Great Regulars: "The ideal life for a poet",

he [Czeslaw Milosz] maintained, "is to contemplate the word is", a quest that leads, in "The Advisor", to a conflict between materialism and the consolations of a faith to which it is perhaps difficult to return in the light of what we have learnt about ourselves over the past century. The landscape Miłosz presents here has been ravaged by scientific and industrial progress. But the cynical advice to regard man merely as an evolved animal is ironically undercut by a haunting echo of old beliefs.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: "The Advisor"

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