Język, cierpienie, milczenie. Czesław Miłosz a poezja Geoffreya Hilla

Abstract

Language, Suffering, Silence. Czeslaw Milosz and Poetry of Geoffrey Hill Geoffrey Hill's prose writings contain one or two references to Czeslaw Milosz, in which Polish poet is heavily and unfairly criticized. Hill bases his criticism on a short fragment, taken out of context, from Jane Zielonko's translation of The Captive Mind. No reference is made to any other of Milosz's writings, although a considerable number of them are available in English. This article considers how some signifi cant departures from original in Zielonko's translation combine with a most surprising disregard on Hill's part not only for contexture of Milosz's huge oeuvre, but also even for The Captive Mind as a whole, to lead to an unjust and distorted understanding of Milosz's moral and poetic outlook. The misunderstanding is all more remarkable given very many similarities between two poets, especially in regard to question of immorality of art and to what Donald Davie describes as the insuffi ciency of lyric. The article compares Hill's attitude to translated text and to Milosz's oeuvre unfavourably with that of Davie, who is much more cautious in his judgments.