2 of 4

The pope's response was read at Milosz's funeral: "Over his casket, I want to quote my answer. 'You write that the object of your concern was making sure that you do not abandon the Catholic orthodoxy in your creative work. I am certain that such an attitude of a poet decides what happens. In this sense, I am happy that I can confirm your words.' " The Pope then added to his listeners, "I repeat these words today as a memento, along with a prayer and a Mass celebrated for his soul."

In another unusual attempt to quell any protests during Milosz's funeral, the poet's own confessor issued a public statement. (This could only happen in a country of impassioned Catholics!) We learned that Milosz "left this world provided with the last rites, reconciled with God and the Church." The Krakow priest added that he had been Milosz's confessor for a year, during which the bard participated in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist regularly. "When his health no longer allowed going to church, he received communion at home," he wrote.

Among the ten thousand Poles who bid farewell to Milosz in person were other Noblists, members of the intelligensia, notable politicians, religious figures, and artists. They included the electrician-turned-union-leader-turned-president Lech Walesa; the first non-communist premier of Poland, Tadeusz Mazowiecki; and Noble Prize winners and fellow poets Wislawa Szymborska and, from Ireland, Seamus Heaney; poet and friend Adam Zagajewski; film director Andrzej Wajda; ex-dissident and now editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza daily Adam Michnik; and Milosz's translators into various languages.

Zagajewski—a friend of Milosz who like him was born in Lithuania and has lived in Paris, in the States (where he is visiting associate professor of English at the University of Houston), and in Krakow—eulogized Milosz's rare "gift of combining raw observation of the moral and political world with a sense of things unseen, with a religious experience" and "a sharp, just judgment of earthly matters and an impassioned search after God."

In his tribute published in Gazeta shortly following the death, Zagajewski summed up Milosz's work with characteristic wit: "The telegram that Nietzsche had sent, informing Europeans about God's death, yes, has reached the poet, but clearly he has refused to sign the receipt, and sent off the messenger."

In an interview with Polish radio, Zagajewski said that "his departure ends a certain chapter and we're a little alone now." He described Milosz as not just a poet but also a "prophet, wise man, and an unusual authority."

Fellow Nobel recipient Wislawa Szymborska, who often spoke of her intimidation by Milosz's genius and insisted that her poetry be treated as less expansive than Milosz's, said at his funeral only this: "Today we bid farewell to the poet, but not his poetry. It will surely outlive us all."

The poet's personal friend and Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda, whose films have documented the evils and ironies of communism, told Gazeta that Milosz was one of these great artists of the 20th and 21st centuries: "Milosz was not only the chronicler of his times, but also their participant."

As an example, Wajda recalled a time when dockyard workers in Gdansk were about to raise the Three Crosses Monument to honor those who had been killed during the anti-communist strikes. "They made me … contact Czeslaw Milosz, who was then living in the United States, and ask him to agree to dedicate a poem that would go on the monument." He took the request to mean that these workers "treated Czeslaw Milosz as a poet who preceded their voice."

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

September (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48