Introduction

The Introduction outlines the central problem of the body in Miłosz’s writings, beginning with a little-known essay on the impoverished existence of Warsaw refugees during the Second World War. Miłosz’s nightmare was the biologized body of pure reductionism: the human being stripped of higher value to become a mere animal. He was convinced that such reductively materialist perspectives had represented the underlying causes of genocide in the twentieth century. In response, he sought the rehabilitation of a transcendent human identity that would preserve and intertwine both material and immaterial aspects. In a secular sense, he aimed to restore the value of the human individual by exposing the deeper significance of the flesh, which transcends consciousness in its connections with the natural world and with other human beings. In religious terms, belief in Miłosz’s writing also takes bodily form—not rationalized or understood, but felt in the blood and breath. For Miłosz, the body is not just the only vehicle for human life, but also the mysterious ground of its higher value.