SOURCE: Fiut, Aleksander. “Milosz and Mickiewicz.” The Polish Review XLIII, no. 4 (1998) 411-18.

In the following essay, Fiut compares and contrasts the life and writings of Czeslaw Milosz with Mickiewicz.

There can be no doubt that, for Czesław Miłosz, Adam Mickiewicz is the most important figure in the whole history of Polish literature. Furthermore, Mickiewicz is an intriguing problem and an unsolvable puzzle for Miłosz. Mickiewicz evokes fervent admiration as well as irritation. He seems to be someone very well known, almost a neighbor, since his imagination was nourished by the same, tenderly loved, landscapes. Simultaneously, some of Mickiewicz's ideas remain strikingly alien and unacceptable to Miłosz. The twentieth century poet pays homage to his remarkable predecessor, emphasizing that every line of verse he has written is indebted to him, and his poems echo Mickiewicz's style. Moreover, he comments ironically on Mickiewicz's messianic frenzy. In...