Czesław Miłosz’s Translations as “Re-Visioning” of the Psalms: Poetry and Eschatology

Abstract

This article focuses on Czesław Miłosz’s translations of parts of the Psalms and their influence on his poetry. For Miłosz, poetry had an eschatological dimension, a view deeply influenced by his distant cousin, the Lithuanian poet and playwright Oscar Miłosz. In his essay “A Few Words on Poetry,” Oscar Miłosz claimed that since prehistoric times, poetry has always followed the mysterious movements of the great soul of the people. He criticized his contemporaries—the French Symbolists—for their elitism, which perpetuated the schism between the poet and the great human family. He predicted that the new poetry would be that of the Bible: “a spacious prose hammered into verses.” For him, a truly inspired poet of the future will be able to transcend his paltry ego. Czesław Miłosz—thanks to this significant influence—resisted literary fashions. Moreover, in times of despair or dry spells in his writing, Miłosz would turn to translating the Bible. In his poem “Ars Poetica?” he writes: “I have always aspired to a more spacious form / that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose/and would let us understand each other without exposing / the author or reader to sublime agonies.”