"At the end of the road" : from Czesław Miłosz’s "Last poems"

Streszcz. po ang.

Published in 2006, two years after the death of Czesław Miłosz, his volume Last Poems belongs to the late verse of great masters. Taken less literally, in Miłosz’s case this category may well include the poems of To [It] (2000), Druga przestrzeń [The Second Space] (2002) and Orfeusz i Eurydyka [Orpheus and Eurydice] (2002). The collection Last Poems brings together texts that highlight the author’s spiritual, artistic and biographical experience. Some of them extol the Power of Eros, set against old age and existential motifs of human wretchedness; some are the product of autothematic reflection; and some more, which form an important group by itself, contain religious ideas and Miłosz’s own credo made ‘at the end of road’. Yet throughout that lyrical and confessional summing-up the tones of defeat and dissatisfaction, spiritual and personal pessimism, self-irony and distance get the better of iron certainty. Looking back at Miłosz’s achievement we may ask ourselves the question how it is going to stand the test of time, increasingly defined by postmodernity and rapid cultural changes. Or, to what extent his, essentially traditional, poetry and its message will hold its appeal to the future generations?