Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope

Ecstatic Pessimist is a timely book about the Central and Eastern European experience of the mid 20th century, as told through the poetry and experiences of Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate for literature, who wrote on the horrors of war and the human experience. Written by a colleague and friend of the poet, it is part literary criticism and part memoir. This biography/memoir of Czeslaw Milosz is a first hand account of the poet's life and his relationship to the author, beginning in the 1960s. Milosz was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Milosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts". Ecstatic Pessimist expands on Czeslaw Milosz's commitment to "unpolitical politics" - working for a revolution in culture, and above all poetry, as a necessary preparation for a revolution in politics. This is a familiar notion in Poland, which for two centuries was politically divided, but poets preserved and enhanced a lively Polish consciousness, And, as the book shows, Milosz took steps over two decades to help reunite Poles in the successful Solidarity movement, whose struggle eventually changed the regime and forced the Soviet armies to withdraw. But the book is designed to encouraged a similar development in America. Milosz's ambition for poetry may at first sound exotic, but as the book says, it is in the spirit of what John Adams wrote late in life to Thomas Jefferson: "The [American] revolution was in the mind of the people, and in the union of the colonies, both of which were accomplished before the hostilities commenced." Though the book is also designed for those who already know and love Milosz, it is primarily written for those looking for someone whose genius could similarly inspire Americans of both left and right to unite in restoring the badly broken politics of this country. The book argues that Czeslaw Milosz is that genius, as perhaps the only person who has been praised by intellectual leaders like Chris Hedges on the left, and has also spoken at Hillsdale College, the intellectual citadel of the American right.

Author: Peter Dale Scott
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 03/03/2023
Pages: 370
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.21lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.84d
ISBN: 9781538172445

About the Author
Peter Dale Scott taught at Sedbergh School and McGill University before joining the Canadian Department of External Affairs and the Canadian Embassy in Warsaw, Poland. Returning to academic life Peter Dale Scott taught at the University of California for over thirty years. Books by Peter Dale Scott include The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War, Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK and Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America and American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan.