszewski is eminently qualified to do so, and has much to offer researchers who are knowledgeable in his specialized field as well as those who are new to it. All in all, chapter one praises Milosz's personal strength in creating characters who dig their heels firmly into the shelf just short of the abyss, and will not be toppled over adding, It will not always be thus (50). On the other hand, Chapter Two: The Atlantic Milosz: 1946-1960 demonstrates the effects of Milosz's wide-ranging professional experience that informed his work, and the resultant inner conflicts. As cultural attache in New York City and Washington, he served the communist-led Polish People's Republic who did not completely trust him, while he was also disliked by anti-communist Poles. Eventually he defected to make the West his home, through Rome and eventually to New York. During this period, he embraced the role of poet-prophet, showing in his verses a sober assessment of the new, threatening reality of the communist world, and his consistent rejection of the same, on behalf of human dignity (58). …