The Mountains of Parnassus
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The Nobel laureate’s unfinished science fiction novel—available in English for the first time ever
Awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1980, Czeslaw Milosz was one of the twentieth century’s most esteemed poets and essayists. This outstanding translation of his only hitherto unavailable work is classic Milosz and a necessary companion volume for scholars and general readers seeking a deeper understanding of his themes. Written in the 1970s and published posthumously in Polish in 2012, Milosz’s deliberately unfinished novel is set in a dystopian future where hierarchy, patriarchy, and religion no longer exist. Echoing the structure of The Captive Mind and written in an experimental, postmodern style, Milosz’s sole work of science fiction follows four individuals: Karel, a disaffected young rebel; Lino, an astronaut who abandons his life of privilege; Petro, a cardinal racked with doubt; and Ephraim, a potential prophet in exile. The original manuscript of this work is held at the Beinecke Library, and this edition will include photographs of the draft.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lithuanian-born Nobel winner Mi osz, whose poetry chronicles historical calamities, left behind this curious work of previously unpublished science fiction speculating on future depredations. Languishing in Yale University's Beinecke Library since 1972 (after Mi osz's Polish editor declined to publish it), the often cryptic novel takes readers on a disjointed journey through a disenchanted world. Mi osz prefaces the novel with a self-deprecating rhetorical gesture, confessing himself "incapable of performing" the task at hand, before wondering whether he might have "stumbled upon an experimental genre in spite of myself." This stated exploratory approach contrasts with the rigid, closed system the novel depicts, a society whose "atomized" citizens are incapable of imagining any alternative to the totalizing ideology of their rulers. Dissidents are "cocooned," a preventative measure to stop subversive ideas from spreading, though the populace is largely docile anyway, having "swallowed a substantial dose of callousness and indifference." Wars between various factions the Botanists' Union, the Astronauts' Union are referred to offhandedly; Mi osz's interest lies not in sustained narratives but in the psychological conflicts of his four characters: a cardinal, a political exile, an elite astronaut, and a suicidal youth. They are reactionary rebels, some desperate to return to a time before "man... had lost his symbols," others to an arcadian place, the (fictional) Parnassus Mountains, where inhabitants cling to the vestiges of the old life its religion, poetry, art that have vanished elsewhere. Hazily sketched though it may be, Mi osz's futuristic landscape unsettles and captivates.
