Milosz's ABC

On Anthologies, he says "Something will always remain from such sowing of seeds into the wind." Personally, the anthology he put together, his  'A Book of Luminous Things' is a treasured collection.

I really enjoy anthologies as they open doors otherwise one wouldn't know existed. I agree when he says "The anthology may be viewed as a separate literary genre, like excerpts from the thoughts of various authors, which are called books of quotations. In the midst of every-increasing quantity, anthologies enable individual voices to be heard above the collective noise."

Also, so much to read in this lifetime. Anthologies help a lot to know the landscape better. 

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On Walt Whitman

"Of all American poets, I will always have the greatest affinity with Walt Whitman. He fulfills the condition of greatness which Oscar Milosz spoke of when he demanded that a work should be like a river, bearing rich silt and broken pieces of trees, not just nuggets of gold. That is why longueurs and repetitions, entire catalog of objects, should not be irritating. Whitman is the opposite of "pure poetry." But at the same time, one's experience of him is like one's experience of large canvases by master paitners, on which one can discern, through attentive observation, many minute and fascinating details."

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On Ambition, and a certain comfort with passivity:

"Ambition, after all, is Schopenhauer's Will, a force equal to biological terrors and drives. The will, however cannot do everything, even in sports, where tenacious daily training means so much. Laying oneself open, letting oneself go, a certain comfort with passivity, allows the body to work in harmony. This is even more true in powetry; straining comes to nothing, for we receive the gift whether we are deserving of it or not. There is a contradiction between striving for recognition and fame on the one hand, and creating something that may bring one fame on the other."

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"Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it. Western Europe can be accused of the deceit of civilization. During the industrial revolution it sacrificed human beings to the Baal of progress; then it engaged in trench warfare. A long time ago, I read a manuscript by one Mr. Ulrich, who fought at Verdun as a German infantry soldier. Those people were captured like the prisoners in Auschwitz, but the waters of oblivion have closed over their torment and death. The habits of civilization have a certain enduring quality and the Germans in occupied Western Europe were obviously embarrassed and concealed their aims, while in Poland they acted completely openly.

It is entirely human and understandable to be stunned by blatant criminality and to cry out, “That’s impossible!” and yet, it was possible. But those who proclaim that God “abandoned us in 1941” are acting like conservators of an anodyne civilization. And what about the history of humankind, with its millennia of mutual murder? To say nothing of natural catastrophes, or of the plague, which depopulated Europe in the fourteenth century. Nor of those aspects of human life which do not need a grand public arena to display their subservience to the laws of earth.

Life does not like death. The body, as long as it is able to, sets in opposition to death the heart’s contractions and the warmth of circulating blood. Gentle verses written in the midst of horror declare themselves for life; they are the body’s rebellion against its destruction. They are carmina, or incantations deployed in order that the horror should disappear for a moment and harmony emerge—the harmony of civilization or, what amounts to the same thing, of childish peace. They comfort us, giving us to understand that what takes place in anus mundi is transitory, and that harmony is enduring—which is not at all a certainty."