Czeslaw Milosz: Use

Czeslaw Milosz was Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator. Explore interesting quotes on use.
Czeslaw Milosz: 212 quotes4 likes

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Ars Poetica?"

“What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Ars Poetica?"

“There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Ars Poetica?"
Context: There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics. And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

“But where is our, dear to us, mortality?
Where is time that both destroys and saves us?
This is too difficult for me. Peace eternal
Could have no mornings and no evenings,
Such a deficiency speaks against it.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"How It Should Be in Heaven" (1986), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz and Robert Hass
New Poems (1985-1987)

“Now I am not ashamed of my defeat.
One murky island with its barking seals
Or a parched desert is enough
To make us say: yes, oui, si.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Magic Mountain" (1975), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

“How is it, Chloe, that your pretty skirt
Is torn so badly by the winds that hurt
Real people, you who, in eternity, sing
The hours, sun in your hair appearing
And disappearing? How is that your breasts
Are pierced by shrapnel, and the oak groves burn,
While you, charmed, caring not at all, turn
To run through forests of machinery and concrete
And haunt us with the echoes of your feet?”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Book in the Ruins" (1941)
Rescue (1945)

“Earth, what have I to do with thee?
With your meadows where dumb beasts
Grazed before the deluge without lifting their heads?
What have I to do with your implacable births?
So why this gracious melancholia?
Is it because anger is no use?”

Czeslaw Milosz

"A Portal" (1976), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

“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)

“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)

“Greece had to lose, her pure consciousness
had to make our agony only more acute.We needed God loving us in our weakness
and not in the glory of beatitude.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"To Raja Rao" (1969) (A poem written in English)
Uncollected Poems (1954-1969)

“They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.”

Czeslaw Milosz

"Dedication" (1945), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Rescue (1945)