#unceasing admiration

“My Catholic upbringing implanted in me a respect for all things visible, connected by the property of esse, that calls for unceasing admiration. I think that the sign of a healthy poetry is striving to capture as much of reality as possible.”
– Czesław Miłosz 
[Flower Garden - 1919 - Emil Nolde]

• The Nobel Prize in Literature 1980 was awarded to Czeslaw Milosz “who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts.” More: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1980/milosz/biographical/ 

• InDumont’s stunning new release, Emil Nolde: My Garden Full of Flowers, Manfred Reuther describes the existential threat that grew up around the painter in the 1930s. “More than one thousand of his works were confiscated from German museums in conjunction with the action against ‘degenerate art.’ More: https://www.artbook.com/blog-featured-image-emil-nolde-my-garden-full-of-flowers.html 

• PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW: This interview was conducted primarily at Milosz’s home in the Berkeley hills overlooking San Francisco Bay, where he lives with his wife, Carol, and a cat named Tiny. Other portions were recorded before a live audience at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street YMHA in New York. The first part of the conversation in Berkeley lasted four hours without interruption, until the poet looked at his watch and then, somewhat sympathetically, at his exhausted interlocutor to ask, “It is six o’clock, time for a little vodka?” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1721/the-art-of-poetry-no-70-czeslaw-milosz