Bypassing Rue Descartes (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Czesław Miłosz
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Colonialism, Colonies or colonization, France or French people, Europe or Europeans, Paris, Imperialism
The Poem
“Bypassing Rue Descartes” is a poem thirty-five lines long and arranged in ten irregular stanzas. The poem is written in the first person, as is traditional in lyric poetry. The poet remembers a walk taken in Paris, which occasions a meditation on history, exile, and guilt. The poem has the qualities of nostalgia and intimacy that insist the poem is autobiographical rather than a portrayal of a persona.
“Bypassing Rue Descartes” (which was tellingly retitled in translation from simply “Rue Descartes”) describes a walk the poet, “A young barbarian...
[The entire page is 1466 words long]
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