in the astronaut’s helmet

I seem to be one of the last authors, not counting theologians, to refer now and then to the notion of a “spiritual life.” In our day, we confine ourselves at the best of times to discussing the imagination. The word “imagination” is beautiful and vast, but it doesn’t hold everything. Some people look at me suspiciously for this very reason; they think I must be a reactionary, or a double-dyed conservative at the very least. I open myself to ridicule. Progressive circles condemn me, or at least look at me askance. Conservative enclaves likewise fail to understand what I’m talking about. Poets a generation younger keep their distance. Only a certain young Spanish poet told me in Barcelona that my essays perhaps signal that postmodern irony may be conquered one day. But what is the spirit, the spiritual life? If only I were up to defining such things! Robert Musil says that the spirit synthesizes intellect and emotion. It’s a good working definition, for all its concision.

In the case of poetry, literature, it’s simpler to say—theologians know a thing or two about this—what the spirit isn’t. It’s not psychoanalytic any more than it’s behavioral, sociological, or political. It is holistic, and in it are reflected, as in the astronaut’s helmet, the earth, the stars, and a human face.

These are difficult and dangerous considerations.

—Adam Zagajewski, “Dangerous Considerations: A Notebook,” translated by Clare Cavenaugh, Poetry, Oct. 2007