Miłosz: A Biography
by andrzej franaszek
translated by aleksandra parker and michael parker
belknap, 544 pages, $35
The impression left in the mind of an American reader, after he finishes Andrzej Franaszek’s exhaustive new biography of Czesław Miłosz, is the absurdity that this man was ever considered a political sage. A great poet, yes. A generous translator of other Polish poets, absolutely. His tireless efforts to make American poetry less provincial by lending his famous name to anthologies of world poetry, not just European but Asian and Latin American, remain underappreciated to this day. But his reputation as a Cold War dissident was accidental and was neither deserved nor welcomed by the poet himself.