Czesław Miłosz's second poetry collection, “Three Winters” (Trzy zimy), has been highly regarded since its publication. While a number of previous studies have examined this work, most have not adequately addressed the issue of the individual and the collective - a recurring and significant theme throughout Miłosz's œuvre. This paper offers a chronological analysis of the poems in “Three Winters,” exploring how the individual “I” gradually connects with human community conceptualized as a “fateful collective.” In a poem written prior to the publication of Miłosz's first collection, one can discern leftist elements closely aligned with the collective. At the same time, however, there also appears an individual striving to reclaim subjectivity by distancing himself/herself from the collective. In works from the following year, a self-reflective “I” emerges, coming to terms with the reality of finitude and the limitations of individual existence. By the subsequent year, this “I” becomes so deeply introspective, allowing the inner world to overflow into external reality, transforming the “I”'s immediate surroundings into a “garden” layered with various images. Finally, in the works from the final year under consideration, the “I” decisively breaks with the earlier self that had earnestly prioritized the collective over the individual, and instead repositions a new “myself” as a member of the “fateful collective” of humanity, situating the individual “I” within the communal “we.”
悠太朗 山本 (Sun,) studied this question.