Obrazy skamienienia świata i śmierci w przedwojennej liryce Czesława Miłosza
Images of the Petrification of the World and Death in the Pre-war Lyrics of Miłosz

Summary/Abstract: The author of this essay proposed to decipher Miłosz’s prewar poetry from the viewpoint of the motifs of the petrification of the world as well as the passage of time and death. In doing so he described this current in Miłosz’s poetry as thanatic, indicating that it reveals concealed kinship with the late Freudian theory of drives, based on the opposition between Eros and Thanatos. This pessimistic tenor in Miłosz’s pre-war poetry is associated with emphasis on the finite dimension of human existence. Consequently, it was to be connected with recurring catastrophic motifs merged with pity for the world in the shape in which it is given to man. This is the reason why Miłosz’s poetry can be described as elegiac, mourning the inevitable departure of everything into death and nothingness.

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