His poetry covers not only these spiritual
beings, but also the Bible, prayer, the afterlife
and the whole wide sweep of Christian theology.
On angels: ‘‘They say someone has invented you /
but to me this does not sound convincing / for
humans invented themselves as well.’’ On reading
Scripture: ‘‘it is proper that we move our finger /
Along letters more enduring than those carved in
stone.’’ A friend’s suffering proves the existence of
Hell: ‘‘You remember, therefore you have no
doubt; there is a Hell for certain,’’ Milosz says in
‘‘Proof.’’
Milosz was fully engaged in the Christian
literary tradition: his work speaks of translating
the Psalms and New Testament Greek, quotes
Martin Luther in epigraphs and mentions his
indebtedness to Simone Weil. His poems are not
simply Christian, but specifically Catholic in both
outlook and details. There is an ode to Pope John
Paul II, that ‘‘Polish romantic’’; a fond recollec-
tion of Milosz’s childhood priest; and references
to monstrances, the Mass, the Virgin Mary and
the role of the church (‘‘for years / I have been
trying to understand what it was’’).
Perhaps Milosz’s most powerful declaration
of faith appeared in his essay ‘‘If Only This
Could Be Said’’: ‘‘I must ask if I believe that the
four Gospels tell the truth. My answer to this is
yes. So I believe in an absurdity, that Jesus rose
from the dead? Just answer without any of those
evasions and artful tricks employed by theolo-
gians: Yes or no? I answer, Yes, and by that
response I nullify death’s omnipotence.’’
In this same essay, however, Milosz made a
confession that frequently appears in his poetry:
‘‘I understand nothing’’—about God, religion,
salvation, even ethics. ‘‘This is too difficult for
me,’’ he says in the poem ‘‘How It Should Be in
Heaven.’’ His is not just a failure of comprehen-
sion but of belief; he freely admits that as with
most of us, his faith often wavers.
Milosz’s poems spell out, even embrace, his
religious contradictions: ‘‘I am fond of sumptu-
ous garments and disguises / Even if there is no
truth in the painted Jesus.’’ ‘‘I am unable to imag-
ine myself among the disciples of Jesus / When
they wandered through Asia Minor from city to
city.’’ Finally, there is the perplexed admission
that ‘‘I don’t know how to care about the salva-
tion of my soul.’’ Writing poetry that is obsessed
with the fundamental questions of Christianity,
Milosz yet knew that a ‘‘desire for faith is not the
same as faith.’’
Milosz, then, was a different kind of reli-
gious poet. No wonder his verse, saturated with
Catholic imagery, is notoftenusedinhomilies
or quoted in devotional books. No wonder his
remarkable and vivid lines are not (yet) used to
buttress or ornament theological arguments.
He was a seeker’s Catholic and a Catholic
seeker, unsure of his beliefs even when profess-
ing orthodoxy, arriving at no certainties even
when repeating age-old creeds. Milosz’s bril-
liant inconsistency mirrors our own: he wants
to believe but only occasionally succeeds.
Milosz has more than usual justification for
his ‘‘weak faith.’’ Born in Lithuania in 1911, he
worked for the Polish resistance during World
War II before defecting to the West in the 1950’s.
A man who witnessed the horrors of the Holo-
caust and the war had a right to doubt. The
miracle, indeed, is that he could believe at all.
Though a childhood faith of incense-filled
churches breathes through many of his poems,
the same poems make clear that 20th-century
history battered and scarred that faith until it
was almost unrecognizable.
In Milosz’s poetry, as in life, the question of
suffering overshadows all speculations on the
nature of God. ‘‘How can it be, such an order of
the world—unless it was created by a cruel demi-
urge?’’ one poem asks. Even if it was not, Milosz’
lines on Purgatory reflect his feelings about God
inside history: ‘‘howlings and pain... Contradict
continuously the goodness of God.’’
If God, Jesus and even angels are out there,
is not their function, Christian theology argues,
to save us? Milosz might answer that they may
save us spiritually, but they will not save us from
earthly suffering, even the most appalling and
degrading suffering. While the devils and malev-
olent spirits that crowd Milosz’s poetic land-
scape can harm us, the celestial beings that
populate it just as thickly cannot save us from
this harm.
Unlike most people preoccupied with God’s
relation to human suffering, Milosz did not
attempt explanations. The poem ‘‘A Story’’
describes a grizzly bear who has rampaged for
years because of a blinding and incomprehensible
pain: a toothache. Humans, too, are doomed to
suffer inexplicable pain, ‘‘and not always with the
hope / that we will be cured by some dentist from
heaven.’’ Similarly, ‘‘I pray to you... / Because my
heart desires you,’’ says another poem, ‘‘though I
do not believe you would cure me.’’ In ‘‘Theodicy’’In Music