17 pages • 34 minutes read
Czesław MiłoszArs Poetica?
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Inspiration & Genius
As a (however slyly) self-identified ars poetica, the poem explores the art of poetry. The poem is concerned with the classical concept of genius. While the word “genius” is used now as a description of extreme intelligence, its origins lie in classical Roman thinking, where a genius was a divine entity or spirit that watched over an individual. The poem’s speaker refers to these Greco-Roman ways of thinking in the third stanza, where they state that poetry is “dictated by a daimonion” (Line 9).
Rather than celebrating the individual’s own wellspring of creativity, like the romantic poets, Miłosz’s poem understands inspiration as an “indecent,” non-angelic, potentially “evil” entity that proceeds from outside the poet (Lines 5, 36). “Ars Poetica?” expresses a view of genius independent from the artist: The poem is a thief of the poet’s “lips or hand” (Line 15), and alters “his destiny for their convenience” (Line 16).
However, inspiration is not entirely sinister in Miłosz’s poem. After all, the poem’s speaker describes inspiration as benign as well as diabolical. The poem presents a view unlike the classical conception of the singular, personal divine entity or muse. It departs from more recent romantic views, which celebrate the individual’s internal creative force. Instead, Miłosz’s inspiration is defined by multiplicity: It makes a poet into “a city of demons” (Line 13) that “speak in many tongues” (Line 14).
Nostalgia for a Lost Past
A reader might reasonably expect that an ars poetica would discuss timeless concepts. After all, a treatise on the art of poetry is generally concerned with definitions of art, poetry, and writing. However, Miłosz’s ars poetica devotes a fair amount of space to lamenting a decline in reading material and what people value, reflecting on a past “when only wise books were read” (Line 21).
The poem introduces nostalgia in the third stanza. The concept of “a daimonion” (Line 9) alludes to a lost, classical past. The theme of nostalgia becomes explicit in stanza five. The speaker reminds the reader that they are part of a society where “what is morbid is highly valued” (Line 17). In this way, the poem situates itself in time. Its direct address to the reader—“so you may think that I am only joking” (Line 18)—creates a disarmingly casual tone even as it signals the speaker’s desperation. The speaker has such little faith in the current time period compared to a classical one that they overtly steer the reader away from false interpretations, from reading the poem as a joke (Line 18).
Language & Communication
It is no surprise that a reflection on poetry would focus so much on the nature of language and communication. The speaker opens his “Ars Poetica?” with a focus on language. They seek communication: A means to “let us understand each other” (Line 3). The poem defines poetry in terms of communication (as opposed to image, dream, the imagination, etc.). The first stanza also ties the poem’s definition of poetry to the specific limits of form and language, what the speaker calls “the claims of poetry” (Line 2).
Miłosz’s poem contrasts pure communication with the thieving, rapacious poetic impulse. It is true that poetry communicates, but at its core it summons our vulnerability, that “which we didn’t know we had in us” (Line 6).
The poem contrasts the lost past and the bleak present in terms of literature. In the past one read insightful texts, in the poem’s present one reads clinical texts. In both time periods, language helps humans bear suffering.
