The poet Czeslaw Milosz reveals to us a vital part of his creative process, of his poetry, namely his faith in and pursuit of God.
O God, you are more awesome than Your holy places. The God of Israel is He who gives strength and power to His people. But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God; Yes, let them rejoice exceedingly.
Psalm 68:35 & Psalm 68:3
Thomas Merton was a friend of Czeslaw Milosz. It was through reading Merton’s letters found in The Courage for Truth that I first learned a bit about Milosz. I had seen Milosz’s books in the poetry sections of bookstores, but had not read him, and certainly didn‘t know he was Catholic, and that his Catholicism was the orientation through which he lived and wrote poetically.
I was in Victoria BC at a conference. During a free moment in the late afternoon of a misty rainy day, I stumbled upon a beautiful bookstore: whitewashed walls, high ceilings, and old wooden floors that creak under foot. Scanning the shelves while clutching my umbrella I saw this volume of the selected and last poems of Milosz 1931-2004. I took it off the shelf, and with no further hesitation paid the cashier and absconded back to my hotel room. Nestled in a wing back chair under the glow of lamplight and the succour of a warm blanket, my sliding doors open to the harbour below, I read through each poem, my heart stirred by the poetry of this artist who believed that the world was made up of real things, and that those real things, when opened to the artist and the perceiver of art, would lead one to the glory of God.
Seamus Heaney, who wrote an essay for this volume describes Milosz as one whose “life and works were founded upon faith. A word wakened by lips that perish”(xv). Heaney continues with an important “first artistic principle” that was clearly related to the last Gospel of the Mass, the ‘In pricipio’ of St. John: In the beginning was the Word”(xvi). Milosz developed a “fierce conviction about the holy force of his art, how poetry was called upon to combat death and nothingness, to be ‘a tireless messenger who runs and runs / Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies / And calls out, protests, screams’ (‘meaning’).
“With Milosz gone,” Heaney explains, “the world has lost a credible witness to the immemorial belief in the saving power of poetry”(xvi).
In this same volume there is an introduction by Milosz entitled, A Footnote Many Years Later. Here Milosz explains his role of poet:
I strongly believe in the passive role of the poet. The poet receives a poem as a gift from forces unknown to him, and he should always remember that the work he has created is not due to his merit. His mind, and his will, must nonetheless, be ever alert, sensitive to every thing around him (xix).
And as if to prevent the reader from interpreting the above into some kind of Byronian romanticism where the subjective reigns over the concrete, Milosz affirms:
My Catholic upbringing implanted in me a respect for all things visible, connected by the poetry of being, or esse, that calls for unceasing admiration. I think that the sign of a healthy poetry is a striving to capture as much reality as is conceivably possible. Having a choice between subjective and objective art, I would vote for the latter … [It] is very difficult to bear the knowledge, the weight of facts and not yield to the temptation of becoming a reporter … A certain astuteness is called for in choosing our means, and a sort of distillation of materials, so as to acquire the perspective that lets us contemplate the things of this world without delusions. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that, for me, such contemplation acquired a religious dimension.
Czeslaw Milosz, Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004, xix.
In Milosz’s poem 1945 as he describes conversation with a friend from the Avant Garde … who lived through the war in Russia, Milosz writes,
“the best cure for illusions is hunger, patience, and obedience.
Further on in the poem, Milosz describes himself …
I blinked, ridiculous and rebellious
Alone with my Jesus Mary against irrefutable power,
A descendent of ardent prayers, of gilded sculptures and miracles.
Czeslaw Milosz, Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004
What is so important about Milosz’s poetry, and his orientation to the world in general, is his affirmation of the natural world and objective art. But such affirmations are not merely with the mind or intellect or, God help us, through some kind of ‘subjectivity’. (I’m all too reminded here of the phenomenologists who talk about the revelation of being on the one hand and ‘shelving’ objectivity on the other.) For Milosz, creative being, the making of art, the observations that are stitched together into piquant poetic quilts, arise from a contemplation that must “acquire a religious dimension,” a way of entering into the meaning of being through what is real and true and incarnate.
Creativity is essentially a spiritual act; a form of prayer. A way of affirming that the whole world is filled with the glory of God. When engaged this way, the product of our creative work can help bring alignment to our lives, to refocus our intentions, to lead us back to God–so necessary in times of tyranny and nausea and brooding fear.
Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz exchanged letters through which they gave honest feedback on one another’s work, recommended books, and engaged in theological conversation.
In these times, when we are reading countless articles and stories about the undermining of human freedom, justice, and beauty, Milosz’s poetry stands as a light for us.
But we are fragile beings. And sometimes standing as light can take its toll on our spirits.
It seems that Milosz’s letters to Merton expressed moments of despondency and a loss of hope in humanity. In contrast, Merton’s letters are always full of hope and radiance.
Here’s one response from Thomas Merton to Milosz that I wrote into the front flyleaf of my copy of Milosz’s Selected and Last Poems …
Milosz–life is on our side. The silence and the cross of which we know are forces that can’t be defeated. In silence and suffering, in the heartbreaking effort to be honest in the midst of dishonesty (most of all our own dishonesty), in all these is victory. It is Christ in us who drives us through the darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair.
Deep affection and solidarity in Christ–Tom Merton
It has a resonance from the Gospel of John 16:33
Christ says,
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
It is out of this relationship with the Incarnate God who offers Himself to us that we can have the courage to create and the awareness of the reality of life itself–and not merely our own experiences or private thoughts–and the ability to communicate heart to heart, because it is the Holy Spirit who communicates through us.
Indeed, to repeat Merton, “It is Christ in us who drives us through the darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair.”
“Despair” because in ourselves we can do nothing.
Allowing Christ to indwell us, drawing closer to Him and following Him as Friend (Jn 16:14), opening our hearts to Love Himself and the Beauty of His creation, out of which form words and images that draw forth onto canvas or page, lines of music or sheets of stone, that is true art.
From Milosz’s Rays of Dazzling Light …
Light off metal shaken,
Lucid dew of heaven,
Bless each and every one
To whom the earth is given.
