The Wisdom of Milosz

I'm reading a number of books lately that weigh on my spirit in ways I cannot assuage... this is the outcome every time I hear of the persecutions the majority of the world suffers in our time. I read "The Kite Runner", "Jia: A Novel of North Korea" (by Hyejin Kim) and of Eastern Europe under the Iron Curtain through Czeslaw Milosz. I am always chilled and humbled by the ease we have known in America. Will I "escape" the horror men do to one another? Most of all, why cannot we stop it all from happening? I feel helpless in the wake of the gruesome woes done to human beings every day.

"...unless we can relate to it ourselves personally, history will always be more or less of an abstraction, and its content the clash of impersonal forces and ideas... Doubtless every family archive that perishes... every effacement of the past reinforces classifications and ideas at the expense of reality."

Of his faith: "... [the newfound] bitterness of dualism, the Absolute saved at this price, intoxicated me like the feel of a harsh surface after a smooth one that is impossible to grasp."

"... the individual who lives his journey from childhood to old age against an almost unchanging background, whose habits are never disrupted by the ups and downs of the social order, is too susceptible to the melancholy of things that are simply here, yet are opaque..." - from "Native Realm" - Czeslaw Milosz

Currently watching: No Country for Old Men