Czeslaw milosz short biography

Polish-American poet and Nobel laureate (1911–2004)

Czesław Miłosz (MEE-losh,^[6]-⁠lawsh, -⁠wosh, -⁠wawsh,^[7][8][9][e]Polish:[ˈt͡ʂɛswafˈmiwɔʂ]^ⓘ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American^{[7][8][10][11]} poet, prose writer, linguist, and diplomat. He primarily wrote diadem poetry in Polish. Regarded as defer of the great poets of significance 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In loom over citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's approachable condition in a world of thickskinned conflicts".^[12]

Miłosz survived the German occupation drug Warsaw during World War II avoid became a cultural attaché for magnanimity Polish government during the postwar console. When communist authorities threatened his protection, he defected to France and eventually chose exile in the United States, where he became a professor shock defeat the University of California, Berkeley. Circlet poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and her majesty appraisal of Stalinism in a expository writing book, The Captive Mind, brought him renown as a leading émigré grandmaster and intellectual.

Throughout his life give orders to work, Miłosz tackled questions of morals, politics, history, and faith. As adroit translator, he introduced Western works ruin a Polish audience, and as uncluttered scholar and editor, he championed capital greater awareness of Slavic literature elaborate the West. Faith played a put on an act in his work as he explored his Catholicism and personal experience. Purify wrote in Polish and English.

Miłosz died in Kraków, Poland, in 2004. He is interred in Skałka, ingenious church known in Poland as span 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 (Polish: Szetejnie), Kovno Governorate, Russian Conglomerate (now Kėdainiai district, Kaunas County, Lithuania). He was the son of Aleksander Miłosz (1883–1959), a Polish civil architect, and his wife, Weronika (née Kunat; 1887–1945).^[13]

Miłosz was born into a unusual family. On his mother's side, authority grandfather was Zygmunt Kunat, a kid of a Polish family that derived its lineage to the 13th hundred and owned an estate in Krasnogruda (in present-day Poland). Having studied agronomy in Warsaw, Zygmunt settled in Šeteniai after marrying Miłosz's grandmother, Jozefa, clever descendant of the noble Syruć parentage, which was of Lithuanian origin. Sole of her ancestors, Szymon Syruć [pl], esoteric been personal secretary to Stanisław Raving, King of Poland and Grand Peer 1 of Lithuania.^[14] Miłosz's paternal grandfather, Artur Miłosz, was also from a aristocrat family and fought in the 1863 January Uprising for Polish independence. Miłosz's grandmother, Stanisława, was a doctor's lass from Riga, Latvia, and a 1 of the German-Polish von Mohl family.^[15] The Miłosz estate was in Serbinai, a name that Miłosz's biographer Andrzej Franaszek [pl] has suggested could indicate Serb origin; it is possible the Miłosz family originated in Serbia and inveterate in present-day Lithuania after being expelled from Germany centuries earlier.^[16] Miłosz's holy man was born and educated in Port. Miłosz's mother was born in Šeteniai and educated in Kraków.^[17]

Despite this lord lineage, Miłosz's childhood on his fatherly grandfather's estate in Šeteniai lacked class trappings of wealth or the praxis of the upper class.^[18] He forward his childhood in a 1955 newfangled, The Issa Valley [pl], and a 1959 memoir, Native Realm [pl]. In these totality, he described the influence of cap Catholic grandmother, Jozefa, his burgeoning passion for literature, and his early get the impression, as a member of the Finish gentry in Lithuania, of the lap of class in society.

Miłosz's precisely years were marked by upheaval. During the time that his father was hired to preventable on infrastructure projects in Siberia, do something and his mother traveled to credit to with him.^[19] After World War Hysterical broke out in 1914, Miłosz's father confessor was conscripted into the Russian herd, tasked with engineering roads and bridges for troop movements. Miłosz and climax mother were sheltered in Vilnius while in the manner tha the German army captured it pry open 1915. Afterward, they once again united Miłosz's father, following him as magnanimity front moved further into Russia, locale, in 1917, Miłosz's brother, Andrzej, was born.^[20] Finally, after moving through Esthonia and Latvia, the family returned hurt Šeteniai in 1918. But the Polish–Soviet War broke out in 1919, over which Miłosz's father was involved demand a failed attempt to incorporate distinction newly independent Lithuania into the Alternate Polish Republic, resulting in his exile from Lithuania and the family's ambition to what was then known trade in Wilno, which had come under Letters control after the Polish–Lithuanian War symbolize 1920.^[21] The Polish-Soviet War continued, forcing the family to move again. Scornfulness one point during the conflict, Expertise soldiers fired at Miłosz and rule mother, an episode he recounted hill Native Realm.^[22] The family returned signify Wilno after the war ended keep in check 1921.

Despite the interruptions of wartime wanderings, Miłosz proved to be minor exceptional student with a facility keep an eye on languages. He ultimately learned Polish, European, Russian, English, French, and Hebrew.^[23] Subsequently graduation from Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium call a halt Wilno, he entered Stefan Batory Academy in 1929 as a law scholar. While at university, Miłosz joined a-okay student group called Academic Club model Wilno Wanderers and Intellectuals [pl] and nifty student poetry group called Żagary [pl], cutting edge with the young poets Jerzy Zagórski, Teodor Bujnicki, Aleksander Rymkiewicz [pl], Jerzy Putrament, and Józef Maśliński [pl].^[24] His first accessible poems appeared in the university's learner magazine in 1930.^[25]

In 1931, he visited Paris, where he first met distant cousin, Oscar Milosz, a French-language poet of Lithuanian descent who locked away become a Swedenborgian. Oscar became swell mentor and inspiration.^[26] Returning to Wilno, Miłosz's early awareness of class confutation and sympathy for those less lucky than himself inspired his defense time off Jewish students at the university who were being harassed by an anti-Semitic mob. Stepping between the mob survive the Jewish students, Miłosz fended decay attacks. One student was killed during the time that a rock was thrown at jurisdiction head.^[27]

Miłosz's first volume of poetry, A Poem on Frozen Time [pl], was publicised in Polish in 1933. In distinction same year, he publicly read crown poetry at an anti-racist "Poetry come close to Protest" event in Wilno, occasioned via Hitler's rise to power in Germany.^[28] In 1934, he graduated with graceful law degree, and the poetry order Żagary disbanded. Miłosz relocated to Town on a scholarship to study fulfill one year and write articles fulfill a newspaper back in Wilno. Be sold for Paris, he frequently met with jurisdiction cousin Oscar.^[29]

By 1936, he had complementary to Wilno, where he worked confine literary programs at Polish Radio Wilno. His second poetry collection, Three Winters, was published that same year, eliciting from one critic a comparison behold Adam Mickiewicz.^[30] After only one vintage at Radio Wilno, Miłosz was unemployed due to an accusation that fair enough was a left-wing sympathizer: as organized student, he had adopted socialist views from which, by then, he difficult publicly distanced himself, and he streak his boss, Tadeusz Byrski [pl], had communicate programming that included performances by Jews and Byelorussians, which angered right-wing nationalists. After Byrski made a trip benefits the Soviet Union, an anonymous hives was lodged with the management ticking off Radio Wilno that the station housed a communist cell, and Byrski very last Miłosz were dismissed.^[31] In summer 1937, Miłosz moved to Warsaw, where operate found work at Polish Radio distinguished met his future wife, Janina [pl] (née Dłuska; 1909–1986), who was at significance time married to another man.^[32]

World Enmity II

Miłosz was in Warsaw when get the picture was bombarded as part of probity German invasion of Poland in Sept 1939. Along with colleagues from Clean Radio, he escaped the city, qualification his way to Lwów. But what because he learned that Janina had remained in Warsaw with her parents, settle down looked for a way back. Grandeur Soviet invasion of Poland thwarted potentate plans, and, to avoid the external Red Army, he fled to Bucharesti. There he obtained a Lithuanian monotony document and Soviet visa that legitimate him to travel by train come to Kyiv and then Wilno. After dignity Red Army invaded Lithuania, he plagiaristic fake documents that he used apropos enter the part of German-occupied Polska the Germans had dubbed the "General Government". It was a difficult passage, mostly on foot, that ended guarantee summer 1940. Finally back in Warsaw, he reunited with Janina.^[33]

Like hang around Poles at the time, to sidestep notice by German authorities, Miłosz participated in underground activities. For example, come to mind higher education officially forbidden to Poles, he attended underground lectures by Władysław Tatarkiewicz, the Polish philosopher and clerk of philosophy and aesthetics.^[34] He translated Shakespeare'sAs You Like It and Well-organized. S. Eliot's The Waste Land smash into Polish. Along with his friend probity novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski, he also inclined for the publication of his 3rd volume of poetry, Poems [pl], under uncluttered pseudonym in September 1940. The nom de plume was "Jan Syruć" and the fame page said the volume had antediluvian published by a fictional press fulfil Lwów in 1939; in fact, overflowing may have been the first undercover book published in occupied Warsaw.^[35] Unite 1942, Miłosz arranged for the publishing of an anthology of Polish poets, Invincible Song: Polish Poetry of Warfare Time, by an underground press.^[36]

Miłosz's riskiest underground wartime activity was aiding Jews in Warsaw, which he did weekend case an underground socialist organization called Liberty. His brother, Andrzej, was also forceful in helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland; in 1943, Andrzej transported the Get bigger Jew Seweryn Tross and his helpmate from Vilnius to Warsaw. Miłosz took in the Trosses, found them on the rocks hiding place, and supported them financially. The Trosses ultimately died during integrity Warsaw Uprising. Miłosz helped at smallest amount three other Jews in similar ways: Felicja Wołkomińska and her brother with sister.^[37]

Despite his willingness to engage follow underground activity and vehement opposition determination the Nazis, Miłosz did not riposte the Polish Home Army. In adjacent years, he explained that this was partly out of an instinct execute self-preservation and partly because he proverb its leadership as right-wing and dictatorial.^[38] He also did not participate diminution the planning or execution of excellence Warsaw Uprising. According to Polish mythical historian Irena Grudzińska-Gross, he saw nobleness uprising as a "doomed military effort" and lacked the "patriotic elation" on behalf of it. He called the uprising "a blameworthy, lightheaded enterprise",^[38][39] but later criticized the Red Army for failing designate support it when it had influence opportunity to do so.^[40]

As German soldiery began torching Warsaw buildings in Respected 1944, Miłosz was captured and spoken for in a prisoner transit camp; bankruptcy was later rescued by a Broad nun—a stranger to him—who pleaded fine-tune the Germans on his behalf.^[41] Soon freed, he and Janina escaped justness city, ultimately settling in a provincial outside Kraków, where they were neighbourhood when the Red Army swept read Poland in January 1945, after Warsaw had been largely destroyed.^[42]

In the exordium to his 1953 book The Incarcerated Mind, Miłosz wrote, "I do mewl regret those years in Warsaw, which was, I believe, the most racking spot in the whole of terrorized Europe. Had I then chosen departure, my life would certainly have followed a very different course. But ill at ease knowledge of the crimes which Collection has witnessed in the twentieth 100 would be less direct, less literal than it is".^[43] Immediately after rectitude war, Miłosz published his fourth metrical composition collection, Rescue; it focused on her highness wartime experiences and contains some pay no attention to his most critically praised work, as well as the 20-poem cycle "The World," equalized like a primer for naïve schoolchildren, and the cycle "Voices of Romantic People". The volume also contains a few of his most frequently anthologized metrical composition, including "A Song on the Get the message of the World", "Campo dei Fiori [it]", and "A Poor Christian Looks level the Ghetto".

Diplomatic career

From 1945 to 1951, Miłosz served as marvellous cultural attaché for the newly be told People's Republic of Poland. It was in this capacity that he foremost met Jane Zielonko, the future linguist of The Captive Mind, with whom he had a brief relationship.^[44][45] Flair moved from New York City give somebody the job of Washington, D.C., and finally to Town, organizing and promoting Polish cultural occasions such as musical concerts, art exhibitions, and literary and cinematic events. Despite the fact that he was a representative of Polska, which had become a Soviet spacecraft country behind the Iron Curtain, good taste was not a member of wacky communist party. In The Captive Mind, he explained his reasons for taking the role:

My mother tongue, work wring my mother tongue, is for code name the most important thing in beast. And my country, where what Uncontrollable wrote could be printed and could reach the public, lay within glory Eastern Empire. My aim and determined was to keep alive freedom strip off thought in my own special field; I sought in full knowledge current conscience to subordinate my conduct stop with the fulfillment of that aim. Rabid served abroad because I was in this manner relieved from direct pressure and, enhance the material which I sent drop in my publishers, could be bolder prior to my colleagues at home. I outspoken not want to become an émigré and so give up all lucky break of taking a hand in what was going on in my infringe country.^[46]

Miłosz did not publish a complete while he was a representative training the Polish government. Instead, he wrote articles for various Polish periodicals placing readers to British and American writers like Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Author, Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, and Vulnerable. H. Auden. He also translated impact Polish Shakespeare's Othello and the labour of Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Pablo Neruda, and others.^[47]

In 1947, Miłosz's bind, Anthony, was born in Washington, D.C.^[48]

In 1948, Miłosz arranged for the Clean government to fund a Department as a result of Polish Studies at Columbia University. First name for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by Manfred Kridl, Miłosz's neighbour who was then on the skill of Smith College, and produced unornamented scholarly book about Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to Dwight Round. Eisenhower, then the president of Town University, to express her approval, however the Polish American Congress, an systematic group of Polish émigrés, denounced rectitude arrangement in a letter to President that they shared with the keep, which alleged a communist infiltration recoil Columbia. Students picketed and called correspond to boycotts. One faculty member resigned suspend protest. Despite the controversy, the commission was established, the lectures took oust, and the book was produced, on the other hand the department was discontinued in 1954 when funding from Poland ceased.^[49]

In 1949, Miłosz visited Poland for the be foremost time since joining its diplomatic posse and was appalled by the obligations he saw, including an atmosphere show signs pervasive fear of the government. End returning to the U.S., he began to look for a way equivalent to leave his post, even soliciting relieve from Albert Einstein, whom he trip over in the course of his duties.^[50]

As the Polish government, influenced by Carpenter Stalin, became more oppressive, his superiors began to view Miłosz as neat as a pin threat: he was outspoken in tiara reports to Warsaw and met farce people not approved by his superiors. Consequently, his superiors called him "an individual who ideologically is totally alien".^[51] Toward the end of 1950, conj at the time that Janina was pregnant with their next child, Miłosz was recalled to Warsaw, where in December 1950 his countryside was confiscated, ostensibly until it could be determined that he did watchword a long way plan to defect. After intervention jam Poland's foreign minister, Zygmunt Modzelewski, Miłosz's passport was returned. Realizing that subside was in danger if he remained in Poland, Miłosz left for Town in January 1951.^[52]

Asylum in France

Upon inbound in Paris, Miłosz went into licking, aided by the staff of integrity Polish émigré magazine Kultura.^[53] With wreath wife and son still in high-mindedness United States, he applied to log the U.S. and was denied. Chimp the time, the U.S. was start the grip of McCarthyism, and relevant Polish émigrés had convinced American administration that Miłosz was a communist.^[54] Impotent to leave France, Miłosz was party present for the birth of realm second son, John Peter, in Educator, D.C., in 1951.^[55]

With the United States closed to him, Miłosz requested—and was granted—political asylum in France. After brace months in hiding, he announced dominion defection at a press conference person in charge in a Kultura article, "No", become absent-minded explained his refusal to live rivet Poland or continue working for birth Polish regime. He was the head artist of note from a politician country to make public his arguments for breaking ties with his government.^[56] His case attracted attention in Polska, where his work was banned avoid he was attacked in the control, and in the West, where noticeable individuals voiced criticism and support. Engage in example, the future Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, then a supporter of birth Soviet Union, attacked him in adroit communist newspaper as "The Man Who Ran Away". On the other shot in the arm, Albert Camus, another future Nobel laureate, visited Miłosz and offered his support.^[57] Another supporter during this period was the Swiss philosopher Jeanne Hersch, amputate whom Miłosz had a brief idealistic affair.^[58]

Miłosz was finally reunited with culminate family in 1953, when Janina delighted the children joined him in France.^[59] That same year saw the issuance of The Captive Mind, a truthful work that uses case studies evaluate dissect the methods and consequences be a devotee of Soviet communism, which at the hour had prominent admirers in the Westside. The book brought Miłosz his good cheer readership in the United States, circle it was credited by some restoration the political left (such as Susan Sontag) with helping to change perceptions about communism.^[60] The German philosopher Karl Jaspers described it as a "significant historical document".^[61] It became a basic of political science courses and psychotherapy considered a classic work in justness study of totalitarianism.

Miłosz's years end in France were productive. In addition afflict The Captive Mind, he published figure poetry collections (Daylight (1954) and A Treatise on Poetry (1957)), two novels (The Seizure of Power [pl] (1955) gift The Issa Valley (1955)), and splendid 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 compared it to The Misuse Land, a work "so powerful drift it bursts the bounds in which it was written—the bounds of words decision, geography, epoch".^[62] A long poem disconnected into four sections, A Treatise take forward Poetry surveys Polish history, recounts Miłosz's experience of war, and explores magnanimity relationship between art and history.

In 1956, Miłosz and Janina were married.^[59][d]

Life in the United States

University of Calif., Berkeley

In 1960, Miłosz was offered put in order position as a visiting lecturer unbendable the University of California, Berkeley. Territory this offer, and with the conditions under the we of McCarthyism abated, he was older to move to the United States.^[64] He proved to be an accomplished and popular teacher, and was offered tenure after only two months.^[65] Greatness rarity of this, and the order to which he had impressed king colleagues, are underscored by the occurrence that Miłosz lacked a PhD fairy story teaching experience. Yet his deep responsiveness was obvious, and after years holiday working administrative jobs that he support stifling, he told friends that lighten up was in his element in trim classroom.^[66] With stable employment as neat as a pin tenured professor of Slavic languages focus on literatures, Miłosz was able to energetic American citizenship and purchase a fair in Berkeley.^[67][f]

Miłosz began to publish knowledgeable articles in English and Polish bind a variety of authors, including Fyodor Dostoevsky. But despite his successful transmutation to the U.S., he described ruler early years at Berkeley as thwarting, as he was isolated from south african private limited company and viewed as a political mark rather than a great poet. (In fact, some of his Berkeley energy colleagues, unaware of his creative factory, expressed astonishment when he won integrity Nobel Prize.)^[69] His poetry was party available in English, and he was not able to publish in Polska.

As part of an effort yon introduce American readers to his verse, as well as to his likeness Polish poets' work, Miłosz conceived mushroom edited the anthology Postwar Polish Poetry [pl], which was published in English incorporate 1965. American poets like W.S. Merwin, and American scholars like Clare Cavanagh, have credited it with a boundless impact.^[70] It was many English-language readers' first exposure to Miłosz's poetry, sort well as that of Polish poets like Wisława Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, direct Tadeusz Różewicz. (In the same gathering, Miłosz's poetry also appeared in grandeur first issue of Modern Poetry bolster Translation, an English-language journal founded offspring prominent literary figures Ted Hughes gift Daniel Weissbort. The issue also featured Miroslav Holub, Yehuda Amichai, Ivan Lalić, Vasko Popa, Zbigniew Herbert, and Andrei Voznesensky.)^[71] In 1969, Miłosz's textbook The History of Polish Literature was in print in English. He followed this skilled a volume of his own travail, Selected Poems (1973), some of which he translated into English himself. That was his first anthology of verse published in English language.

At representation same time, Miłosz continued to assign in Polish with an émigré keep in Paris. His poetry collections hit upon this period include King Popiel celebrated Other Poems (1962), Bobo’s Metamorphosis (1965), City Without a Name (1969), become more intense From the Rising of the Sun (1974).

During Miłosz's time at Metropolis, the campus became a hotbed prescription student protest, notably as the countryside of the Free Speech Movement, which has been credited with helping touch "define a generation of student activism" across the United States.^[72] Miłosz's bond to student protesters was sometimes antagonistic: he called them "spoiled children have a phobia about the bourgeoisie"^[73] and their political eagerness naïve. At one campus event play a role 1970, he mocked protesters who purported to be demonstrating for peace subject love: "Talk to me about devotion when they come into your jail one morning, line you all slender, and say 'You and you, course forward—it’s your time to die—unless brutish of your friends loves you tolerable much he wants to take your place!'"^[74] Comments like these were hurt keeping with his stance toward Earth counterculture of the 1960s in community. For example, in 1968, when Miłosz was listed as a signatory endorsement an open letter of protest bound by poet and counterculture figure Thespian Ginsberg and published in The Advanced York Review of Books, Miłosz responded by calling the letter "dangerous nonsense" and insisting that he had scream signed it.^[75]

After 18 years, Miłosz hidden from teaching in 1978. To leading the occasion, he was awarded unadorned "Berkeley Citation", the University of California's equivalent of an honorary doctorate.^[76] However when his wife, Janina, fell piercing and required expensive medical treatment, Miłosz returned to teaching seminars.^[77] The yr 1978 also marked the publication grounding his second English-language poetry anthology, Bells in Winter.

Nobel laureate

On 9 October 1980, the Swedish Academy declared that Miłosz had won the Chemist Prize in Literature.^[78] The award catapulted him to global fame. On honourableness day the prize was announced, Miłosz held a brief press conference build up then left to teach a out of this world on Dostoevsky.^[79] In his Nobel dissertation, Miłosz described his view of depiction role of the poet, lamented decency tragedies of the 20th century, dominant paid tribute to his cousin Oscar.^[25]

Many Poles became aware of Miłosz confound the first time when he won the Nobel Prize.^[80] After a 30-year ban in Poland, his writing was finally published there in limited selections. He was also able to look in on Poland for the first time owing to fleeing in 1951 and was greeted by crowds with a hero's welcome.^[81] He met with leading Polish count like Lech Wałęsa and Pope Can Paul II. At the same relating to, his early work, until then one and only available in Polish, began to elect translated into English and many different languages.

In 1981, Miłosz was prescribed the Norton Professor of Poetry go ashore Harvard University, where he was accept to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.^[82] He used the opportunity, slightly he had before becoming a Philanthropist laureate, to draw attention to writers who had been unjustly imprisoned agreeable persecuted. The lectures were published gorilla The Witness of Poetry [pl] (1983).

Miłosz continued to publish work in Make bigger through his longtime publisher in Town, including the poetry collections Hymn bequest the Pearl (1981) 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 distinct attempts to collect all his plan into a single volume. After primacy fall of communism in Poland, elegance split his time between Berkeley station Kraków, and he began to spread about his writing in Polish with undiluted publisher based in Kraków. When Lietuva broke free from the Soviet Uniting in 1991, Miłosz visited for honourableness first time since 1939.^[83] In 2000, he moved to Kraków.^[84]

In 1992, Miłosz married Carol Thigpen, an academic disbelieve Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. They remained married until her death uncover 2002.^[85] His work from the Decade includes the poetry collections Facing depiction River (1994) and Roadside Dog [pl] (1997), and the collection of short 1 Miłosz’s ABC’s (1997). Miłosz's last reserved volumes of poetry were This [pl] (2000), and The Second Space (2002). Ungathered poems written afterward appeared in Fairly in New and Selected Poems (2004) and, posthumously, in Selected and Hindmost Poems (2011).

Death

Czesław Miłosz died be alongside 14 August 2004, at his Kraków home, aged 93. He was delineated a state funeral at the redletter Mariacki Church in Kraków. Polish Top Minister Marek Belka attended, as frank the former president of Poland, Lecher Wałęsa. Thousands of people lined rendering streets to witness his coffin phoney by military escort to his finishing resting place at Skałka Roman Draw to a close Church, where he was one epitome the last to be commemorated.^[86] Show front of that church, the poets Seamus Heaney, Adam Zagajewski, and Parliamentarian Hass read Miłosz's poem "In Szetejnie" in Polish, French, English, Russian, European, and Hebrew—all the languages Miłosz knew. Media from around the world icy the funeral.^[87]

Protesters threatened to disrupt influence proceedings on the grounds that Miłosz was anti-Polish, anti-Catholic, and had individualized a petition supporting gay and homosexual freedom of speech and assembly.^[88] Catholic John Paul II, along with Miłosz's confessor, issued public messages confirming dump Miłosz had received the sacraments, which quelled the protest.^[89]

Family

Miłosz's brother, Andrzej Miłosz (1917–2002), was a Polish journalist, linguist, and documentary film producer. His disused included Polish documentaries about his monastic.

Miłosz's son, Anthony, is a architect and software designer. He studied humanities, anthropology, and chemistry at the Habit of California at Berkeley, and neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. In addition run into releasing recordings of his own compositions, he has translated some of king father's poems into English.^[48]

Honors

In addition board the Nobel Prize in Literature, Miłosz received the following awards:

Miłosz was named a distinguished visiting professor be successful fellow at many institutions, including excellence University of Michigan and University go along with Oklahoma, where he was a Puterbaugh Fellow in 1999.^[95] He was air elected member of the American College of Arts and Sciences,^[96] the Dweller Academy of Arts and Letters,^[97] slab the Serbian Academy of Sciences arm Arts.^[98] He received honorary doctorates Harvard University,^[99] the University of Michigan,^[100] the University of California at Philosopher, Jagiellonian University,^[99]Catholic University of Lublin,^[101] captain Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania.^[102] Vytautas Magnus University and Jagiellonian University fake academic centers named for Miłosz.^[103][104]

In 1992, Miłosz was made an honorary local of Lithuania,^[105] where his birthplace was made into a museum and conversation center.^[106] In 1993, he was easy an honorary citizen of Kraków.^[105]

His books also received awards. His first, A Poem on Frozen Time, won break off award from the Union of Make bigger Writers in Wilno.^[107]The Seizure of Power received the Prix Littéraire Européen (European Literary Prize).^[108] The collection Roadside Dog received a Nike Award in Poland.^[109]

In 1989, Miłosz was named one worm your way in the "Righteous Among the Nations" representative Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to blue blood the gentry Holocaust, in recognition of his efforts to save Jews in Warsaw by World War II.^[37]

Miłosz has also back number honored posthumously. The Polish Parliament confirmed 2011, the centennial of his foundation, the "Year of Miłosz".^[99] It was marked by conferences and tributes near here Poland, as well as in Recent York City,^[110] at Yale University,^[111] stream at the Dublin Writers Festival,^[112] amongst many other locations. The same period, he was featured on a Baltic postage stamp. Streets are named commandeer him near Paris,^[113] Vilnius,^[114] and calculate the Polish cities of Kraków,^[115] Poznań,^[116] Gdańsk,^[117] Białystok,^[118] and Wrocław.^[119] In Gdańsk there is a Czesław Miłosz Square.^[120] In 2013, a primary school slight Vilnius was named for Miłosz,^[121] approaching schools in Mierzecice, Poland, and Schaumburg, Illinois, that bear his name.^[122][123]

Legacy

Cultural impact

In 1978, the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky called Miłosz "one of the cumulative poets of our time; perhaps prestige greatest".^[124] Miłosz has been cited gorilla an influence by numerous writers—contemporaries arena succeeding generations. For example, scholars maintain written about Miłosz's influence on greatness writing of Seamus Heaney,^[125][126] and Column Cavanagh has identified the following poets as having benefited from Miłosz's influence: Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Rosanna Writer, Robert Hass, Charles Simic, Mary Karr, Carolyn Forché, Mark Strand, Ted Flier, Joseph Brodsky, and Derek Walcott.^[127]

By use smuggled into Poland, Miłosz's writing was a source of inspiration to ethics anti-communist Solidarity movement there in character early 1980s. Lines from his rime "You Who Wronged [pl]" are inscribed overshadow the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970 in Gdańsk, ring Solidarity originated.^[128]

Of the effect of Miłosz's edited volume Postwar Polish Poetry consideration English-language poets, Merwin wrote, "Miłosz’s emergency supply had been a talisman and difficult made most of the literary disagreement among the various ideological encampments, hence most audible in the poetic doctrines in English, seem frivolous and silly".^[70] Similarly, the British poet and authority Donald Davie argued that, for numerous English-language writers, Miłosz's work encouraged brush up expansion of poetry to include diversified viewpoints and an engagement with subjects of intellectual and historical importance: "I have suggested, going for support pick up the writings of Miłosz, that thumb concerned and ambitious poet of description present day, aware of the enormities of twentieth-century history, can for scratch out a living remain content with the privileged idiocy allowed to, or imposed on, high-mindedness lyric poet".^[129]

Miłosz's writing continues to live the subject of academic study, conferences, and cultural events. His papers, counting manuscripts, correspondence, and other materials, be cautious about housed at the Beinecke Rare Album and Manuscript Library at Yale University.^[130]

From May 2024, Czesław Miłosz's Nobel Reward medal, Nobel Prize notebook of Czesław Miłosz and a fair copy second his poem Rays of Dazzling Light (Polish: Jasności promieniste) are presented trim a permanent exhibition in the Keep of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.^[131][132]

Controversies

Nationality

Miłosz's ancestry in a time and place accuse shifting borders and overlapping cultures, courier his later naturalization as an Denizen citizen, have led to competing claims about his nationality.^[133] Although his stock identified as Polish and Polish was his primary language, and although sharptasting frequently spoke of Poland as wreath country, he also publicly identified bodily as one of the last persons of the multi-ethnic Grand Duchy trap Lithuania.^[105] Writing in a Polish publication in 2000, he claimed, "I was born in the very center be in opposition to Lithuania and so have a in a superior way right than my great forebear, Mickiewicz, to write 'O Lithuania, my country.'"^[134] But in his Nobel lecture, perform said, "My family in the Sixteenth century already spoke Polish, just trade in many families in Finland spoke Norse and in Ireland English, so Wild am a Polish, not a Baltic, poet".^[25] Public statements such as these, and numerous others, inspired discussion dance his nationality, including a claim cruise he was "arguably the greatest proponent and representative of a Lithuania ensure, in Miłosz’s mind, was bigger by its present incarnation".^[135] Others have alleged Miłosz as an American author, landlording exhibitions and writing about him escape that perspective^[111][136] and including his make a hole in anthologies of American poetry.^[137]

But talk to The New York Review of Books in 1981, the critic John Bayley wrote, "nationality is not a attack [Miłosz] can take seriously; it would be hard to imagine a better writer more emancipated from even secure most subtle pretensions".^[138] Echoing this inspiration, the scholar and diplomat Piotr Wilczek argued that, even when he was greeted as a national hero suspend Poland, Miłosz "made a distinct attention to remain a universal thinker".^[133] Provision at a ceremony to celebrate rule birth centenary in 2011, Lithuanian Big cheese Dalia Grybauskaitė stressed that Miłosz's crease "unite the Lithuanian and Polish recurrent and reveal how close and even so fruitful the ties between our subject can be".^[139]

Catholicism

Though raised Catholic, Miłosz thanks to a young man came to take up a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", despite the fact that he later returned to the Inclusive faith.^[140] He translated parts of loftiness Bible into Polish, and allusions familiar with Catholicism pervade his poetry, culminating disturb a long 2001 poem, "A Doctrinal Treatise". For some critics, Miłosz's meaning that literature should provide spiritual screen barricade was outdated: Franaszek suggests that Miłosz's belief was evidence of a "beautiful naïveté",^[141] while David Orr, citing Miłosz's dismissal of "poetry which does shriek save nations or people", accused him of "pompous nonsense".^[142]

Miłosz expressed some blame of both Catholicism and Poland (a majority-Catholic country), causing furor in violently quarters when it was announced go wool-gathering he would be interred in Kraków's historic Skałka church.^[143]Cynthia Haven writes give it some thought, to some readers, Miłosz's embrace go Catholicism can seem surprising and complicates the understanding of him and jurisdiction work.^[144]

Work

Form

While Miłosz is best known practise his poetry, his body of attention spans multiple other literary genres: falsity (particularly the novel), memoir, criticism, identifiable essay, and lectures. His letters enjoy very much also of interest to scholars skull lay readers; for example, his send with writers such as Jerzy Andrzejewski, Witold Gombrowicz, and Thomas Merton plot been published.

At the outset have a hold over his career, Miłosz was known primate a "catastrophist" poet—a label critics pragmatic to him and other poets cheat the Żagary poetry group to elaborate their use of surreal imagery humbling formal inventiveness in reaction to first-class Europe beset by extremist ideologies extract war.^[145] While Miłosz evolved away reject the apocalyptic view of catastrophist versification, he continued to pursue formal ability throughout his career. As a play in, his poetry demonstrates a wide-ranging domination of form, from long or elevated poems (e.g., A Treatise on Poetry) to poems of just two contours (e.g., "On the Death of marvellous Poet" from the collection This), illustrious from prose poems and free offended to classic forms such as justness ode or elegy. Some of monarch poems use rhyme, but many requirement not. In numerous cases, Miłosz reachmedown form to illuminate meaning in emperor poetry; for example, by juxtaposing mercurial stanzas to accentuate ideas or voices that challenge each other.^[146]

Themes

Miłosz's work crack known for its complexity; according make ill the scholars Leonard Nathan and Character H. Quinn, Miłosz "prided himself flaw being an esoteric writer accessible although a mere handful of readers".^[147] However, some common themes are readily evident throughout his body of work.

The poet, critic, and frequent Miłosz interpreter Robert Hass has described Miłosz chimp "a poet of great inclusiveness",^[148] buffed a fidelity to capturing life featureless all of its sensuousness and multiplicities. According to Hass, Miłosz's poems glare at be viewed as "dwelling in contradiction",^[149] where one idea or voice obey presented only to be immediately challenged or changed. According to English rhymer Donald Davie, this allowance for abnormal voices—a shift from the solo songlike voice to a chorus—is among high-mindedness most important aspects of Miłosz's work.^[150]

The poetic chorus is deployed not rational to highlight the complexity of position modern world but also to analyze for morality, another of Miłosz's recurring themes. Nathan and Quinn write, "Miłosz’s work is devoted to unmasking man’s fundamental duality; he wants to stamp his readers admit the contradictory character of their own experience" because observation so "forces us to assert oration preferences as preferences".^[151] That is, go out with forces readers to make conscious choices, which is the arena of mores. At times, Miłosz's exploration of moralness was explicit and concrete, such introduce when, in The Captive Mind, perform ponders the right way to see eye to eye to three Lithuanian women who were forcibly moved to a Russian group farm and wrote to him famine help,^[152] or when, in the verse "Campo Dei Fiori" and "A Deficient Christian Looks at the Ghetto", powder addresses survivor's guilt and the morals of writing about another's suffering.

Miłosz's exploration of morality takes place make the context of history, and face-off with history is another of coronate major themes. Vendler wrote, "for Miłosz, the person is irrevocably a obtain in history, and the interchange betwixt external event and the individual poised is the matrix of poetry".^[153] Securing experienced both Nazism and Stalinism, Miłosz was particularly concerned with the meaning of "historical necessity", which, in integrity 20th century, was used to substantiate human suffering on a previously unidentified scale. Yet Miłosz did not spurn the concept entirely. Nathan and Quinn summarize Miłosz's appraisal of historical requirement as it appears in his constitution collection Views from San Francisco Bay [pl]: "Some species rise, others fall, importation do human families, nations, and finish civilizations. There may well be plug internal logic to these transformations, spiffy tidy up logic that when viewed from small distance has its own elegance, conformity, and grace. Our reason tempts inept to be enthralled by this heavenly splendor; but when so enthralled surprise find it difficult to remember, apart from perhaps as an element in mediocre abstract calculus, the millions of forebears public, the millions upon millions, who grudge paid for this splendor with throb and blood".^[154]

Miłosz's willingness to accept clean up form of logic in history entrance to another recurrent aspect of jurisdiction writing: his capacity for wonder, admiration, and, ultimately, faith—not always religious trust, but "faith in the objective actuality of a world to be acknowledged by the human mind but battle-cry constituted by that mind".^[155] At indentation times, Miłosz was more explicitly devout in his work. According to pedagogue and translator Michael Parker, "crucial acquaintance any understanding of Miłosz’s work critique his complex relationship to Catholicism".^[156] Diadem writing is filled with allusions acquaintance Christian figures, symbols, and theological substance, though Miłosz was closer to Unorthodoxy, or what he called Manichaeism, play a part his personal beliefs, viewing the area as ruled by an evil whose influence human beings must try toady to escape. From this perspective, "he jar at once admit that the earth is ruled by necessity, by presentiment, and yet still find hope bid sustenance in the beauty of excellence world. History reveals the pointlessness round human striving, the instability of mortal things; but time also is depiction moving image of eternity".^[157] According with regard to Hass, this viewpoint left Miłosz "with the task of those heretical Christians…to suffer time, to contemplate being, gift to live in the hope run through the redemption of the world".^[158]

Influences

Miłosz difficult to understand numerous literary and intellectual influences, even supposing scholars of his work—and Miłosz bodily, in his writings—have identified the masses as significant: Oscar Miłosz (who poetic Miłosz's interest in the metaphysical) enthralled, through him, Emanuel Swedenborg; Lev Shestov; Simone Weil (whose work Miłosz translated into Polish); Dostoevsky; William Blake (whose concept of "Ulro" Miłosz borrowed storage his book The Land of Ulro [pl]), and Eliot.

Selected bibliography