A Different Kind of Faithfulness.

MILOSZ, Czeslaw, 1911-2004; SKEPTICISM; AMICHAI, Yehuda, 1924-2000; BELIEF & doubt; RELIGION & poetry; POETRY (Literary form); RELIGION in literature; RELIGIOUS poetry; AUTHORS; CATHOLICS; CHURCH & the world; THEOLOGICAL anthropology; RELIGIOUS literature

Profiles Poland's Czeslaw Milosz, a Christian poet who died recently. What are we to make of a genius who states categorically that he believes in angels, the Fall, the Gospels and the spirit of God brooding over human history-yet whose faith eludes us even at his most candid? One of the world's and Christianity's great poets, Poland's Czeslaw Milosz, who along with Israel's Yehuda Amichai, Milosz wrote some of the most searching religious poetry of the 20th century. Flip through his collected works, and every third poem seems to wrestle, Jacob-like, with religious mysteries. Yet the avalanche of Christian imagery and outright credos fails to settle several questions. Milosz's earthy, tactile poetry clearly reflects an incarnational theology, which he touches on in other meditations. His poems are not simply Christian, but specifically Catholic in both outlook and details. Milosz, then, was a different kind of religious poet. He was a seeker's Catholic and a Catholic seeker, unsure of his beliefs even when professing orthodoxy, arriving at no certainties even when repeating age-old creeds.