tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post5001046939322127001..comments2024-01-23T03:58:02.422-08:00Comments on oriana-poetry: TO BECOME THE PERSON WE MUST BEUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-38684398236172352422012-06-11T17:56:51.987-07:002012-06-11T17:56:51.987-07:00Thanks again. Yes, Milosz probably knew the work y...Thanks again. Yes, Milosz probably knew the work you mention -- teaching Dostoyevski was for him an education as well, quite influential. <br /><br />The carnivalesque -- that's Kronski's mockery as well. Liberating, as long as one doesn't freeze in perpetual irony. Milosz didn't. He dared be completely serious -- and then change his mind. <br /><br />Jung, definitely. I just didn't see a convenient "inlet." And I probably should have left out the poems -- that's another post. But I was so excited about those two by Margaret. My weakness, I know, trying to include too much. If I were choosing material from the blog for the book, I'd be a lot more selective. <br /><br />Satan in Goray -- what a fabulous title.orianahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04209366167129773052noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-81781799164708620952012-06-11T17:16:08.811-07:002012-06-11T17:16:08.811-07:00In the post, Darlene mentions Jung, and what I kno...In the post, Darlene mentions Jung, and what I know of Jung suggest he would be comfortable with this discussion. His willingness to see our self in terms of the contradictions and oppositions it possesses doesn't seem that far off from what I see Milosz striving for.John Guzlowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13052735138993479204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-66974354500418790702012-06-11T12:27:38.359-07:002012-06-11T12:27:38.359-07:00Yes, Dostoevsky's Polyphony. I wonder if Milo...Yes, Dostoevsky's Polyphony. I wonder if Milosz knew M.M. Bakhtin's book Rabelais and His World or Bakhtin's work on Dostoevsky and Polyphony. What I like about Bakhtin is his sense of the carnivalesque, the way some of the really great thinkers subvert/overturn prevailing ideas in order to arrive at a new sense of things. Here's a paragraph from an essay I wrote years ago about Bakntin's sense of the carnivalesque and one of Isaac Singer's earliest novel: Satan in Goray. <br /><br />As presented in his Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin's understanding of the grotesque is much less ominous than Kayser's. The source of Bakhtin's theory is the tradition of folk humour which stems from medieval carnival. He writes that carnival celebrates the "temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order". This liberation produces an overwhelming sense of the "gay relativity" of these truths and this order. During carnival, everything is seen as happily grotesque, susceptible to the "peculiar logic of the inside out, of the 'turnabout', of a continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings". The purpose of all this is neither negative nor ominous, as Kayser would have it. Rather, the end is a carnivalesque laughter which "revives and renews". Summing up his sense of this revival, Bakhtin says, "This carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things" (34).John Guzlowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13052735138993479204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-46205568498007768852012-06-11T10:00:01.383-07:002012-06-11T10:00:01.383-07:00Thank you for this brilliant insight: yes, definit...Thank you for this brilliant insight: yes, definitely, Milosz had "negative capability." I think his outsider status, which also caused him much suffering, was one of the best things that happened to him in terms of intellectual and artistic development. Having seen so much impermanence, so much perishing, he managed to cultivate enough detachment to see the complexity of things, and thus both what was right and wrong with any particular ideology, and could choose the best aspects and toss the rest like an apple core. Kronski liberated him from what Milosz described as a tendency to "pained lyricism." But he never accepted the gulags as historically necessary, as Kronski did. He was not a moral relativist. His having seen so much evil sometimes pushed him in the direction of Gnosticism -- the Prince of this World seemed to be winning here on earth. <br /><br />But ultimately Milosz cannot be made to fit any existing category. What he admired in Dostoyevski was POLYPHONY -- something akin to negative capability. By creating compelling characters, Dostoyevski was able to present many voices, many views -- e.g. Ivan Karamazov, the intellectual and atheist, who "returns his ticket" to paradise if it's bought at the price of even one tear of an abused child -- much less a crucified innocent -- and Father Zosima with his gospel of universal kindness and responsibility of all for all. Milosz had the wisdom, the negative capability, that prevented him from being a dogmatic believer in ONE truth. As you suggest, it takes an exceptional self-confidence to be able to see many sides of an issue. In my eyes, Herbert's accusation that Milosz had no "identity" is actually high praise. He was a true thinker and not an ideologue. I read him because he nourishes me with wisdom and reminds of how complex everything is.orianahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04209366167129773052noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7760986403290352152.post-19770809979449772972012-06-11T09:10:28.966-07:002012-06-11T09:10:28.966-07:00Oriana, I'm slowly reading through your essay ...Oriana, I'm slowly reading through your essay and as always there is so much to consider. Your talk above of Milosz and Kronski has me thinking. One of the things I like about Milosz is his sense of negative capability in terms of his friends and his ideas and his attitudes toward this and that. He was a writer who must have felt so strong (centered?) within himself that he could entertain people and ideas and actions that might frighten a person less sure of himself. And maybe that’s what his “self” finally was—this openness to people and ideas, the willingness to accept the “this is me” and the “this is not me.”John Guzlowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13052735138993479204noreply@blogger.com