Sleeping Orpheus (some remarks on the "Orpheus and Euridice", a poem by Czesław Miłosz)

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis and interpretation of the poem by Miłosz, which elaborate the contexts of literary history (Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridice, La Divina Commedia of Dante, Orpheus, Eurydike, Hermes of Rilke) and of literary theory (references to critical studies on Milosz and to the Bloom’s theory of historical process). Main thesis concerns the metaphysical ideas of Milosz’s poem interpreted in the perspective of the metaphysics of Lévinas.