Wiersze ostatnie Czesława Miłosza liryczną pieśnią o ludzkich sposobach doświadczania świata

Abstract

A volume of Last Poems has a special meaning in the creative work of Czesław Miłosz as it constitutes a weaving structure of the core motifs and themes that the artist undertook during his long lifetime. Casting a light on meanders of the Nobel Prize winner is facilitated by the category of experience in the philosophical grasp of Walter Benjamin. Thus, the present article shows an important role of memory in shaping human experience of the reality, as the poet posited that cumulative experience may constitute a kind of wisdom which comes only after dusk. By evoking isolated, not infrequently contradictory elements of experience, Miłosz includes them in the narration. However, imperfect memory cannot integrate everything into a meaningful tale at the end of one’s life, regardless of how valuable examining traces of the past would be. Memorizing is accompanied by acute sensitivity to what is transient, passing and ephemeral. What the author of the article emphasizes is that the volume is also a record of painful experience of physical and mental limitations which old age brings. It also opens room for metaphysical experiences, the second plane, which – evading the proofs of an ending life – can only be a sensed, projected entity, whose existence the poet ardently wants to believe in. The author tries to highlights that the record of the present and retrospective experience made Miłosz aware that life is never free from paradox, contradictions and disappointments.