Beginning with My Streets: Essays and Recollections

by Czesław Miłosz, Madeline G. Levine (Translator)

Polish Wilno―now Vilnius, in Lithuania―was the city of Czeslaw Milosz's youth and adolescence. In this collection of essays and reminiscences, written over a span of three decades, the Nobel Prize–winning poet traces an informal autobiography against the street map of an extraordinary city―a crossroads of languages, cultures, and beliefs―that lies at the very heart of his internal geography.

Beginning with My Streets , available for the first time in paperback, gathers portraits of the writers Aleksander Wat, Dwight MacDonald, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as the great Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg; an exchange of letters from the 1950s with the novelist and diarist Witold Gombrowicz; and a selection of speeches delivered between 1967 and 1987, including Milosz's Nobel Lecture. These diffuse reckonings, distinguished throughout by the flavor of personality and the aura of place, have a cumulative power―they are quintessential Milosz.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Biography, Poland, Polish Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Czesław Miłosz was a Nobel Prize winning poet and author of Polish-Lithuanian heritage. He memorialised his Lithuanian childhood in a 1955 novel, The Issa Valley , and in the 1959 memoir Native Realm . After graduating from Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium in Vilnius, he studied law at Stefan Batory University and in 1931 he travelled to Paris, where he was influenced by his distant cousin Oscar Milosz, a French poet of Lithuanian descent and a Swedenborgian. His first volume of poetry was published in 1934.

After receiving his law degree that year, he again spent a year in Paris on a fellowship. Upon returning, he worked as a commentator at Radio Wilno, but was dismissed, an action described as stemming from either his leftist views or for views overly sympathetic to Lithuania. Miłosz wrote all his poetry, fiction, and essays in Polish and translated the Old Testament Psalms into Polish.

Awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author "who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts."

Reviews

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

The word here is "idiosyncratic". It describes a great and unique mind.

This book was often hard to understand because I do not know the history of the region in which Mr. M's mind seems always to have been firmly based. It was also often hard to understand because of the density of Mr. M's thinking. However, when he spoke about writing and his way of writing and about other writers, I was drawn in thoroughly.

The transcript of the interview about Dostoevsky and Swedenborg was fascinating, from the point of view of Mr. M's approach and research and from the comments he makes about Dostoevsky and his novels. Also, Mr. M also takes me to a place I know virtually nothing about (Eastern Europe, or, more precisely, to Poland and to Lithuania, that little country to the northeast). He brings to life a whole world of his childhood and youth, most or all of which has disappeared, apart from landscape. In this sense, the essays are often a magic carpet guided by a sorrowful and often angry, opinionated genie.

Check out the transcript of "An Interview with C.M." by Rachel Berghash, for what seems an intuitive proof of God's existence, based on imagination of the reality of past times --- at page 147 in my edition. This was new to me.

Although I often do not understand Mr. M and sometimes think he accepts and believes only his view of the world, I cannot question his authority to speak. This is a hard book, but worth at least a look into some of the essays, etc.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy reading the essays of Czeslaw Milosz. His prose is so poetic and philosophical. This book begins as reminisces about Wilno, the city he grew up in. It then progresses on into a variety of other topics often discussing literature and writers and, occasionally, includes poems by either himself or other poets. He has a very unique perspective on many subjects having lived through both Nazi and Communist occupations. The book, also, includes interesting interviews in which he answers questions about his philosophy and give a good insight into his thinking and has, as well, the Nobel lecture that he gave after winning the Nobel award. Another very enjoyable read from Milosz.

[Ocean G]

I thought I would find the first part, discussing Vilnius and Lithuania, the least interesting, since I know so little about that region. But it turned out to be enthralling. Especially his back and forth with Tomas Venclova. I confess the other sections then didn't retain my interest all that long, and this book probably should've been a dnf for me. This is mainly because I think Milosz is too poetic and philosophical for me, and I just found it hard to keep up. For this reason I won't give a rating, but I'd rate the first part 4.5 stars.

[Gediminas Kontrimas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toks senas žmogus, o taip lengvai ir grakščiai rašo.

[Joan Wetherell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book I will not exactly "finish." It bears careful reading and rereading, as it is Milosz's musings, many of which are quite unusual for me. I never would have suspected that there was such a divide and even antipathy between Poles and Lithuanians, for example, although many people live where there is a crossover in the populations. His essay to his friend describing and trying to explain his struggle and his feelings was hard to get through, but worth it.
The nature of nationalism shows up very strongly. Perhaps it made such an impression because it is from an unexpected source. It took me a while to understand what the big problem was!
I did not finish it because I lost the book!

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ein Sammelsurium vollkommen unterschiedlicher Textsorten, u.a. ein Briefwechsel mit T. Venclova, der das eindeutig bessere Buch über Vilnius verfasste; Milosz konzentriert sich stärker auf seine Erinnerungen(Höhepunkt: Das Dictionnaire zu Wilnas Straßen), ist aber im Gesamtbild über die Stadt etwas naiver als sein litauischer Kollege.

[C.]

Though all I actually want to read is some of his poetry.

[Melanie H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back to my serious reading.