SOURCE: "Shestov, or the Purity of Despair," in Emperor of the Earth: Modes of Eccentric Vision, University of California Press, 1977, pp. 99-119.

Recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in literature, Lithuanian-born Milosz is known for his contributions to the development of Polish poetry. In the following essay, originally published in the journal Tri-Quarterly in 1973, Milosz examines the defining characteristics of Shestov's work, and compares him to other philosophers and literary critics, in particular Kierkegaard and Simone Weil.

Lev Shestov (pen name of Lev Isaakovich Schwarzman) was born in Kiev in 1866. Thus by the turn of the century he was already a mature man, the author of a doctoral dissertation in law, which failed to bring him the degree because it was considered too influenced by revolutionary Marxism, and of a book of literary criticism (on Shakespeare and his critic Brandes). His book Dobro v uchenfi grafa Tolstogo i Nitsshe...