At home in the world: Czesław Miłosz and the ontology of space

Thesis

Space constitutes one of the main leitmotifs of Czesław Miłosz’s work, both theoretical and poetic. Central in this respect is the notion of imagination as a faculty organizing space, the faculty which, from the times of the Scientific Revolution, has been subject to erosion, especially as far as the religious imagination is concerned. The abolition of the anthropocentric, hierarchical vision of space, threw human beings into a state of alienation, conceptual nowhere. Religion was replaced by the dogmatism of scientific reductionism, the reality of Ulro. Miłosz shows the way out of Ulro, the way out of nowhere to the somewhere.

This thesis aims to illustrate the conceptual map of the way out of Ulro as portrayed in four selected volumes of poetry and the novel Dolina Issy, anchored in different points of Miłosz’s biography. The Land of Ulro, the collection of essays which encapsulate Miłosz’s ideas on space, constitutes a canopy work for the interpretation of the practical realization of those ideas in Miłosz’s poetic work. Trzy zimy (1936), Świat, poema naiwne (1943), Miasto bez imienia (1969), and Druga przestrzeń (2002) provide the material for the analysis of different aspects of Miłosz’s conception of space. Subject to analysis is the relationship between object and human subject as regards the formative, childhood experience of the space of the house (manor) and surrounding landscape, the act of building space on the basis of memory and retrospection in the context of distance and exile, and the workings of religious imagination in the context of the realm of second space.

Through his conception of space, Miłosz defends human existence in its completeness. He shows the way out of Ulro. This thesis aims to retrace Miłosz’s map out of the land of alienation on the basis of the poet’s selected works.

Authors: Machala, M

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: object; exile; space; religion; ontology; Polish poetry; memory; city; house; catastrophism