Glory, glory is singing the whole existence : musical themes and metaphors in Czesław Miłoszs poetry

Czesław Miłosz’s poems devoted to music create a separate poetical sequence, characterised by different expression styles and constructed meanings. In a prewar volume Trzy zimy (The Three Winters) Miłosz subordinates sounds and musical articulations to a foreboding of catastrophy and a vision of destruction of the world. In poems written after the Second World War, the poet revokes music and connects it with metaphysical and historiosophical considerations. In Miłosz’s poetry, the the 20th-century switch of music tastes brings us closer to the problem of the birth of modernity. He confronts changes in music language with crises in history (Pierwsze wykonanie – The First Performance). It is characteristic of our Noble Prize Winner to oppose culture (and music) to nature, to contrast artificial art order with the eternal order of existence. In another series of literary works, music becomes an important element of ecstatic experience. Especially in the last period in Miłosz’s poetry music serves to the adoration of existence. One also should not forget about the rescuing role of music and participation of the art of sound in apokatastasis. The return to the youth initiations, possible through remembered melodies and the sound of instruments, plays an important part in the discussed poems. Musical experiences take part in accounting with totalitarian constraint and in establishing private zone of freedom (Baśń - The Fairy Tale). In Miłosz’s poem entitled Mistrz (The Master) we can recognize the destroying of the myth of music as the „angel speech”, thus, as we read in the old composer’s confessions, the great art cannot be separated from evil.