Abstract
In his programmatic work The Witness of Poetry2 Czeslaw Milosz reminds us that the poet is charged with the mission to bear witness to the events of history. Miłosz insists that even when nobody else is, the poet must be the conscience of a nation.
Śpiewaj dales, słowiku, śpiewaj tylko dla mnie: ja twą pieśń opowiem, ani slowa nie sklamiȩ przepiszȩ ją świeżą na czysto pytająco, zapłakaną, prelistą
K. I. ‘Slowik Litewski’
Sing on, oh nightingale, sing for me only: I will tell your song, not a word shall I lie, I will re-write it fresh, copy-clean questioningly, in tears, pearly.
K. I. ‘Lithuanian Nightingale’1
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Notes
Miłosz, Czesław, The Witness of Poetry (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1983).
Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983).
Ketchian, Sonia, The Poetry of Anna Akhmatova: A Conquest of Time and Space (München Slavistische Beiträge: Verlag, Otto Sagner, 1986). Especially consider Part Two.
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© 1992 International Council for Soviet and East European Studies, and Celia Hawkesworth
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Zamojska-Hutchins, D. (1992). Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna: The Poet as a Witness of History, and of Double National Allegiance. In: Hawkesworth, C. (eds) Literature and Politics in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22238-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22238-4_11
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