From Publishers Weekly
It would be difficult to overstate the brilliance and breadth of vision of this Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet and prose writer. This collection, spanning five decades, demonstrates an uncommon rigor, respect for truth and refusal to bend to intellectual fashion. While Milosz (The Captive Mind, etc.) an exile since 1951 and a professor of Slavic languages and literature at UC Berkeley has the trappings of a traditional European man of letters, he brings a unique modern perspective to topics of longstanding intellectual debate, including belief in God, poetry's social relevance and the limitations of Western liberalism. His adventurous, varied prose style calls upon different literary traditions: sketches, letters, aphorisms and philosophical essays. Underlying Milosz's writing is the constant, pained consciousness of having lived through WWII and the Holocaust, during which time he experienced a spiritual crisis as a Catholic which does not seem fully resolved (his favorite philosophers are the contradictory Simone Weil and Lev Shestov). From his harsh judgment of himself ("to preserve an untarnished image of [one]self is rarely possible") to his meditations on the nature of evil ("purely bestial sadism, naked and plain, occurs much more rarely than motivated sadism, equipped with all the arguments needed to make it into a noble and positive inclination"), Milosz's thoughts stem from the pressure that reality exerts on theory. Even in moments of relative levity ("America... has always suffered from a certain weakness in historical imagination... which is perhaps why in American films both ancient Romans and astronauts from the year 3000 look and act like boys from Kentucky"), a seriousness of purpose predominates. Seven of these pieces are translated into English for the first time, helping to make this indispensable reading. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Winner of the Nobel prize in literature in 1980, poet Milosz (Road-Side Dog, Milosz's ABC), has long made the experience of Poland in the past harsh century the keystone of his writing. In this collection of his essays and other prose, containing material spanning from 1942 to 1998, he writes of life in Wilno, Paris, Warsaw, and California with poignant insight and describes his friends in all these places sensitively and honestly. The difficult conditions of exile and the passage of time are constant themes in Milosz's work, along with considerations of the European mind, the Catholic faith, humanism, and the collective nature of humanity's struggles. He approaches these varied and rich subjects through personal memoirs, biographies of friends, and thoughts gained from philosophy, literature, and writing. The essays on Jerzy Andrzejewski, Robinson Jeffers, Simone Weil, Lev Shestov, and Polish poetry are major statements of this great writer's beliefs. Highly recommended for literature collections.- Gene Shaw, NYPL Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Poems and essays cover the same emotional and intellectual terrain but with different gaits and rhythms, and Nobel laureate Milosz writes with both mastery and serious philosophical purpose. This invaluable retrospective presents a wealth of his reflective, beautifully wrought prose works, in which he weaves autobiography and portraits of people, famous and otherwise, who have influenced him into graceful and provocative musings on time, history, religion, science, and art. An exquisitely receptive observer of place, Milosz, now in his nineties, remembers his boyhood bliss on his grandparents' Lithuanian farm in "Happiness," the volume's most recent essay. Elsewhere, he conjures up the lost streets of Wilno and his first trip to Western Europe; then, in his most riveting and pivotal narratives, he writes piercingly of America, the country of his long exile. But as brilliantly as he evokes place, it's people who inspire him the most profoundly as he seeks understanding of the horrors of the twentieth century--totalitarianism, genocide, Hiroshima--and the splendor of our persistent desire to "lift ourselves over new thresholds of consciousness." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
To Begin Where I Am stands as the most complete one-volume edition of Milosz's prose writings available in English by "arguably the greatest living poet." --Edward Hirsch, The New York Times Book Review

"Milosz's vigorous and sinewy prose is that of a man of a particular historical moment...The reader will find, in both the expository essays and the incomparable portraits of his contemporaries, Milosz's characteristic intensity, momentum, and savage intelligence." --Helen Vendler, Harper's Magazine

"Extraordinary...These 400 or so pages document the development, over seven decades, of a great mind." --The Economist

"Beguiling...[Milosz] displays his genius for wedding palpable, personal loss to larger themes...[To Begin Where I Am] grants privileged access to a singular literary mind." --Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[This collection] could not have come at a better time...A remarkable body of work...Enlightening." --Cynthia L. Haven, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review



Review
To Begin Where I Am stands as the most complete one-volume edition of Milosz's prose writings available in English by "arguably the greatest living poet." --Edward Hirsch, The New York Times Book Review

"Milosz's vigorous and sinewy prose is that of a man of a particular historical moment...The reader will find, in both the expository essays and the incomparable portraits of his contemporaries, Milosz's characteristic intensity, momentum, and savage intelligence." --Helen Vendler, Harper's Magazine

"Extraordinary...These 400 or so pages document the development, over seven decades, of a great mind." --The Economist

"Beguiling...[Milosz] displays his genius for wedding palpable, personal loss to larger themes...[To Begin Where I Am] grants privileged access to a singular literary mind." --Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[This collection] could not have come at a better time...A remarkable body of work...Enlightening." --Cynthia L. Haven, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review



Book Description
A comprehensive selection of essays--some never before translated into English--by the Nobel Laureate.

To Begin Where I Am brings together a rich sampling of poet Czeslaw Milosz's prose writings. Spanning more than a half century, from an impassioned essay on human nature, wartime atrocities, and their challenge to ethical beliefs, written in 1942 in the form of a letter to his friend Jerzy Andrzejewski, to brief biographical sketches and poetic prose pieces from the late 1990s, this volume presents Milosz the prose writer in all his multiple, beguiling guises. The incisive, sardonic analyst of the seductive power of communism is also the author of tender, elegiac portraits of friends famous and obscure; the witty commentator on Polish complexes writes lyrically of the California landscape. Two great themes predominate in these essays, several of which have never appeared before in English: Milosz's personal struggle to sustain his religious faith, and his unswerving allegiance to a poetry that is "on the side of man."



Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Polish


About the Author
Czeslaw Milosz was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a professor, now emeritus, of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent publications are Road-side Dog (FSG, 1998), and Milosz's ABC's (FSG, 2000).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For decades, the poetry and prose of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz have enthralled and provoked his readers. To Begin Where I Am brings together - in the most complete one-volume edition available in English - a rich sampling of the prose writings of "arguably the greatest living poet" (Edward Hirsch, The New York Times Book Review). Spanning more than half a century, these essays, several of which have never before appeared in English, present Milosz the prose writer in all his multiple, intriguing guises.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

It would be difficult to overstate the brilliance and breadth of vision of this Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet and prose writer. This collection, spanning five decades, demonstrates an uncommon rigor, respect for truth and refusal to bend to intellectual fashion. While Milosz (The Captive Mind, etc.) an exile since 1951 and a professor of Slavic languages and literature at UC Berkeley has the trappings of a traditional European man of letters, he brings a unique modern perspective to topics of longstanding intellectual debate, including belief in God, poetry's social relevance and the limitations of Western liberalism. His adventurous, varied prose style calls upon different literary traditions: sketches, letters, aphorisms and philosophical essays. Underlying Milosz's writing is the constant, pained consciousness of having lived through WWII and the Holocaust, during which time he experienced a spiritual crisis as a Catholic which does not seem fully resolved (his favorite philosophers are the contradictory Simone Weil and Lev Shestov). From his harsh judgment of himself ("to preserve an untarnished image of [one]self is rarely possible") to his meditations on the nature of evil ("purely bestial sadism, naked and plain, occurs much more rarely than motivated sadism, equipped with all the arguments needed to make it into a noble and positive inclination"), Milosz's thoughts stem from the pressure that reality exerts on theory. Even in moments of relative levity ("America... has always suffered from a certain weakness in historical imagination... which is perhaps why in American films both ancient Romans and astronauts from the year 3000 look and act like boys from Kentucky"), aseriousness of purpose predominates. Seven of these pieces are translated into English for the first time, helping to make this indispensable reading. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal