Catastrophism

From the premonition of the catastrophe to the execued Apocalypse. The early poems of the poet - especially these coming from two first volumes: „A Poem on frozen time" and „Three winters" are catastrohical in their mood.

Catastrophism - from Greek: katastrophe - upheaval, turning point, it is intellectual attitude characterized by the fear of inevitable extermination (annihilation) the present world is in danger of; also the single human being, culture, civilation, values are in danger. The representatives of catastrophism in olish literature were: Krasiński (question about the sense of history), Kasprowicz, Witkiewicz (civilisation will be the cause of culture exermination), Baczynski (the exermination of generation), Konwicki (the exermination of values), Czechowicz (war).

The works poems are full of the mood of threat and fear, they present apocalypteal visious. The poetical pictures present the world getting plunged in oblivion (forgetfulness); time and history are stopped.

The poem "Statue of a Couple" origines from one of the first Milosz's volume: "Three Winters".We have to remember that this poem was written three years before the II World War and we can feel this depressing mood.

STATUE OF A COUPLE (Three Winters)

Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold.
The purest light of the celestial dome
has burned me through. And now we are
as two still plams lying in darlmess,
as two black banks of a frozen stream
in the chasm of the world.

Our hair combed back is carved in wood,
the moon walks over our ebony shoulders.
A distant cockcrow, the night goes by, silent.
Rich is the rime of love, withered the dowry.

Where are you, living in what depths of time,
love, stepping down into what waters,
now, when the frost of our voiceless lips
does not fend off the divine fires?

In a forest of clouds, of fcam, and of silver
we live, caressing lands under our
And we are wielding the might of a dark scepter
to earn oblivion.

My love, your breast cut through by a clinel
knows nothing anymore of what it was.
Of clouds at dawn, of angers at daybreak,
of shallows in springtime it has no remembrance.

And you have led me, as once an angel led
Tobias, onto the rusty mashes of Lombardy.
But a day came when a sign frightened you,
a stinma of golden measure.

With a scream, with inunobile fear in your thin hands
you fell into a pit that ashes lie over,
where neither northern firs nor Italian yews
could protect our andent bed of lovers.

What was it. what is it, what will it be
we filled the world with our cry and calling.
The dawn is back, the red moon set,
do we know now? In a heavy ship

A helmman comes, throws a silken rope
and binds w tightly to eaah other,
then he pours on friends, once enemies,
a handful of snow.

Wilno, 1935