On Czeslaw Milosz - (Writers on Writers) by Eva Hoffman (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was one of the great literary voices of the twentieth century, in no small part because he very much lived the events and ideologies of that century. Born into a Polish family in what was then the western fringe of the Russian Empire, and what is now Lithuania, a young man Milosz found his life upended by the First World War and his father's conscription in the Russian army. In the Second World War, he provided aid to Jews in Warsaw as a partisan and a member of the Polish socialist underground. But after the war he lived as a permanent exile, from Poland, from Soviet communism, from his early fervent Catholicism and then, later, even from the almost garish extremes and inequalities of the American society in which he chose to live. His work is a lasting legacy. His poetry remains in print, whether in Polish or English or the other languages into which it has been translated, and his two classic works of prose non-fiction, The Captive Mind, his reflection on the hypnotic effect of ideology, and Native Realm, his memoir on his life in Poland and his life away from it, have been reissued in Penguin Classics. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. In this new volume of the Writers on Writers series, writer Eva Hoffman draws on her conversations with Milosz during their encounters and her own private engagement with his work, in order to comprehend someone whose intellectual and geographic trajectory serves as a mirror to her own, as someone who emigrated with her family from her native Poland and who has since lived and pursued a literary career in the anglophone world. Hoffman concentrates on several important themes in Milosz's life and work, such as his resistance to dogma and fanaticism, his fascination with place and geographic separation, his awareness of his own exile, his attraction to all life, his capacity for pleasure, and finally his basic humanism, which underpinned his poetry"--

Book Synopsis

A compelling personal introduction to the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning writer Czeslaw Milosz from his fellow Polish exile and acclaimed writer Eva Hoffman

Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was a giant of twentieth-century literature, not least because he lived through and wrote about many of the most extreme events of that extreme century, from the world wars and the Holocaust to the Cold War. Over a seven-decade career, he produced an important body of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including classics such as The Captive Mind, a reflection on the hypnotic power of ideology, and Native Realm, a memoir. In this book, Eva Hoffman, like Milosz a Polish-born writer who immigrated to the West, presents an eloquent personal portrait of the life and work of her illustrious fellow exile.

Milosz experienced the horrors of World War II in Warsaw--the very epicenter of the inferno--and witnessed the unfolding of the Holocaust from up close. After the war, he lived as a permanent exile--from Poland, communism, and mainstream American culture. Hoffman explores how exile, historical disasters, and Milosz's origins in Eastern Europe shaped his vision, and she occasionally compares her own postwar trajectory with Milosz's to show how the question of "the Other Europe" is still with us today. She also examines his later turn to the poetry of memory and loss, driven by the need to remember and honor his many friends and others killed in the Holocaust.

Combining incisive personal and critical insights, On Czeslaw Milosz captures the essence of the life and work of a great poet and writer.

Review Quotes

"[An] illuminating study. . . . [Hoffman] knew Milosz as only another Polish writer could know him, as she has known other Polish Nobel laureates. That makes this book, written from a fresh new angle, both distinctive and trustworthy."---Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, Christian Century

"[A] profoundly honest and rather beautiful book. . . .On Czeslaw Milosz, is a true treasure to both read and embrace."-- "David Marx Book Reviews"

"A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year"

"Hoffman's short book ought to be . . . one of the most perceptive and sympathetic introductions to Milosz's life and work available. She manages not only to bring vividly alive one of the greatest Europeans of the century, but also to raise once again all the hauntingly insistent questions about art, politics, power and suffering that the century generated - and that we are constantly in danger of forgetting."---Rowan Williams, Literary Review

"This marvellous short book. . .is unsettling and relevant to our own times. Essential reading."---Mark Glanville, Jewish Chronicle

About the Author

Eva Hoffman is a critic, novelist, historian, and memoirist who grew up in Kraków, Poland, before immigrating to Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Her many books include Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language and Exit into History: A Journey through the New Eastern Europe. She is a visiting professor at the European Institute of University College London.