SECOND SPACE
By Czeslaw Milosz. Translated from the Polish by the author and Robert Hass
Ecco. 102 pp. $23.95
Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz died at 93 on August 14 in Krakow. The surprise was that it was a surprise; it was beginning to seem he would carry on forever. Although the news reports said only that he died of "old age," friends noted that the poet, almost blind and deaf, had been ill for some time.
Second Space, in press when he died, entered stores as a posthumous collection, leaving us with the impression that, after a lifetime of skepticism, peregrination and troubles, Milosz tossed us an armful of roses as he departed for the hereafter, the "second space" of his title poem.
The book is an extraordinary spiritual testament, unlike any that could have been produced by another poet of our time. Milosz -- that inveterate miracle-worker who nevertheless doubts, prods and questions miracles -- has pulled off an astonishing summa as his farewell present.
Milosz never failed to view life as a spiritual pilgrimage -- a cliché, perhaps, until you see that he envisioned the journey not in the touchy-feely New Age sense; his grapples with his faith are ancient, specific and enduring. For that reason, it will be interesting to see what non-Polish readers make of this book -- a book that cries out on almost every page, "Help thou my unbelief!"
"It's beyond my understanding.
How could you create such a world,
Alien to the human heart, pitiless,
In which monsters copulate, and death
Is the numb guardian of time?" . . .
"Save me from the images of pain I have gathered wandering on the earth,
Lead me where only Your light abides."
