Miłosz, Camus, Einstein, and Weil

Cynthia Haven at Church Life Journal:

Beavers were hunted to near extinction in Europe by mid-century, but in America, they thrived. For the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz, they would have held an obvious fascination. They are muscular animals; they can carry their own substantial weight when building a lodge, which can total three tons. And though they are, to all appearances, dumpy, heavy rodents, when they plunge into water, they are as sleek as otters. One of these odd creatures moved Miłosz to make perhaps the most significant decision of his life, though he would see that only in retrospect. He would write about it years later in France—but he was far from Paris on that day, on one early winter morning before dawn in the winter of 1948-49.

The love and reverence many Californians feel for the Pacific is, in much of the world, directed towards rivers. Certainly, it was so with Miłosz. He had been drawn to rivers since his childhood, on the Niewiaża river, in Lithuania’s Šeteniai, and now he was unimaginably far away, in the land where natura ruled supreme. The Pacific Ocean that was his destined home was terrifying and alien, but this river was manageable.

more here.

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