The "Insect-world" of Czesław Miłosz

This paper offers an interpretation of a problem omnipresent in the writings of Czesław Miłosz: the relationship of faith and science in the modern world. The aim here is, nonetheless, a modest one; an attempt is made to view the larger issue of the confrontation between science and religion through an analysis of a single motif, namely the motif of insects in the poetry of Czesław Miłosz. By choosing poems from different periods and written in different places ("The World", "Voices of Poor People", "Bob's Metamorphosis", "Diary of a Naturalist", "Spider"), this paper develops the theme of nature in two contradictory sets of meanings: nature as a source of enchantment or epiphany and, on the other hand, nature as a source of animal and human pain, a "senseless" process without a beginning or an end. These two aspects of the experience of nature can be called grace and despair. This thusly proceeds to the underlying theme of the analysis, from the "naive" or childish experience of paradise to a dark, Darwinian "inferno" of exiled pain. The tension between these two poles marks the entire poetry of Miłosz and introduces a Manichean split into his experience of himself, as well as his vision of worldVytauto Didžiojo universiteta