One of the other books I'm reading these days is Czeslaw Milosz's A Year of the Hunter. This book is a diary of a year, 1987 Aug - 1988 July. I am still on early pages, now beginning September.
I just perhaps need to reiterate this thing about a poet's prose. Somehow a poet's sensibility and the relationship with words, metaphors, phrases, sentences is quite something. The economy of the prose, the simplicity yet the depth it can reflect. Like deep, clean, refreshing pool of water. Generally, it is a treat to read prose by poets.
Here's a little paragraph and a poem he refers to from the preface:
There is also another explanation for the title. My youthful dreams of excursions "on the trail of nature" were never fulfilled, and yet I did become a hunter, although of a different sort: my game was the entire visible world and I have devoted my life trying to capture it in words, to making a direct hit with words. Alas, the present year of the hunter brings, in the main, reflections on the incommensurability of aspirations and accomplishments, despite the existence of an entire shelf of books written by me. I repeat to myself a poem by Robinson Jeffers that I translated into Polish a long time ago, and I see more clearly than ever before that I could well have adopted it as the motto for all my creative work:
Love The Wild SwanCzeslaw Milosz received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Here is his Nobel Lecture. His fame he believes is narrow, what he calls "providential equanimity inscribed in my destiny: never too much fame, just the right amount."
"I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunger, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."
- This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast,
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your...self? At least
Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
Some time back I bought a book of his poems, translated. The poems are yet to find me. But his another collection, a poetry anthology 'A Book of Luminous Things' finds me flipping through its pages often. He has selected poems from all over the world, often translated, and presented across a few key themes. So many poems like the one above. A beautiful selection.
More from 'A Year of the Hunter' if I am able to read through more.