On Translating the Bible into Polish: An Inteiview with Czesław Miłosz, Conducted by Ewa Czarnecka

Summary

Ewa Czarnecka: You've said that your whole life may have been a preparation for translating the Book of Psalms. I know that was a very apt answer to a question about your poems written with a Biblical line but doesn't it also contain some truth? A growing interest in the sphere of sacrum can be observed in your poetry, a passage from history to metaphysics. On the other hand, you stress your obligations to Polish literature, in the sense of strengthening it as a language of dignity and hierarchy, an end that the translation of the psalms should serve.

Czesław Miłosz: I would rather prefer to speak of the second aspect because I'm not so sure about the first. In the end, I wouldn't wish to overstate my constant evolution toward what you've called the sacral. Those are quite mysterious things - why did it happen this way, what impelled me to do it - because I had been tempted to do that translation for a long time. On the other hand, it's easier to shed some light on the question of language. In fact, very early on, I began seeking a language that would be anti-avantgarde, meaning a language that would make use of simple words but which would at the same time produce strong impressions and have great power of expression through specific combinations of words made by rhythm. Only by rhythm in fact. The simplest words can be joined in more ways than one. But they can also be joined by rhythm. Rhythm limited to classical meter, to the metric forms we have in Polish versification - be they syllabic or syllabotonic, weren't enough for me somehow. For a long time I'd been tempted by a line we can call Biblical or Whitmanesque. I had no desire to introduce any exclusive element here because Białoszewski was also right when he spoke of needing an ear for the language. Still, it's a fact that Polish had a need of a certain high style. I think that my contact with Russian, always very off and on (I never studied Russian but my ear was sensitized to it when I was a child because of the years I spent in Russia) created a desire to emulate it. Many people have felt that temptation. And it's often a dangerous one.