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"Czesław Miłosz's autobiography, little noticed when it appeared in 1968, is now republished because he won the Nobel Prize.
Good: it is a powerful book we should have read earlier.
...we can readily believe that the man who wrote this memoir could be - as Joseph Brodsky declared two years before the Swedish prize was announced -
"one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest."
"Native Realm" - beautifully written, elegantly translated - tries to find in the chaos of this life some glimmers of meaning. While following, as along a dotted line for tearing, the outer events of Miłosz's years, the book is primarily an exercise in consciousness: How can a man be honest with himself, his time?...
"We are always pupils in an introductory class", remarks Miłosz towards the end, and all one can do is to keep trying to find "the elixir of youth: that is, of life made into thought."