“Invisible Guests”: Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, on his experience of the creative artist’s normal version of multiple personality.

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us

how difficult it is to remain just one person,

for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,

and invisible guests come in and out at will.” — from “Ars Poetica?”

from The Paris Review, Winter 1994, No. 133

Czeslaw Milosz, The Art of Poetry No. 70

INTERVIEWER

In your poem “Ars Poetica?” you stated that the purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.

MILOSZ

My poetry has been called polyphonic, which is to say that I have always been full of voices speaking; in a way I consider myself an instrument, a medium. My friend Jeanne Hersch, who introduced me to the existentialism of Karl Jaspers, used to say, “I have never seen a person so instrumental,” meaning that I was visited by voices. There is nothing extraterrestrial in this, but something within myself. Am I alone in this? I don’t think so. Dostoyevsky was one of the first writers, along with Friedrich Nietzsche, to identify a crisis of modern civilization: that every one of us is visited by contradictory voices, contradictory physical urges. I have written about the difficulty of remaining the same person when such guests enter and go and take us for their instrument. But we must hope to be inspired by good spirits, not evil ones.

INTERVIEWER

You have called yourself a medium, but a suspicious one. What do you mean by this? Of what are you a medium?

MILOSZ

I suppose, looking back, that everything was dictated to me, and I was just a tool. Of what I don’t know. I would like to believe that I am a tool of God, but that’s presumptuous. So I prefer to call whatever it is my “daimonion.” I have written a new poem that describes this relationship:

Please, my Daimonion, ease off just a bit,

I’m still closing accounts and have much to tell.

Your rhythmical whispers intimidate me.

Today for instance, reading about a certain old woman

I saw again—Let us call her Priscilla,

Though I am astonished that I can give her any name

And people will not care. So that Priscilla,

Her gums in poor shape, an old hag,

Is the one to whom I return, in order to throw charms

And grant her eternal youth. I introduce a river,

Green hills, irises wet with rain

And, of course, a conversation. “You know,” I say,

“I could never guess what was on your mind

And will never learn. I have a question

That won’t be answered.” And you, Daimonion,

Just at this moment interfere, interrupt us, averse to

Surnames and family names and all reality

Too prosaic and ridiculous, no doubt.

So, this voice involves my purification from the past by time and distance. It interferes and stops me from writing about my life too realistically, too prosaically. I am able to move to another dimension.”

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1721/the-art-of-poetry-no-70-czeslaw-milosz