Czeslaw Milosz: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Only when two times, two forms are drawn
Together and their legibility
Disturbed, do you see that immortality
Is not very different from the present
And is for its sake. You pick a fragment
Of grenade which pierced the body of a song
On Daphnis and Chloe.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Book in the Ruins" (1941), trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass
Rescue (1945)

Time

“When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Meaning" (1991)

World , Mountain , Bird

“I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Esse" (1954), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Pinsky
Uncollected Poems (1954-1969)

Tree , Suffering

“Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Meaning" (1991)

“Leaves glowing in the sun, zealous hum of bumblebees,
From afar, from somewhere beyond the river, echoes of lingering voices
And the unhurried sounds of a hammer gave joy not only to me.
Before the five senses were opened, and earlier than any beginning
They waited, ready, for all those who would call themselves mortals,
So that they might praise, as I do, life, that is, happiness.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"An Hour" (1972), trans. Czesŀaw Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
From the Rising of the Sun (1974)

Life , Sense , Waiting , Sun

“The masses in highly industrialized countries like England, the United States, or France are largely de-Christianized. Technology, and the way of life it produces, undermines Christianity far more effectively than do violent measures.”

Czeslaw Milosz book The Captive Mind

The Captive Mind (1953)

Life , Way , Country

“Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.”

Czeslaw Milosz

Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1980/milosz-lecture-en.html (8 December 1980)

Feeling , Time , Dependency

“I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith
but I received strength, it tears the world apart.
I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores
and a young wave will cover my trace.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Hymn" (1935), trans. by Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Three Winters (1936)

Wisdom , World , Faith , Tear

“It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Ars Poetica?"

Art , Thinking , Help

“They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for humans invented themselves as well.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"On Angels"

“A man should not love the moon.
An ax should not lose weight in his hand.
His garden should smell of rotting apples
And grow a fair amount of nettles.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Should, Should Not" (1961), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
King Popeil and Other Poems (1962)

Love

“If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Study of Loneliness" (1975), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

“I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:
:day draws near
another one
do what you can.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"On Angels"

Time , Drawing

“We go down with the bells ringing in all the sunken cities.
Forgotten, we are greeted by the embassies of the dead,
While your endless flowing carries us on and on;
And neither is nor was. The moment only, eternal.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Rivers" (1980), trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

Dead

“On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Song On the End of the World" http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19195

World , Bee

“All my life to pretend this world of theirs is mine
And to know such pretending is disgraceful.
But what can I do? Suppose I suddenly screamed
And started to prophesy. No one would hear me.
Their screens and microphones are not for that.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Not Mine"

Life , World

“Our memory is childish and it saves only what we need.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Yellow Bicycle," trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Unattainable Earth (1986)

Memory

“During the thirty years I have spent abroad I have felt I was more privileged than my Western colleagues, whether writers or teachers of literature, for events both recent and long past took in my mind a sharply delineated, precise form. Western audiences confronted with poems or novels written in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, or with films produced there, possibly intuit a similarly sharpened consciousness, in a constant struggle against limitations imposed by censorship. Memory thus is our force, it protects us against a speech entwining upon itself like the ivy when it does not find a support on a tree or a wall.”

Czeslaw Milosz

Nobel lecture (8 December 1980)

Literature , Support , Tree , Teachers

“Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself,
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Child of Europe" (1946), trans. Jan Darowski
Daylight (1953)

Truth , Lie , Travel , Tree

“From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife,
what grain will be saved?My son, believe me, nothing remains,
Only adult toil,
the furrow of fate in the palm.
Only toil,
Nothing more.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Farewell" (1945)
Rescue (1945)

Life , Fate