Czeslaw Milosz: On the Imagination of Twentieth-Century Man

Abstract

Czeslaw Milosz is known either as author of The Captive Mind(1953) or as the accomplished poet and Nobel laureate (1980). Little effort has been made to connect the beautiful and penetrating poet and essayist, so well known in literary circles, with the most astute analyst of the seduction of intellectuals by Communism, so essential for political scientists and historians. It is argued here that there is a remarkable unity of purpose and continuity of themes across the very distinct works in Milosz's corpus. The subject matter of intellectuals and Communism would seem, at first glance, to be an important yet nonetheless isolated matter, central only from the standpoint of understanding postwar Eastern Europe. Milosz reveals that the topic of eastern intellectuals and Communism is a surface manifestation of larger and deeper philosophical problems, including modern science and its effect on the human imagination, and the gulf between the poet and his audience.