„In the Heart of Destruction”. Miłosz and the recovery of poetry as mythopoiesis

Sara Quondamatteo

(Università Ca’ Foscari)
E-mail: sara.quondamatteo[at]outlook.it
ORCID: 0000-0002-2449-109X
DOI: 10.31261/FLPI.2022.04.09
„Fabrica Litterarum Polono-Italica” 2022, nr 1

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Abstract

Starting with an analysis of two works by Czesław Miłosz, namely Lullaby (1933/1934) and The World. A Naive Poem (1943), the essay aims at examining the process of the author’s rediscovery of the mythopoetic function of lyric poetry during World War II. Characterized by the use of a child’s perspective and imagination, marked more or less clearly by the experience of war catastrophe – both compositions are constructed by antithesis, and poetically founded on different forms of imagination in the service of an axiology which attests a radical transformation of the poetic quest.