MILOSZ AT THE GATES OF HEAVEN

     Czeslaw Milosz, Krakow 2002. Photo: Judyta Papp


AN ALCOHOLIC ENTERS THE GATES OF HEAVEN

What kind of man I was to be you’ve known since the beginning,

since the beginning of every creature.

It must be horrible to be aware, simultaneously,

of what is, what was,

and what will be.

I began my life confident and happy,

certain that the Sun rose every day for me

and that flowers opened for me every morning.

I ran all day in an enchanted garden.

Not suspecting that you had picked me from the Book of Genes

for another experiment altogether.

As if there were not proof enough

that free will is useless against destiny.

Under your amused glance I suffered

like a caterpillar impaled on the spike of a blackthorn.

The terror of the world opened itself to me.

Could I have avoided escape into illusion?

Into a liquor which stopped the chattering of teeth

and melted the burning ball in my breast

and made me think I could live like others?

I realized I was wandering from hope to hope

and I asked you, All Knowing, why you torture me.

Is it a trial like Job’s, so that I call faith a phantom

and say: You are not, nor do your verdicts exist,

and the earth is ruled by accident?

Who can contemplate

simultaneous, a-billion-times-multiplied pain?

It seems to me that people who cannot believe in you

deserve our praise.

But perhaps because you were overwhelmed by pity,

you descended to the earth

to experience the condition of mortal creatures.

Bore the pain of crucifixion for a sin, but committed by whom?

I pray to you, for I do not know how not to pray.

Because my heart desires you,

though I do not believe you would cure me.

And so it must be, that those who suffer will continue to suffer,

praising your name.

~ Czeslaw Milosz, This, 2000

**

Sober Reader, you yawn: yet another famous poet turns out to have been an alcoholic. “Heaven is the third vodka” – should we even bother discussing what for non-alcoholics is sheer nonsense? And is it really true that great writers need a “charismatic flaw,” as the literary critic Leslie Fiedler claimed, that flaw generally being dependence on alcohol?

Milosz writes: “My real drinking began in earnest in occupied Warsaw with my future wife Janka and Jerzy Andrzejewski (author of Ashes and Diamond) . . .  I drank a lot, but always took care to separate time for work from time for letting go . . .  Alas, too many generations of my ancestors drank for me to have been free from the urge for the bottle.” (Milosz’s ABC, p. 18)

The fact that Milosz had the self-discipline to separate work and drinking possibly accounts for his amazing creativity in old age. Or maybe it was the positive emotions generated by the Nobel Prize when he was almost seventy, receiving recognition and adulation at last. I prefer not to delve into this puzzle, except for acknowledging how inspiring it always is to find a writer who in his or her old age experiences a creative blossoming rather than a decline. Instead, I am interested in the acutely bitter tone of this unique poem. Is this Job speaking, subtly accusing the Old One (as Einstein liked to refer to God)? Let’s not forget that Milosz is a metaphysical poet, and can provide us with a certain metaphysical shiver when we consider the kind of cruel deterministic theology that is still very powerful, while progressive Christian theologies remain anemic.

“An Alcoholic Enters the Gates of Heaven” is especially interesting in the light of the recent prediction by a fundamentalist preacher, Harold Camping (a happy camper, since he regards himself as one of those predestined to taste paradise) that the Last Judgment would take place Saturday May 21st at 6 PM (Eastern Standard Time, I think). I have also just read an interesting summary of crucifixion-centered theologies versus progressive theologies. The preacher who was predicting the end of the world belongs to the first tradition, of Christ seen both as a sacrificial victim, a "sin sacrifice," and – this seems an egregiously un-Christian concept – as the ultimate judge who will accept the chosen few and hurl billions of souls into eternal torment.

Progressive theologies, on the other hand, are fascinated by early Christianity that emphasized agape (loving kindness; a community of affection) and paradise rather than hell. The basic tenet of progressive theologies is that the Second Coming is the birth of Christ Consciousness within us and among us, in the global community. We are here to build the kingdom of God on earth. God intends all souls to be saved. Paradise is here and now.

Alas, progressive theologians do not seem to have the PR resources commanded by the “blood of the Lamb/Armageddon” theologies. The only time there seemed to be true hope for progressive theologies was when Rabbi Kushner’s famous book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, became a best-seller. Kushner posited a deity with limited powers, one who neither causes nor prevents cancer, heart attacks, tsunamis, and other disasters. God does not decide which child will get leukemia, or who will grow up to be an alcoholic. Some evil is the work of natural laws (these days, an earthquake is rarely called an “act of God”); other kinds of evil are the work of man. Afterwards, everything depends on our response: do we curse and despair and can’t move on, or do we summon the strength to transcend the tragedy? Faith is one of the resources that can increase people’s strength to endure and recover. (Twelve-step programs also come to mind.)

Alas, Milosz was brought up in old-time Catholicism. Even though he forayed into such unorthodox theologians as Swedenborg and Simone Weil, he could not accept the notion that God’s power is limited and it wasn’t God who planted alcoholic genes in a particular individual: it just happened. The first lines of the poem tell us that God knew who’d be an alcoholic “since the beginning of every creature,” i.e. since the moment of creation. Predestination? Yes. A Calvinist doctrine, is has wormed its way into any theology which agrees with the statement, “Everything that happens is the will of God.” And if the belief in omniscience, including the knowledge of everything that will happen, is the required trait of divine perfection, then logic grimly leads to the conclusion that only predestination can account for omniscience. Everything was decided for eternity at the moment of creation. And countless millions were predestined to become alcoholics.

What kind of man I was to be you’ve known since the beginning,

since the beginning of every creature.

I remember my father’s saying that the only way out of these theological conundrums is those religions where the gods have limited knowledge and limited power. This idea has been around for a long time, certainly long enough for Milosz to have heard of it. But when the doctrines of omnipotence and omniscience are drummed into a child’s mind, reinforced with the fear of eternal damnation is you dare question dogma, it is difficult to shake off toxic beliefs. It seems to me that Milosz caused himself untold anguish by not being able to liberate himself from the toxic theology of “old-time religion.”

True, the Catholic Church emphasizes free will. I don’t remember the word “predestination” being ever used in my catechism classes. In fact the existence of evil was explained in a simple and powerful way: “Because God has granted man free will.” Thus God will allow genocide rather than interfere with man’s free will. Case closed. It’s only the more intellectual Catholics who ponder omniscience, connect the dots, and arrive at the moral monstrosity of predestination.

It is interesting that in this poem Milosz does not use the capital “You.” Maybe the god who predestines so much suffering doesn’t deserve to be capitalized. In fact, already in the second stanza, the poet winces at the idea of what it must be like to be an omniscient god who knows what will happen since he planned it down to the smallest detail. Milosz startles the reader by announcing that it must be horrible to be God:

It must be horrible to be aware, simultaneously,

of what is, what was,

and what will be.

~ and later

Who can contemplate

simultaneous, a billion-times-multiplied pain?

and then the stanza that is bound to shock the pious:

It seems to me that people who cannot believe in you

deserve your praise.

But the pathos of the poem lies in the personal part:

I began my life confident and happy . . .

I ran all day in an enchanted garden.

Not suspecting that you had picked me from the Book of Genes

for another experiment altogether.

As if there were not proof enough

that free will is useless against destiny.

Note also:

Under your amused glance I suffered

like a caterpillar impaled on the spike of a blackthorn. [emphasis mine]

The experiment of making someone an alcoholic somehow amuses this kind of God, even though the results are known in advance. Maybe God would be bored if the world were filled with goodness. He wants to be entertained with some people’s drunken antics, their remorse, their broken promises. If the alcoholic’s wife and children suffer, that’s “collateral damage.”

The speaker wonders if perhaps he is like Job, being tested to see not so much if he’ll curse God (cursing God would imply that God exists), but, in the modern context, if he’ll become an atheist and decide that the world is ruled by accident.

I asked you, All Knowing, why you torture me.

It is a trial like Job’s, so that I call faith a phantom

and say: You are not, nor do your verdicts exist,

and the earth is ruled by accident?

The God who performs such experiments, having already predestined their outcome, the God who can contemplate pain multiplied billions of times, does not appear to be synonymous with love. Let me quote the startling lines again:

It seems to me that people who cannot believe in you

deserve your praise.

The poet then ponders the possibility that God is not an amused sadist, but is overwhelmed by pity instead. The proof of it is crucifixion

for a sin, but committed by whom?

By Adam and Eve? Is it the old “ransom” theology here, demanding that someone must pay with blood for the first humans’ having dared to reach for knowledge? Or is it the sum of the collective sin, all the sins committed in the past and present, and the sins about to be committed in the future? The whole obsession with sin seems a monstrosity.

Nevertheless, Milosz decides that atheism would be impossible for him

Because my heart desires you,

though I do not believe you would cure me.

Here Milosz falls into his own trap, since if God happened to predestine his cure, then the cure would certainly happen. So “I do not believe you would cure me” stems from some bitter intuition that cannot be rationally explained.

Milosz knows that faith rests on emotional need, not on reason. And thus, like Job, he decides that the solution is to praise the author of the suffering. Thus he joins the community of those who “continue to suffer, / praising your name.”

Czeslaw, I want to scream, even the gospels provide a less deterministic and sin-obsessed scenario. For instance, in Matthew 25: 31 and onward, we see that the Last Judgment separates not the sinless from the sinful, but those who did good works such as feeding and clothing the poor and visiting the sick from those who did not perform such kind deeds. Thus, at least according to St. Matthew, doing good is the criterion for admission to heaven. Long live orthopraxy (right conduct) as opposed to the Protestant doctrine of “by faith alone” (sola fide). I have always praised the Catholic church for maintaining that faith without works is dead: “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (James 2:26).

Nevertheless, we are still stuck with the existence of eternal punishment, even if the non-doers of good somehow deserve it. The hellfire that is the foundation of traditional Christianity remains a problem. The current Pope, a former Grand Inquisitor in charge of maintaining the purity of the doctrine, has changed the definition of hell to a state of mind in which a human being is separated from God. Thus, hell can be experienced here on earth (no one would argue with that), and it need not be eternal. It seems that almost everyone experiences both hell and heaven right here on earth, and several times at that. Swedenborg’s idea that a soul can decide to leave hell for heaven makes intuitive sense.

And simply dropping the idea of predestination, even if it implies no omniscience, would cleanse God of the charge of cruelty. No need to posit an “amused glance.” Karl Barth, regarded as one of the greatest theologians who ever lived, rejected immutable predestination at the moment of creation because it would negate grace and Christ’s power of redemption. (It puzzles me that Milosz would not be of the same persuasion. Is not believing that God would cure him equivalent to the sin of despair?)


Likewise, if we assume the atheist position, the universe may be indifferent, but at least it does not watch our suffering with an amused glance.

Besides, both chaos theory and quantum theory cast doubt on the deterministic universe. It can seriously be doubted if Milosz’s genes were determined in the first nanosecond of the Big Bang. As for the so-called genetic lottery, neither malice nor kindness was involved, no Job-like experiment and no amusement – and we are learning that DNA is not destiny.

Furthermore, Milosz did admire and accept Sartre’s “philosophy of freedom.” One of its main tenets is that the present changes the past. We know that human memory is meaning-based, and that meaning is subject to evolution and insight. This is what allowed Milosz his escape from depression by “escaping forward.” There may be no consolation, but there is work to be done. It’s pointless to be stuck in the Middle Ages, wasting time on theological conundrums. And besides, as the title indicates, even an alcoholic can enter heaven. For me, this means heaven right here, right now – right this moment as I am typing these words, knowing they might be helpful to someone – or at least interesting. And even apart from that, and in spite of aches and pains and dissatisfactions, there is an elementary pleasure in existing.


Actually, this poem interests me not because of its presentation of old-time theology, but because I see a wider meaning that has nothing to do with religion. I see it as somewhat related to Jack Gilbert’s “A Brief for the Defense,” which also deals with the existence of enormous suffering in the world. Great poets and writers frequently grapple with the problem of evil, of innocent suffering, and that is one reason we regard them as great.

The question need not be whether to praise God, but whether to continue to affirm life in spite of suffering. One thing that a writer can do is fully acknowledge and lament suffering, but also juxtapose it with something good. Even if the world ends on some fine Saturday, we can still take delight in the blossoming jacarandas and whatever other fragments of paradise are within our sight. “We must risk delight,” as Gilbert puts it. That, perhaps, is the greatest piety.

Milosz did know how to risk delight. Poems of his that people tend to love most are not Augustinian torments, but an acknowledgment that we do the best we can and that life is a gift, and our cup runneth over:

GIFT

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.

Berkeley, 1971

“Gift” is one of Milosz’s Blakean songs of innocence, at least borderline transcendent: a day in which the ordinary earthly life is a paradise – if only we forget the evil we have suffered, do not feel guilty or embarrassed by our past, and envy no one. To see the birds, the flowers, the ocean with no thought of the self – “if the doors of perceptions were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite” – that, sages agree, is paradise. And if we experience enough paradise here on earth, perhaps the longing for some vague heaven will lose at least some of its appeal. If not, then we have to seriously reconsider the concepts of God and the kind of afterlife that would be something else than floating in the clouds, “doing nothing and nothing forever.” That can never be a poet’s dream. A poet takes the gift of his/her life and transforms it into a gift for others. That would be heaven enough for me. 

                                        Milosz, Krakow 2001. Photo: Judyta Papp

**

You may be wondering how Milosz managed to live to be ninety-three, sharp and productive to the end. It’s possible that alcohol actually helped him. Recent studies on drinking have come up with politically incorrect results. It turns out that even heavy drinkers outlive tee-totalers. The effect of alcohol in preventing heart disease and stroke is greater than the effect of measures such as exercise, diet, and statins.

Benefits of moderate drinking (1-2 glasses a day; daily alcohol consumption is more beneficial than less frequent drinking) includes decreased incidence of heart attack and stroke, diabetes, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, dementia, several major cancers, osteoporosis, gallstones, kidney stones, thrombosis, and enlarged prostate.

Large recent studies have established that people who drink 1-2 glasses a day have the lowest death rate from all causes.

It doesn't have to be red wine since the benefits are due to alcohol per se. Alcohol is anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory, and dilates blood vessels better than anything else. It also raises the levels of serotonin.

Why even heavy drinkers tend to live longer than tee-totalers is unclear. Stress reduction may be the main factor.

                                                 Photo: Judyta Papp

But there is heavy habitual drinking, and then there is the tragedy of progressive, out-of-control alcoholism. Binge drinking, and/or drinking the first thing is the morning, are signs of advanced alcoholism, with its shortened life expectancy. Given that Milosz lived to be ninety-three, and continued to be productive, my guess is that his alcoholism, while undeniable (“Heaven is the third vodka” – take that, all you theologians who would define heaven!), was not of the worst kind. The pious may take it as a sign of grace. I am simply grateful that Milosz had a wonderfully productive old age, creating fascinating poems.


(My thanks to Jon Wesick for enlightening me on chaos theory and quantum mechanics in regard to the concept of the deterministic universe) 

Michael (from Walker Pass, waiting for the snow to melt so he can resume hiking on Pacific Crest Trail):

If one must order life by shuffling pieces around on the game board called god, predestination is a worthy fiction, as are a 7-day creation, sin, heaven, and hell. If. Feats of creativity at playing this game are written on every dusty page of Christianity. If. But my impatience is large. I cannot sit quietly by watching men and women earnestly working out the next move when the game board itself should be scrapped. We need to begin again. 

Oriana:

I completely agree with you. In Wisdom of the Psyche, (thanks for recommending the book), Ginette Paris says more than once that it’s still very soon after the death of God, and it will take a few more generations before we (at least the Western civilization) are done mourning and fully concentrate on living this life well, doing our best to create at last an approximate paradise of beauty and affection and meaningful work right here on earth. 

Doing away with both predestination and divine punishment was announced also by Rabbi Kushner in his When Bad Things Happen to Good People. It is possible to develop a spirituality without a cruel, monstrous being who in the moment of creation decided which child to make leukemic, which deformed, which doomed to struggle with alcoholic genes, and so on. Nor is everything that happens to be seen as either punishment or reward. The same goes for the equally monstrous law of karma that exacts retribution for something done during a lifetime four hundred years ago. I love the way both Kushner’s and Paris’s books praise the healing power of human affection.

I think we also have to deal with the human, all too human yearning for the absolute. It took me a while to realize that aside from facts such as “the earth is round,” we simply can’t speak of absolute truth. We speak of points of view, perspectives, interpretations. I used to yearn for a divine voice (or any voice of superior wisdom) to explain the meaning of my life to me. Then with the suddenness that tends to accompany insight, I realized that there is no such thing as THE meaning of my life. We have a meaning-seeking brain, however, and mine set to work in no time to provide possible meanings, depending on the point of view.

Oddly enough, that turned out to be more satisfying than hearing some variation of that “divine voice” I used to yearn for. If I were to hear that voice now, I’d immediately reply, “From whose point of view?” Anything absolute now strikes me as constricting and authoritarian. But it takes a lot of life experience to stop waiting for THE answer, THE book, THE man, THE job. The list varies somewhat from person to person, but the notion of the absolute and of magical, all-satisfying person or condition underlies it all. Not all people manage to outgrow the yearning for the absolute; there are octogenarians still waiting for their Prince or Princess instead of loving the imperfect partner they are lucky to have. But as ideas such as multiple perspectives, more than one vocation per lifetime, partial truth and partial satisfaction make their way into the collective psyche, there is at least hope for more maturity and tolerance. 

Hyacinth:

My favorite poem by Milosz is “The Gift”. Milosz touches me in some of his lines and these are the most lyrical and touching. I read a quote from Thoreau this morning: "My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion; they have woolen feet." That I understand: these moments of silence of the "soul." There are certain meadows and moments that have "woolen feet" for me too.

Oriana:

Let me shamelessly digress with this precious quotation about Thoreau:

Alcott and George William Curtis were both visiting Mr. Ricketson, and interesting discourse had gone on at the dinner, Thoreau talking very well. After dinner, Alcott and Curtis went with Mr. Ricketson to his “Shanty” for serious talk, but the others went into the parlor to consult some bird book. Mrs. Ricketson, playing at her piano, struck into “The Campbells are Coming.” Thoreau put down his book and began to dance—a sylvan dance, as of a faun among rocks and bushes in a sort of labyrinthine fashion, now leaping over obstacles, then advancing with stately strides, returning in curves, then coming back in leaps. Alcott, coming in, stood thunderstruck to see “Thoreau acting his feelings in motion” as he called it. Alcott did not have that kind of feelings. 

Edward Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend, 1917 (the youngest son of the famous Emerson)

“The Gift” is a timeless, wonderful poem. I hope Milosz had many more of those moments, and didn’t really lose sleep over predestination – though we can’t be sure. A nasty theology can do so much damage. I mean chiefly the classic Calvinism with its “total depravity” and “limited election.” It horrifies me that people went for it.

Mary:

It's not surprising that Milosz lived with alcoholism. So many poets have mood disorders and self-medicate. I recognized something bipolar in Milosz when I discovered his work in my teens, though I didn't yet know that word or description. There is something about alcoholic thinking that meshes with the theology of this poem – the fear, guilt, shame. At the same time, I wonder, why did humans evolve to have genes for alcoholism?

Biologists have found adaptive purposes for other disease genes. Two copies of the sickle cell gene create sickle cell anemia, but one copy, like my half African American grandson has, confers resistance to malaria. And even when people end up with genetic diseases – not all but a part of the suffering is due to disability not as some predetermined biological damnation to an irredeemably horrible life, but as the construction of an excluding, unaccommodating culture. I have a number of genetically based disorders – a big reason for my fatigue – and have thought about this issue a lot. Maybe there are dimensions to it that go beyond the individual's suffering, intense as that can be.

Oriana:

Alcoholism among creative people is certainly no surprise. Neither is the bipolar disorder. I can understand the temptation, even among some professionals, to associate mood disorders and alcoholism with creativity. But I’ve come across too many alcoholics who were NOT creative (reminding me of “Artists are such fools.” – “There are so many fools who are not artists) to make me swallow the supposed connection between alcohol and the “inner fire” of creativity.

True, creative and high-achieving people very often have something at least partly abnormal about them, something that makes them outsiders who deeply understand the tragic dimension of human existence. But alcoholism is a particularly destructive way of being abnormal, most often leading to premature creative decline.  Milosz’s alcoholism was of the fascinating “disciplined” sort. The capacity for self-restraint and persistent, disciplined effort are also supposed to be genetic. Perhaps Milosz should have been mainly thankful for his genes. I feel the poem presents an unfortunate, mistaken perspective. Imagine if we had here a poem of thanksgiving instead! Milosz’s poems of gratitude also happen to be more lyrical.

I’ve come across the theory that there is less alcoholism among Mediterranean peoples because they have lived with alcohol for thousands of years, and the worst alcoholics – those who start drinking heavily already in their teens – just didn’t get to live long enough to reproduce in a significant way, so those genes got “weeded out” over many centuries (hence the myth that there are no Jewish alcoholics). In Northern Europe – so the theory goes – not enough time has elapsed, and now alcoholics get to live longer, etc. These theorists also point out to the Native American population: look what happened when whisky was introduced. 

I don’t know if I buy that, but the persistence of alcoholism has certainly been one of the genetic puzzles. My guess is that it is not purely genetic. As you say, culture has something to do with it. A repressive, stress-causing culture, one that uses “fear, guilt, shame” to manipulate people, creates the conditions when “release” is of tremendous value. There are certainly alcoholics in every social class, but it seems to me that the association with poverty and the “social bottom” is real. I’ve been to places in rural America where it’s just scary to see those hollow faces and burned-out eyes, especially in women.

In terms of “side benefits,” it’s been pointed out that early on in the disease, thanks to having reliable stress release, an alcoholic has an advantage over the “normie,” and can do better in a stressful job. Drinking is easier than meditation or physical exercise. I am terrifically grateful for having been spared the alcoholic genes, so I was forced to find other means of escape – or I’d probably be dead by now. Fortunately, my love of books and ideas created a sufficiently rewarding alternate reality for me. Once I had a marvelous dream about having decided to commit suicide and walking around a (generic) college campus and saying goodbye to strangers. Then, in the dream, I stood in front of the library, glassy, all lit up. And I woke up in awe, repeating, “So many books! So many books!” And of course I have writing too. I am so blessed.

Stress reduction, art education, enjoyable physical exercise, affordable mental health services – wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had more of these? There’d still be alcoholism and other substance abuse, but to a lesser degree, I think, since the amount of stress is a well-established factor. I think lives might be saved. And no toxic theology please.