The Sovereignty of Taste

6. The City of Demons

6. The City of Demons If humans are devoted to the production of an idea of taste that can never be completely rendered,if individuals are bedeviled throughout life by the question of whether they are the instrument of good or evil spirits, then Czeslaw Milosz’s poetry is the consummate expression of our age. No poet has wrestled more powerfully with the forces that have made this such a horrible and glorious period,and no poet has worked harder to redefine our relations to the world in accord with the ancient imperatives of the daimonion . Like the early Greeks whose tragedies cautioned people that none of their lives should be spoken of until they are over, Milosz has constructed a poetry that pursues his own troubled relationship with the century that made him who he is. He shows the reader even in his latest work that he remains as uncertain about what he has become as he was at the beginning of his career. The one constant is his recurring concern for the pattern unfolding in his life, the sense of appropriateness his words and actions produce. It is not surprising that even in a recent collection of poems, Facing the River, Milosz continues to question his daimonion. He reminds himself of the way his life has unfolded in accord with imperatives over which he had no control but through which his life has become exactly what it was supposed to be. In “To My Daimonion,” he declares: “My daimonion, it is certain I could not have lived differently./ I would have perished if not for you.”1 He concedes that “it is certain [he] could not have lived differently.” He has become who he is with such inevitability that he can’t imagine another way of maintaining his integrity. He further acknowledges to his daimonion that he “would have perished if not for you,” and although people typically use such expressions metaphorically to suggest that they would have been radi- The City of Demons 171 cally different, the reader must take the statement literally as well: Milosz would not have survived without the daimonion’s regular insistence that he be who he is. And whereas it is relatively easy at the end of a life to declare that all of one’s life was inevitable, it would degrade both poem and poet to only acknowledge that he is speaking in this typical manner. It is important that he admits the inevitability of his life to his daimonion rather than to a self that would have been constituted out of all of his experiences, for that puts his fate further out of his own control than we like to imagine our own. It is more significant that it is “certain” that Milosz couldn’t have lived differently . Most individuals see how their lives come together, and many of them decide that they could live in no other way. Few, however, are inclined to say that there was no other choice for their lives, no other way for them to be who they have been for decades. Milosz’s certainty comes from the fact that he has listened to his daimonion , willingly submitted to its dictates. He agreed every day to remain just one person, to continue the arduous journey through life that means being who he is. He has been more committed to what he has become than most people are. Perhaps he has less in the way of regret as well. It may be that he is not inclined to excise any of the historical events of which he was a part, nor to cut out any of the personal experiences along the way that have significantly changed the outcome of his life. It may be that unlike Kundera, he doesn’t think it just as easily could have been otherwise. Maybe he couldn’t have lived differently even if he had remained in Poland, even if he had suffered in other ways, even if he had been blessed with other comforts. Milosz is grateful to his daimonion for pulling him through his life with such inevitability without at the same time placing him in the pathway of destruction. If he confesses that he would have perished without the daimonion , he is thanking it for having been the most reliable element of who he is,the fundamental principle of taste on which all of his actions have depended .The poem is a prayer of thanks...