Czeslaw Milosz – My intention

(the opening essay of “To begin where I am”)

I have written on varios subjects, and not, for the most part, as I would have wished. Nor will I realize my longstanding intention this time. But I am always aware that what I want is impossible to achieve. I would need the ability to communicate my full amazement at “being here” in one unattainable sentence which would simultaneously transmit the smell and texture of my skin, everything stored in my memory and all I now assent to, dissent from. However, in pursuing the impossible, I did learn something. Each of us is so ashamed of his own helplessness and ignorance that he considers it appropriate to communicate only what he thinks others will understand.
There are, however, times when somehow we slowly divest ourselves of that shame and begin to speak openly about all the things we do not understand. If I’m not wise, then why must I pretend to be? If I’m lost, why must I pretend to have ready counsel for my contemporaries? But perhaps the value of communication depends on the aknowledgement of one’s awn limits which mysteriously are also limits common to many others; and aren’t these the same limits for 100 or 1000 years ago? And when the air is filled with the clamour of analysys and conclusion, would it be entirely useless to admit you don’t understand?
I have read many books, but to place all those volumes on top of one another and stand on them would not add a cubit to my stature. Their leared terms are of little use when I attempt to seize naked experience which eludes all accepted ideas. To borrow their language can be helpful in many ways, but it also leads imperceptibly into a self-contained labyrinth, leading us in alien corridors which allow no exit. And so, I must offer resistance, check every moment to be sure I’m not departing from what I have actually experienced on my own, what I myself have touched.
I cannot invent a new language and I use the one I was first taught, but I can distinguish, I hope, between what is mine and what is merely fashionable. I cannot expel from my memory the books I have read, their contending theories and philosophies, but I am free to be suspicious and to ask naive questions instead of joining the chorus which affirms or denies.
Intimidation. I am brave and undaunted in the certainty of having something important to say to the world, something no one else will be called to say.
Then the feeling of individuality and a unique role begins to weaken and the thought of all the people who ever were, are and ever will be – aspiring, doubting, believing – people superior to me in strength of feeling and depth of mind, robbs me of a confidence in what I call my “I”. The words of a prayer two millenia old, the cellestial music created by a composer in a wig and jabot make me ask why I, too, am here, why me? Shouldn’t one evaluate his chances befor and – either equal the best or say nothing.
Right at this moment, as I put these marks on paper, countless others are doing the same, and our books in the brightly oloured jackets will be added to that mass of things in which names and titles sink and vanish. No doubt, alsi at this very moment, someone is standing in a book-store and, face with the sight of those splendid and vain ambitions, is making his decision – silence is better. That single phrase whick, were it truly weighed, would suffice as a life’s work. However, here, now, I have the courage to speak, a sort of secondary courage, not blind. Perhaps it is my stubbornness in pursuit of that single sentence. Or perhaps it is my old fearlessness, temperant fate, a search for a new dodge. In any case, my consolation lies not so much in the role I have been called on to play, as in the great mosaic like whole which is composed of the fragments of various people’s efforts wether successful or not. I am here – and everyone is in some “here” – and the only thing we can do is try to communicate with one another.