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{{Short description|Polish-American poet and Nobel laureate (1911–2004)}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see ] -->
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2020}}
| name = Czesław Miłosz ]
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see ] -->
| image = Czeslaw Milosz 1998 by Kubik.jpg
| caption = Czesław Miłosz, ], December 1998. | name = Czesław Miłosz
| image = Czeslaw Milosz 3 ap.tif
| birth_date = {{birth date|1911|6|30|mf=y}},
| caption = Miłosz in 1999
| birth_place = Šeteniai, near ].
| death_date = {{death date and age|2004|8|14|1911|6|30}}, | birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1911|6|30}}
| birth_place = ], ], ]
| death_place = ].
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|2004|8|14|1911|6|30}}
| occupation = ], ].
| death_place = ], Poland
| website =
| occupation = {{hlist|Poet|prose writer|professor|translator|diplomat}}
| footnotes =
| nationality = ], ]
| citizenship = {{ublist|] (1918–??)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=44|quote=Weronika would retain two passports throughout her life, while Czesław, as a child, had only Lithuanian citizenship.}}</ref>|] (??–1951){{Efn|It is unclear when Miłosz obtained Polish citizenship. He claimed to have received a Lithuanian identity document in 1940, in which he wrote his nationality as Polish, but there is no official record to confirm what type of identity document he used during World War II.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=183, 195–6}}</ref>|name=|group=lower-alpha}}|] (1951–1970)|] (from 1970){{Efn|Franaszek claims Miłosz became an American citizen in 1962.<ref name="Franaszek, Andrzej 358">{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=358}}</ref> Haven claims he became an American citizen in 1970.<ref name="Haven, Cynthia 2006 xxvii, 147">{{Cite book|title=Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations|last=Haven, Cynthia|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|year=2006|isbn=1578068290|location=Jackson|pages=xxvii, 147}}</ref>|name=|group=lower-alpha}}|] (from 1995){{Efn|Miłosz maintained dual citizenship (Poland and USA) beginning in 1995.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Miłosz w Krakowie|last=Kosińska, Agnieszka|publisher=Wydawnictwo Otwarte|year=2015|isbn=9788324038572|location=Krakow}}</ref>|name=|group=lower-alpha}}}}
| spouse = {{plainlist|
* {{marriage|Janina Dłuska|1956|1986|end=died}}{{efn|name=marriage}}
* {{marriage|Carol Thigpen|1992|2002|end=died}}
}} }}
| children = Anthony (born 1947)<br />John Peter (born 1951)
'''Czesław Miłosz''' {{Audio|Milosz.ogg|2={{IPA|}}}}; (], ] &ndash; ], ]) was a ] poet, prose ] and ]. From 1961 to 1978 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the ]. In 1980 he won the ].
| notable_works = '']'' (1945)<br />'']'' (1953)<br />'']'' (1957)
| awards = ] (1978)<br />] (1980)<br />] (1989)<br />] (1994)<br />] (1998)
| signature = Czesław Miłosz signature 1985.svg
}}
{{Righteous Among the Nations}}


'''Czesław Miłosz''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|m|iː|l|ɒ|ʃ}} {{respell|MEE|losh}},<ref name="Collins">{{cite web|url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/milosz|title=Miłosz|work=]|publisher=]|access-date=20 August 2019}}</ref> {{IPAc-en|USalso|-|l|ɔː|ʃ|,_|-|w|ɒ|ʃ|,_|-|w|ɔː|ʃ}} {{respell|-|lawsh|,_|-|wosh|,_|-|wawsh}},<ref name=":7">{{Cite American Heritage Dictionary|Milosz|access-date=20 August 2019}}</ref><ref name=":8">{{Cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.lexico.com/en/definition/Milosz,+Czeslaw |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210617223744/https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/milosz,_czeslaw |url-status=dead |archive-date=2021-06-17 |title=Milosz, Czeslaw |dictionary=] US English Dictionary |publisher=]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite Merriam-Webster|Milosz|access-date=20 August 2019}}</ref>{{efn|''Czesław'' may be pronounced {{IPAc-en|ˈ|tʃ|ɛ|s|w|ɑː|f}} or {{IPAc-en|ˈ|tʃ|ɛ|s|l|ɑː|f}} in American English, {{IPAc-en|ˈ|tʃ|ɛ|s|l|ɔː}} or {{IPAc-en|ˈ|tʃ|ɛ|s|w|æ|f}} in British English.<ref name="Collins"/>}} {{IPA|pl|ˈt͡ʂɛswaf ˈmiwɔʂ|lang|pl-Czesław Miłosz.ogg}}; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a ]<ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Czeslaw-Milosz|title=Czeslaw Milosz {{!}} Biography, Books, Nobel Prize, & Facts|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2019-10-05}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Napierkowski|first=Thomas J.|date=2005|title=Does Anyone Know My Name? A History of Polish American Literature|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20148726|journal=Polish American Studies|volume=62|issue=2|pages=23–46|doi=10.2307/20148726 |jstor=20148726|s2cid=254440419 |issn=0032-2806|quote=Aside from a few internationally acclaimed authors such as Czeslaw Milosz, W.S. Kuniczak, and Jerzy Kosinski...Polish Americans seem to have produced little literature of their own.}}</ref> poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in ]. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the ]. In its citation, the ] called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1980/milosz/facts/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1980|website=NobelPrize.org|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref>
==Life==
Czesław Miłosz was born June 30, 1911, at ] (]: ''Szetejnie'') in ], which was then part of the ] as a result of the ]. He was born into a '']'' family of the ].{{Facts|date=January 2008}} He emphasized his family connections with the ancient ], which for four centuries had been a major part of the ]. Miłosz once said of himself: "I am a Lithuanian to whom it was not given to be a Lithuanian."<ref>{{lt icon}} {{cite web | title=Išėjus Česlovui Milošui, Lietuva neteko dalelės savęs | work=Mokslo Lietuva (Scientific Lithuania) | lang=lt | url=http://www.lms.lt/ML/200415/20041501.htm | accessmonthday = October 16 | accessyear=2007}}</ref>


Miłosz survived the ] during ] and became a cultural attaché for the Polish government during the postwar period. When ] authorities threatened his safety, he defected to France and ultimately chose exile in the United States, where he became a professor at the ]. His poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and his appraisal of ] in a prose book, '']'', brought him renown as a leading '']'' artist and intellectual.
He had a brother, ] (1917 – 2002), a Polish journalist, translator of ] and of ] ] into Polish, and a documentary-film producer who created some documentaries about his famous brother.


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 ] in the West. Faith played a role in his work as he explored his ] and personal experience. He wrote in Polish and English.
Czesław Miłosz passed most of his childhood in Lithuania. He graduated from ] '']'' in ], and studied ] at ], then a Polish-language institution, ] having been incorporated into ] after the ]. Miłosz wrote all his poetry, fiction and essays in Polish and translated the ] '']'' into Polish.
] World Congress, ], May 1999]]
He spent ] in ], ], where, among other things, he attended ] by Polish ] and historian of philosophy and ], ]. He did not participate in the ] due to residing outside Warsaw proper.


Miłosz died in ], Poland, in 2004. He is interred in ], a church known in Poland as a place of honor for distinguished Poles.
After ] he served as ] of the ] ] in ]. In 1951 Miłosz broke with his government and obtained ] in ]. In 1953 he received the '']'' (European Literary Prize).


==Life in Europe==
In 1960 Miłosz moved to the ], and in 1970 he became a U.S. citizen. In 1961 he began a professorship in ] in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the ]. In 1978 Miłosz received the ]. He retired that same year, but continued teaching at Berkeley.
===Origins and early life===
Czesław Miłosz was born on 30 June 1911, in the village of ] ({{langx|pl|Szetejnie}}), ], ] (now ], ], ]). He was the son of Aleksander Miłosz (1883–1959), a Polish civil engineer, and his wife, Weronika (née Kunat; 1887–1945).<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=2017|isbn=9780674977419|location=Cambridge|oclc=982122195|quote=Birth and death of Miłosz's parents are noted on pp. 36, 38, 242, 243.}}</ref>


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 ] (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, {{ill|Szymon Syruć|pl|Szymon Syruć}}, had been personal secretary to ], King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=35|oclc=982122195}}</ref> Miłosz's paternal grandfather, Artur Miłosz, was also from a noble family and fought in the 1863 ] for Polish independence. Miłosz's grandmother, Stanisława, was a doctor's daughter from ], ], and a member of the German-Polish von Mohl family.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=40}}</ref> The Miłosz estate was in ], a name that Miłosz's biographer {{ill|Andrzej Franaszek|pl|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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=38}}</ref> Miłosz's father was born and educated in Riga. Miłosz's mother was born in Šeteniai and educated in Kraków.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=36}}</ref>
In 1980 he received the ]. Since his works had been banned in Poland by the communist government, this was the first time that many Poles became aware of him.


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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=34}}</ref> He memorialized his childhood in a 1955 novel, ''{{ill|The Issa Valley|lt=The Issa Valley|pl|Dolina Issy (powieść)}}'', and a 1959 memoir, ''{{ill|Native Realm|lt=Native Realm|pl|Rodzinna Europa}}.'' 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.
When the ] fell, Miłosz was able to return to Poland, at first to visit and later to live there part-time.
], ], 1930]]
Miłosz's early years were marked by upheaval. When his father was hired to work on infrastructure projects in ], he and his mother traveled to be with him.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=15}}</ref> After ] 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 ] 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, ], was born.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=17–20}}</ref> Finally, after moving through Estonia and Latvia, the family returned to Šeteniai in 1918. But the ] broke out in 1919, during which Miłosz's father was involved in a ] to incorporate the newly independent Lithuania into the ], resulting in his expulsion from Lithuania and the family's move to what was then known as ], which had come ] after the ] of 1920.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=45}}</ref> 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.''<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=46}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news|title= Czeslaw Milosz, Poet and Nobelist Who Wrote of Modern Cruelties, Dies at 93| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/books/czeslaw-milosz-poet-and-nobelist-who-wrote-of-modern-cruelties-dies-at-93.html| access-date=17 March 2017|work=The New York Times|first=Raymond H.|last=Anderson|date=15 August 2004}}</ref> After graduation from ] in Wilno, he entered ] in 1929 as a law student. While at university, Miłosz joined a student group called {{ill|Academic Club of Wilno Wanderers and Intellectuals|lt=Academic Club of Wilno Wanderers and Intellectuals|pl|Akademicki Klub Włóczęgów Wileńskich)}} and a student poetry group called {{ill|Żagary|pl|Żagary}}, along with the young poets ], ], {{ill|Aleksander Rymkiewicz|pl|Aleksander Rymkiewicz}}, ], and {{ill|Józef Maśliński|pl|Józef Maśliński}}.<ref name="hope">''Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of Czeslaw Milosz'' by Edward Możejko. University of Alberta Press, 1988. pp 2f.</ref> His first published poems appeared in the university's student magazine in 1930.<ref name=":1" />
In 1989 Miłosz received the ] and an honorary doctorate from ].


In 1931, he visited Paris, where he first met his distant cousin, ], a French-language poet of Lithuanian descent who had become a ]. Oscar became a mentor and inspiration.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Poet's Work : An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz|last=Nathan, Leonard and|first=Quinn, Arthur.|date=1991|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674689695|location=Cambridge, Mass.|pages=93–95|oclc=23015782}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=88–89}}</ref>
Through the ], Miłosz's name was often invoked in the ], particularly by conservative commentators such as ], usually in the context of Miłosz's 1953 book '']''. During this period, his name was largely passed over in silence in government-] media and publications in ].


Miłosz's first volume of poetry, ''{{ill|A Poem on Frozen Time|pl|Poemat o czasie zastygłym}}'', 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 ] rise to power in Germany.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=88}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=129|oclc=982122195}}</ref>
'']'' has been described as one of the finest studies of the behavior of ]s under a repressive regime. Miłosz observed that those who became ]s were not necessarily those with the strongest minds, but rather those with the weakest stomachs. The mind can rationalize anything, he said, but the stomach can take only so much. Miłosz also claimed that, as a poet, he avoided touching his nation's wounds for fear of making them holy.
] shipyard workers, featuring a poem by Miłosz]]
Miłosz is honored at ]'s ] memorial to the ], as one of the "]." A poem by him appears on a memorial to shipyard workers who were killed at ] in 1970.


By 1936, he had returned to Wilno, where he worked on literary programs at ]. His second poetry collection, '']'', was published that same year, eliciting from one critic a comparison to ].<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=151}}</ref> 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, {{ill|Tadeusz Byrski|pl|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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=162–163}}</ref> In summer 1937, Miłosz moved to Warsaw, where he found work at ] and met his future wife, {{ill|Janina Miłosz|lt=Janina|pl|Janina Miłosz}} (née Dłuska; 1909–1986), who was at the time married to another man.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=171|oclc=982122195}}</ref>
His books and poems have been translated into English by many hands, including ] ('']''), Miłosz himself, his Berkeley students (in ] ]s conducted by him), and his friends and Berkeley colleagues, ], ] and ].


===World War II===
Miłosz spoke ] with a Polish accent.
Miłosz was in Warsaw when ] as part of the ] in September 1939. Along with colleagues from Polish Radio, he escaped the city, making his way to ]. But when he learned that Janina had remained in Warsaw with her parents, he looked for a way back. The ] thwarted his plans, and, to avoid the incoming ], he fled to ]. 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 "]". It was a difficult journey, mostly on foot, that ended in summer 1940. Finally back in Warsaw, he reunited with Janina.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=180–190}}</ref>


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 ] by ], the Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy and aesthetics.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Memoirs|last=Tatarkiewicz|first=Wladyslaw|publisher=Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy|year=1979|isbn=978-83-06-00102-0|location=Warsaw|pages=171}}</ref> He translated ] '']'' and ]'s '']'' into Polish. Along with his friend the novelist ], he also arranged for the publication of his third volume of poetry, ''{{ill|Poems (Miłosz)|lt=Poems|pl|Wiersze (Czesław Miłosz)}}'', 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 ] published in occupied Warsaw.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=202}}</ref> In 1942, Miłosz arranged for the publication of an anthology of Polish poets, ''Invincible Song: Polish Poetry of War Time'', by an underground press.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=203}}</ref>] World Congress, ], May 1999]]
Miłosz took pleasure in occasionally deflating academic pomposity, as when he recounted the stir he had caused at a literary conference by referring to "turpism" (same root as the English "turpitude"), which some at the conference had taken to be a new ].


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 ]; in 1943, Andrzej 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 ]. Miłosz helped at least three other Jews in similar ways: Felicja Wołkomińska and her brother and sister.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|url=http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4044933|title=Yad Vashem Institute Database of Righteous Among the Nations: Milosz Family|website=yadvashem.org|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref>
Though somewhat reserved in manner, in the 1960s he would playfully greet a coed with "How's your sex life?"


Despite his willingness to engage in underground activity and vehement opposition to the Nazis, Miłosz did not join the Polish ]. 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.<ref name="dublin">{{cite web|url=http://www.drb.ie/essays/apples-at-world-s-end|title=Apples at World's End|author=Enda O'Doherty|publisher=]|access-date=5 June 2014|archive-date=7 June 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140607000131/http://www.drb.ie/essays/apples-at-world-s-end|url-status=dead}}</ref> He also did not participate in the planning or execution of the Warsaw Uprising. According to Polish literary historian ], he saw the uprising as a "doomed military effort" and lacked the "patriotic elation" for it. He called the uprising "a blameworthy, lightheaded enterprise",<ref name="dublin" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://aseees.org/newsnet/2012-08.pdf|title=The Year of Czesław Miłosz|date=August 2012|publisher=]|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130918140736/http://aseees.org/newsnet/2012-08.pdf|archive-date=18 September 2013}}</ref> but later criticized the ] for failing to support it when it had the opportunity to do so.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Captive Mind|last=Milosz|first=Czeslaw|publisher=Vintage International|year=1990|location=New York|pages=169}}</ref>
Miłosz died in 2004 at his Kraków home, aged 93. His first wife, Janina, had died in 1986; and his second wife, Carol, a U.S. born historian, in 2002. Miłosz is entombed at ]'s historic ].
] buildings, 1944]]
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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69162/the-doubter-and-the-saint|title=The Doubter and the Saint|last=Haven|first=Cynthia|date=2008-11-20|website=Poetry Foundation|language=en|access-date=2019-10-29}}</ref> 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 ].<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=223}}</ref>


In the preface to his 1953 book '']'', 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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Captive Mind|last=Milosz|first=Czeslaw|publisher=Vintage International|year=1990|location=New York|pages=vi–viii}}</ref> Immediately after the war, Miłosz published his fourth poetry collection, '']''; 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", "{{ill|Campo dei Fiori (poem)|lt=Campo dei Fiori|it|Campo dei Fiori (poema)}}", and "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto".
==Works==
].]]
* ''Kompozycja'' (])
* ''Podróż'' (])
* ''Poemat o czasie zastygłym'' (])
* ''Trzy zimy'' / ''Three Winters'' (])
* ''Obrachunki''
* ''Wiersze'' / ''Verses'' (])
* ''Pieśń niepodległa'' (])
* ''Ocalenie'' / ''Rescue'' (])
* ''Traktat moralny'' / ''A Moral Treatise'' (])
* ''Zniewolony umysł'' / '']'' (])
* ''Zdobycie władzy'' / ''The Seizure of Power'' (])
* ''Światło dzienne'' / ''The Light of Day'' (])
* ''Dolina Issy'' / ''The Issa Valley'' (])
* ''Traktat poetycki'' / ''A Poetical Treatise'' (])
* ''Rodzinna Europa'' / ''Native Realm'' (])
* ''Kontynenty'' (])
* ''Człowiek wśród skorpionów'' (])
* ''Król Popiel i inne wiersze'' / ''King Popiel and Other Poems'' (])
* ''Gucio zaczarowany'' / ''Gucio Enchanted'' (])
* ''Widzenia nad Zatoką San Francisco'' / ''Visions of San Francisco Bay'' (])
* ''Miasto bez imienia'' / ''City Without a Name'' (])
* ''The History of Polish Literature'' (])
* ''Prywatne obowiązki'' / ''Private Obligations'' (])
* ''Gdzie słońce wschodzi i kiedy zapada'' / ''Where the Sun Rises and Where It Sets'' (])
* ''Ziemia Ulro'' / ''The Land of Ulro'' (])
* ''Ogród nauk'' / ''The Garden of Learning'' (])
* ''Hymn o perle'' / ''The Poem of the Pearl'' (])
* ''The Witness of Poetry'' (])
* ''Nieobjęta ziemio'' / ''The Unencompassed Earth'' (])
* ''Kroniki'' / ''Chronicles'' (])
* ''Dalsze okolice'' / ''Farther Surroundings'' (])
* ''Zaczynając od moich ulic'' / ''Starting from My Streets'' (])
* ''Metafizyczna pauza'' / ''The Metaphysical Pause'' (])
* ''Poszukiwanie ojczyzny'' (])
* ''Rok myśliwego'' (])
* ''Na brzegu rzeki'' / ''Facing the River'' (])
* ''Szukanie ojczyzny'' / ''In Search of a Homeland'' (])
* ''Legendy nowoczesności'' / ''Modern Legends'' (])
* ''Życie na wyspach'' / ''Life on Islands'' (])
* ''Piesek przydrożny'' / ''Roadside Dog'' (])
* ''Abecadlo Miłosza'' / ''Milosz's Alphabet'' (])
* ''Inne Abecadło'' / ''A Further Alphabet'' (])
* ''Wyprawa w dwudziestolecie'' / ''An Excursion through the Twenties and Thirties'' (])
* ''To'' / ''It'' (])
* ''Orfeusz i Eurydyka'' (])
* ''O podróżach w czasie'' / ''On Time Travel'' (])
* ''Wiersze ostatnie'' / ''The Last Poems'' (])


===Diplomatic career===
==Notes==
From 1945 to 1951, Miłosz served as a ] for the newly formed ]. It was in this capacity that he first met ], the future translator of ''The Captive Mind'', with whom he had a brief relationship.<ref name=Roe9Nov2001>Roe, Nicholas (9 November 2001). . ''The Guardian''.</ref><ref name=Biegajło2018p137>{{cite book |last1=Biegajło |first1=Bartłomiej |title=Totalitarian (In)Experience in Literary Works and Their Translations: Between East and West |date=2018 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |location=Newcastle |page= |isbn=978-1-5275-1184-2}}</ref> He moved from ] to ], 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 ] behind the ], he was not a member of any communist party. In ''The Captive Mind'', he explained his reasons for accepting the role:<blockquote>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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Captive Mind|last=Milosz|first=Czeslaw|publisher=Vintage International|year=1990|location=New York|pages=x}}</ref></blockquote>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 British and American writers like Eliot, ], ], ], ], and ]. He also translated into Polish Shakespeare's '']'' and the work of ], ], ], and others.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=261}}</ref>
{{reflist|2}}


In 1947, Miłosz's son, Anthony, was born in Washington, D.C.<ref name=":5" />
==References==
* ''Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz'', edited by ] (Farrar Straus & Giroux, ])


In 1948, Miłosz arranged for the Polish government to fund a Department of Polish Studies at ]. Named for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by ], Miłosz's friend who was then on the faculty of ], and produced a scholarly book about Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to ], then the president of Columbia University, to express her approval, but the ], 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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=259–261}}</ref>
==Obituaries==
* (UC Berkeley)
* (UC Berkeley Press Release)
* (New York Times)
* (''New York Times'')
* (CBC News)
* (BBC News)
* (The Economist)
* (San Francisco Chronicle)
* (Washington Post)
* (New Criterion)


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 ], whom he met in the course of his duties.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=266–270}}</ref>
==External links==

As the Polish government, influenced by ], 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".<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=277}}</ref> 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 ], ], Miłosz's passport was returned. Realizing that he was in danger if he remained in Poland, Miłosz left for Paris in January 1951.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=281–283}}</ref>

=== Asylum in France ===
Upon arriving in Paris, Miłosz went into hiding, aided by the staff of the Polish émigré magazine ''].''<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=284–285}}</ref> 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 ], and influential Polish émigrés had convinced American officials that Miłosz was a communist.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=301}}</ref> Unable to leave France, Miłosz was not present for the birth of his second son, John Peter, in Washington, D.C., in 1951.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=283}}</ref>

With the United States closed to him, Miłosz requested—and was granted—] 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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=286}}</ref> 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 ], attacked him in a communist newspaper as "The Man Who Ran Away". On the other hand, ], another future Nobel laureate, visited Miłosz and offered his support.<ref name="Haven2006">{{cite book|author=Cynthia L. Haven|title=Czesław Miłosz: Conversations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r-fXgmb5EmEC&pg=PA206|year=2006|publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi|isbn=978-1-57806-829-6|page=206}}</ref> Another supporter during this period was the Swiss philosopher ], with whom Miłosz had a brief romantic affair.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek|first=Andrzej|pages=312–318}}</ref>

Miłosz was finally reunited with his family in 1953, when Janina and the children joined him in France.<ref name="Franaszek, Andrzej 324">{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=324}}</ref> 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 ]) with helping to change perceptions about communism.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/03/12/specials/sontag-communism.html|title=Susan Sontag Provokes Debate on Communism|website=movies2.nytimes.com|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> The German philosopher ] described it as a "significant historical document".<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Endurance and Miracle: Review of The Captive Mind|last=Jaspers|first=Karl|date=6 June 1953|journal=The Saturday Review}}</ref> It became a staple of political science courses and is considered a classic work in the study of ].

Miłosz's years in France were productive. In addition to ''The Captive Mind'', he published two poetry collections ('']'' (1954) and '']'' (1957)), two novels (''{{ill|The Seizure of Power|pl|Zdobycie władzy}}'' (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 ] compared it to '']'', a work "so powerful that it bursts the bounds in which it was written—the bounds of language, geography, epoch".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/05/31/a-lament-in-three-voices/|title=A Lament in Three Voices|last=Vendler|first=Helen|journal=New York Review of Books|date=2001-05-31|access-date=2019-04-10|language=en|issn=0028-7504}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Franaszek, Andrzej 324"/>{{Efn|There is evidence that Miłosz and Janina obtained a civil marriage certificate in Warsaw in 1944. World War II had separated Janina from her first husband, who was in London. This prevented them from obtaining a divorce, and they remained legally married. Miłosz and Janina had a church-sanctioned wedding in France in 1956 after her first husband died.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=323}}</ref>|name=marriage|group=lower-alpha}}

==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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=356}}</ref> He proved to be an adept and popular teacher, and was offered ] after only two months.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=360}}</ref> The rarity of this, and the degree to which he had impressed his colleagues, are underscored by the fact that Miłosz lacked a ] 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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=362}}</ref> With stable employment as a tenured professor of Slavic languages and literatures, Miłosz was able to secure American citizenship and purchase a home in ].<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=358}}</ref>{{Efn|Franaszek claims Miłosz became an American citizen in 1962.<ref name="Franaszek, Andrzej 358">{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=358}}</ref> Haven claims he became an American citizen in 1970.<ref name="Haven, Cynthia 2006 xxvii, 147">{{Cite book|title=Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations|last=Haven, Cynthia|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|year=2006|isbn=1578068290|location=Jackson|pages=xxvii, 147}}</ref>|name=|group=lower-alpha}}

Miłosz began to publish scholarly articles in English and Polish on a variety of authors, including ]. 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.)<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=376–377}}</ref> 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 ''{{ill|Postwar Polish Poetry|pl|Postwar Polish Poetry}}'', which was published in English in 1965. American poets like ], and American scholars like ], have credited it with a profound impact.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=5}}</ref> It was many English-language readers' first exposure to Miłosz's poetry, as well as that of Polish poets like ], ], and ]. (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 ] and ]. The issue also featured ], ], ], ], Zbigniew Herbert, and ].)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/14/ted-hughes-modern-poetry-in-translation-magazine-greatest-contribution|title=Modern Poetry in Translation is Ted Hughes's greatest contribution|last=Dugdale|first=Sasha|date=2015-11-14|work=The Guardian|access-date=2019-08-13|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> In 1969, Miłosz's textbook '']'' was published in English. He followed this with a volume of his own work, '']'' (1973), some of which he translated into English himself. This was his first anthology of poetry published in English language.

At the same time, Miłosz continued to publish in Polish with an émigré press in Paris. His poetry collections from this period include '']'' (1962), '']'' (1965), '']'' (1969), and '']'' (1974).

During Miłosz's time at Berkeley, the campus became a hotbed of student protest, notably as the home of the ], which has been credited with helping to "define a generation of student activism" across the United States.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2014/10/05/353849567/when-political-speech-was-banned-at-berkeley|title=Berkeley's Fight For Free Speech Fired Up Student Protest Movement|website=NPR.org|language=en|access-date=2019-04-25}}</ref> Miłosz's relationship to student protesters was sometimes antagonistic: he called them "spoiled children of the ]"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/ESSAY-Bay-Area-finally-recognizes-Milosz-2538597.php|title=ESSAY / Bay Area finally recognizes Milosz|last=Haven|first=Cynthia|date=2006-03-26|website=SFGate|access-date=2019-04-25}}</ref> 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!'"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2016/06/happy-birthday-czeslaw-milosz-he-was-no-hero-and-he-knew-it/|title=Happy birthday, Czesław Miłosz! He was no hero, and he knew it.|website=The Book Haven|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-25}}</ref> Comments like these were in keeping with his stance toward American ] 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 ] and published in '']'', Miłosz responded by calling the letter "dangerous nonsense" and insisting that he had not signed it.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/11/07/poet-power/|title=Poet Power|last=Milosz|first=Czeslaw|journal=New York Review of Books|date=1968-11-07|access-date=2019-04-25|language=en|issn=0028-7504}}</ref>

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 ].<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=364}}</ref> But when his wife, Janina, fell ill and required expensive medical treatment, Miłosz returned to teaching seminars.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=412|oclc=982122195}}</ref> The year 1978 also marked the publication of his second English-language poetry anthology, ''Bells in Winter''.

=== Nobel laureate ===
On 9 October 1980, the Swedish Academy announced that Miłosz had won the Nobel Prize in Literature.<ref name=":6">{{Cite web|url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1980/10/09/Poet-Czeslaw-Milosz-winner-of-the-1980-Nobel-Prize/3819339912000/|title=Poet Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize...|website=UPI|language=en|access-date=2019-05-19}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=416}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1980/Miłosz/lecture/|title=Czeslaw Milosz Nobel Lecture|website=NobelPrize.org|access-date=10 April 2019}}</ref>]

Many Poles became aware of Miłosz for the first time when he won the Nobel Prize.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Merriman|first1=John|last2=Winter|first2=Jay|title="Milosz, Czeslaw (1911–2004)" in Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, vol. 3|date=2006|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|isbn=978-0684313702|pages=1765–66}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=430}}</ref> He met with leading Polish figures like ] and ]. 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 ], where he was invited to deliver the ].<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=421}}</ref> 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 ''{{ill|The Witness of Poetry|pl|Świadectwo poezji}}'' (1983).

Miłosz continued to publish work in Polish through his longtime publisher in Paris, including the poetry collections '']'' (1981) and '']'' (1986), and the essay collection '']'' (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 ], he split his time between Berkeley and Kraków, and he began to publish his writing in Polish with a publisher based in Kraków. When ] in 1991, Miłosz visited for the first time since 1939.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=438}}</ref> In 2000, he moved to Kraków.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://quarterlyconversation.com/milosz-as-california-poet-i-did-not-choose-california-it-was-given-to-me|title=Milosz as California Poet|last=Haven|first=Cynthia L.|date=4 March 2013|website=The Quarterly Conversation|language=en-US|access-date=2019-08-14|archive-date=14 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190814210707/http://quarterlyconversation.com/milosz-as-california-poet-i-did-not-choose-california-it-was-given-to-me|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 1992, Miłosz married Carol Thigpen, an academic at ] in Atlanta, Georgia. They remained married until her death in 2002.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=465}}</ref> His work from the 1990s includes the poetry collections '']'' (1994) and ''{{ill|Roadside Dog|pl|Piesek przydrożny}}'' (1997), and the collection of short prose '']'' (1997). Miłosz's last stand-alone volumes of poetry were ''{{ill|This (Miłosz)|lt=This|pl|To (tom poetycki)}}'' (2000), and '']'' (2002). Uncollected poems written afterward appeared in English in '']'' (2004) and, posthumously, in '']'' (2011).

==Death==
] Roman Catholic Church, ]]]
]. The Latin inscription reads "May you rest well"; the Polish inscription reads "The cultivation of learning, too, is love."|alt=]]
Czesław Miłosz died on 14 August 2004, at his Kraków home, aged 93. He was given a state funeral at the historic ] in Kraków. Polish Prime Minister ] 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 ] Roman Catholic Church, where he was one of the last to be commemorated.<ref>, miloszinstitute.com. Retrieved 18 April 2018.</ref> In front of that church, the poets ], ], and ] 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.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/style/appreciation-the-legacies-of-polands-poet.html|title=Appreciation : The legacies of Poland's poet|last=Dupont|first=Joan|date=2004-09-09|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-04-10|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

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.<ref name="protest">{{cite web|url=http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2004/september/040907.html|title=The Poet Who Remembered – Poland (mostly) honors Czeslaw Miłosz upon his death|author=Agnieszka Tennant|publisher=booksandculture.com}}</ref> Pope John Paul II, along with Miłosz's confessor, issued public messages confirming that Miłosz had received the sacraments, which quelled the protest.<ref name="Grudzińska-Gross289">{{cite book|author=Irena Grudzińska-Gross|title=Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tCLo63-ypkkC&pg=PA289|access-date=18 September 2013|year=2009|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14937-1|page=289}}</ref>

== Family ==
Miłosz's brother, ] (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 ]. In addition to releasing recordings of his own compositions, he has translated some of his father's poems into English.<ref name=":5">{{Cite web|url=https://www.cmc.edu/Miłosz/speakers/anthony-Miłosz|title=Speaker Bio: Anthony Milosz|last=Claremont McKenna College|website=cmc.edu|access-date=10 April 2019}}{{Dead link|date=August 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

== Honors ==
], 100th anniversary of Miłosz's birth]]
In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Miłosz received the following awards:

* Polish PEN Translation Prize (1974)<ref name=":6" />
*] for Creative Arts (1976)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/czeslaw-milosz/|title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation {{!}} Czeslaw Milosz|language=en-US|access-date=2019-05-19}}</ref>
*] (1978)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.neustadtprize.org/1978-neustadt-laureate-czeslaw-milosz/|title=1978 – Czesław Miłosz|date=2013-06-10|website=Neustadt Prizes|language=en-US|access-date=2019-05-19}}</ref>
*] (United States, 1989)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/czelaw-milosz|title=Czelaw Milosz|date=2013-04-24|website=NEA|language=en|access-date=2019-05-19}}</ref>
*] (1990)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-04-bk-5249-story.html|title=THE 1990 ROBERT KIRSCH AWARD : Czeslaw Milosz: The Virile Voice of History|date=1990-11-04|work=Los Angeles Times|access-date=2019-05-19|language=en-US|issn=0458-3035}}</ref>
*] (Poland, 1994)<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=450|oclc=982122195}}</ref>

Miłosz was named a distinguished visiting professor or fellow at many institutions, including the ] and ], where he was a Puterbaugh Fellow in 1999.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.puterbaughfestival.org/category/puterbaugh-fellows/|title=Puterbaugh Fellows Archives|website=Puterbaugh Festival of International Literature & Culture|language=en|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> He was an elected member of the ],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.amacad.org/person/czeslaw-milosz-0|title=Czeslaw Milosz|website=American Academy of Arts & Sciences|language=en|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> the ],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://artsandletters.org/academy-members/|title=Academy Members – American Academy of Arts and Letters|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> and the ].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Members|url=https://www.sanu.ac.rs/en/about-the-academy/members/|access-date=2020-10-28|website=www.sanu.ac.rs}}</ref> He received honorary doctorates from Harvard University,<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=451}}</ref> the University of Michigan,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ii.umich.edu/crees/news-events/news/archived-news/2011/09/_milosz--made-in-america-program-will-honor-polish-poet-with-mic.html|title="Milosz: Made in America" program will honor Polish poet with Michigan ties {{!}} U-M LSA Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES)|website=ii.umich.edu|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> the University of California at Berkeley, ],<ref name=":2" /> ],<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/13/arts/milosz-ending-exile-to-visit-poland.html|title=Milosz, Ending Exile, to Visit Poland|last=McDowell|first=Edwin|date=1981-05-13|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-04-10|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> and ] in Lithuania.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.vdu.lt/en/person/czeslaw-milosz//|title=VMU Honorary Doctor Czesław Miłosz|website=VDU|date=April 2013|language=en|access-date=2021-01-20}}</ref> Vytautas Magnus University and Jagiellonian University have academic centers named for Miłosz.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://pmdf.vdu.lt/en/about-the-faculty/czeslaw-milosz-centre/|title=Czezlaw Milosz centre|website=VDU Politikos mokslų ir diplomatijos fakultetas|language=en|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Ośrodek Badań nad Twórczością Czesława Miłosza - Faculty of Polish Studies|url=https://milosz.polonistyka.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/|access-date=2022-02-23|website=milosz.polonistyka.uj.edu.pl}}</ref>

In 1992, Miłosz was made an ] of Lithuania,<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|url=https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/inmemoriam/html/czeslawmilosz.htm|title=Czesław Miłosz|website=senate.universityofcalifornia.edu|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> where his birthplace was made into a museum and conference center.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.kedainiutvic.lt/tourism/tourism/en/objects/birthplace-residential-conference-centre-of-czeslaw-milosz|title=Birthplace/Residential Conference Centre of Česlovas Milošas|website=www.kedainiutvic.lt|language=en|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> In 1993, he was made an honorary citizen of Kraków.<ref name=":3" />

His books also received awards. His first, ''A Poem on Frozen Time'', won an award from the Union of Polish Writers in Wilno.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=105}}</ref> ''The Seizure of Power'' received the ] (European Literary Prize).<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Bell|first=Daniel|date=1953-09-17|title=Out of the Fight for Warsaw|magazine=The New Republic|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/83279/book-review-seizure-of-power|access-date=2022-02-23|issn=0028-6583}}</ref> The collection ''Roadside Dog'' received a ] in Poland.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Holownia|first=Szymon|date=27 June 2001|title=Nagroda Literacka Nike 1998 - Czesław Milosz za "Pieska przydrożnego"|url=https://wyborcza.pl/7,81826,983685.html?disableRedirects=true|access-date=2022-02-23|website=wyborcza.pl}}</ref>

In 1989, Miłosz was named one of the "]" at Israel's ] memorial to the ], in recognition of his efforts to save Jews in Warsaw during World War II.<ref name=":4" />

Miłosz has also been honored posthumously. The ] declared 2011, the centennial of his birth, the "Year of Miłosz".<ref name=":2" /> It was marked by conferences and tributes throughout Poland, as well as in New York City,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.92y.org/archives/a-celebration-of-czeslaw-milosz-with-adam-zagajewski|title=92nd Street Y: A Celebration of Czeslaw Milosz with Adam Zagajewski|date=21 March 2011|website=www.92y.org|access-date=10 April 2019}}</ref> at ],<ref name=":9">{{Cite web|url=https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/exhibitions-visiting/special-exhibitions/exile-destiny-czeslaw-milosz-and-america|title=Exile as Destiny: Czesław Miłosz and America|date=2018-12-14|website=Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library|language=en|access-date=2019-10-29}}</ref> and at the Dublin Writers Festival,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://ilfdublin.com/archive/event/solidarity-solitude-revolution.-czesaw-miosz-a-centenary-celebration|title=Solidarity, Solitude, Revolution. Czesław Miłosz - A Centenary Celebration {{!}} International Literature Festival Dublin|website=ilfdublin.com|access-date=2019-04-10|archive-date=10 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191210152044/http://ilfdublin.com/archive/event/solidarity-solitude-revolution.-czesaw-miosz-a-centenary-celebration|url-status=dead}}</ref> among many other locations. The same year, he was featured on a Lithuanian postage stamp. Streets are named for him near Paris,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Rue+Czeslaw+Milosz,+77170+Brie-Comte-Robert,+France/@48.6822218,2.6054299,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47e5e2a50f7f8aed:0xdc15c47329ad6055!8m2!3d48.6822218!4d2.6076239|title=Rue Czeslaw Milosz|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> Vilnius,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/%C4%8Ceslovo+Milo%C5%A1o+g.,+Lithuania/@54.7457067,25.1283908,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x46dd8e7daf3b9f11:0x8e255a43922a25f3!8m2!3d54.7457067!4d25.1305848|title=Česlovo Milošo g.|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-29}}</ref> and in the Polish cities of Kraków,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Czes%C5%82awa+Mi%C5%82osza,+31-000+Krak%C3%B3w,+Poland/@50.0750302,19.9435713,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47165b02944f18f3:0x440d2fb720fd5fe9!8m2!3d50.0750302!4d19.9457653|title=Czesława Miłosza Krakow|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> Poznań,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Czes%C5%82awa+Mi%C5%82osza,+60-461+Pozna%C5%84,+Poland/@52.4533257,16.8689804,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4704439d73068f61:0x4ae0d0eb86cae00c!8m2!3d52.4533257!4d16.8711744|title=Czesława Miłosza Poznan|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> Gdańsk,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Czes%C5%82awa+Mi%C5%82osza,+80-001+Gda%C5%84sk,+Poland/@54.3483471,18.5876398,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x46fd7468d0ffd535:0x8651ae1906e93bbb!8m2!3d54.3483471!4d18.5898338|title=Czesława Miłosza Gdansk|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> Białystok,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Czes%C5%82awa+Mi%C5%82osza,+15-001+Bia%C5%82ystok,+Poland/@53.1221517,23.1773188,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x471ffeaddc4d50fb:0x3573036162122c1!8m2!3d53.1221517!4d23.1795128|title=Czesława Miłosza Bialystok|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> and Wrocław.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Czes%C5%82awa+Mi%C5%82osza,+50-001+Wroc%C5%82aw,+Poland/@51.12728,17.0415559,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x470fe9c138cec073:0x4ddd3e99145af32f!8m2!3d51.12728!4d17.0437499|title=Czesława Miłosza Wroclaw|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> In Gdańsk there is a Czesław Miłosz Square.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.google.com/maps/place/Skwer+Czes%C5%82awa+Mi%C5%82osza,+Powsta%C5%84c%C3%B3w+Warszawy,+81-718+Sopot,+Poland/@54.4462643,18.5683738,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x46fd0a8e678e3bb3:0xf11b5af018e074cc!8m2!3d54.4464912!4d18.5682626|title=Skwer Czesława Miłosza|website=maps.google.com|language=en|access-date=2019-04-17}}</ref> In 2013, a primary school in Vilnius was named for Miłosz,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://media.efhr.eu/2013/10/08/czeslaw-milosz-school-school-kiena/|title=Czesław Miłosz School – new name for school in Kiena|date=2013-10-08|website=media.efhr.eu|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-10}}</ref> joining schools in Mierzecice, Poland, and ], that bear his name.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.czeslawmilosz.org/eng/|title=Czeslaw Milosz Polish School|website=www.czeslawmilosz.org|access-date=2019-04-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161028034041/http://www.czeslawmilosz.org/eng/|archive-date=28 October 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://milosz-institute.com/instituteactivities0407.htm|title=Milosz Institute Activities|website=milosz-institute.com|access-date=2019-04-10|archive-date=9 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509082715/http://milosz-institute.com/instituteactivities0407.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

== Legacy ==

=== Cultural impact ===
], ]]]
In 1978, the Russian-American poet ] called Miłosz "one of the great poets of our time; perhaps the greatest".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Brodsky|first=Joseph|date=1978|title=Presentation of Czeslaw Milosz to the Jury|journal=World Literature Today|volume=3|pages=364|doi=10.2307/40134202|jstor=40134202}}</ref> 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 ],<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Parker|first=Michael Richard|date=2013-08-01|title=Past master: Czeslaw Milosz and his impact on the poetry of Seamus Heaney|journal=Textual Practice|volume=27|issue=5|pages=825–850|doi=10.1080/0950236X.2012.751448|s2cid=154036373|issn=0950-236X|url=http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/3990/8/3990_Past%20master%20Czeslaw%20Milosz%20and%20his%20impact%20on%20the%20poetry%20of%20Seamus%20Heaney.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180720231333/http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/3990/8/3990_Past%20master%20Czeslaw%20Milosz%20and%20his%20impact%20on%20the%20poetry%20of%20Seamus%20Heaney.pdf |archive-date=2018-07-20 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=KAY|first=MAGDALENA|date=2011|title=Dialogues across the Continent: The Influence of Czesław Miłosz on Seamus Heaney|journal=Comparative Literature|volume=63|issue=2|pages=161–181|issn=0010-4124|jstor=41238505|doi=10.1215/00104124-1265465}}</ref> and ] has identified the following poets as having benefited from Miłosz's influence: ], ], ], Robert Hass, ], ], ], ], ], Joseph Brodsky, and ].<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=6}}</ref>

By being smuggled into Poland, Miłosz's writing was a source of inspiration to the anti-communist ] movement there in the early 1980s. Lines from his poem "{{ill|You Who Wronged|pl|Który skrzywdziłeś}}" are inscribed on the ] in Gdańsk, where Solidarity originated.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=436}}</ref>

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".<ref name=":0" /> Similarly, the British poet and scholar ] 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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Czeslaw Milosz and the insufficiency of lyric|last=Davie, Donald (1922-1995).|date=1986|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521322645|pages=29|oclc=833103961}}</ref>

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 ] at ].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://orbis.library.yale.edu/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=4254889|title=Czesław Miłosz papers|last=Miłosz|first=Czesław}}</ref>

From May 2024, Czesław Miłosz's ], Nobel Prize notebook of Czesław Miłosz and a fair copy of his poem ''Rays of Dazzling Light'' (Polish: ''Jasności promieniste'') are presented at a ] in Warsaw.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://bn.org.pl/en/news/5313-palace-of-the-commonwealth-open-to-visitors.html |title= Palace of the Commonwealth open to visitors |date= 2024-05-28 |publisher= National Library of Poland |access-date= 2024-06-11}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-first1=Tomasz |editor-last1= Makowski | editor-link1=Tomasz Makowski (librarian) | editor-first2= Patryk| editor-last2 = Sapała |date=2024 |publication-place=Warsaw |publisher= National Library of Poland|title=The Palace of the Commonwealth. Three times opened. Treasures from the National Library of Poland at the Palace of the Commonwealth |pages=210–215}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal|last=Wilczek|first=Piotr|date=2000-06-22|title=Polish Nobel Prize Winners in Literature: Are They Really Polish?|url=https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-67541501/polish-nobel-prize-winners-in-literature-are-they|journal=Chicago Review|volume=46|issue=3/4|pages=375–377|issn=0009-3696|doi=10.2307/25304677|jstor=25304677}}</ref> 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 ].<ref name=":3" /> 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.'"<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=43}}</ref> 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".<ref name=":1" /> 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".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/10717/|title=Czeslaw Milosz - Lithuania's native foreign son|website=www.baltictimes.com|access-date=2019-04-23}}</ref> Others have viewed Miłosz as an American author, hosting exhibitions and writing about him from that perspective<ref name=":9" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Haven|first=Cynthia L.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1232515902|title=Czeslaw Milosz: A California Life|publisher=Heyday Books|year=2021|isbn=978-1-59714-549-7|location=Berkeley|oclc=1232515902}}</ref> and including his work in anthologies of American poetry.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/archive/?id=13|title=The Best American Poetry 1999, Guest Edited by Robert Bly|website=www.bestamericanpoetry.com|access-date=2019-10-29}}</ref>

But in ''The New York Review of Books'' in 1981, the critic ] wrote, "nationality is not a thing can take seriously; it would be hard to imagine a greater writer more emancipated from even its most subtle pretensions".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1981/06/25/return-of-the-native/|title=Return of the Native|last=Bayley|first=John|journal=New York Review of Books|date=1981-06-25|access-date=2019-04-23|language=en|issn=0028-7504}}</ref> Echoing this notion, the scholar and diplomat ] argued that, even when he was greeted as a national hero in Poland, Miłosz "made a distinct effort to remain a universal thinker".<ref name=":10" /> Speaking at a ceremony to celebrate his birth centenary in 2011, Lithuanian President ] 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".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lrp.lt/en/press-centre/press-releases/czesaw-miosz-citizen-of-the-world-a-link-between-lithuanian-and-polish-nations/11419|title=Czesław Miłosz – citizen of the world, a link between Lithuanian and Polish nations|website=www.lrp.lt|language=en|access-date=2019-04-23|archive-date=23 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190423122532/https://www.lrp.lt/en/press-centre/press-releases/czesaw-miosz-citizen-of-the-world-a-link-between-lithuanian-and-polish-nations/11419|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==== Catholicism ====
Though raised ], Miłosz as a young man came to adopt a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", though he later returned to the Catholic faith.<ref>Haven, Cynthia L., "'A Sacred Vision': An Interview with Czesław Miłosz", in Haven, Cynthia L. (ed.), ''Czesław Miłosz: Conversations''. University Press of Mississippi, 2006, p. 145.</ref> He translated parts of the ] 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",<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=459}}</ref> while ], citing Miłosz's dismissal of "poetry which does not save nations or people", accused him of "pompous nonsense".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/books/review/Orr-t.html|title=The Great(ness) Game|last=Orr|first=David|date=2009-02-19|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-04-21|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

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 ]'s historic ] church.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=434}}</ref> ] writes that, to some readers, Miłosz's embrace of Catholicism can seem surprising and complicates the understanding of him and his work.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/czeslaw-milosz-around-the-world/|title=Czeslaw Milosz around the world|last=Haven|first=Cynthia|date=23 November 2011|website=The Times Literary Supplement|language=en-GB|access-date=2019-04-21}}</ref>

== Work ==

=== Form ===
While Miłosz is best known for his poetry, his body of work spans multiple other literary genres: fiction (particularly the novel), memoir, criticism, 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, ], and ] 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry|last=Hass, Robert.|date=1997|publisher=Ecco Press|isbn=978-0880015394|location=New York|pages=177|oclc=37003152}}</ref> 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 ] and ] to classic forms such as the ] or ]. 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry|last=Hass, Robert|pages=207}}</ref>

=== Themes ===
Miłosz's work is known for its complexity; according to the scholars ] and ], Miłosz "prided himself on being an esoteric writer accessible to a mere handful of readers".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Poet's Work: An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz|last=Nathan, Leonard and|first=Quinn, Arthur.|date=1991|pages=9|oclc=23015782}}</ref> Nevertheless, some common themes are readily apparent throughout his body of work.

The poet, critic, and frequent Miłosz translator ] has described Miłosz as "a poet of great inclusiveness",<ref>{{Cite book|title=Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry|last=Hass, Robert|pages=210}}</ref> 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",<ref>{{Cite book|title=Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry|last=Hass, Robert|pages=209}}</ref> where one idea or voice is presented only to be immediately challenged or changed. According to English poet ], 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Czeslaw Milosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric|last=Davie, Donald|pages=8}}</ref>

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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Poet's Work: An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz|last=Nathan, Leonard and|first=Quinn, Arthur|pages=7}}</ref> 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,<ref>{{Cite book|title=Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry|last=Hass, Robert|pages=196}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/musicofwhathappe0000vend/page/210|title=The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics|last=Vendler, Helen|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1988|isbn=978-0674591523|location=Cambridge|pages=|oclc=16468960}}</ref> Having experienced both ] and ], 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 ''{{ill|Views from San Francisco Bay|pl|Widzenia nad Zatoką San Francisco}}'': "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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Poet's Work: An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz|last=Nathan, Leonard and|first=Quinn, Arthur|pages=4}}</ref>

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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Czeslaw Milosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric|last=Davie, Donald|pages=69}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=8}}</ref> His writing is filled with allusions to Christian figures, symbols, and theological ideas, though Miłosz was closer to ], or what he called ], 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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Poet's Work: An Introduction to Czeslaw Milosz|last=Nathan, Leonard and|first=Quinn, Arthur|pages=43}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry|last=Hass, Robert|pages=212}}</ref>

=== 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, ]; ]; ] (whose work Miłosz translated into Polish); Dostoevsky; ] (whose concept of "Ulro" Miłosz borrowed for his book ''{{ill|The Land of Ulro|pl|Ziemia Ulro}}''), and ].

==Selected bibliography==
{{refbegin|2}}

===Poetry collections===
* 1933: ''Poemat o czasie zastygłym'' (''A Poem on Frozen Time''); Wilno: Kolo Polonistów Sluchaczy Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego
* 1936: '']'' (''Three Winters''); Warsaw: Władysława Mortkowicz
* 1940: ''Wiersze'' (''Poems''); Warsaw (clandestine publication)
* 1945: '']'' (''Rescue''); Warsaw: Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza Czytelnik
* 1954: '']'' (''Daylight''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1957: '']'' (''A Treatise on Poetry''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1962: '']'' (''King Popiel and Other Poems''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1965: '']'' (''Gucio Enchanted''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1969: '']'' (''City Without a Name''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1974: '']'' (''Where the Sun Rises and Where it Sets''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1982: '']'' (''Hymn of the Pearl''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1984: '']'' (''Unattainable Earth''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1989: '']'' (''Chronicles''); Paris: Instytut Literacki
* 1991: '']'' (''Farther Surroundings''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak
* 1994: '']'' (''Facing the River''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak
* 1997: ''Piesek przydrożny'' (''Roadside Dog''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak
* 2000: '']'' (''This''), Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak
* 2002: '']'' (''The Second Space''); Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak
* 2003: '']'' (''Orpheus and Eurydice''); Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie
* 2006: '']'' (''Last Poems'') Kraków: Społeczny Instytut Wydawniczy Znak

===Prose collections===
* 1953: ''Zniewolony umysł'' ('']''); 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 ] translated by Czesław Miłosz and ], ]

{{refend}}

== See also ==

*]
*]
*]

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* Baranczak, Stanislaw, ''Breathing Under Water and Other East European Essays'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|978-0674081253}}
*Cavanagh, Clare, ''Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0300152968}}
*Davie, Donald, ''Czesław Miłosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric,'' Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. {{ISBN|978-0870494833}}
* Faggen, Robert, editor, ''Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz,'' New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996. {{ISBN|978-0374271008}}
*Fiut, Aleksander, ''The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. {{ISBN|978-0520066892}}
*Franaszek, Andrzej, ''Miłosz: A Biography,'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. {{ISBN|978-0674495043}}
*Golubiewski, Mikołaj, ''The Persona of Czesław Miłosz: Authorial Poetics, Critical Debates, Reception Games'', Bern: Peter Lang, 2018. {{ISBN|978-3631762042}}
*Grudzinska Gross, Irena, ''Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0300149371}}
* Haven, Cynthia L., editor, ''Czesław Miłosz: Conversations,'' Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. {{ISBN|1-57806-829-0}}
* Haven, Cynthia L., editor, ''An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz'', Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011. {{ISBN|978-0804011334}}
*Kay, Magdalena, "Czesław Miłosz in the World: The Will to Transcendence", in ''A Companion to World Literature'', John Wiley & Sons, 2020. {{ISBN|978-1118993187}}
*Kraszewski, Charles, ''Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism, and Paganism in the Poetry of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. {{ISBN|978-1443837613}}
*Możejko, Edward, editor, ''Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1988. {{ISBN|978-0888641274}}
* Nathan, Leonard, and Arthur Quinn, ''The Poet's Work: An Introduction to'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. {{ISBN|978-0674689695}}
*Rzepa, Joanna, ''Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. {{ISBN|978-3030615291}}
*Tischner, Łukasz, ''Miłosz and the Problem of Evil'', Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015. {{ISBN|978-0810130821}}
*Zagajewski, Adam, editor, ''Polish Writers on Writing,'' San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2007. {{ISBN|978-1595340337}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category}}
{{wikiquote}} {{wikiquote}}
* &mdash; official website of Czesław Miłosz (Polish)
* (Georgia Review)
* ]:
*
*
* (online audio file)
* (online audio file)
* Information relating to Miłosz as the winner of the (official site)
* Nobel Prize acceptance speech
*
*


=== Profiles ===

*
* biography and poetry on poezja.org
* {{OL_author|OL44091A}}
* {{Nobelprize}}
*. Retrieved 2010-08-04
* at the Poetry Foundation

=== Articles ===

*{{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1721/the-art-of-poetry-no-70-czeslaw-milosz| title=Czeslaw Milosz, The Art of Poetry No. 70| author= Robert Faggen| date=Winter 1994| journal=The Paris Review | volume=Winter 1994| issue=133}}
*. Retrieved 2010-08-04
*. Retrieved 2010-08-04
*. Retrieved 2010-08-04
*. Retrieved 2010-08-04
*. Retrieved 2010-08-04
*]. General Collection, , Yale University.

=== Biographies, memoirs, photographs ===

*
* - biography and poems at poezja.org
* Haven, Cynthia L.,'': ''Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2021.''
*
*
* Barbara Gruszka-Zych, ''Mój Poeta – osobiste wspomnienia o Czesławie Miłoszu'', VIDEOGRAF II, {{ISBN|978-83-7183-499-8}}
*

=== Bibliography ===

* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424174508/http://www.biblioteka.zabrze.pl/wp-content/uploads/pliki/prezentacje/czeslaw_milosz.pdf |date=24 April 2016 }}
*
*
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504234901/http://www.pedagogiczna.edu.pl/zest111.htm |date=4 May 2016 }}
*
*
*

=== Archives ===

* ] General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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{{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1976-2000}} {{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1976-2000}}
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Latest revision as of 00:42, 18 January 2025

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

Czesław Miłosz
Miłosz in 1999Miłosz in 1999
Born(1911-06-30)30 June 1911
Šeteniai, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire
Died14 August 2004(2004-08-14) (aged 93)
Kraków, Poland
Occupation
  • Poet
  • prose writer
  • professor
  • translator
  • diplomat
NationalityPolish, American
Citizenship
Notable worksRescue (1945)
The Captive Mind (1953)
A Treatise on Poetry (1957)
Notable awardsNeustadt International Prize for Literature (1978)
Nobel Prize in Literature (1980)
National Medal of Arts (1989)
Order of the White Eagle (1994)
Nike Award (1998)
Spouse
Janina Dłuska ​ ​(m. 1956; died 1986)
Carol Thigpen ​ ​(m. 1992; died 2002)
ChildrenAnthony (born 1947)
John Peter (born 1951)
Signature
Righteous
Among the Nations
By country

Czesław Miłosz (/ˈmiːlɒʃ/ MEE-losh, US also /-lɔːʃ, -wɒʃ, -wɔːʃ/ -⁠lawsh, -⁠wosh, -⁠wawsh, Polish: [ˈt͡ʂɛswaf ˈmiwɔʂ] ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy 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 and became a cultural attaché for the Polish government during the postwar period. When communist 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. His poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and his appraisal of Stalinism in a prose book, The Captive Mind, brought him renown as a leading émigré 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 in the West. Faith played a role in his work as he explored his Catholicism and personal experience. He wrote in Polish and English.

Miłosz died in Kraków, Poland, in 2004. He is interred in Skałka, 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 (Polish: Szetejnie), Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire (now Kėdainiai district, Kaunas County, 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 [pl], had been personal secretary to Stanisław I, 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 for Polish independence. Miłosz's grandmother, Stanisława, was a doctor's daughter from Riga, Latvia, and a member of the German-Polish von Mohl family. The Miłosz estate was in Serbinai, a name that Miłosz's biographer Andrzej Franaszek [pl] 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 [pl], and a 1959 memoir, Native Realm [pl]. 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.

Czesław Miłosz, third row from top and fourth from left, with fellow students, Stefan Batory University, Wilno, 1930

Miłosz's early years were marked by upheaval. When his father was hired to work on infrastructure projects in Siberia, he and his mother traveled to be with him. After World War I 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 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, was born. Finally, after moving through Estonia and Latvia, the family returned to Šeteniai in 1918. But the Polish–Soviet War 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, resulting in his expulsion from Lithuania and the family's move to what was then known as Wilno, which had come under Polish control after the Polish–Lithuanian War 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 Gymnasium in Wilno, he entered Stefan Batory University in 1929 as a law student. While at university, Miłosz joined a student group called Academic Club of Wilno Wanderers and Intellectuals [pl] and a student poetry group called Żagary [pl], along with the young poets Jerzy Zagórski, Teodor Bujnicki, Aleksander Rymkiewicz [pl], Jerzy Putrament, and Józef Maśliński [pl]. 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, a French-language poet of Lithuanian descent who had become a Swedenborgian. 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 [pl], 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 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 Polish Radio Wilno. His second poetry collection, Three Winters, was published that same year, eliciting from one critic a comparison to Adam Mickiewicz. 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 [pl], 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 and met his future wife, Janina [pl] (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 in September 1939. Along with colleagues from Polish Radio, he escaped the city, making his way to Lwów. But when he learned that Janina had remained in Warsaw with her parents, he looked for a way back. The Soviet invasion of Poland thwarted his plans, and, to avoid the incoming Red Army, he fled to Bucharest. 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". 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, the Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy and aesthetics. He translated Shakespeare's As You Like It and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land into Polish. Along with his friend the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski, he also arranged for the publication of his third volume of poetry, Poems [pl], 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.

Czesław Miłosz (right) with brother Andrzej Miłosz at PEN Club World Congress, Warsaw, May 1999

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, Andrzej 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. 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. 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. According to Polish literary historian 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.

German troops setting fire to Warsaw buildings, 1944

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 [it]", 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. It was in this capacity that he first met Jane Zielonko, the future translator of The Captive Mind, with whom he had a brief relationship. He moved from New York City 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, 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 British and American writers like Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, and W. H. Auden. He also translated into Polish Shakespeare's Othello and the work of Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Pablo Neruda, 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. Named for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by Manfred Kridl, Miłosz's friend who was then on the faculty of Smith College, 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, 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, whom he met in the course of his duties.

As the Polish government, influenced by Joseph Stalin, 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. 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, 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, attacked him in a communist newspaper as "The Man Who Ran Away". On the other hand, Albert Camus, another future Nobel laureate, visited Miłosz and offered his support. Another supporter during this period was the Swiss philosopher Jeanne Hersch, 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) with helping to change perceptions about communism. The German philosopher Karl Jaspers 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.

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 [pl] (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 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

Miłosz in mid-career

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 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 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. 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 [pl], which was published in English in 1965. American poets like W.S. Merwin, 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, Zbigniew Herbert, and Tadeusz Różewicz. (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 and Daniel Weissbort. The issue also featured Miroslav Holub, Yehuda Amichai, Ivan Lalić, Vasko Popa, Zbigniew Herbert, and Andrei Voznesensky.) 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. This was his first anthology of poetry published in English language.

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, 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 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 and published in The New York Review of Books, 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. The year 1978 also marked the publication of his second English-language poetry anthology, Bells in Winter.

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.

Miłosz, 1998

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 and Pope John Paul II. 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, where he was invited to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures. 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 [pl] (1983).

Miłosz continued to publish work in Polish through his longtime publisher in Paris, including the poetry collections Hymn of 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 several attempts to collect all his poetry into a single volume. After the fall of communism in Poland, 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 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 [pl] (1997), and the collection of short prose Miłosz’s ABC’s (1997). Miłosz's last stand-alone volumes of poetry were This [pl] (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

Miłosz's final resting place: Skałka Roman Catholic Church, Kraków
Miłosz's sarcophagus. The Latin inscription reads "May you rest well"; the Polish inscription reads "The cultivation of learning, too, is love."

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 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, Adam Zagajewski, and Robert Hass 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 (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, San Francisco Medical Center. In addition to releasing recordings of his own compositions, he has translated some of his father's poems into English.

Honors

Lithuanian stamp, 100th anniversary of Miłosz's birth

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

Miłosz was named a distinguished visiting professor or fellow at many institutions, including the University of Michigan and University of Oklahoma, 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 Letters, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He received honorary doctorates from Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, Jagiellonian University, Catholic University of Lublin, and Vytautas Magnus University 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 in Poland.

In 1989, Miłosz was named one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust, 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, 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, that bear his name.

Legacy

Cultural impact

Miłosz's poem on the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, Gdańsk, Poland

In 1978, the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky 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, and Clare Cavanagh has identified the following poets as having benefited from Miłosz's influence: Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Rosanna Warren, Robert Hass, Charles Simic, Mary Karr, Carolyn Forché, Mark Strand, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, and Derek Walcott.

By being smuggled into Poland, Miłosz's writing was a source of inspiration to the anti-communist Solidarity movement there in the early 1980s. Lines from his poem "You Who Wronged [pl]" 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 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 at Yale University.

From May 2024, Czesław Miłosz's Nobel Prize medal, Nobel Prize notebook of Czesław Miłosz and a fair copy of his poem Rays of Dazzling Light (Polish: Jasności promieniste) are presented at a permanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.

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. 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 can 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 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 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, 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 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, 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's historic Skałka church. Cynthia Haven writes that, to some readers, Miłosz's embrace of Catholicism can seem surprising and complicates the understanding of him and his work.

Work

Form

While Miłosz is best known for his poetry, his body of work spans multiple other literary genres: fiction (particularly the novel), memoir, criticism, 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, and Thomas Merton 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 and free verse to classic forms such as the ode or elegy. 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 H. 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 English poet 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 [pl]: "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, or what he called Manichaeism, 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; Lev Shestov; Simone Weil (whose work Miłosz translated into Polish); Dostoevsky; William Blake (whose concept of "Ulro" Miłosz borrowed for his book The Land of Ulro [pl]), 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); 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 translated by Czesław Miłosz and Leonard Nathan, Copper Canyon Press

See also

Notes

  1. It is unclear when Miłosz obtained Polish citizenship. He claimed to have received a Lithuanian identity document in 1940, in which he wrote his nationality as Polish, but there is no official record to confirm what type of identity document he used during World War II.
  2. Franaszek claims Miłosz became an American citizen in 1962. Haven claims he became an American citizen in 1970.
  3. Miłosz maintained dual citizenship (Poland and USA) beginning in 1995.
  4. ^ There is evidence that Miłosz and Janina obtained a civil marriage certificate in Warsaw in 1944. World War II had separated Janina from her first husband, who was in London. This prevented them from obtaining a divorce, and they remained legally married. Miłosz and Janina had a church-sanctioned wedding in France in 1956 after her first husband died.
  5. Czesław may be pronounced /ˈtʃɛswɑːf/ or /ˈtʃɛslɑːf/ in American English, /ˈtʃɛslɔː/ or /ˈtʃɛswæf/ in British English.
  6. Franaszek claims Miłosz became an American citizen in 1962. Haven claims he became an American citizen in 1970.

References

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  2. Franaszek, Andrzej. Milosz: A Biography. pp. 183, 195–6.
  3. ^ Franaszek, Andrzej. Milosz: A Biography. p. 358.
  4. ^ Haven, Cynthia (2006). Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. pp. xxvii, 147. ISBN 1578068290.
  5. Kosińska, Agnieszka (2015). Miłosz w Krakowie. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Otwarte. ISBN 9788324038572.
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  10. "Czeslaw Milosz | Biography, Books, Nobel Prize, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  11. Napierkowski, Thomas J. (2005). "Does Anyone Know My Name? A History of Polish American Literature". Polish American Studies. 62 (2): 23–46. doi:10.2307/20148726. ISSN 0032-2806. JSTOR 20148726. S2CID 254440419. Aside from a few internationally acclaimed authors such as Czeslaw Milosz, W.S. Kuniczak, and Jerzy Kosinski...Polish Americans seem to have produced little literature of their own.
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Further reading

  • Baranczak, Stanislaw, Breathing Under Water and Other East European Essays, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0674081253
  • Cavanagh, Clare, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0300152968
  • Davie, Donald, Czesław Miłosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0870494833
  • Faggen, Robert, editor, Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996. ISBN 978-0374271008
  • Fiut, Aleksander, The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of Czesław Miłosz, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0520066892
  • Franaszek, Andrzej, Miłosz: A Biography, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0674495043
  • Golubiewski, Mikołaj, The Persona of Czesław Miłosz: Authorial Poetics, Critical Debates, Reception Games, Bern: Peter Lang, 2018. ISBN 978-3631762042
  • Grudzinska Gross, Irena, Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0300149371
  • Haven, Cynthia L., editor, Czesław Miłosz: Conversations, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006. ISBN 1-57806-829-0
  • Haven, Cynthia L., editor, An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0804011334
  • Kay, Magdalena, "Czesław Miłosz in the World: The Will to Transcendence", in A Companion to World Literature, John Wiley & Sons, 2020. ISBN 978-1118993187
  • Kraszewski, Charles, Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism, and Paganism in the Poetry of Czesław Miłosz, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-1443837613
  • Możejko, Edward, editor, Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of Czesław Miłosz, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0888641274
  • Nathan, Leonard, and Arthur Quinn, The Poet's Work: An Introduction to Czesław Miłosz, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0674689695
  • Rzepa, Joanna, Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. ISBN 978-3030615291
  • Tischner, Łukasz, Miłosz and the Problem of Evil, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0810130821
  • Zagajewski, Adam, editor, Polish Writers on Writing, San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1595340337

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1989
Neustadt International Prize for Literature Laureates
Righteous Among the Nations
Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust
Overview Righteous diploma
Notable individuals
Nations and groups
Related articles by country: Rescue of the Danish JewsRescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust
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