How does a Poem Think? Czesław Miłosz Nad strumieniem

Abstract

The subject of the analysis is the poem by Czesław Miłosz from the volume To, entitled “Nad strumieniem”. The task the author embarked upon boils down to the answer to the question: how does a specific idea(its hidden mental message) develop in this poem and what results from it for the idea as well as for the poem. The proposed reading takes place at three levels. Preliminary reconnaissance is made by naive reading consisting in the reconstruction of the situation portrayed in the poem, in the recreation of that which can be fund, so to say, on the “surface” of the poem. Next, the author launches these contexts which in Miłosz’s representation of the attitude of man towards nature allow one to notice balance and harmony, coming to terms with life and wisdom, which is based on distance and silence. At the third reading level, the author refers to the image crowning opus magnum by Charles Darwin, in which a similar situation—contemplation in the open nature—leads to the formulation of the answer to the question about the sense of “fight in nature, famine and death”. This answer is juxtaposed with the ending of Czesław Miłosz’s poem: „Wydaje mi się, że słyszę głos demiurga:/ Albo nieme skały jak w pierwszym dniu stworzenia,/ albo życie, którego warunkiem jest śmierć,/ i to upajające ciebie piękno”. („It seems to me that I hear the voice of demiurge:/ Either silent rocks as on the first day of creation, / or life, whose condition is death,/ and this beauty engulfing you”).