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The Captivated Mind: Two Studies of Miłosz in EnglishHAROLD B. SEGELTHE ETERNAL MOMENT: THE POETRY OF CZESŁAWMIŁOSZ. By Aleksander Fiut. Translated by Theodosia S. Robertson.Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press,1990. 226 pp. $29.95.THE POET'S WORK: AN INTRODUCTION TO CZESŁAWMIŁOSZ. By Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1991. xi, 178 pp. $29.95 cloth, $9.95paper.Since Czesław Miłosz has reached the age of eighty, and has been at the Universityof California at Berkeley since I960, it may seem surprising that book-length studiesof his works have not appeared in English before now. This is not to suggest adearth of literature in English on Miłosz. Quite the contrary. There has been a greatdeal of periodical writing as well as the publication of a few collections of essaysreflecting a fine knowledge of the body of Miłosz's work and the ability to situate itwithin various contexts. Yet, as Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn remind us intheir own book—the first by American critics—Miłosz's recognition as a poet in theEnglish-speaking world came relatively late. Whatever interest he had begun toattract as a young poet in Poland before and during World War Π was limited to Polishreaders. His international postwar reputation was acquired initially through hisauthorship of two prose works of patent political content, The Captive Mind, whichstill remains Miłosz's best-known book, and the novel The Seizure of Power. Boththese works were published in English in the 1950s—The Captive Mind in 1953 andThe Seizure of Power in 1955. For at least fifteen years after, these remained theonly works of Miłosz available in English. Even such engaging, and revealing, proseworks as Native Realm and The Issa Valley, which were also products of the earlyémigré years in Paris after Miłosz's defection from the Polish diplomatic service in1951, were translated into English only much later—Native Realm in 1968 and TheIssa Valley in 1981. In 1980, when Miłosz received the Nobel Prize in literature(which greatly enhanced his stature as a poet), it had only been a few years since hisfirst book of poetry—Selected Poems (1973)—appeared in English. And, again, itwas not until fifteen years after the appearance of Selected Poems and eight yearsafter the award of the Nobel Prize that a substantial collection of Miłosz's poetry—The Collected Poems, 1931-1987 (1988)—was published in English. In light of thischronology, it may seem less surprising that it has taken so long for a monograph onhis work to appear in the country in which Miłosz has made his home for over thirtyyears.