The land of Ulro: thinking through Milosz

The Prince of This World governs number.
The singular is the hidden God’s dominion ...

We were miserable, we used no more
than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from
centuries ago –
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes
before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot,
a caravel
staving its hull against a reef – they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in
the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the
same time,
whether they were aware of it or not ...


Instead of leaving to theologians their worries, I have constantly meditated on religion ... To write on literature or art is considered an honourable occupation, whereas any time notions taken from the language of religion appeared, the one who brought them up is immediately treated as lacking in tact, as if a silent pact had been broken ...

They rage like wild beasts in the forests of affliction ... an urgent lament for the precipitous decline ...

My imperviousness to the usually rather shallow progressive-atheist arguments was like the chess-player’s contempt for cards ...

From Schopenhauer’s Godless, meaningless, ceaselessly cruel universe, in which the competitive struggle of the will to life delivers only suffering, there's no escape except in the paradoxical renunciation of the will by the will. The atheist philosopher wrote:

"Our state is originally and essentially an incurable one, and . . . we need deliverance from it . . . . Salvation is to be gained only through faith, in other words, through a changed way of knowledge. This faith can come only through grace, and hence as if from without."

The sceptical irony of the classicist is more attractive than the priest’s puritanism. Yet, what does it mean to be sufficiently well informed about Darwin if there are not rational grounds for an unaided human reason, and the gaps are glaring.

Ought I to try to explain “why I believe”? I don’t think so. It should suffice if I attempt to convey the colouring or tone. If I believed that man can do good with his own powers, I would have no interest in Christianity. But he cannot, because he is enslaved in his own predatory, domineering instincts, which we may call proprium , or self-love ... Still it does not mean man is helpless; any good that must be done in and through needs his / her openness to it and cooperation. Grace limits her work to man's intricacies. What all-powerful will limit omnipotence to the whims of a worm? Except, of course the God of love.

Human reasoning is limited, much more so than he rationalists realise. Here is placed the victory, that is, of the resurrected Christ. It confounds all powers of human reason. To conquer by death, human's ultimate failure? St Paul's foolishness of Christ's crucified.

All man of goodwill are staggering to their own victory through death, which, I suppose is essentially what is meant by redemption.