On Czeslaw Milosz
Visions from the Other Europe
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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.
About this 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.
Reviews
"A Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year"
"This marvellous short book. . .is unsettling and relevant to our own times. Essential reading."---Mark Glanville, Jewish Chronicle
"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
"[A] profoundly honest and rather beautiful book. . . .On Czeslaw Milosz, is a true treasure to both read and embrace."
"[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
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