Description: In his 1981-1982 Norton Lectures, Czeslaw Milosz stages an ambitious defense of the need for poetry amid the ruins of a catastrophic twentieth century. Introducing Western audiences to a wide range of Polish poetry, Milosz vividly reveals that it remains a wellspring of "incorrigible hope," not despite but because of Poland's calamitous history.
Brief description: Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was the author of dozens of volumes of poetry, along with several novels and collections of essays. The winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, he was Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at University of California, Berkeley.
Review Quotes: By the strength of its condensed and lucid exposition, The Witness of Poetry provides us with a key to Milosz's poetic historiosophy, philosophy, and aesthetics. Of course, Milosz's entire work offers one of the most profound responses to the dilemmas of our century.-- "New Criterion"