FAQ
Jagiellonian University in Krakow logo

Songs of Ecstatic Despair. Miłosz and the Counterculture

Publication date: 02.08.2013

Przekładaniec, Issues in English, Issue 25/2011– Between Miłosz and Milosz, pp. 147 - 157

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.021.1210

Authors

Marcin Jaworski
All publications →

Titles

Songs of Ecstatic Despair. Miłosz and the Counterculture

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between the American counterculture
of the 1960s and Miłosz’s poetry created during that time in Berkeley. The poet
observes the student revolt through his own experience with history, including his leftist
sympathies. He is critical both of the naïve hippie postulates and Herbert Marcuse’s new
version of Marxism. However, he treats counterculture as a symptomatic response to
vital problems of the Western civilization in the second half of the twentieth century. He
refl ects upon the infl uence of art on power, totalitarian as well as democratic. He sees
the necessity of commitment, though he asks about its form and effects. Countercultural
experiments coincide also with Miłosz’s own search for “a more capacious form” and
with the epiphanies described in his poems.
 

References

Franaszek, A. 2011. Miłosz. Biografia [Miłosz: A Biography ]. Kraków: Znak.

Ginsberg, A. 1993. Znajomi z tego świata. Wiersze z lat 1947–1985 [Friends from This World: Collected Poems 1947–1985]. Kraków: Maszachaba.

Haven, C.L., ed. 2006. Czesław Miłosz. Conversations. Jackson: UP of Mississippi.

Herbert, Z. and Miłosz C. 2006. Korespondencja [Correspondence]. Warszawa: Zeszyty Literackie.

Jung, C.G. 1991. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. London and New York: Routledge.

Miłosz, C., ed. 1965. Post-War Polish Poetry. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

––––– 1982. Visions from San Francisco Bay. Trans. R. Lourie. Manchester: Carcanet.

––––– 1994. A Year of the Hunter. Trans. M.G. Levine. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

––––– 1995a. Facing the River. Trans. C. Miłosz and R. Hass. Manchester: Carcanet.

––––– 1995b. „Poeci piszą przeciw śmierci (z Czesławem Miłoszem rozmawiają Joanna Podolska i Jerzy Jarniewicz)” [Poets Writing against Death (Joanna Podolska and Jerzy Jarniewicz in Conversation with Czesław Miłosz)]. Verte 60, Łódź supplement of Gazeta Wyborcza, June 30.

––––– 1996. Jakiegoż to gościa mieliśmy. O Annie Świrszczyńskiej [What a Guest We Had: On Anna Swir]. Kraków: Znak.

––––– 2001. New and Collected Poems 1931–2001. London: Penguin.

––––– 2002. Milosz’s ABC’s. Trans. M.G. Levine. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

––––– 1993. „Do Allena Ginsberga” [“To Allen Ginsberg”]. NaGłos 9–10 (34–35), February/March.

Unterecker, J. 1977. A Reader’s Guide to W.B. Yeats. London: Thames and Hudson.

Yeats, W.B. 2000. The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Ware: Wordsworth.

––––– 2008. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume XIII: A Vision: The Original 1925 Version. New York: Scribner.

Information

Information: Przekładaniec, Issues in English, Issue 25/2011– Between Miłosz and Milosz, pp. 147 - 157

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Songs of Ecstatic Despair. Miłosz and the Counterculture

English:

Songs of Ecstatic Despair. Miłosz and the Counterculture

Published at: 02.08.2013

Article status: Open

Licence: None

Percentage share of authors:

Marcin Jaworski (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English

View count: 1978

Number of downloads: 1317

<p> Songs of Ecstatic Despair. Miłosz and the Counterculture</p>