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Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980
Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...
. In its citation, the
Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy ( sv, Svenska Akademien), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is bes ...
called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts". Miłosz survived the German occupation of Warsaw during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
and became a cultural attaché for the Polish government during the postwar period. When
communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
authorities threatened his safety, he defected to France and ultimately chose exile in the United States, where he became a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
. His poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and his appraisal of
Stalinism Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the the ...
in a prose book, ''
The Captive Mind ''The Captive Mind'' (Polish: ''Zniewolony umysł'') is a 1953 work of nonfiction by Polish writer, poet, academic and Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz. It was first published in English in a translation by Jane Zielonko in 1953. Overview ''The ...
'', brought him renown as a leading ''
émigré An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French ''émigrer'', "to emigrate". French Huguenots Many French Huguenots fled France followin ...
'' artist and intellectual. Throughout his life and work, Miłosz tackled questions of morality, politics, history, and faith. As a translator, he introduced Western works to a Polish audience, and as a scholar and editor, he championed a greater awareness of
Slavic literature Slavic literature refers to the literature in any of the Slavic languages: *Belarusian literature *Bosnian literature *Bulgarian literature *Croatian literature *Czech literature *Kashubian literature *Macedonian literature *Polish literature *Russ ...
in the West. Faith played a role in his work as he explored his
Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
and personal experience. He wrote in Polish and English. Miłosz died in
Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...
, Poland, in 2004. He is interred in
Skałka Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr Basilica, also known as Skałka, which means "a small rock" in Polish, is a small outcrop in Kraków atop of which a Pauline monastery is located, a place where the Bish ...
, a church known in Poland as a place of honor for distinguished Poles.


Life in Europe


Origins and early life

Czesław Miłosz was born on 30 June 1911, in the village of
Šeteniai Šeteniai (''Šateiniai'', formerly russian: Шатейни, pl, Szetejnie, Józefów) is a village in the Kėdainiai district municipality, Lithuania. According to the 2011 census, the village had a population of 31 people. It is situated n ...
( pl, Szetejnie),
Kovno Governorate Kovno Governorate ( rus, Ковенская губеpния, r=Kovenskaya guberniya; lt, Kauno gubernija) or Governorate of Kaunas was a governorate ('' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Kaunas (Kovno in Russian). It was form ...
,
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...
(now
Kėdainiai district Kėdainiai () is one of the oldest cities in Lithuania. It is located north of Kaunas on the banks of the Nevėžis River. First mentioned in the 1372 Livonian Chronicle of Hermann de Wartberge, its population is 23,667. Its old town dates to ...
,
Kaunas County Kaunas County ( lt, Kauno apskritis) is one of ten counties of Lithuania. It is in the centre of the country, and its capital is Kaunas. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished. Symbols The county's coat of arms can be blazon ...
,
Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
). He was the son of Aleksander Miłosz (1883–1959), a Polish civil engineer, and his wife, Weronika (née Kunat; 1887–1945). Miłosz was born into a prominent family. On his mother's side, his grandfather was Zygmunt Kunat, a descendant of a Polish family that traced its lineage to the 13th century and owned an estate in Krasnogruda (in present-day Poland). Having studied agriculture in Warsaw, Zygmunt settled in Šeteniai after marrying Miłosz's grandmother, Jozefa, a descendant of the noble Syruć family, which was of Lithuanian origin. One of her ancestors, Szymon Syruć, had been personal secretary to
Stanisław I Stanislav and variants may refer to: People *Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.) Places * Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine * Stanislaus County, Cal ...
, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Miłosz's paternal grandfather, Artur Miłosz, was also from a noble family and fought in the 1863
January Uprising The January Uprising ( pl, powstanie styczniowe; lt, 1863 metų sukilimas; ua, Січневе повстання; russian: Польское восстание; ) was an insurrection principally in Russia's Kingdom of Poland that was aimed at ...
for Polish independence. Miłosz's grandmother, Stanisława, was a doctor's daughter from
Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...
,
Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
, and a member of the German/Polish von Mohl family. The Miłosz estate was in Serbiny, a name that Miłosz's biographer Andrzej Franaszek has suggested could indicate Serbian origin; it is possible the Miłosz family originated in Serbia and settled in present-day Lithuania after being expelled from Germany centuries earlier. Miłosz's father was born and educated in Riga. Miłosz's mother was born in Šeteniai and educated in Kraków. Despite this noble lineage, Miłosz's childhood on his maternal grandfather's estate in Šeteniai lacked the trappings of wealth or the customs of the upper class. He memorialized his childhood in a 1955 novel, ''The Issa Valley'', and a 1959 memoir, ''Native Realm.'' In these works, he described the influence of his Catholic grandmother, Jozefa, his burgeoning love for literature, and his early awareness, as a member of the Polish gentry in Lithuania, of the role of class in society. Miłosz's early years were marked by upheaval. When his father was hired to work on infrastructure projects in
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
, he and his mother traveled to be with him. After
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
broke out in 1914, Miłosz's father was conscripted into the Russian army, tasked with engineering roads and bridges for troop movements. Miłosz and his mother were sheltered in
Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urba ...
when the German army captured it in 1915. Afterward, they once again joined Miłosz's father, following him as the front moved further into Russia, where, in 1917, Miłosz's brother,
Andrzej Andrzej is the Polish form of the given name Andrew. Notable individuals with the given name Andrzej * Andrzej Bartkowiak (born 1950), Polish film director and cinematographer * Andrzej Bobola, S.J. (1591–1657), Polish saint, missionary and ma ...
, was born. Finally, after moving through Estonia and Latvia, the family returned to Šeteniai in 1918. But the
Polish–Soviet War The Polish–Soviet War (Polish–Bolshevik War, Polish–Soviet War, Polish–Russian War 1919–1921) * russian: Советско-польская война (''Sovetsko-polskaya voyna'', Soviet-Polish War), Польский фронт (' ...
broke out in 1919, during which Miłosz's father was involved in a failed attempt to incorporate the newly independent Lithuania into the
Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...
, resulting in his expulsion from Lithuania and the family's move to what was then known as
Wilno Vilnius ( , ; see also #Etymology and other names, other names) is the capital and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the munic ...
, which had come under Polish control after the
Polish–Lithuanian War The Polish–Lithuanian War (in Polish historiography, Polish–Lithuanian Conflict) was an undeclared war between newly-independent Lithuania and Poland following World War I, which happened mainly, but not only, in the Vilnius and Suwałki ...
of 1920. The Polish-Soviet War continued, forcing the family to move again. At one point during the conflict, Polish soldiers fired at Miłosz and his mother, an episode he recounted in ''Native Realm.'' The family returned to Wilno after the war ended in 1921. Despite the interruptions of wartime wanderings, Miłosz proved to be an exceptional student with a facility for languages. He ultimately learned Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English, French, and Hebrew. After graduation from
Sigismund Augustus Sigismund II Augustus ( pl, Zygmunt II August, lt, Žygimantas Augustas; 1 August 1520 – 7 July 1572) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the son of Sigismund I the Old, whom Sigismund II succeeded in 1548. He was the first ruler ...
Gymnasium in Wilno, he entered Stefan Batory University in 1929 as a law student. While at university, Miłosz joined a student group called The Intellectuals' Club and a student poetry group called Żagary, along with the young poets Jerzy Zagórski,
Teodor Bujnicki Teodor Bujnicki (13 December 1907 – 27 November 1944) was a Polish poet, and member of the literary group ''Żagary''. During World War II, Bujnicki was condemned for "collaboration with Soviet occupants" in Vilnius after Lithuania's incorporati ...
, Aleksander Rymkiewicz, Jerzy Putrament, and Józef Maśliński.''Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of Czeslaw Milosz'' by Edward Możejko. University of Alberta Press, 1988. pp 2f. His first published poems appeared in the university's student magazine in 1930. In 1931, he visited Paris, where he first met his distant cousin,
Oscar Milosz Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz ( lt, Oskaras Milašius; ) (28 May 1877 – 2 March 1939) was a French language poet, playwright, novelist, essayist and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations.Czesław Miłosz, Cynthia L. Haven. ...
, a French-language poet of Lithuanian descent who had become a
Swedenborgian The New Church (or Swedenborgianism) is any of several historically related Christian denominations that developed as a new religious group, influenced by the writings of scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborgian or ...
. Oscar became a mentor and inspiration. Returning to Wilno, Miłosz's early awareness of class difference and sympathy for those less fortunate than himself inspired his defense of Jewish students at the university who were being harassed by an anti-Semitic mob. Stepping between the mob and the Jewish students, Miłosz fended off attacks. One student was killed when a rock was thrown at his head. Miłosz's first volume of poetry, ''A Poem on Frozen Time'', was published in Polish in 1933. In the same year, he publicly read his poetry at an anti-racist "Poetry of Protest" event in Wilno, occasioned by
Hitler's Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
rise to power in Germany. In 1934, he graduated with a law degree, and the poetry group Żagary disbanded. Miłosz relocated to Paris on a scholarship to study for one year and write articles for a newspaper back in Wilno. In Paris, he frequently met with his cousin Oscar. By 1936, he had returned to Wilno, where he worked on literary programs at Radio Wilno. His second poetry collection, ''Three Winters'', was published that same year, eliciting from one critic a comparison to
Adam Mickiewicz Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (; 24 December 179826 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. A principal figure in Polish Ro ...
. After only one year at Radio Wilno, Miłosz was dismissed due to an accusation that he was a left-wing sympathizer: as a student, he had adopted socialist views from which, by then, he had publicly distanced himself, and he and his boss, Tadeusz Byrski, had produced programming that included performances by Jews and Byelorussians, which angered right-wing nationalists. After Byrski made a trip to the Soviet Union, an anonymous complaint was lodged with the management of Radio Wilno that the station housed a communist cell, and Byrski and Miłosz were dismissed. In summer 1937, Miłosz moved to Warsaw, where he found work at
Polish Radio Polskie Radio Spółka Akcyjna (PR S.A.; English: Polish Radio) is Poland's national public-service radio broadcasting organization owned by the State Treasury of Poland. History Polskie Radio was founded on 18 August 1925 and began making ...
and met his future wife, Janina (née Dłuska; 1909–1986), who was at the time married to another man.


World War II

Miłosz was in Warsaw when it was bombarded as part of the
German invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
in September 1939. Along with colleagues from Polish Radio, he escaped the city, making his way to
Lwów Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...
. But when he learned that Janina had remained in Warsaw with her parents, he looked for a way back. The
Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military operation by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Subs ...
thwarted his plans, and, to avoid the incoming
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
, he fled to
Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north o ...
. There he obtained a Lithuanian identity document and Soviet visa that allowed him to travel by train to Kyiv and then Wilno. After the Red Army invaded Lithuania, he procured fake documents that he used to enter the part of German-occupied Poland the Germans had dubbed the "
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
". It was a difficult journey, mostly on foot, that ended in summer 1940. Finally back in Warsaw, he reunited with Janina. Like many Poles at the time, to evade notice by German authorities, Miłosz participated in underground activities. For example, with higher education officially forbidden to Poles, he attended underground lectures by
Władysław Tatarkiewicz Władysław Tatarkiewicz (; 3 April 1886, Warsaw – 4 April 1980, Warsaw) was a Polish philosopher, historian of philosophy, historian of art, esthetician, and ethicist. Early life and education Tatarkiewicz began his higher education at ...
, the Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy and aesthetics. He translated Shakespeare's ''
As You Like It ''As You Like It'' is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 h ...
'' and T. S. Eliot's ''
The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of Modernist poetry in English, modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the ...
'' into Polish. Along with his friend the novelist
Jerzy Andrzejewski Jerzy Andrzejewski (; 19 August 1909 – 19 April 1983) was a prolific Polish writer. His works confront controversial moral issues such as betrayal, the Jews and Auschwitz in the wartime. His novels, '' Ashes and Diamonds'' (about the immediat ...
, he also arranged for the publication of his third volume of poetry, ''Poems'', under a pseudonym in September 1940. The pseudonym was "Jan Syruć" and the title page said the volume had been published by a fictional press in Lwów in 1939; in fact, it may have been the first clandestine book published in occupied Warsaw. In 1942, Miłosz arranged for the publication of an anthology of Polish poets, ''Invincible Song: Polish Poetry of War Time'', by an underground press. Miłosz's riskiest underground wartime activity was aiding Jews in Warsaw, which he did through an underground socialist organization called Freedom. His brother, Andrzej, was also active in helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland; in 1943, he transported the Polish Jew Seweryn Tross and his wife from Vilnius to Warsaw. Miłosz took in the Trosses, found them a hiding place, and supported them financially. The Trosses ultimately died during the
Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...
. Miłosz helped at least three other Jews in similar ways: Felicja Wołkomińska and her brother and sister. Despite his willingness to engage in underground activity and vehement opposition to the Nazis, Miłosz did not join the Polish
Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) es ...
. In later years, he explained that this was partly out of an instinct for self-preservation and partly because he saw its leadership as right-wing and dictatorial. He also did not participate in the planning or execution of the
Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...
. According to Irena Grudzińska-Gross, he saw the uprising as a "doomed military effort" and lacked the "patriotic elation" for it. He called the uprising "a blameworthy, lightheaded enterprise", but later criticized the Red Army for failing to support it when it had the opportunity to do so. As German troops began torching Warsaw buildings in August 1944, Miłosz was captured and held in a prisoner transit camp; he was later rescued by a Catholic nun—a stranger to him—who pleaded with the Germans on his behalf. Once freed, he and Janina escaped the city, ultimately settling in a village outside Kraków, where they were staying when the Red Army swept through Poland in January 1945, after Warsaw had been largely destroyed. In the preface to his 1953 book ''The Captive Mind'', Miłosz wrote, "I do not regret those years in Warsaw, which was, I believe, the most agonizing spot in the whole of terrorized Europe. Had I then chosen emigration, my life would certainly have followed a very different course. But my knowledge of the crimes which Europe has witnessed in the twentieth century would be less direct, less concrete than it is". Immediately after the war, Miłosz published his fourth poetry collection, ''Rescue''; it focused on his wartime experiences and contains some of his most critically praised work, including the 20-poem cycle "The World," composed like a primer for naïve schoolchildren, and the cycle "Voices of Poor People". The volume also contains some of his most frequently anthologized poems, including "A Song on the End of the World", "Campo Dei Fiori", and "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto".


Diplomatic career

From 1945 to 1951, Miłosz served as a cultural attaché for the newly formed
People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million ne ...
. It was in this capacity that he first met
Jane Zielonko Jane Irene Zielonko (1922–1982)"The captive mind / ...
, the future translator of ''The Captive Mind'', with whom he had a brief relationship.Roe, Nicholas (9 November 2001)
"A century's witness"
''The Guardian''.
He moved from
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
to Washington, D.C., and finally to Paris, organizing and promoting Polish cultural occasions such as musical concerts, art exhibitions, and literary and cinematic events. Although he was a representative of Poland, which had become a Soviet satellite country behind the
Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its ...
, he was not a member of any communist party. In ''The Captive Mind'', he explained his reasons for accepting the role:
My mother tongue, work in my mother tongue, is for me the most important thing in life. And my country, where what I wrote could be printed and could reach the public, lay within the Eastern Empire. My aim and purpose was to keep alive freedom of thought in my own special field; I sought in full knowledge and conscience to subordinate my conduct to the fulfillment of that aim. I served abroad because I was thus relieved from direct pressure and, in the material which I sent to my publishers, could be bolder than my colleagues at home. I did not want to become an émigré and so give up all chance of taking a hand in what was going on in my own country.
Miłosz did not publish a book while he was a representative of the Polish government. Instead, he wrote articles for various Polish periodicals introducing readers to American writers like Eliot,
William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most o ...
,
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
,
Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Maile ...
,
Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the '' Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...
, and
W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
. He also translated into Polish Shakespeare's ''
Othello ''Othello'' (full title: ''The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice'') is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, probably in 1603, set in the contemporary Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–1573) fought for the control of the Island of Cyp ...
'' and the work of
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
,
Carl Sandburg Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...
,
Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
, and others. In 1947, Miłosz's son, Anthony, was born in Washington, D.C. In 1948, Miłosz arranged for the Polish government to fund a Department of Polish Studies at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. Named for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by Manfred Kridl, Miłosz's friend who was then on the faculty of
Smith College Smith College is a private liberal arts women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith and opened in 1875. It is the largest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite women's coll ...
, and produced a scholarly book about Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the president of Columbia University, to express her approval, but the
Polish American Congress The Polish American Congress (PAC) is an American umbrella organization of Polish-Americans and Polish-American organizations. Its membership has fraternal, educational, veterans, religious, cultural, social, business, political organizations, and ...
, an influential group of Polish émigrés, denounced the arrangement in a letter to Eisenhower that they shared with the press, which alleged a communist infiltration at Columbia. Students picketed and called for boycotts. One faculty member resigned in protest. Despite the controversy, the department was established, the lectures took place, and the book was produced, but the department was discontinued in 1954 when funding from Poland ceased. In 1949, Miłosz visited Poland for the first time since joining its diplomatic corps and was appalled by the conditions he saw, including an atmosphere of pervasive fear of the government. After returning to the U.S., he began to look for a way to leave his post, even soliciting advice from
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...
, whom he met in the course of his duties. As the Polish government, influenced by
Josef Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
, became more oppressive, his superiors began to view Miłosz as a threat: he was outspoken in his reports to Warsaw and met with people not approved by his superiors. Consequently, his superiors called him "an individual who ideologically is totally alien". Toward the end of 1950, when Janina was pregnant with their second child, Miłosz was recalled to Warsaw, where in December 1950 his passport was confiscated, ostensibly until it could be determined that he did not plan to defect. After intervention by Poland's foreign minister, Zygmunt Modzelewski, Miłosz's passport was returned. Realizing that he was in danger if he remained in Poland, Miłosz left for Paris in January 1951.


Asylum in France

Upon arriving in Paris, Miłosz went into hiding, aided by the staff of the Polish émigré magazine ''
Kultura ''Kultura'' (, ''Culture'')—sometimes referred to as ''Kultura Paryska'' ("Paris-based Culture")—was a leading Polish-émigré literary-political magazine, published from 1947 to 2000 by ''Instytut Literacki'' (the Literary Institute), ini ...
.'' With his wife and son still in the United States, he applied to enter the U.S. and was denied. At the time, the U.S. was in the grip of
McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...
, and influential Polish émigrés had convinced American officials that Miłosz was a communist. Unable to leave France, Miłosz was not present for the birth of his second son, John Peter, in Washington, D.C., in 1951. With the United States closed to him, Miłosz requested—and was granted—political asylum in France. After three months in hiding, he announced his defection at a press conference and in a ''Kultura'' article, "No", that explained his refusal to live in Poland or continue working for the Polish regime. He was the first artist of note from a communist country to make public his reasons for breaking ties with his government. His case attracted attention in Poland, where his work was banned and he was attacked in the press, and in the West, where prominent individuals voiced criticism and support. For example, the future Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, then a supporter of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, attacked him in a communist newspaper as "The Man Who Ran Away". On the other hand,
Albert Camus Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
, another future Nobel laureate, visited Miłosz and offered his support. Another supporter during this period was the Swiss philosopher
Jeanne Hersch Jeanne Hersch (13 July 1910 – 5 June 2000) was a Swiss philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin, whose works dealt with the concept of freedom. She was the daughter of Liebman Hersch. Education and career Hersch was born in 1910 in Geneva, Sw ...
, with whom Miłosz had a brief romantic affair. Miłosz was finally reunited with his family in 1953, when Janina and the children joined him in France. That same year saw the publication of ''The Captive Mind'', a nonfiction work that uses case studies to dissect the methods and consequences of Soviet communism, which at the time had prominent admirers in the West. The book brought Miłosz his first readership in the United States, where it was credited by some on the political left (such as
Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...
) with helping to change perceptions about communism. The German philosopher
Karl Jaspers Karl Theodor Jaspers (, ; 23 February 1883 – 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspe ...
described it as a "significant historical document". It became a staple of political science courses and is considered a classic work in the study of
totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regu ...
. Miłosz's years in France were productive. In addition to ''The Captive Mind'', he published two poetry collections (''Daylight'' (1954) and '' A Treatise on Poetry'' (1957)), two novels (''The Seizure of Power'' (1955) and ''The Issa Valley'' (1955)), and a memoir (''Native Realm'' (1959)). All were published in Polish by an émigré press in Paris. Andrzej Franaszek has called ''A Treatise on Poetry'' Miłosz's magnum opus, while the scholar
Helen Vendler Helen Hennessy Vendler (born April 30, 1933) is an American literary critic and is Porter University Professor Emerita at Harvard University. Life and career Helen Hennessy Vendler was born on April 30, 1933, in Boston, Massachusetts, to George ...
compared it to ''The Waste Land'', a work "so powerful that it bursts the bounds in which it was written—the bounds of language, geography, epoch". A long poem divided into four sections, ''A Treatise on Poetry'' surveys Polish history, recounts Miłosz's experience of war, and explores the relationship between art and history. In 1956, Miłosz and Janina were married.


Life in the United States


University of California, Berkeley

In 1960, Miłosz was offered a position as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. With this offer, and with the climate of McCarthyism abated, he was able to move to the United States. He proved to be an adept and popular teacher, and was offered
tenure Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...
after only two months. The rarity of this, and the degree to which he had impressed his colleagues, are underscored by the fact that Miłosz lacked a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...
and teaching experience. Yet his deep learning was obvious, and after years of working administrative jobs that he found stifling, he told friends that he was in his element in a classroom. With stable employment as a tenured professor of Slavic languages and literatures, Miłosz was able to secure American citizenship and purchase a home in Berkeley. Miłosz began to publish scholarly articles in English and Polish on a variety of authors, including
Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
. But despite his successful transition to the U.S., he described his early years at Berkeley as frustrating, as he was isolated from friends and viewed as a political figure rather than a great poet. (In fact, some of his Berkeley faculty colleagues, unaware of his creative output, expressed astonishment when he won the Nobel Prize.) His poetry was not available in English, and he was not able to publish in Poland. As part of an effort to introduce American readers to his poetry, as well as to his fellow Polish poets' work, Miłosz conceived and edited the anthology ''Postwar Polish Poetry'', which was published in English in 1965. American poets like
W.S. Merwin William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose, and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was the ...
, and American scholars like Clare Cavanagh, have credited it with a profound impact. It was many English-language readers' first exposure to Miłosz's poetry, as well as that of Polish poets like
Wisława Szymborska Maria Wisława Anna SzymborskaVioletta Szosta gazeta.pl, 9 February 2012. ostęp 2012-02-11 (; 2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent ( ...
,
Zbigniew Herbert Zbigniew Herbert (; 29 October 1924 – 28 July 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s (a volume titled ...
, and
Tadeusz Różewicz Tadeusz Różewicz (9 October 1921 – 24 April 2014) was a Polish poet, playwright, writer, and translator. Różewicz was in the first generation of Polish writers born after Poland regained its independence in 1918, following the century of f ...
. (In the same year, Miłosz's poetry also appeared in the first issue of ''Modern Poetry in Translation,'' an English-language journal founded by prominent literary figures
Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...
and Daniel Weissbort. The issue also featured
Miroslav Holub Miroslav Holub (; 13 September 1923 – 14 July 1998) was a Czech poet and immunologist. Holub's work was heavily influenced by his experiences as an Immunologist, writing many poems using his scientific knowledge to poetic effect. His work ...
,
Yehuda Amichai Yehuda Amichai ( he, יהודה עמיחי; born Ludwig Pfeuffer 3 May 1924 – 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet and author, one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew in modern times. Amichai was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the ...
, Ivan Lalić,
Vasko Popa Vasile "Vasko" Popa ( sr-Cyrl, Васко Попа; 29 June 1922 – 5 January 1991) was a Serbian poet. Biography Popa was born in the village of Grebenac ( ro, Grebenaț), Vojvodina, Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia). After finishing hig ...
, Zbigniew Herbert, and
Andrei Voznesensky Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky (russian: link=no, Андре́й Андре́евич Вознесе́нский, 12 May 1933 – 1 June 2010) was a Soviet and Russian poet and writer who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as "one of the ...
.) In 1969, Miłosz's textbook ''The History of Polish Literature'' was published in English. He followed this with a volume of his own work, ''Selected Poems'' (1973), some of which he translated into English himself. At the same time, Miłosz continued to publish in Polish with an émigré press in Paris. His poetry collections from this period include ''King Popiel and Other Poems'' (1962), ''Bobo’s Metamorphosis'' (1965), ''City Without a Name'' (1969), and ''From the Rising of the Sun'' (1974). During Miłosz's time at Berkeley, the campus became a hotbed of student protest, notably as the home of the
Free Speech Movement The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Be ...
, which has been credited with helping to "define a generation of student activism" across the United States. Miłosz's relationship to student protesters was sometimes antagonistic: he called them "spoiled children of the bourgeoisie" and their political zeal naïve. At one campus event in 1970, he mocked protesters who claimed to be demonstrating for peace and love: "Talk to me about love when they come into your cell one morning, line you all up, and say 'You and you, step forward—it’s your time to die—unless any of your friends loves you so much he wants to take your place!'" Comments like these were in keeping with his stance toward American
counterculture of the 1960s The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...
in general. For example, in 1968, when Miłosz was listed as a signatory of an open letter of protest written by poet and counterculture figure
Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
and published in ''
The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...
'', Miłosz responded by calling the letter "dangerous nonsense" and insisting that he had not signed it. After 18 years, Miłosz retired from teaching in 1978. To mark the occasion, he was awarded a "Berkeley Citation", the University of California's equivalent of an honorary doctorate. But when his wife, Janina, fell ill and required expensive medical treatment, Miłosz returned to teaching seminars.


Nobel laureate

On 9 October 1980, the Swedish Academy announced that Miłosz had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The award catapulted him to global fame. On the day the prize was announced, Miłosz held a brief press conference and then left to teach a class on Dostoevsky. In his Nobel lecture, Miłosz described his view of the role of the poet, lamented the tragedies of the 20th century, and paid tribute to his cousin Oscar. Many Poles became aware of Miłosz for the first time when he won the Nobel Prize. After a 30-year ban in Poland, his writing was finally published there in limited selections. He was also able to visit Poland for the first time since fleeing in 1951 and was greeted by crowds with a hero's welcome. He met with leading Polish figures like
Lech Wałęsa Lech Wałęsa (; ; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democrati ...
and
Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
. At the same time, his early work, until then only available in Polish, began to be translated into English and many other languages. In 1981, Miłosz was appointed the Norton Professor of Poetry at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, where he was invited to deliver the
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figure ...
. He used the opportunity, as he had before becoming a Nobel laureate, to draw attention to writers who had been unjustly imprisoned or persecuted. The lectures were published as ''The Witness of Poetry'' (1983). Miłosz continued to publish work in Polish through his longtime publisher in Paris, including the poetry collections ''Hymn of the Pearl'' (1981), ''Bells in Winter'' (1984) and ''Unattainable Earth'' (1986), and the essay collection ''Beginning with My Streets'' (1986). In 1986, Miłosz's wife, Janina, died. In 1988, Miłosz's ''Collected Poems'' appeared in English; it was the first of several attempts to collect all his poetry into a single volume. After the
fall of communism in Poland Autumn, also known as fall in American English and Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southe ...
, he split his time between Berkeley and Kraków, and he began to publish his writing in Polish with a publisher based in Kraków. When Lithuania broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991, Miłosz visited for the first time since 1939. In 2000, he moved to Kraków. In 1992, Miłosz married Carol Thigpen, an academic at
Emory University Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
in Atlanta, Georgia. They remained married until her death in 2002. His work from the 1990s includes the poetry collections ''Facing the River'' (1994) and ''Roadside Dog'' (1997), and the collection of short prose ''Miłosz’s ABC’s'' (1997). Miłosz's last stand-alone volumes of poetry were ''This'' (2000), and ''The Second Space'' (2002). Uncollected poems written afterward appeared in English in ''New and Selected Poems'' (2004) and, posthumously, in ''Selected and Last Poems'' (2011).


Death

Czesław Miłosz died on 14 August 2004, at his Kraków home, aged 93. He was given a state funeral at the historic Mariacki Church in Kraków. Polish Prime Minister
Marek Belka Marek Marian Belka (; born 9 January 1952 in Lódź) is a Polish professor of economics and politician who has served as Prime Minister of Poland and Finance Minister of Poland in two governments. He is a former Director of the International M ...
attended, as did the former president of Poland, Lech Wałęsa. Thousands of people lined the streets to witness his coffin moved by military escort to his final resting place at Skałka Roman Catholic Church, where he was one of the last to be commemorated. In front of that church, the poets
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
,
Adam Zagajewski Adam Zagajewski (21 June 1945 – 21 March 2021) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the 2017 P ...
, and
Robert Hass Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection ''Time and Materials: Poems 1997 ...
read Miłosz's poem "In Szetejnie" in Polish, French, English, Russian, Lithuanian, and Hebrew—all the languages Miłosz knew. Media from around the world covered the funeral. Protesters threatened to disrupt the proceedings on the grounds that Miłosz was anti-Polish, anti-Catholic, and had signed a petition supporting gay and lesbian freedom of speech and assembly. Pope John Paul II, along with Miłosz's confessor, issued public messages confirming that Miłosz had received the sacraments, which quelled the protest.


Family

Miłosz's brother,
Andrzej Miłosz Andrzej Miłosz (19 September 1917, Vilnius – 21 September 2002, Warsaw) was a Polish journalist, translator of literature and film subtitles, and documentary-film maker. During World War II he was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance, soldie ...
(1917–2002), was a Polish journalist, translator, and documentary film producer. His work included Polish documentaries about his brother. Miłosz's son, Anthony, is a composer and software designer. He studied linguistics, anthropology, and chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, and neuroscience at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. In addition to releasing recordings of his own compositions, he has translated some of his father's poems into English.


Honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Miłosz received the following awards: * Polish PEN Translation Prize (1974) *
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...
for Creative Arts (1976) *
Neustadt International Prize for Literature The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, ''World Literature Today''. It is considered one of the more prestigious int ...
(1978) *
National Medal of Arts The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. A prestigious American honor, it is the highest honor given to artists and arts patrons ...
(United States, 1989) *
Robert Kirsch Award Since 1980, the '' Los Angeles Times'' has awarded a set of annual book prizes. The Prizes currently have nine categories: biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the ...
(1990) * Order of the White Eagle (Poland, 1994) Miłosz was named a distinguished visiting professor or fellow at many institutions, including the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
and
University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , pr ...
, where he was a Puterbaugh Fellow in 1999. He was an elected member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
, the
American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
, and the
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Serbica, sr-Cyr, Српска академија наука и уметности, САНУ, Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU) is a national academy and the ...
. He received honorary doctorates from Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley,
Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University ( Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...
,
Catholic University of Lublin John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin ( pl, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, la, Universitas Catholica Lublinensis Ioannis Pauli II, abbreviation KUL), established in 1918. It is the only private college in Poland with the s ...
, and
Vytautas Magnus University Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) ( lt, Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas (VDU)) is a public university in Kaunas, Lithuania. The university was founded in 1922 during the interwar period as an alternate national university. Initially it was known ...
in Lithuania. Vytautas Magnus University and Jagiellonian University have academic centers named for Miłosz. In 1992, Miłosz was made an honorary citizen of Lithuania, where his birthplace was made into a museum and conference center. In 1993, he was made an honorary citizen of Kraków. His books also received awards. His first, ''A Poem on Frozen Time'', won an award from the Union of Polish Writers in Wilno. ''The Seizure of Power'' received the Prix Littéraire Européen (European Literary Prize). The collection ''Roadside Dog'' received a
Nike Award The Nike Literary Award ( pl, Nagroda Literacka „Nike") is a literary prize awarded each year for the best book of a single living author writing in Polish and published the previous year. It is widely considered the most important award fo ...
in Poland. In 1989, Miłosz was named one of the "
Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sa ...
" at Israel's
Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
memorial to the
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, in recognition of his efforts to save Jews in Warsaw during World War II. Miłosz has also been honored posthumously. The Polish Parliament declared 2011, the centennial of his birth, the "Year of Miłosz". It was marked by conferences and tributes throughout Poland, as well as in New York City, at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
, and at the Dublin Writers Festival, among many other locations. The same year, he was featured on a Lithuanian postage stamp. Streets are named for him near Paris, Vilnius, and in the Polish cities of Kraków, Poznań, Gdańsk, Białystok, and Wrocław. In Gdańsk there is a Czesław Miłosz Square. In 2013, a primary school in Vilnius was named for Miłosz, joining schools in Mierzecice, Poland, and
Schaumburg, Illinois Schaumburg ( ) is a village mostly in Cook County and partly in DuPage County in northeastern Illinois, United States. Per the 2020 Census, the population was 78,723. Schaumburg is around northwest of the Chicago Loop and northwest of O'Har ...
, that bear his name.


Legacy


Cultural impact

In 1978, the Russian-American poet
Joseph Brodsky Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; russian: link=no, Иосиф Александрович Бродский ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), USSR in 1940, ...
called Miłosz "one of the great poets of our time; perhaps the greatest". Miłosz has been cited as an influence by numerous writers—contemporaries and succeeding generations. For example, scholars have written about Miłosz's influence on the writing of
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
, and Clare Cavanagh has identified the following poets as having benefited from Miłosz's influence:
Robert Pinsky Robert Pinsky (born October 20, 1940) is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most o ...
, Edward Hirsch, Rosanna Warren, Robert Hass,
Charles Simic Dušan Simić ( sr-cyr, Душан Симић, ; born May 9, 1938), known as Charles Simic, is a Serbian American poet and former co-poetry editor of the ''Paris Review''. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990 for ''The World Doesn' ...
,
Mary Karr Mary Karr (born January 16, 1955) is an American poet, essayist and memoirist from East Texas. She is widely noted for her 1995 bestselling memoir ''The Liars' Club''. Karr is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracus ...
,
Carolyn Forché Carolyn Forché (born April 28, 1950) is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate. She has received many awards for her literary work. Biography Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Michael Joseph and Louis ...
,
Mark Strand Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004 ...
,
Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...
, Joseph Brodsky, and
Derek Walcott Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem '' Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
. By being smuggled into Poland, Miłosz's writing was a source of inspiration to the anti-communist
Solidarity ''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti ...
movement there in the early 1980s. Lines from his poem "You Who Wronged" are inscribed on the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970 in Gdańsk, where Solidarity originated. Of the effect of Miłosz's edited volume ''Postwar Polish Poetry'' on English-language poets, Merwin wrote, "Miłosz’s book had been a talisman and had made most of the literary bickering among the various ideological encampments, then most audible in the poetic doctrines in English, seem frivolous and silly". Similarly, the British poet and scholar
Donald Davie Donald Alfred Davie, FBA (17 July 1922 – 18 September 1995) was an English Movement poet, and literary critic. His poems in general are philosophical and abstract, but often evoke various landscapes. Biography Davie was born in Barnsley, ...
argued that, for many English-language writers, Miłosz's work encouraged an expansion of poetry to include multiple viewpoints and an engagement with subjects of intellectual and historical importance: "I have suggested, going for support to the writings of Miłosz, that no concerned and ambitious poet of the present day, aware of the enormities of twentieth-century history, can for long remain content with the privileged irresponsibility allowed to, or imposed on, the lyric poet". Miłosz's writing continues to be the subject of academic study, conferences, and cultural events. His papers, including manuscripts, correspondence, and other materials, are housed at the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. Es ...
at
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
.


Controversies


Nationality

Miłosz's birth in a time and place of shifting borders and overlapping cultures, and his later naturalization as an American citizen, have led to competing claims about his nationality. Although his family identified as Polish and Polish was his primary language, and although he frequently spoke of Poland as his country, he also publicly identified himself as one of the last citizens of the multi-ethnic
Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was Partitions of Poland, partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire, Habsburg Empire of ...
. Writing in a Polish newspaper in 2000, he claimed, "I was born in the very center of Lithuania and so have a greater right than my great forebear, Mickiewicz, to write 'O Lithuania, my country.'" But in his Nobel lecture, he said, "My family in the 16th century already spoke Polish, just as many families in Finland spoke Swedish and in Ireland English, so I am a Polish, not a Lithuanian, poet". Public statements such as these, and numerous others, inspired discussion about his nationality, including a claim that he was "arguably the greatest spokesman and representative of a Lithuania that, in Miłosz’s mind, was bigger than its present incarnation". Others have viewed Miłosz as an American author, hosting exhibitions and writing about him from that perspective and including his work in anthologies of American poetry. But in ''The New York Review of Books'' in 1981, the critic John Bayley wrote, "nationality is not a thing iłoszcan take seriously; it would be hard to imagine a greater writer more emancipated from even its most subtle pretensions". Echoing this notion, the scholar and diplomat
Piotr Wilczek Piotr Antoni Wilczek (born 26 April 1962 in Chorzów) is a Polish intellectual historian, a specialist in comparative literature and a literary translator, who served as the Ambassador of Poland to the United States (2016–2021) and the United K ...
argued that, even when he was greeted as a national hero in Poland, Miłosz "made a distinct effort to remain a universal thinker". Speaking at a ceremony to celebrate his birth centenary in 2011, Lithuanian President
Dalia Grybauskaitė Dalia Grybauskaitė (; born 1 March 1956) is a Lithuanian politician who served as the eighth President of Lithuania from 2009 until 2019. She is the first woman to hold the position and in 2014 she became the first President of Lithuania to be ...
stressed that Miłosz's works "unite the Lithuanian and Polish people and reveal how close and how fruitful the ties between our people can be".


Catholicism

Though raised
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, Miłosz as a young man came to adopt a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", though he later returned to the Catholic faith. He translated parts of the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
into Polish, and allusions to Catholicism pervade his poetry, culminating in a long 2001 poem, "A Theological Treatise". For some critics, Miłosz's belief that literature should provide spiritual fortification was outdated: Franaszek suggests that Miłosz's belief was evidence of a "beautiful naïveté", while
David Orr David Duvall Orr (born October 4, 1944) is an American Democratic politician who served as the Cook County Clerk from 1990 to 2018. Orr previously served as alderman for the 49th ward in Chicago City Council from 1979 to 1990. He briefly served ...
, citing Miłosz's dismissal of "poetry which does not save nations or people", accused him of "pompous nonsense". Miłosz expressed some criticism of both Catholicism and Poland (a majority-Catholic country), causing furor in some quarters when it was announced that he would be interred in
Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...
's historic
Skałka Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr Basilica, also known as Skałka, which means "a small rock" in Polish, is a small outcrop in Kraków atop of which a Pauline monastery is located, a place where the Bish ...
church.
Cynthia Haven Cynthia L. Haven is an American literary scholar, author, critic, Slavicist, and journalist. Her books includ''Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard'' which the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' named one of the top books of 2018, and Czesław Mi ...
writes that, to some readers, Miłosz's embrace of Catholicism can seem surprising and complicates the understanding of him and his work.


Work


Form

Miłosz's body of work comprised multiple literary genres: poetry, fiction (particularly the novel), autobiography, scholarship, personal essay, and lectures. His letters are also of interest to scholars and lay readers; for example, his correspondence with writers such as Jerzy Andrzejewski,
Witold Gombrowicz Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his fi ...
, and
Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and g ...
have been published. At the outset of his career, Miłosz was known as a "catastrophist" poet—a label critics applied to him and other poets from the Żagary poetry group to describe their use of surreal imagery and formal inventiveness in reaction to a Europe beset by extremist ideologies and war. While Miłosz evolved away from the apocalyptic view of catastrophist poetry, he continued to pursue formal inventiveness throughout his career. As a result, his poetry demonstrates a wide-ranging mastery of form, from long or epic poems (e.g., ''A Treatise on Poetry'') to poems of just two lines (e.g., "On the Death of a Poet" from the collection ''This''), and from
prose poems Prose poetry is poetry written in prose form instead of Verse (poetry), verse form, while preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery, parataxis, and emotional effects. Characteristics Prose poetry is written as prose, without the line ...
and
free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French '' vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Defi ...
to classic forms such as the
ode An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...
or
elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
. Some of his poems use rhyme, but many do not. In numerous cases, Miłosz used form to illuminate meaning in his poetry; for example, by juxtaposing variable stanzas to accentuate ideas or voices that challenge each other.


Themes

Miłosz's work is known for its complexity; according to the scholars Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, Miłosz "prided himself on being an esoteric writer accessible to a mere handful of readers". Nevertheless, some common themes are readily apparent throughout his body of work. The poet, critic, and frequent Miłosz translator Robert Hass has described Miłosz as "a poet of great inclusiveness", with a fidelity to capturing life in all of its sensuousness and multiplicities. According to Hass, Miłosz's poems can be viewed as "dwelling in contradiction", where one idea or voice is presented only to be immediately challenged or changed. According to Donald Davie, this allowance for contradictory voices—a shift from the solo lyric voice to a chorus—is among the most important aspects of Miłosz's work. The poetic chorus is deployed not just to highlight the complexity of the modern world but also to search for morality, another of Miłosz's recurrent themes. Nathan and Quinn write, "Miłosz’s work is devoted to unmasking man’s fundamental duality; he wants to make his readers admit the contradictory nature of their own experience" because doing so "forces us to assert our preferences as preferences". That is, it forces readers to make conscious choices, which is the arena of morality. At times, Miłosz's exploration of morality was explicit and concrete, such as when, in ''The Captive Mind'', he ponders the right way to respond to three Lithuanian women who were forcibly moved to a Russian communal farm and wrote to him for help, or when, in the poems "Campo Dei Fiori" and "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto", he addresses survivor's guilt and the morality of writing about another's suffering. Miłosz's exploration of morality takes place in the context of history, and confrontation with history is another of his major themes. Vendler wrote, "for Miłosz, the person is irrevocably a person in history, and the interchange between external event and the individual life is the matrix of poetry". Having experienced both Nazism and Stalinism, Miłosz was particularly concerned with the notion of "historical necessity", which, in the 20th century, was used to justify human suffering on a previously unheard-of scale. Yet Miłosz did not reject the concept entirely. Nathan and Quinn summarize Miłosz's appraisal of historical necessity as it appears in his essay collection ''Views from San Francisco Bay'': "Some species rise, others fall, as do human families, nations, and whole civilizations. There may well be an internal logic to these transformations, a logic that when viewed from sufficient distance has its own elegance, harmony, and grace. Our reason tempts us to be enthralled by this superhuman splendor; but when so enthralled we find it difficult to remember, except perhaps as an element in an abstract calculus, the millions of individuals, the millions upon millions, who unwillingly paid for this splendor with pain and blood". Miłosz's willingness to accept a form of logic in history points to another recurrent aspect of his writing: his capacity for wonder, amazement, and, ultimately, faith—not always religious faith, but "faith in the objective reality of a world to be known by the human mind but not constituted by that mind". At other times, Miłosz was more explicitly religious in his work. According to scholar and translator Michael Parker, "crucial to any understanding of Miłosz’s work is his complex relationship to Catholicism". His writing is filled with allusions to Christian figures, symbols, and theological ideas, though Miłosz was closer to
Gnosticism Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...
, or what he called
Manichaeism Manichaeism (; in New Persian ; ) is a former major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani (A ...
, in his personal beliefs, viewing the universe as ruled by an evil whose influence human beings must try to escape. From this perspective, "he can at once admit that the world is ruled by necessity, by evil, and yet still find hope and sustenance in the beauty of the world. History reveals the pointlessness of human striving, the instability of human things; but time also is the moving image of eternity". According to Hass, this viewpoint left Miłosz "with the task of those heretical Christians…to suffer time, to contemplate being, and to live in the hope of the redemption of the world".


Influences

Miłosz had numerous literary and intellectual influences, although scholars of his work—and Miłosz himself, in his writings—have identified the following as significant: Oscar Miłosz (who inspired Miłosz's interest in the metaphysical) and, through him,
Emanuel Swedenborg Emanuel Swedenborg (, ; born Emanuel Swedberg; 29 March 1772) was a Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, ''Heaven and Hell'' (1758). Swedenborg had a ...
;
Lev Shestov Lev Isaakovich Shestov (russian: Лев Исаа́кович Шесто́в; 31 January .S. 13 February 1866 – 19 November 1938), born Yehuda Leib Shvartsman (russian: Иегуда Лейб Шварцман), was a Russian existentialist and r ...
; Simone Weil (whose work Miłosz translated into Polish); Dostoevsky;
William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of t ...
(whose concept of "Ulro" Miłosz borrowed for his book ''The Land of Ulro''), and Eliot.


Selected bibliography


Poetry collections

* 1933: ''Poemat o czasie zastygłym'' (''A Poem on Frozen Time''); Wilno: Kolo Polonistów Sluchaczy Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego * 1936: '' Trzy zimy'' (''Three Winters''); Warsaw: Władysława Mortkowicz * 1940: ''Wiersze'' (''Poems''); Warsaw (clandestine publication) * 1945: '' Ocalenie'' (''Rescue''); Warsaw: Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza Czytelnik * 1954: '' Światło dzienne'' (''Daylight''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1957: '' Traktat poetycki'' (''A Treatise on Poetry''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1962: '' Król Popiel i inne wiersze'' (''King Popiel and Other Poems''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1965: '' Gucio zaczarowany'' (''Gucio Enchanted''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1969: '' Miasto bez imienia'' (''City Without a Name''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1974: '' Gdzie słońce wschodzi i kedy zapada'' (''Where the Sun Rises and Where it Sets''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1982: '' Hymn o Perle'' (''Hymn of the Pearl''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1984: '' Nieobjęta ziemia'' (''Unattainable Earth''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1989: '' Kroniki'' (''Chronicles''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1991: '' Dalsze okolice'' (''Farther Surroundings''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 1994: '' Na brzegu rzeki'' (''Facing the River''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 1997: ''Piesek przydrożny'' (''Roadside Dog''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 2000: '' To'' (''This''), Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 2002: '' Druga przestrzen'' (''The Second Space''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 2003: '' Orfeusz i Eurydyka'' (''Orpheus and Eurydice''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie * 2006: '' Wiersze ostatnie'' (''Last Poems'') Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak


Prose collections

* 1953: ''Zniewolony umysł'' (''
The Captive Mind ''The Captive Mind'' (Polish: ''Zniewolony umysł'') is a 1953 work of nonfiction by Polish writer, poet, academic and Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz. It was first published in English in a translation by Jane Zielonko in 1953. Overview ''The ...
''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1959: ''Rodzinna Europa'' (''Native Realm''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1969: ''The History of Polish Literature''; London-New York: MacMillan * 1969: ''Widzenia nad Zatoką San Francisco'' (''A View of San Francisco Bay''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1974: ''Prywatne obowiązki'' (''Private Obligations''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1976: ''Emperor of the Earth''; Berkeley: University of California Press * 1977: ''Ziemia Ulro'' (''The Land of Ulro''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1979: ''Ogród Nauk'' (''The Garden of Science''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1981: ''Nobel Lecture''; New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux * 1983: ''The Witness of Poetry''; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press * 1985: ''Zaczynając od moich ulic'' (''Starting from My Streets''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1986: ''A mi Európánkról'' (''About our Europe''); New York: Hill and Wang * 1989: ''Rok myśliwego'' (''A year of the hunter''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1992: ''Szukanie ojczyzny'' (''In Search of a Homeland''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 1995: ''Metafizyczna pauza'' (''The Metaphysical Pause''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 1996: ''Legendy nowoczesności'' (''Modern Legends, War Essays''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie * 1997: ''Zycie na wyspach'' (''Life on Islands''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 1997: ''Abecadło Milosza'' (''Milosz's ABC's''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie * 1998: ''Inne Abecadło'' (''A Further Alphabet''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie * 1999: ''Wyprawa w dwudziestolecie'' (''An Excursion through the Twenties and Thirties''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie * 2001: ''To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays''; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux * 2004: ''Spiżarnia literacka'' (''A Literary Larder''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie * 2004: ''Przygody młodego umysłu''; Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak * 2004: ''O podróżach w czasie''; (''On time travel'') Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak


Novels

* 1955: ''Zdobycie władzy'' (''The Seizure of Power''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1955: ''Dolina Issy'' (''The Issa Valley''); Paris: Instytut Literacki * 1987: ''The Mountains of Parnassus''; Yale University Press


Translations by Miłosz

* 1968: ''Selected Poems'' by Zbigniew Herbert translated by Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott, Penguin Books * 1996: ''Talking to My Body'' by
Anna Swir Anna may refer to: People Surname and given name * Anna (name) Mononym * Anna the Prophetess, in the Gospel of Luke * Anna (wife of Artabasdos) (fl. 715–773) * Anna (daughter of Boris I) (9th–10th century) * Anna (Anisia) (fl. 1218 to 1221) ...
translated by Czesław Miłosz and Leonard Nathan,
Copper Canyon Press Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, founded in 1972 specializing exclusively in the publication of poetry. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon Press publishes new collections of poetry by both ...


See also

*
List of Poles This is a partial list of notable Polish or Polish-speaking or -writing people. People of partial Polish heritage have their respective ancestries credited. Science Physics * Czesław Białobrzeski * Andrzej Buras * Georges Charpa ...
*
Nike Award The Nike Literary Award ( pl, Nagroda Literacka „Nike") is a literary prize awarded each year for the best book of a single living author writing in Polish and published the previous year. It is widely considered the most important award fo ...
*
Nobel Prize in literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...
*
Polish literature Polish literature is the literary tradition of Poland. Most Polish literature has been written in the Polish language, though other languages used in Poland over the centuries have also contributed to Polish literary traditions, including Lati ...
*
List of Polish Nobel laureates This is a list of Nobel laureates who are Poles (ethnic) or Polish (citizenship). The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed on "those who conferred the greatest benefit on humankind", first instituted in 1901. Since 1903, t ...
*
Information Research Department The Information Research Department (IRD) was a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda, provide support and information to anti-communist pol ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* Baranczak, Stanislaw, ''Breathing Under Water and Other East European Essays'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. *Cavanagh, Clare, ''Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. *Davie, Donald, ''Czesław Miłosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric,'' Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. * Faggen, Robert, editor, ''Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz,'' New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996. *Fiut, Aleksander, ''The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. *Franaszek, Andrzej, ''Miłosz: A Biography,'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. *Golubiewski, Mikołaj, ''The Persona of Czesław Miłosz: Authorial Poetics, Critical Debates, Reception Games'', Bern: Peter Lang, 2018. *Grudzinska Gross, Irena, ''Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. * Haven, Cynthia L., editor, ''Czesław Miłosz: Conversations,'' Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. * Haven, Cynthia L., editor, ''An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz'', Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011. *Kay, Magdalena, "Czesław Miłosz in the World: The Will to Transcendence", in ''A Companion to World Literature'', John Wiley & Sons, 2020. *Kraszewski, Charles, ''Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism, and Paganism in the Poetry of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. *Możejko, Edward, editor, ''Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1988. * Nathan, Leonard, and Arthur Quinn, ''The Poet's Work: An Introduction to'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. *Rzepa, Joanna, ''Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. *Tischner, Łukasz, ''Miłosz and the Problem of Evil'', Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015. *Zagajewski, Adam, editor, ''Polish Writers on Writing,'' San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2007.


External links


Profiles


Profile of the poet at Culture.pl
* *
Profile at the American Academy of Poets
Retrieved 2010-08-04
Profile and works
at the Poetry Foundation


Articles

*
Interview with Nathan Gardels for the ''New York Review of Books'', February 1986
Retrieved 2010-08-04

Retrieved 2010-08-04
Obituary ''The Economist''
Retrieved 2010-08-04

Retrieved 2010-08-04
Biography and selected works listing. The Book Institute
Retrieved 2010-08-04 * Czeslaw Milosz Papers. General Collection
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University.


Biographies, memoirs, photographs


Czesław Miłosz
- biography and poems at poezja.org

* ttp://www.sejm-wielki.pl/b/sw.10762 Genealogia Czesława Miłosza w: M.J. Minakowski, ''Genealogy descendants of the Great Diet''* Barbara Gruszka-Zych, ''Mój Poeta – osobiste wspomnienia o Czesławie Miłoszu'', VIDEOGRAF II,
''Milosz – the centenary since the birth''


Bibliography


Presentation of the subject-object

Bibliography in question 1981–2010 (journal articles in chronological order, the title)

Bibliography subject-object


Archives

* Czesław Miłosz Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Milosz, Czeslaw 1911 births 2004 deaths People from Kėdainiai District Municipality People from Kovensky Uyezd 20th-century Polish nobility American Nobel laureates American Roman Catholic poets American translators Vilnius University alumni Polish dissidents Polish Roman Catholics Polish political writers Polish poets Polish emigrants to the United States Polish Nobel laureates Polish Righteous Among the Nations Polish–English translators Exophonic writers Polish defectors People with acquired American citizenship Catholic Righteous Among the Nations Diplomats of the Polish People's Republic Nike Award winners Nobel laureates in Literature Roman Catholic writers Translators from Polish United States National Medal of Arts recipients University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts 20th-century translators 20th-century American poets World War II poets Polish prisoners of war World War II prisoners of war held by Germany Cultural attachés Writers from Vilnius People associated with the magazine "Kultura"