A comprehensive selection of essays--some never before translated into English--by the Nobel Laureate. "To Begin Where I Am" brings together a rich sampling of poet Czeslaw Milosz's prose writings. Spanning more than a half century, from an impassioned essay on human nature, wartime atrocities, and their challenge to ethical beliefs, written in 1942 in the form of a letter to his friend Jerzy Andrzejewski, to brief biographical sketches and poetic prose pieces from the late 1990s, this volume presents Milosz the prose writer in all his multiple, beguiling guises. The incisive, sardonic analyst of the seductive power of communism is also the author of tender, elegiac portraits of friends famous and obscure; the witty commentator on Polish complexes writes lyrically of the California landscape. Two great themes predominate in these essays, several of which have never appeared before in English: Milosz's personal struggle to sustain his religious faith, and his unswerving allegiance to a poetry that is "on the side of man."

切斯瓦夫•米沃什（Czesław Miłosz） 波蘭著名詩人、散文傢、文學史傢。1911年齣生於波蘭第一共和國的立陶宛。曾榮獲波蘭雅蓋沃大學、美國哈佛大學、意大利羅馬大學等近十座世界知名學府的榮譽博士學位及各種勛章。1978年獲俗有小諾貝爾奬之稱的諾斯達特國際文學奬。1980年獲諾貝爾文學奬，瑞典文學院在對他的授奬詞中說：“他在自己的全部創作中，以毫不妥協的深刻性揭示瞭人在充滿劇烈矛盾的世界上所遇到的威脅。”2004年8月在波蘭剋拉科夫逝世，享年九十三歲。

黃燦然 詩人，批評傢。現居深圳洞背村。著有《必要的角度》《格拉斯的煙鬥》《奇跡集》等，譯有《關於他人的痛苦》《論攝影》《同時》《新韆年文學備忘錄》《如何讀，為什麼讀》《詩的見證》《內心活動》《小於一》《希尼三十年文選》《開墾地》等。