ANTITUSSIVE

August 26, 2004 By ROBERT PINSKY Cambridge, Mass. When I heard that protesters were going to demonstrate at Czeslaw Milosz's funeral tomorrow at the Mariacki Church in Krakow, it was easy for me to imagine the great poet's laugh. The protesters do not think he was Catholic enough, or Polish enough. He raised such antagonisms all his life. As a kind of byproduct of being a great writer, devoted to ultimate things - call him an Eschatological Humanist - he drove authoritarians crazy. In the 1970's, Czeslaw knew that the Soviet authorities in Poland were beginning to rehabilitate his reputation when an official reference work alluded to him - unmistakably, though not by name - as one of several poets in his generation who were of no particular significance. He was living in Berkeley, Calif., at the time. He shared this information with his American friends and colleagues, coloring it with his booming laugh, a deep bark of pleasure that was simultaneously hearty and ironic. The sound of it was infectious, but more precisely it was commanding. His laughter had the counter-authority of human intelligence, triumphing over the petty-minded authority of a regime. Being a forbidden was an old story to him. He had survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, as many of his close friends did not. He survived his confrontation with the postwar Communist government, and his choice of exile. After the war, his imagination survived through decades as an émigré artist: an anomaly, a Polish poet in America. In "Magic Mountain," a poem published in 1975, he wrote: "Fame would pass me by, no tiara, no crown?" Meaning: he could survive an exile artist's fate, the likelihood that recognition would be sparse. In a poem titled "My Faithful Mother Tongue," he wrote of the Polish language: "You were my native land; I lacked any other." Then he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, the year of Solidarity in Poland. Lines from his poems appeared on banners, and on a famous monument in Gdansk. An edition of his poems was allowed, and in a time of food shortages and short money, queues of people waiting to buy the book extended for blocks. In Berkeley, Czeslaw sometimes showed his friends a three-panel cartoon from a Warsaw newspaper: first panel, a man walking along while reading a book, with another, sinister figure lurking around the corner; middle panel, the hidden figure leaps from the shadows to stab the walking man in the back; in the final panel, the killer walks away from the bleeding corpse, reading the stolen book, with its cover now visible: "Milosz Poems." From the poet displaying this little artifact, those characteristic barks of laughter - skeptical, but undeniably pleased. By maintaining a stubborn loyalty to his language and his native province, he had become a world poet. By cleaving to seemingly outmoded convictions of his childhood and youth - belief in reason, love of nature, the cosmopolitan views of his uncle Oscar Milosz, an important French poet - he survived the lethal ideologies of Nazism and Soviet Communism. By tending to his work, and by the turns of fortune, he had now somehow, beyond his own expectation, outlasted the great brutal monolith and its attempts to edit him out of history. The cosmopolitan, eclectic side of his imagination might have been formed not only by Oscar Milosz but by his childhood home city of Vilnius - then Wilno, in Polish - which was Jewish and Polish and Lithuanian, a lively intellectual center. After his triumphant return, a return that for decades seemed beyond possibility, he was honored in a Vilnius that is no longer Jewish or Polish, but altogether Lithuanian. Gradually, he left Berkeley for Krakow, a university city that unlike Warsaw survived the war with its ancient buildings intact. His prose book "The Captive Mind" is not so much anti-Communist as an account of the traps, compromises, self-deceptions and suicidal hypocrisies of writers and intellectuals in a police state. Anyone who supposes that poets or scholars are by their nature moral guides as people will find a generous but unwavering corrective in "The Captive Mind." The book survives not only the Soviet system, but also the fall of the system. I visited Czeslaw in a Krakow hospital last month, a day before his 93rd birthday, a couple of weeks before his death. He greeted me with a familiar mixture of courtliness and attentive self-examination: "I am very moved you have come to visit me. Fortunately, I am conscious." As these characteristic words indicate, the spirit and mind were as ever, though the body appeared too weak for writing, maybe even for dictation. To the question, "Czeslaw, have you been composing sentences in your head? Are you writing in your mind," he responded, "Nooo" - the syllable prolonged in a crooning, Slavic way - "only absurd bric-a-brac." The homely French phrase, so amusingly placed, demonstrated his subtle command of English, a language in which he chose to write only one poem ("To Raja Rao"). Then he chose to give an example of the bric-a-brac, a dream he had that day, in the hospital: "I dreamed I was in 18th-century Boston," he said. "Arguing with Puritans." Then, "Everybody was in uniform!" - the old laughter booming, with its sense of absurdity and purpose, appetite and revulsion, grief and renewal: an essential sound of the 20th century, persisting in an unsurpassed body of work. The enemies of that great voice could not silence it in exile; their baffled, angry protests cannot muffle its triumph at home. Robert Pinsky's most recent book of poems is "Jersey Rain." He was poet laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/opinion/26pinsky.html?ex=1094575339&ei=1&en=96365b51fce90274

By Patricia Sullivan Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, 93, one of the major poets of the violent 20th century whose unflinching view of man's inhumanity was tempered by his love of the world's beauty, died Aug. 14 at his home in Krakow, Poland. No exact cause of death was reported. His assistant told the Associated Press: "It's death, simply death. It was his time -- he was 93." His life, forged from the start in the crucible of Russia and Eastern Europe, straddled the chaos and the cataclysms of the century. He spent 30 years in self-imposed exile in France and the United States but returned to Poland in 1989 after the overthrow of Communist rule. His poetry inspired his countrymen for decades before he won the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature, which made him one of the best-read poets in the United States. "He is without question one of the heroic figures of 20th-century poetry, although 'heroic' was a mantle he shunned," said Robert Faggen, a literature professor at Claremont McKenna College who interviewed, studied and wrote about the poet. "At the [Solidarity] monument in Gdansk, you have icons of three figures: Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II and Milosz." His work grappled ceaselessly with the religious and metaphysical paradox of how to live, and maintain one's faith, in a world of mass-scale suffering. He insisted on detachment and irony. "There is a very dark vision of the world in my work," he once told a Washington Post reporter, but he added that he was "a great partisan of human hope" due to his religious convictions. He believed, he said, in "the passionate pursuit of the real." Mr. Milosz was born in what is now Lithuania and raised on the battle lines of Russia during World War I. His father built roads for the czarist army. After the war, the family returned to its home town, which had become part of the Polish state. Mr. Milosz fought in the Resistance in World War II, living in occupied Warsaw and publishing anti-Nazi poetry in underground journals. He entered the diplomatic corps of the fledgling Polish republic after the war, serving for a time as cultural attache in Washington. Disillusioned with Stalinism, Mr. Milosz left Poland, finding political asylum in France, where he published "The Captive Mind" (1953), a widely influential attack on the manner in which the Polish Communist Party destroyed the independence of the intelligentsia. His work was censored in Poland but circulated underground. It was not translated into English until 1973. He took a job as a professor of literature at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960 and became a U.S. citizen in 1970. Mr. Milosz cut an imposing figure, a barrel-chested and vigorous man whose most memorable characteristic was his wild, dark eyebrows. A translator of Shakespeare, Milton, Baudelaire and T.S. Eliot into his native tongue, a scholar who commanded Russian, Polish, English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Mr. Milosz radiated a demanding intellectual style, colleagues said. He became an extremely popular lecturer on campus, even before the 1980 Nobel Prize catapulted his popularity. Mr. Milosz wrote his poems in Polish, then translated them. He turned to Robert L. Hass, later the American poet laureate, and others to refine the English. This co-translation resulted in a second translation of the beautifully accessible language, with deeply thought-out meanings. His work was read not just by students and Polish partisans (his name, entered in the online Google search engine, returns 33,900 results), but fellow Pole Karol Józef Wojtyla, now known as Pope John Paul II. Faggen said the pope and the poet began corresponding over Mr. Milosz's treatise on theology and its justifications of evil. "One of the things the pope said to him was, 'In your poetry, you take two steps forward and one step back.' Czeslaw replied, 'Holy father, how in this century can I do otherwise?' " Faggen said. He is survived by two sons. His first wife, Janina, died in 1986. His second wife, Carol, died in 2003. Mr. Milosz would have been impatient with attempts to understand him through a recitation of biography. "Biographies are like seashells; not much can be learned from them about the mollusk that once lived inside them," he wrote in "Milosz's ABCs" (2001). Although he was ill, he was writing until recently. He pursued meaning until the end of his life, asserting, in a poem called "Meaning" (1991): When I die, I will see the lining of the world The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset The true meaning, ready to be decoded. And if there is no meaning, what remains, he said, is a word, a tireless messenger who "calls out, protests, screams." --- Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/admin/emailfriend?contentId=A1519-2004Aug14&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle

Obituary Czeslaw Milosz Aug 19th 2004 From The Economist print edition AP Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish émigré poet, died on August 14th, aged 93 HE WAS a poet who spanned his century. Born in a Lithuanian-Polish province of tsarist Russia, Czeslaw Milosz died having seen the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian empires rise and fall, while his two native lands finally escaped their miserable history to end up safe and free. He wrote about it all, mostly in exile in America, in essays, novels and volumes of poems. These lines of his are inscribed on a monument at the Gdansk shipyard, honouring Polish workers shot for striking against the dictatorship of the proletariat: Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. You can kill one, but another is born. The words are written down, the deed, the date. In retrospect, the Communists and their goons who banned his poems should have been scared. History has proved Mr Milosz right about pretty much everything. But at the time, and particularly until he won the Nobel prize for literature in 1980, it was a long slog. When will that shore appear from which at last we see How all this came to pass and for what reason? he asked sadly in 1974 in ³From the Rising of the Sun², a poem that his friend and fellow-émigré, the Russian Joseph Brodsky, considered his best. His greatness was often against the spirit of the age, largely because the ages in which he lived had so many nasty spirits. He was liberal-minded, xenophile, wistful and tolerant, in a world that was none of these things. That made him, in his words, ³an ecstatic pessimist². Feeling gloomy, he cheerfully got on with writing. In pre-war Poland Mr Milosz felt stifled by the prevailing Catholic-nationalist ethos; he was sacked from a Polish radio station for being too pro-Lithuanian. Under Nazi occupation, he worked with the resistance, among other things translating ³The Waste Land² into Polish for an underground publisher. Before it showed its truly Stalinist face, he served the post-war regime as a diplomat; in 1951, he defected. For the next 40 years he tried to explain to the West both the real nature of Communism, and the things it had extinguished. Mr Milosz liked to describe himself as the last citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a medieval superpower that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, noted for its religious and cultural tolerance. But that, and its surviving echoes in the modern era, had disappeared like Atlantis. Mr Milosz's erudite nostalgia for the ethnographical intricacies of the eastern Polish provinces, the ³border of Rome and Byzantium² as he put it, seemed fanciful and archaic. Now, as the European Union wonders how best to deal with its sullen, poverty-stricken eastern neighbours, his thoughts on culture and history could hardly be more topical. In his best-known prose work, ³The Captive Mind², Mr Milosz caught not only the nastiness of totalitarian ideology, but also its seductiveness. An intellectual who swallows the Communist medicine of the mind, he wrote, ³attains a relative degree of harmony...preferable to the torment of pointless rebellion and groundless hope.² His poems dealt with metaphysics, immortality, love, memory and beauty. A masterful observer of sights and sounds, he used small details from his youth to illustrate large ideas. That, he said, was a Proustian ³search for reality purified by the passage of time², as in the opening stanzas of ³Earth², written in 1949: My sweet European homeland, A butterfly lighting on your flowers stains its wings with blood, Blood gathers in the mouths of tulips, Shines, star-like, inside a morning glory And washes the grains of wheat. Your people warm their hands At the funeral candle of a primrose And hear on the fields the wind howling In the cannons ready to be fired. You are a land where it's no shame to suffer For one is served here a glass of bitter liquor With lees, the poison of centuries. Writing in Polish is not the easiest way to become world-famous, and it was only in 1973 that a volume of his poetry appeared in English. His recognition was aided by excellent translators, principally Richard Hass, an American poet laureate and a professor, like Mr Milosz, at Berkeley. The intellectual tussles of the cold war were tricky too. Diehard anti-Communists distrusted him for having served the regime at all. America at first refused to give him a visa, leaving him stranded and cash-strapped in Paris, where he was befriended by Albert Camus. Other intellectuals found his critique of totalitarianism too harsh. Pablo Neruda denounced him in a left-wing newspaper as ³The man who ran away². That charge hurt: Mr Milosz was always worried that he had betrayed his homeland by leaving it and was glad to return to newly free Poland for the final years of his life. He was welcomed as a literary giant. But like many east European intellectuals who flourished in adversity, he had little to say directly about the new era of uncaptive minds. ³Intellectuals have a certain image of things and don't know very well what is going on beneath, in people's heads, after those decades of totalitarian smashing and modelling,² he said. His many fans thought that too modest. Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2004. All rights reserved.

'Creative people can either reflect the state of the world or uplift it.For some, the choice is obvious.'

by Marge C. Enriquez
ELAN Secion, PDI
07/31/2004

In the August issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott writes an incisive essay on the cult of instant celebrity, born out of narcissism, a prodigy of ego, and how popular culture worships the body like a deity. Looks reign supreme and talent has not just taken the backseat; it has become a "potential handicap".

The essay, "Bland Ambition", focuses on the phenomenon of reality TV start and finalists in singing contests who get the spotlight for their popularity rather than their voice. (Remember "American Idol" finalist Jasmine Trias who got the formidable Filipino vote even when she sang off-key? We've heard better singers in local noontime shows.)

The gist could well apply in any field, including fashion, photography and broadcast and print media, which has inflated the image and egos of many pretenders who rose to national prominence in too short a time. Their main talents are to look cute and schmooze wiht the media, and their knowledge of the craft is secondary, sometimes even negligible. Some don't have the dedication to their work but get away with their position.

Too little time
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"Talent takes time to ripen, time to learn and hone its craft, who has time for that ?", Wolcott asks.

What I find shocking is his comment, but it's true: "Mass culture secretes condescencsion and borderline contempt for any quest for artistic _expression that requires discipline, difficulty, sacrifice and a devotion to traditions larger than oneself. Having to work for success and personal satisfaction seems as primitive as pushing a plow."

Wolcott also observes how coverage of the performing arts in the leading newspapers is drying up and that the opera is "still patronized as a game reserved for Social Register dowagers and prisses."

His lament on how mass culture seems to disdain the virtues of dedication and patience in the arts saddens me. Between an invitation to a special function or a performance, Manilenos will favor the former. They don't realize that a show takes months of preparation, not to mention the artists' years of training.

In our media, the most talented and dedicated professionals don't get much attention. Advertisements tend to get endorsers borne of popcorn popularity. Without much technique, what would they be doing five years from now?

I have long been wanting to write an essay on the role of the arts which has been alienated from out society. Yet how many are going to finish reading a lifestyle editorial that has no gossip in it., or biting quotes, or anything that would titillae the basal instincts?

Both art and science are virtual in our thoughts and actions. We cannot avoid contact with art because it stretches out from the practical to the profound. Society's estrangement from it has left us with a lackadaisical or blase approach to life. To many, art may seem illogical, unnecessary and elitist. At a deeper level, the emotional distance of art from society and the idolatry of people who only talent is to look cute (call it the worship of dolls), symbolize the division of the body and the spirit.

Making sense of it
==============

Art is concerned with knowing the world through intuition. In ancient times, art through ritual, helped the community make sense of their lives. If we are cut off from our inner faculties, the result is a cold and materialistic mentality. Works of art are achievements in organization and derring-do. The quality and quantity of art is a yardstick of culture.

Art prospers in environments where compassion for human welfare can also flourish. Not only does art reflect a people's history and aspiration; it is also extremely important in planning the present and future.

Artists rouse social conscience. The most dedicated artists have been the ones who refused to conform, and have continuously treaded on terra incognita to arrive at a point of relevant insight and _expression. They are intuitively conscious of their transformation to discover a new set of values and uphold this through their work. Art allows a different aspect of the personality to develop an openness to substantial ideas. The more an artist enhances his innate abilities, the more powerfully the meaning of the art is transmitted.

Artists have choice - to reflect the state of the world or to uplift it. It is for these reasons that the ravage of art would mean the erosion of society's values.

How is this manifested today? Wolcott quotes cultural critic Albert Goldman as saying, "Never in the history of the world has there been such a rage for exhibitionism. What are we going to do with all these beautiful show-offs?"

While we're talking about art, Leo Garcia, dean of the humanities department of Ateneo, reviews "Art", performed by Actors' Actors Inc. The play tackles "The Emperor's Clothes" syndrome and discusses how perspective can glorify a work or give it a reality check. It also shows how perspectives can build or destroy friendships.

'Inside Out'

Last week I performed the multi-media art concert, "Inside Out", at Onstage Greenbelt. It was not only part of the creative outlet that balances my brain. Taking into considerations that our society preferred socials to arts, the invitations indicated that the show would start at 7p.m. sharp and finish at 8p.m. sharp so that the guests could catch up with their other events that night.

The concert was also a venue to market ELAN. A flier about ELANS thrust was inserted in the programs and given to prospective advertisers. This year my pitch was predictably iconoclastic. It defined what success meant to ELAN - certainly not in the traditional sense of quantity.

The worldly standard of success - having MORE - is based on the precept that there's nothing much around going for us, therefore, accumulation is triumph.

I wrote that the more I chased success according to materialistic ideals, the more it eluded me. Sucess is not based on quantity or popularity. It is based on quality. If the articles and images have opened people's eyes and made them see things differently, then ELAN has done its job.

That was also how I viewed working on 'Inside Out'. Its success was not going to be measured by whether people talked about the event, or by the media mileage. It would have to be based on two things: the quality of the relationships developed in its making, and the opportunity for creative work in the future.

Some people have remarked that my attitude is too philosophical or too airy-fairy, especially advertisers and sponsors who don't think much and just looks to mileage for support. Nothing has ever come easy for me. It is these ideals that have kept me determined and diligent in both my journalistic career and my artistic passion.