SOURCE: Nilsson, Nils Åke. “Poetic Naivism: Czeslaw Milosz and Pär Lagerkvist.” Scando-Slavica 36 (1990): 41-53.

In the following essay, Nilsson finds historical, biographical, and religious similarities between Czeslaw Milosz's poem “Father in the Library” and Lagerkvist's untitled poem from his collection The Road of the Happy Man.

In 1943 Czesław Miłosz wrote a cycle of poems entitled Świat (The World; there are two English translations, Miłosz 1984 and Miłosz 1988).

The theme of the cycle—a world of childhood and innocence—returns in Miłosz's later prose and poetry. But the form of poetic discourse—indicated by the subtitle Poema naiwne (Naive poems)—is special and gives the cycle a unique position among his works.

It consists of 20 short poems. One of them is entitled “Ojciec w bibliotece” (“Father in the Library”):

Wysokie czoło, a nad nim zwichrzone Włosy, na które słońce z...