Czesław Miłosz ( ,
,
; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a
Polish-American
Polish Americans () are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 8.81 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.67% of the U.S. population, ...
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
__NOTOC__
Year 198 (CXCVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Gallus (or, less frequently, year 951 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 198 fo ...
. In its citation, the
Swedish Academy
The Swedish Academy (), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body t ...
called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts".
Miłosz survived the
German occupation of Warsaw during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
and became a cultural attaché for the Polish government during the postwar period. When
communist
Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
authorities threatened his safety, he defected to France and ultimately chose exile in the United States, where he became a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
. His poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and his appraisal of
Stalinism
Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...
in a prose book, ''
The Captive Mind'', brought him renown as a leading ''
émigré
An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social exile or self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French verb ''émigrer'' meaning "to emigrate".
French Huguenots
Many French Hugueno ...
'' 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
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
and personal experience. He wrote in Polish and English.
Miłosz died in
Kraków
, officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
, Poland, in 2004. He is interred in
Skałka
Basilica of Saints Michael the Archangel and Stanislaus the Bishop, also known as Skałka, which means "a small rock" in Polish, is a church situated on a small outcrop in Kraków atop of which a Pauline monastery is also located. The crypt ...
, 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 (),
Kovno Governorate
Kovno Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Kovno (Kaunas). It was formed on 18 December 1842 by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas I from the western part of Vilna Govern ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
(now
Kėdainiai district,
Kaunas County
Kaunas County () is one of ten counties of Lithuania. It is in the centre of the country, and its Capital (political), capital is Kaunas. On 1 July 2010, the county administration was abolished.
Symbols
The county's coat of arms can be blazoned ...
,
Lithuania
Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
). 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, , 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
The January Uprising was an insurrection principally in Russia's Kingdom of Poland that was aimed at putting an end to Russian occupation of part of Poland and regaining independence. It began on 22 January 1863 and continued until the last i ...
for Polish independence. Miłosz's grandmother, Stanisława, was a doctor's daughter from
Riga
Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...
,
Latvia
Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...
, and a member of the German-Polish von Mohl family. The Miłosz estate was in
Serbinai, a name that Miłosz's biographer 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, ', and a 1959 memoir, ''.'' In these works, he described the influence of his Catholic grandmother, Jozefa, his burgeoning love for literature, and his early awareness, as a member of the Polish gentry in Lithuania, of the role of class in society.
Miłosz's early years were marked by upheaval. When his father was hired to work on infrastructure projects in
Siberia
Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
, he and his mother traveled to be with him. After
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
broke out in 1914, Miłosz's father was conscripted into the Russian army, tasked with engineering roads and bridges for troop movements. Miłosz and his mother were sheltered in
Vilnius
Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...
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
The Polish–Soviet War (14 February 1919 – 18 March 1921) was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, following World War I and the Russian Revolution.
After the collapse ...
broke out in 1919, during which Miłosz's father was involved in a
failed attempt to incorporate the newly independent Lithuania into the
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...
, resulting in his expulsion from Lithuania and the family's move to what was then known as
Wilno
Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...
, 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 and a student poetry group called , along with the young poets
Jerzy Zagórski,
Teodor Bujnicki
Teodor Bujnicki (13 December 1907 – 27 November 1944) was a Polish poet and a member of the literary group ''Żagary''.
During World War II, Bujnicki was condemned for "collaboration with Soviet occupants" in Vilnius after Lithuania's incorporat ...
, ,
Jerzy Putrament, and .
[''Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of Czeslaw Milosz'' by Edward Możejko. University of Alberta Press, 1988. pp 2f.] His first published poems appeared in the university's student magazine in 1930.
In 1931, he visited Paris, where he first met his distant cousin,
Oscar Milosz
Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (; ) (28 May 1877 or 15 May 1877 – 2 March 1939) was a French language poet, playwright, novelist, essayist and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations.Czesław Miłosz, Cynthia L. Haven. Czesła ...
, a French-language poet of Lithuanian descent who had become a
Swedenborgian
The New Church (or Swedenborgianism) can refer to any of several historically related Christian denominations that developed under the influence of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). The Swedenborgian tradition is considered to ...
. 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, ', 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
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (24 December 179826 November 1855) was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He also largely influenced Ukra ...
. 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, , 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
The Polish Radio (PR; Polish: ''Polskie Radio'', PR) is a national public-service radio broadcasting organization of Poland, founded in 1925. It is owned by the State Treasury of Poland. On 27 December 2023, the Minister of Culture and Nationa ...
and met his future wife, (née Dłuska; 1909–1986), who was at the time married to another man.
World War II
Miłosz was in Warsaw when
it was bombarded as part of the
German invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...
in September 1939. Along with colleagues from Polish Radio, he escaped the city, making his way to
Lwów
Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...
. But when he learned that Janina had remained in Warsaw with her parents, he looked for a way back. The
Soviet invasion of Poland
The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...
thwarted his plans, and, to avoid the incoming
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
, he fled to
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
. There he obtained a Lithuanian identity document and Soviet visa that allowed him to travel by train to Kyiv and then Wilno. After the Red Army invaded Lithuania, he procured fake documents that he used to enter the part of German-occupied Poland the Germans had dubbed the "
General Government
The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...
". 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
''As You Like It'' is a pastoral Shakespearean comedy, comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wil ...
'' and
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
's ''
The Waste Land
''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United ...
'' into Polish. Along with his friend the novelist
Jerzy Andrzejewski
Jerzy Andrzejewski (; 19 August 1909 – 19 April 1983) was a prolific Polish writer. His works confront controversial moral issues such as betrayal, the Jews and Auschwitz in the wartime. His novels, ''Ashes and Diamonds'' (about the immediate ...
, he also arranged for the publication of his third volume of poetry, ', under a pseudonym in September 1940. The pseudonym was "Jan Syruć" and the title page said the volume had been published by a fictional press in Lwów in 1939; in fact, it may have been the first
clandestine book published in occupied Warsaw. In 1942, Miłosz arranged for the publication of an anthology of Polish poets, ''Invincible Song: Polish Poetry of War Time'', by an underground press.

Miłosz's riskiest underground wartime activity was aiding Jews in Warsaw, which he did through an underground socialist organization called Freedom. His brother, Andrzej, was also
active in helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland; in 1943, 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
The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...
. Miłosz helped at least three other Jews in similar ways: Felicja Wołkomińska and her brother and sister.
Despite his willingness to engage in underground activity and vehement opposition to the Nazis, Miłosz did not join the Polish
Home Army
The Home Army (, ; abbreviated AK) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) established in the ...
. 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
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
for failing to support it when it had the opportunity to do so.

As German troops began torching Warsaw buildings in August 1944, Miłosz was captured and held in a prisoner transit camp; he was later rescued by a Catholic nun—a stranger to him—who pleaded with the Germans on his behalf. Once freed, he and Janina escaped the city, ultimately settling in a village outside Kraków, where they were staying when the Red Army swept through Poland in January 1945, after
Warsaw had been largely destroyed.
In the preface to his 1953 book ''
The Captive Mind'', Miłosz wrote, "I do not regret those years in Warsaw, which was, I believe, the most agonizing spot in the whole of terrorized Europe. Had I then chosen emigration, my life would certainly have followed a very different course. But my knowledge of the crimes which Europe has witnessed in the twentieth century would be less direct, less concrete than it is". Immediately after the war, Miłosz published his fourth poetry collection, ''
Rescue
Rescue comprises responsive operations that usually involve the saving of life, removal from danger, liberation from restraint, or the urgent treatment of injury, injuries after an incident. It may be facilitated by a range of tools and equipm ...
''; 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", "", and "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto".
Diplomatic career
From 1945 to 1951, Miłosz served as a
cultural attaché
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
for the newly formed
People's Republic of Poland
The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic 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.
[Roe, Nicholas (9 November 2001)]
"A century's witness"
''The Guardian''. He moved from New York City to
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, and finally to Paris, organizing and promoting Polish cultural occasions such as musical concerts, art exhibitions, and literary and cinematic events. Although he was a representative of Poland, which had become a Soviet
satellite country behind the
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were countries connected to the So ...
, 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
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
,
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
,
Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...
,
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...
, and
W. H. Auden. He also translated into Polish Shakespeare's ''
Othello
''The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice'', often shortened to ''Othello'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare around 1603. Set in Venice and Cyprus, the play depicts the Moorish military commander Othello as he is manipulat ...
'' and the work of
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist; he also wrote two novels. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and world literature. Whitman incor ...
,
Carl Sandburg,
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...
, and others.
In 1947, Miłosz's son, Anthony, was born in Washington, D.C.
In 1948, Miłosz arranged for the Polish government to fund a Department of Polish Studies at
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
. Named for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by
Manfred Kridl, Miłosz's friend who was then on the faculty of
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...
, and produced a scholarly book about Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionar ...
, 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
Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...
, whom he met in the course of his duties.
As the Polish government, influenced by
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
, 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
McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a Fear mongering, campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage i ...
, 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
The right of asylum, sometimes called right of political asylum (''asylum'' ), is a juridical concept, under which people persecuted by their own rulers might be protected by another sovereignty, sovereign authority, such as a second country or ...
in France. After three months in hiding, he announced his defection at a press conference and in a ''Kultura'' article, "No", that explained his refusal to live in Poland or continue working for the Polish regime. He was the first artist of note from a communist country to make public his reasons for breaking ties with his government. His case attracted attention in Poland, where his work was banned and he was attacked in the press, and in the West, where prominent individuals voiced criticism and support. For example, the future Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, then a supporter of the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, attacked him in a communist newspaper as "The Man Who Ran Away". On the other hand,
Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...
, another future Nobel laureate, visited Miłosz and offered his support.
Another supporter during this period was the Swiss philosopher
Jeanne Hersch
Jeanne Hersch (13 July 1910 – 5 June 2000) was a Swiss philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin, whose works dealt with the concept of freedom. She was the daughter of Liebman Hersch.
Education and career
Hersch was born in 1910 in Geneva, Sw ...
, with whom Miłosz had a brief romantic affair.
Miłosz was finally reunited with his family in 1953, when Janina and the children joined him in France.
That same year saw the publication of ''The Captive Mind'', a nonfiction work that uses case studies to dissect the methods and consequences of Soviet communism, which at the time had prominent admirers in the West. The book brought Miłosz his first readership in the United States, where it was credited by some on the political left (such as
Susan Sontag
Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...
) with helping to change perceptions about communism. The German philosopher
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers (; ; 23 February 1883 – 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy. His 1913 work ''General Psychopathology'' influenced many ...
described it as a "significant historical document". It became a staple of political science courses and is considered a classic work in the study of
totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public s ...
.
Miłosz's years in France were productive. In addition to ''The Captive Mind'', he published two poetry collections (''Daylight (Miłosz), Daylight'' (1954) and ''A Treatise on Poetry'' (1957)), two novels (' (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
''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United ...
'', a work "so powerful that it bursts the bounds in which it was written—the bounds of language, geography, epoch". A long poem divided into four sections, ''A Treatise on Poetry'' surveys Polish history, recounts Miłosz's experience of war, and explores the relationship between art and history.
In 1956, Miłosz and Janina were married.
Life in the United States
University of California, Berkeley

In 1960, Miłosz was offered a position as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. With this offer, and with the climate of McCarthyism abated, he was able to move to the United States. He proved to be an adept and popular teacher, and was offered Academic tenure, 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 Doctor of Philosophy, 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, California, 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 ', which was published in English in 1965. American poets like W. S. Merwin, 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 V. Lalić, 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 (Miłosz), 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 degree, 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.
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 ' (1983).
Miłosz continued to publish work in Polish through his longtime publisher in Paris, including the poetry collections ''Hymn of the Pearl (Miłosz), 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 History of Poland (1945–1989), 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 Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, 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 ' (1997), and the collection of short prose ''Miłosz’s ABC’s'' (1997). Miłosz's last stand-alone volumes of poetry were ' (2000), and ''The Second Space'' (2002). Uncollected poems written afterward appeared in English in ''New and Selected Poems (Miłosz), New and Selected Poems'' (2004) and, posthumously, in ''Selected and Last Poems'' (2011).
Death
Czesław Miłosz died on 14 August 2004, at his Kraków home, aged 93. He was given a state funeral at the historic St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków, 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
Basilica of Saints Michael the Archangel and Stanislaus the Bishop, also known as Skałka, which means "a small rock" in Polish, is a church situated on a small outcrop in Kraków atop of which a Pauline monastery is also located. The crypt ...
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
In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Miłosz received the following awards:
* Polish PEN Translation Prize (1974)
*Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1976)
*Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1978)
*List of recipients of the National Medal of Arts, National Medal of Arts (United States, 1989)
*Robert Kirsch Award (1990)
*Order of the White Eagle (Poland), Order of the White Eagle (Poland, 1994)
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,
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, 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 citizenship, 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, Righteous Among the Nations" at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the The Holocaust, Holocaust, in recognition of his efforts to save Jews in Warsaw during World War II.
Miłosz has also been honored posthumously. The Parliament of Poland, 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

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 (Polish trade union), Solidarity movement there in the early 1980s. Lines from his poem "" 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 (writer), John Bayley wrote, "nationality is not a thing [Miłosz] 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 Church, 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 (journalist), 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
, officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
's historic
Skałka
Basilica of Saints Michael the Archangel and Stanislaus the Bishop, also known as Skałka, which means "a small rock" in Polish, is a church situated on a small outcrop in Kraków atop of which a Pauline monastery is also located. The crypt ...
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 poetry, 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 J. 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
Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...
, 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 ': "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 '), and T. S. Eliot, 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: ''A Treatise on Poetry, 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 (play), 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
* 2025: ''Poet in the New World--Poems, 1946-1953''; HarperCollins
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
* 1998: ''Un libro de cosas luminosas, Antología de poesía internacional'' (''A Book of Luminous Thing''); Boston: Mariner Books
* 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 Świrszczyńska, Anna Swir translated by Czesław Miłosz and Leonard Nathan, Copper Canyon Press
See also
*List of Poles#Poetry, List of Poles
*Polish literature
*List of Polish Nobel laureates
Notes
References
Further reading
* Baranczak, Stanislaw, ''Breathing Under Water and Other East European Essays'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.
*Cavanagh, Clare, ''Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
*Davie, Donald, ''Czesław Miłosz and the Insufficiency of Lyric,'' Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986.
* Faggen, Robert, editor, ''Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz,'' New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996.
*Fiut, Aleksander, ''The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
*Franaszek, Andrzej, ''Miłosz: A Biography,'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017.
*Golubiewski, Mikołaj, ''The Persona of Czesław Miłosz: Authorial Poetics, Critical Debates, Reception Games'', Bern: Peter Lang, 2018.
*Grudzinska Gross, Irena, ''Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
* Haven, Cynthia L., editor, ''Czesław Miłosz: Conversations,'' Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006.
* Haven, Cynthia L., editor, ''An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czesław Miłosz'', Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011.
*Kay, Magdalena, "Czesław Miłosz in the World: The Will to Transcendence", in ''A Companion to World Literature'', John Wiley & Sons, 2020.
*Kraszewski, Charles, ''Irresolute Heresiarch: Catholicism, Gnosticism, and Paganism in the Poetry of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.
*Możejko, Edward, editor, ''Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1988.
* Nathan, Leonard, and Arthur Quinn, ''The Poet's Work: An Introduction to'' ''Czesław Miłosz'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.
*Rzepa, Joanna, ''Modernism and Theology: Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Czesław Miłosz'', New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
*Tischner, Łukasz, ''Miłosz and the Problem of Evil'', Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015.
*Zagajewski, Adam, editor, ''Polish Writers on Writing,'' San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2007.
External links
Profiles
Profile of the poet at Culture.plCzesław Miłoszbiography and poetry on poezja.org
*
*
Profile at the American Academy of Poets Retrieved 2010-08-04
Profile and worksat the Poetry Foundation
Articles
*
Interview with Nathan Gardels for the ''New York Review of Books'', February 1986 Retrieved 2010-08-04
Retrieved 2010-08-04
Obituary ''The Economist'' Retrieved 2010-08-04
Retrieved 2010-08-04
Biography and selected works listing. The Book Institute Retrieved 2010-08-04
*hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.milosz, Czeslaw Milosz Papers. General Collection
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Yale University.
Biographies, memoirs, photographs
Czesław Miłosz- biography and poems at poezja.org
* Haven, Cynthia L.,
Czesław Miłosz: A California Life ''Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2021.''
*[http://www.sejm-wielki.pl/b/sw.10762 Genealogia Czesława Miłosza w: M.J. Minakowski, ''Genealogy descendants of the Great Diet'']
* Barbara Gruszka-Zych, ''Mój Poeta – osobiste wspomnienia o Czesławie Miłoszu'', VIDEOGRAF II,
''Milosz – the centenary since the birth''
Bibliography
Presentation of the subject-objectBibliography in question 1981–2010 (journal articles in chronological order, the title)Bibliography subject-object
Archives
* hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.milosz, Czesław Miłosz Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Milosz, Czeslaw
1911 births
2004 deaths
People from Kėdainiai District Municipality
People from Kovensky Uyezd
20th-century Polish nobility
American Nobel laureates
American Catholic poets
American translators
Vilnius University alumni
Polish dissidents
Polish Roman Catholic writers
Polish political writers
Polish male poets
Polish emigrants to the United States
Polish Nobel laureates
Polish Righteous Among the Nations
Polish–English translators
Exophonic writers
Polish defectors
Naturalized citizens of the United States
Catholic Righteous Among the Nations
Diplomats of the Polish People's Republic
Nike Award winners
Nobel laureates in Literature
Translators from Polish
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
20th-century translators
20th-century American poets
20th-century Polish poets
World War II poets
Polish prisoners of war
World War II prisoners of war held by Germany
Cultural attachés
Writers from Vilnius
People associated with Kultura (magazine)
Foreign members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts