At World's End, the Clarity
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Jennifer Frey, who is a professor in Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, recently interviewed Thomas Pfau, who is Professor of English at Duke University on her podcast Sacred and Profane Love.
In this episode, Frey and Pfau discuss the life and work of the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. A number of great points of discussion were covered in this episode, in particular the Thomist sensibility of Milosz, which focused his attention not only to the utter richness of the concrete reality of things, but also of the telos or end of those things.
Related to that point, one theme that particularly stuck with me was a discussion on Milosz’s thoughts on eschatology - otherwise known as the last things or more colloquially as the end of the world.
When talking about the end of the world, the common tendency would be to turn away from the things of this world to look out for extraordinary phenomena. This arises from the presumption that at the end of all things, all things have exceeded their capacity to convey meaning, and will begin to fade into the background as the last thing, the eschaton, comes into view.
In keeping with his Thomist sensibility, Milosz believed quite the opposite. For Thomas, things are moving towards their telos the closer they get to the eschaton. What this means is that the end of the world is not the finishing off of the world. Rather, the end of the world is where the world reaches its end, in terms of its fulfilment and telos. What this means is that, for Milosz, things are not eviscerated by the apocalypse. Instead, as they become more themselves, they become ever more present to us. Things grow in their heft and immanence the closer they get to the end of all things. Things become revealed, in the truest sense of the term “apocalyptic”.
I find this point of the podcast fascinating to the utmost, for it presents a challenge to me. In the first instance, Milosz the Thomist presents us with a Thomism that is not just concerned for the things in this world for the duration of its life. Instead, Milosz the Thomist casts our attention to the threshold of the end of all life. In the second instance, Milosz the poet presents a challenge, to see the end of all things, not as a welcome end to the practical joke which is life, but to see the fecundity of goodness that comes with life and its presence, which is then crowned by the eschaton, and the presence of the Lord of Life.
Lastly, it is this interview that gives meaning and coherence to a line in Milosz’s “A Song on the End of the World”, which begins with these lines that cause us not to look up but down:
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 should always be.
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