In this book, Ewa Bienkowska tells the story of Czeslaw Milosz's development as a writer and person.
The poetic path reconstructed here draws an arc across almost an entire century - from Vilnius, the mythical city of Milosz's youth, through Warsaw and Paris, to Berkeley and the West Coast of America. Time lived and the planetary space become tasks for language to master, topics to be presented and understood. This is a personal history and a history of humankind, a story about the fate of Eastern Europe, the civilization of the West, the American challenge, the beauty and cruelty of the world, human sensuality and mortality, the search for meaning in religious myth. All this combines to constitute the fabric of Milosz's oeuvre as embodied in his poems and essays.
An essayist and literary historian, Ewa Bienkowska lectures at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. She has published books on philosophers, poets, the history of ideas and on Italian culture. She is a regular contributor to "Zeszyty Literackie" (Literary Notebooks), "Znak" (Sign) monthly and "Tygodnik Powszechny" (Popular Weekly) (more on cultural periodicals...). Her most recent book was Pisarz i los. O tworczosci Gustawa Herlinga-Grudzinskiego / The Writer and Fate - On the Oeuvre of Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski (more on Herling-Grudzinski...).
- Ewa Bieńkowska
W ogrodzie ziemskim. Książka o Miłoszu / In the Earthly Garden - A Book About Milosz
Wydawnictwo Sic!, Warsaw, September 2004
135 x 205, 280 pages, paperback
ISBN 83-88807-52-8
www.wydawnictwo-sic.com.pl