Adversity is nothing new to poet Czeslaw Milosz. Growing up in Lithuania and living in Poland until 1951 when he defected to the United States, he has seen his share of hard times.
And when the 86-year-old Nobel Prize-winning author stood before about 200 spectators in Montezuma Hall Friday, a much smaller difficulty arose ? he couldn’t find his reading glasses.
Milosz, who survived two world wars and the cold war, struggled through the reading until a substitute pair could be found. And as soon as he got a pair, he could see clearly enough to read poems that won him the Nobel Prize in literature in 1980.
As part of the Border Voices series, designed to introduce San Diego City School students to the world’s leading poets, novelists and filmmakers, The San Diego Union-Tribune and San Diego State University’s Associated Students Cultural Arts and Special Events presented the first in a series of lectures on campus.
Although Milosz, (pronounced “Me-losh”), is a naturalized American citizen, he continues to write most of his work in his native Polish language.
Milosz read in English but also gave a sample of Polish to “get the feel of poetry.”
Milosz’s poetry ranges from political to purely artistic. Many of his poems also deal with history and lost friends, and they each have a romanticism attached.
“I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of Metro stations flew by; I didn’t notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird?” Milosz quoted from his poem “Esse.”
Milosz earned a master’s of law degree in 1934, but as he said Friday, “I have never practiced law.”
The series began on Feb. 6 with the Polish-American writer and will continue tonight at 7 with novelist and essayist Susan Sontag.
The series will conclude March 13 at 7 p.m. with filmmaker Michael Moore. Moore is most famous for his documentary “Roger and Me” and the television series “TV Nation.”
