Space constitutes one of the main leitmotifs of Czeslaw Milosz's work, both theoretical and poetic. Central in this respect is the notion of imagination as a faculty organizing space, the faculty which, from the times of the Scientific Revolution, has been subject to erosion, especially as far as the religious imagination is concerned. The abolition of the anthropocentric, hierarchical vision of space, threw human beings into a state of alienation, conceptual nowhere. Religion was replaced by the dogmatism of scientific reductionism, the reality of Ulro. Milosz shows the way out of Ulro, the way out of nowhere to the somewhere. This thesis aims to illustrate the conceptual map of the way out of Ulro as portrayed in four selected volumes of poetry and the novel Dolina Issy, anchored in different points of Milosz's biography. The Land of Ulro, the collection of essays which encapsulate Milosz's ideas on space, constitutes a canopy work for the interpretation of the practical realization of those ideas in Milosz's poetic work. Trzy zimy (1936), Swiat, poema naiwne (1943), Miasto bez imienia (1969), and Druga przestrzen (2002) provide the material for the analysis of different aspects of Milosz's conception of space. Subject to analysis is the relationship between object and human subject as regards the formative, childhood experience of the space of the house (manor) and surrounding landscape, the act of building space on the basis of memory and retrospection in the context of distance and exile, and the workings of religious imagination in the context of the realm of second space. Through his conception of space, Milosz defends human existence in its completeness. He shows the way out of Ulro. This thesis aims to retrace Milosz's map out of the land of alienation on the basis of the poet's selected works.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:711840 |
Date | January 2015 |
Creators | Machala, Marta |
Contributors | Fellerer, Jan M. |
Publisher | University of Oxford |
Source Sets | Ethos UK |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Source | https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a551d588-fcb4-4c5c-81c3-3e81e8f7e593 |
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