Poeta zaświatu przedstawionego: Dante u Miłosza

Dante’s presence in Miłosz’s works dates back to the Thirties, when the young Polish poet was under the influence of his cousin, the French-Lithuanian poet Oskar Miłosz. Oskar’s high opinion about Dante is clearly reflected in Czesław’s essays of these years, where he contrasts the figure of the Italian poet both with the supporters of engagé art and with the worshippers of formal plays and pure art. In later essays by Miłosz, Dante is often named in texts concerning metaphysical issues, especially the relationship between faith and imagination. The name of the author of The Divine Comedy evokes by contrast a phenomenon which is typical of contemporary civilization: the erosion of religious imagination. Two images of Dante which are traditional in Polish culture, fixed during Romanticism, i.e. Dante poet of exile and Dante poet of Hell, undergo change and actualization in Miłosz’s works: Dante is indeed associated with exile, but it is rather a spiritual exile, marking the whole contemporary civilization, deprived of its religious roots; and he is not the poet of Hell alone, rather the poet of the otherworlds – represented otherworlds