Adam Mickiewicz 

                           Invocation

O Lithuania, my fatherland,
Thou art like health; what praise thou shouldst command
Only the man finds who has lost thee quite.
Today I see, and limn, thy beauty bright
In all its splendor, for I yearn for thee.

O holy Virgin, who dost oversee
Bright Czenstochowa and in Wilno shinest
Above the Ostra Gate! thou who inclinest
To shelter Nowogrodek with its folk
In faithfulness. When I, in youth, bespoke
Thy help, by miracle thou didst restore
My failing health; when my sad mother bore
Me to thy seat, my deathlike eyes I raised;
Walked to the threshold of thy shrine amazed;
And thanked God for the health brought back to me- 
So by a miracle thou wilt decree
That we regain our country. Meanwhile bear
To those treed hills my spirit of despair,
To those green meadows, stretching far and wide
By the blue Niemen; to those grain fields pied
With hues of various harvests, gold with wheat,
Silvered with rye; where mustard-blossoms meet
With buckwheat white as snow; where clover glows
As with a girl's blush; and green turf-strip bows
Engirdle all the garth with ribbons rare,
As quiet pear-trees slumber here and there.

  The beginning of ‘Pan Tadeusz’, a national epic
  ( translated by Watson Kirkconnel)

 Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855)  a été le plus exceptionnel des Romantiques polonais. Poète, columniste, activiste politique et visionnaire.

Mickiewicz laissa derrière lui une oeuvre vaste et variée. Elle comporte de la poésie, des poèmes épiques, des pièces de théâtre et des essais. On a aussi retrouvé plusieurs oeuvres inachevées. Les vues philosophiques et sociales de Mickiewcz  sont aussi convaincantes. A cause de sa  façon particulière de mêler religion, nationalisme romantique et radicalisme social, plusieurs groupes le citent comme source de leur inspiration. Son "messianisme" slave a influencé l'émergence des identités nationales en Europe de l'Est qui ne jouissaient pas alors d'états indépendants.

 

  Czesław Miłosz

            Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.
And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world there will be,
No other end of the world there will be.

    (translated by Anthony Miłosz)

Czesław Miłosz (1911 – 2004) était poète, auteur d’ouvrages de prose et d’essais et traducteur.

En 1980, on lui décerna le Prix Nobel  de littérature.

Sa poésie est riche de métaphores. Le romantisme et l'apocalyptique vont main dans la main. Ses vers suggèrent parfois un discours pholosophique cru de l'épiphanie religieuse. Miłosz transcende les genres; comme poète et comme traducteur, il passe  des poètes américains modernes à la Bible
( dont il a traduit  des parties en polonais )

Ses recueils de poésies les plus importants sont : Salut (1945), Lumière du jour (1953), Traité poétique (1957), Ville sans nom  (1969). Il est aussi auteur d’excellents essais, d’articles et de prose, comme L’Esprit en esclavage (1953), La Terre d'Ulro (1977).