The religious sanction of the poetic mission in late Czesław Miłosz poems

Streszczenie po ang.

The intention of the article is to present the evolution of the poetic calling, the conditions, and the ways of its realisation by Czesław Miłosz. The poet’s creative conscience was often expressed through his self-concentrated pronouncements, and the questions of his poetic mission often were, throughout his life, a subject of his poetic reflection. Analysing these pronouncements, beginning with Poemat o czasie zastygłym, and particularly Three Winters and Rescue to his late The Second Space, It and Last Poems, allow us to capture the transformations in his outlook and his creative philosophy. It makes it possible to show the transformations that refer to the understanding of his mission but also his fixed opinions as to his poetic metaphysical calling. The metaphysical perspective becomes more evident in his later poems becoming straightforwardly religious. His life’s work of the time knowingly refers to God as the one who not only sends the poetic calling but also gives the final sense to the service the poet pays to the word. The article concentrates mainly on the poet’s late poems, referring to the earlier works mainly for comparative reasons.