Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie w oczach Czesława Miłosza (eseje, rozmowy)

Abstract

Czestaw Miłosz often refers to his life in essays and conversations. By using the strategy of uncov ering/covering, the poet transfers the biography into paraliterary and non-literary statements. According to the writer, the most important feature ofthe biography is emigration, which sentences a person to solitude and mental journeys to the world of childhood and youth, often transformed into mythological Arcadia. When it comes to Miłosz, these journeys refer to a highly diversified area as far as culture, language and rich history are concerned. Naturally, the writer goes back to the past although he declares that he is more interested in the future. For the author of The Issa Valley, The Grand Duchy of Lithuania is an area ofrootedness, which for Simone Weil stands for functioning in a community that maintains tradition and plans the future. The paradox of Miłosz is that he came across factors that influenced his intellectual and mental for mation only in the form of heritage - trails found in various regions - starting from the history and ending with culture. For Miłosz, the Grand Duchy ofLithuania is primarily a construction of a mind shaped by resist ance to contemporaneousness and a need to change it, as well as by axiology. It is not a myth that takes place in locus amoenus.