Religion, Poetry and Compassion. On Józef Wittlin and Czesław Miłosz

The essay invites us to look at the poetry of Józef Wittlin and Czesław Miłosz, noting the religious potential of compassion as a response to the scandal of evil. Józef Wittlin – a soldier in First World War and later a victim of the anti-Semitic attacks – was particularly sensitive to the manifestations of cruelty and violence in the world. Likewise – fifteen years younger than Wittlin – Miłosz, who experienced first-hand the oppression of Nazi and Communist totalitarianisms. Although their poetry is very different, they both can be named “sick souls,” as William James defined religious people who confront their faith with evidence of pain, loss, evil and suffering in the world. The concept of compassion (in the case of Wittlin and Miłosz, originally borrowed from Schopenhauer) seems to be rather secular, but their poetry suggests that it gets theological overtones and becomes similar to agape, as understood by Charles Taylor in his reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan (A Secular Age). The article primarily refers to the two poems by Wittlin (Pain of a Tree, The Lament of the Sacrificial Ram) and some of Miłosz’s late poems.