Book Description
The Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz began his remarkable A Treatise on Poetry in the winter of 1955 and finished it in the spring of 1956. It was published originally in parts in the Polish émigré journal Kultura. Now it is available in English for the first time in this expert translation by the award-winning American poet Robert Hass.A Treatise on Poetry is a great poem about some of the most terrible events in the twentieth century. Divided into four sections, the poem begins at the end of the nineteenth century as a comedy of manners and moves with a devastating momentum through World War I to the horror of World War II. Then it takes on directly and plainly the philosophical abyss into which the European cultures plunged."Author's Notes" on the poem appear at the end of the volume. A stunning literary composition, these notes stand alone as brilliant miniature portraits that magically re-create the lost world of prewar Europe.A Treatise on Poetry evokes the European twentieth century, its comedy and terror and grief, with the force and expressiveness of a great novel. A tone poem to a lost time, a harrowing requiem for the century's dead, and a sober meditation on history, consciousness, and art: here is a masterwork that confronts the meaning of the twentieth century with a directness and vividness that are without parallel.


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Polish


About the Author
Czeslaw Milosz was born in Lithuania in 1911. His books of poetry in English include The Collected Poems, 1931-1987, Unattainable Earth, The Separate Notebooks, Provinces, Bells in Winter, and Selected Poems, all published by The Ecco, Press. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Begun in the winter of 1955 and completed in the spring of 1956, Treatise on Poetry is a brilliant meditative poem fully expressive of the powers that have made Milosz one of our greatest writers. Expertly translated, the poem is divided into four parts—Europe at the turn of the century, the condition of Polish culture between the two world ward, the harsh reality of World War II, and the role of the poet in the postwar world, here Milosz addresses the failure of early-20th-century Polish poetry. With vast historical sweep and in language that enables readers to see "as if in a flash of summer lighting," Milosz offers a fascinating account of the mysterious art of poetry.

About the Authors:Czeslaw Milosz was born in Lithuania in 1911. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate and winner of two National Book Critics Circle Awards, is a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. Both live in Berkeley, CA.

FROM THE CRITICS

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