To Begin Where I Am Selected Essays

by Milosz, Czeslaw; Levine, Madeline; Carpenter, Bogdana

• ISBN13: 9780374528591
• ISBN10: 0374528594
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-10-02
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

A comprehensive selection of essays--some never before translated into English--by the Nobel Laureate. To Begin Where I Ambrings together a rich sampling of poet Czeslaw Milosz's prose writings. Spanning more than a half century, from an impassioned essay on human nature, wartime atrocities, and their challenge to ethical beliefs, written in 1942 in the form of a letter to his friend Jerzy Andrzejewski, to brief biographical sketches and poetic prose pieces from the late 1990s, this volume presents Milosz the prose writer in all his multiple, beguiling guises. The incisive, sardonic analyst of the seductive power of communism is also the author of tender, elegiac portraits of friends famous and obscure; the witty commentator on Polish complexes writes lyrically of the California landscape. Two great themes predominate in these essays, several of which have never appeared before in English: Milosz's personal struggle to sustain his religious faith, and his unswerving allegiance to a poetry that is "on the side of man."

Author Biography

Czeslaw Milosz was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a professor, now emeritus, of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent publications are Road-side Dog (FSG, 1998), and Milosz's ABC's (FSG, 2000).

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
My Intention	i
PART ONE: THESE GUESTS OF MINE
Who Was I?	7	(6)
Notes on Exile	13	(7)
Happiness	20	(7)
Dictionary of Wilno Streets	27	(25)
After All ...	52	(3)
Miss Anna and Miss Dora	55	(2)
Journey to the West	57	(20)
On Oscar Milosz	77	(8)
The Prioress	85	(17)
Brognart: A Story Told over a Drink	102	(14)
Alpha the Moralist	116	(26)
Tiger	142	(27)
Zygmunt Hertz	169	(16)
Pity	185	(4)
PART TWO: ON THE SIDE OF MAN
Letter to Jerzy Andrzejewski	189	(13)
Speaking of a Mammal	202	(16)
Facing Too Large an Expanse	218	(3)
Religion and Space	221	(5)
Carmel	226	(7)
To Robinson Jeffers	233	(2)
Essay in Which the Author Confesses That He Is on the Side of Man, for Lack of Anything Better	235	(11)
The Importance of Simone Weil	246	(14)
Shestov, or the Purity of Despair	260	(21)
Dostoevsky	281	(3)
A Philosopher	284	(3)
Saligia	287	(27)
If Only This Could Be Said	314	(15)
Why Religion?	329	(4)
PART THREE: AGAINST INCOMPREHENSIBLE POETRY
Remembrance of a Certain Love	333	(4)
A Semi-Private Letter About Poetry	337	(15)
Ruins and Poetry	352	(19)
Anus Mundi	371	(2)
Against Incomprehensible Poetry	373	(15)
Reflections on T.S. Eliot	388	(11)
Robert Frost	399	(5)
On Pasternak Soberly	404	(17)
Notes About Brodsky	421	(12)
PART FOUR: IN CONSTANT AMAZEMENT
From ``Notebook''	433	(8)
Notes	441	(14)
Index	455

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