“… I spin bitter meditations on memory too large and a heart too small.” The Experience of Wrong and Forgiveness in the Poetry of Czesław Miłosz and Zbigniew Herbert
Danuta OPACKA-WALASEK
University of Silesia in Katowice , PolandAbstract
The article presents some chosen aspects of the problems of evildoing and forgiveness as they appear in the works of Czesław Miłosz and Zbigniew Herbert. The analytical and interpretational reflection is focused on the presence and particular manifestations of these motifs in their poetry. The meanings and conceptual constructs present in their poems are referred to the metaliterary writings of the two poets, in particular to the essays they authored. The paper comprises the following parts: “‘Wrong’ as the Keyword,” “Facing the Twentieth Century: «A New Experience» of Wrong and Forgiveness,” “To Find the Middle Point,” “The Wronged Ones and the Wrongdoers,” and “The Paradoxes of Forgiveness.” The paper offers interpretational solutions regarding various aspects of the categories relevant to the main theme of the analysis, and it attempts to show the most important artistic means employed by the poets, who attempt to find the best possible style of expression of the complex dialectics of wrongdoing and forgiveness and, consequently, to articulate to ‘new,’ twentieth-century experience of such affects, processes, and states.
Keywords:
wrong, forgiveness, Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Miłosz, poetics of experienceUniversity of Silesia in Katowice
