Legends of modernity
Subtitle: essays and letters from occupied Poland, 1942-43
By: Czesław Miłosz ; translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine ; introduction by Jaroslaw Anders.
Contributors: Andrzejewski, Jerzy, 1909-; Levine, Madeline G.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 266
Subjects: Miłosz, Czesław -- Correspondence.; Andrzejewski, Jerzy, 1909- -- Correspondence.; Miłosz, Czesław -- Translations into English.; Authors, Polish -- 20th century -- Correspondence.
Genres: Correspondence.; Translations into English.
Description: Legends of Modernity, now available in English for the first time, brings together some of Czeslaw Milosz's early essays and letters, composed in German-occupied Warsaw during the winter of 1942-43. "Why did the European spirit succumb to such a devastating fiasco?" the young Milosz asks. Half a century later, when Legends of Modernity saw its first publication in Poland, Milosz said: "If everything inside you is agitation, hatred, and despair, write measured, perfectly calm sentences ..." While the essays here reflect a "perfect calm," the accompanying contemporaneous exchange of letters between Milosz and Jerzy Andrzejewski express the raw emotions of "agitation, hatred and despair" experienced by these two close friends struggling to understand the proximate causes of this debacle of western civilization, and the relevance, if any, of the teachings of the Catholic church.
Table of contents: title: Essays from the Occupation; title: Letter essays of Jerzy Andrzejewski and Czesław Miłosz.