Czesław Miłosz's seemingly accessible poetry has not revealed even a fraction of its riddles. The more intensely one reads "Three Winters" (1936), "Rescue" (1945), not to mention "Treatise on Poetry" (1956) and "From Where the Sun Rises" (1974), the richer and more enigmatic they seem. Surely the emigration of the poet … was not favorable to critical reflection. But even the earlier work is filled with contradictions and intimations that eloquently testify to the resistance which Miłosz's poetry presents to interpretation…. Homogeneous yet multiform, Miłosz's poetry puts a stop to tendencies whose sense eludes even the most sympathetic of readers. The writer worked against the principle which was gaining ascendancy in Poland at the beginning of this century: the principle of autonomous poetic language.

Hence the abundance of contradictory labels attached to Miłosz. Romantic magus? Lover of classical harmony? Prophet of destruction? Ironic skeptic? Only recently, rather late...