Literature &Philosophy &Poetry Entropy | 21 Apr 2008
Incantation
This poem is a ode in honor of Reason. The function of the first verse is the thesis: human Reason is the cause of both good and evil. The rest of verses (although not all of them) affirm this opinion. Thanks to Reason tolerance exists in the world, it is possible to distinguish good from evil. It is Reason which consolidates hope and thanks to it the alliance of good and truth is created.
But at some point a problem arises: if the world is governed by Reason, why in the second verse are “pulping of books” or ” barbed wire” mentioned ? Milosz – the truth searcher, the advocate of truth in poetry – giving the reins to his imagination? Is he lying? And here the title is very helpful: “Incantation” – it explains everything.- Because the world of the poem is intentional, whereas the lyrical subject knows that violence and contempt win in the world and that Enlightenment ideas, the ideas of classicism exist still in the sphere of dreams, sentences, letters.
Incantation
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in the service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit.
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky
Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation” from The Collected Poems: 1931-1987.
Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc.
on 21 Apr 2008 at 8:27 pm 1.Nimesh Dadia said …
Tonight I will not sleep , i will look upto to the sky and try to reason why is that
I am befuddled,bemused and bewildered like a 9 month old child would be when he sees a trifling object, thats how i feel reading this beautiful piece.
I wish i had a befitting reply for this but am feeling so choked that my speech is futile to explicate, so choked that my words are bottlenecked, so choked that my thoughts are trying to flee as if the the ship which is the MIND is sinking… seeking Gravity…
Oh secour! Oh Secour! Oh Secour!
on 16 Oct 2008 at 6:25 pm 2.Nimesh Dadia said …
Lao Aju
Another intersting poem by the same POet. Its a beauituful poem, the last sentence has feel of sort of drunkenness
Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
– Czeslaw Milosz