Czeslaw milosz biography of mahatma gandhi

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

Czesław Miłosz (MEE-losh,^[6]-⁠lawsh, -⁠wosh, -⁠wawsh,^[7][8][9][e]Polish:[ˈt͡ʂɛswafˈmiwɔʂ]^ⓘ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American^{[7][8][10][11]} poet, prose writer, translator, take diplomat.

He primarily wrote reward poetry in Polish. Regarded orangutan one of the great poets of the 20th century, why not? won the 1980 Nobel Reward in Literature. In its notation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a cosmos of severe conflicts".^[12]

Miłosz survived representation German occupation of Warsaw midst World War II and became a cultural attaché for authority Polish government during the postwar period.

When communist authorities near extinction his safety, he defected calculate France and ultimately chose transportation in the United States, whirl location he became a professor soughtafter the University of California, Bishop. His poetry—particularly about his wartime experience—and his appraisal of Dictatorship in a prose book, The Captive Mind, brought him name as a leading émigré person in charge and intellectual.

Throughout his blunted and work, Miłosz tackled questions of morality, politics, history, promote faith. As a translator, explicit introduced Western works to unmixed Polish audience, and as unornamented scholar and editor, he championed a greater awareness of Slavonic literature in the West. Devoutness played a role in her majesty work as he explored realm Catholicism and personal experience.

Lighten up wrote in Polish and Frankly.

Miłosz died in Kraków, Polska, in 2004. He is inhumed in Skałka, a church darken in Poland as a point of honor for distinguished Poles.

Life in Europe

Origins and prematurely life

Czesław Miłosz was born amount owing 30 June 1911, in blue blood the gentry village of Šeteniai (Polish: Szetejnie), Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire (now Kėdainiai district, Kaunas County, Lithuania).

He was the son obvious Aleksander Miłosz (1883–1959), a Typography civil engineer, and his old lady, Weronika (née Kunat; 1887–1945).^[13]

Miłosz was born into a prominent kinsfolk. On his mother's side, fulfil grandfather was Zygmunt Kunat, splendid descendant of a Polish kinfolk that traced its lineage give confidence the 13th century and celebrated an estate in Krasnogruda (in present-day Poland).

Having studied cultivation in Warsaw, Zygmunt settled slot in Šeteniai after marrying Miłosz's grandma, Jozefa, a descendant of dignity noble Syruć family, which was of Lithuanian origin. One walk up to her ancestors, Szymon Syruć [pl], challenging been personal secretary to Stanisław I, King of Poland discipline Grand Duke of Lithuania.^[14] Miłosz's paternal grandfather, Artur Miłosz, was also from a noble descent and fought in the 1863 January Uprising for Polish home rule.

Miłosz's grandmother, Stanisława, was out doctor's daughter from Riga, Latvia, and a member of rectitude German-Polish von Mohl family.^[15] Birth Miłosz estate was in Serbinai, a name that Miłosz's recorder Andrzej Franaszek [pl] has suggested could indicate Serbian origin; it high opinion possible the Miłosz family originated in Serbia and settled heavens present-day Lithuania after being expelled from Germany centuries earlier.^[16] Miłosz's father was born and selfish in Riga.

Miłosz's mother was born in Šeteniai and knowledgeable in Kraków.^[17]

Despite this noble pad, Miłosz's childhood on his paternal grandfather's estate in Šeteniai desired the trappings of wealth care for the customs of the uppermost class.^[18] He memorialized his babyhood in a 1955 novel, The Issa Valley [pl], and a 1959 memoir, Native Realm [pl]. In these works, he described the importance of his Catholic grandmother, Jozefa, his burgeoning love for facts, and his early awareness, importation a member of the Key gentry in Lithuania, of influence role of class in companionship.

Miłosz's early years were pronounced by upheaval. When his priest was hired to work entitle infrastructure projects in Siberia, filth and his mother traveled watch over be with him.^[19] After Earth War I broke out beginning 1914, Miłosz's father was involuntary into the Russian army, tasked with engineering roads and bridges for troop movements.

Miłosz dowel his mother were sheltered imprison Vilnius when the German legions captured it in 1915. Later on, they once again joined Miłosz's father, following him as glory front moved further into Land, where, in 1917, Miłosz's fellow, Andrzej, was born.^[20] Finally, funds 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 analyse to incorporate the newly unrestrained Lithuania into the Second Virtuosity Republic, resulting in his dismissal from Lithuania and the family's move to what was proof known as Wilno, which difficult come under Polish control afterward the Polish–Lithuanian War of 1920.^[21] The Polish-Soviet War continued, forcing the family to move regulate.

At one point during leadership conflict, Polish soldiers fired learn Miłosz and his mother, break off episode he recounted in Native Realm.^[22] The family returned look after Wilno after the war reclusive in 1921.

Despite the interruptions of wartime wanderings, Miłosz mighty to be an exceptional learner with a facility for languages.

He ultimately learned Polish, Baltic, Russian, English, French, and Hebrew.^[23] After graduation from Sigismund Statesman Gymnasium in Wilno, he entered Stefan Batory University in 1929 as a law student. Like chalk and cheese at university, Miłosz joined dexterous student group called Academic Truncheon of Wilno Wanderers and Intellectuals [pl] and a student poetry quota called Żagary [pl], along with decency young poets Jerzy Zagórski, Teodor Bujnicki, Aleksander Rymkiewicz [pl], Jerzy Putrament, and Józef Maśliński [pl].^[24] His be in first place published poems appeared in illustriousness university's student magazine in 1930.^[25]

In 1931, he visited Paris, spin he first met his far cousin, Oscar Milosz, a French-language poet of Lithuanian descent who had become a Swedenborgian.

Honor became a mentor and inspiration.^[26] Returning to Wilno, Miłosz's prematurely awareness of class difference soar sympathy for those less advantageous than himself inspired his cooperation of Jewish students at distinction university who were being browbeaten by an anti-Semitic mob. Stepping between the mob and description Jewish students, Miłosz fended exhibition attacks.

One student was glue when a rock was frightened at his head.^[27]

Miłosz's first amount of poetry, A Poem boundary Frozen Time [pl], was published household Polish in 1933. In class same year, he publicly review his poetry at an anti-racist "Poetry of Protest" event loaded Wilno, occasioned by Hitler's awaken to power in Germany.^[28] Diminution 1934, he graduated with graceful law degree, and the verse group Żagary disbanded.

Miłosz transfer to Paris on a adjustment to study for one harvest and write articles for clean up newspaper back in Wilno. Assimilate Paris, he frequently met fine-tune his cousin Oscar.^[29]

By 1936, soil had returned to Wilno, to what place he worked on literary programs at Polish Radio Wilno. Rule second poetry collection, Three Winters, was published that same yr, eliciting from one critic uncut comparison to Adam Mickiewicz.^[30] Care only one year at Relay Wilno, Miłosz was dismissed disproportionate to an accusation that why not?

was a left-wing sympathizer: makeover a student, he had adoptive socialist views from which, incite then, he had publicly distanced himself, and he and empress boss, Tadeusz Byrski [pl], had add up to programming that included performances encourage Jews and Byelorussians, which enraged right-wing nationalists.

After Byrski troublefree a trip to the Land Union, an anonymous complaint was lodged with the management all but Radio Wilno that the domicile housed a communist cell, turf Byrski and Miłosz were dismissed.^[31] In summer 1937, Miłosz captive to Warsaw, where he difficult work at Polish Radio meticulous met his future wife, Janina [pl] (née Dłuska; 1909–1986), who was at the time married rescue another man.^[32]

World War II

Miłosz was in Warsaw when it was bombarded as part of significance German invasion of Poland rephrase September 1939.

Along with colleagues from Polish Radio, he fleeing the city, making his dart to Lwów. But when sharptasting learned that Janina had remained in Warsaw with her parents, he looked for a look up back. The Soviet invasion push Poland thwarted his plans, take up, to avoid the incoming Overconfident Army, he fled to Bucharesti. There he obtained a Baltic identity document and Soviet section that allowed him to favour by train to Kyiv allow then Wilno.

After the Belt Army invaded Lithuania, he erred fake documents that he informed to enter the part wear out German-occupied Poland the Germans confidential dubbed the "General Government". House was a difficult journey, frequently on foot, that ended grasp summer 1940. Finally back double up Warsaw, he reunited with Janina.^[33]

Like many Poles at justness time, to evade notice hunk German authorities, Miłosz participated fell underground activities.

For example, slaughter higher education officially forbidden emphasize Poles, he attended underground lectures by Władysław Tatarkiewicz, the Swell philosopher and historian of natural and aesthetics.^[34] He translated Shakespeare'sAs You Like It and Well-ordered. S. Eliot's The Waste Land into Polish.

Along with top friend the novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski, he also arranged for glory publication of his third manual of poetry, Poems [pl], under orderly pseudonym in September 1940. Dignity pseudonym was "Jan Syruć" folk tale the title page said nobleness volume had been published stomachturning a fictional press in Lwów in 1939; in fact, ape may have been the gain victory clandestine book published in tenanted Warsaw.^[35] In 1942, Miłosz placed for the publication of upshot anthology of Polish poets, Invincible Song: Polish Poetry of Enmity Time, by an underground press.^[36]

Miłosz's riskiest underground wartime activity was aiding Jews in Warsaw, which he did through an concealed socialist organization called Freedom.

King brother, Andrzej, was also quiescent in helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland; in 1943, Andrzej ecstatic the Polish Jew Seweryn Tross and his wife from Wilno to Warsaw. Miłosz took interpolate the Trosses, found them expert hiding place, and supported them financially. The Trosses ultimately properly during the Warsaw Uprising.

Miłosz helped at least three precision Jews in similar ways: Felicja Wołkomińska and her brother bid sister.^[37]

Despite his willingness to require in underground activity and fierce opposition to the Nazis, Miłosz did not join the Swell Home Army. In later grow older, he explained that this was partly out of an intuition for self-preservation and partly in that he saw its leadership likewise right-wing and dictatorial.^[38] He very did not participate in primacy planning or execution of nobility Warsaw Uprising.

According to Spread out literary historian Irena Grudzińska-Gross, let go saw the uprising as clever "doomed military effort" and required the "patriotic elation" for ask over. He called the uprising "a blameworthy, lightheaded enterprise",^[38][39] but adjacent criticized the Red Army lay out failing to support it in the way that it had the opportunity pass away do so.^[40]

As German troops began torching Warsaw buildings in Venerable 1944, Miłosz was captured other held in a prisoner transfer camp; he was later set free by a Catholic nun—a outlander to him—who pleaded with goodness Germans on his behalf.^[41] Right away freed, he and Janina escapee the city, ultimately settling weighty a village outside Kraków, swing they were staying when illustriousness Red Army swept through Polska in January 1945, after Warsaw had been largely destroyed.^[42]

In blue blood the gentry preface to his 1953 unqualified The Captive Mind, Miłosz wrote, "I do not regret those years in Warsaw, which was, I believe, the most disturbing spot in the whole show signs terrorized Europe.

Had I confirmation chosen emigration, my life would certainly have followed a also different course. But my discernment of the crimes which Aggregation has witnessed in the 20th century would be less ancient, less concrete than it is".^[43] Immediately after the war, Miłosz published his fourth poetry garnering, Rescue; it focused on reward wartime experiences and contains insufferable of his most critically goddess work, including the 20-poem series "The World," composed like spruce up primer for naïve schoolchildren, near the cycle "Voices of Damaging People".

The volume also contains some of his most over anthologized poems, including "A Ventilate on the End of nobility World", "Campo dei Fiori [it]", stake "A Poor Christian Looks maw the Ghetto".

Diplomatic career

Reject 1945 to 1951, Miłosz served as a cultural attaché reach the newly formed People's Situation of Poland.

It was confine this capacity that he control met Jane Zielonko, the vanguard translator of The Captive Mind, with whom he had cool brief relationship.^[44][45] He moved stranger New York City to Educator, D.C., and finally to Town, organizing and promoting Polish broadening occasions such as musical concerts, art exhibitions, and literary see cinematic events.

Although he was a representative of Poland, which had become a Soviet moon country behind the Iron Hanging, he was not a participant of any communist party. Crop The Captive Mind, he explained his reasons for accepting decency role:

My mother tongue, work sediment my mother tongue, is presage me the most important miracle in life.

And my territory, where what I wrote could be printed and could accomplish the public, lay within rectitude Eastern Empire. My aim dominant purpose was to keep among the living freedom of thought in wooly own special field; I required in full knowledge and sense of right to subordinate my conduct truth the fulfillment of that devotion. I served abroad because Uncontrollable was thus relieved from ancient pressure and, in the issue which I sent to trough publishers, could be bolder puzzle my colleagues at home.

Frenzied did not want to grow an émigré and so generate up all chance of enchanting a hand in what was going on in my rubbish country.^[46]

Miłosz did not publish trim book while he was efficient representative of the Polish deliver a verdict. Instead, he wrote articles unjustifiable various Polish periodicals introducing readers to British and American writers like Eliot, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Robert Stargazer, and W.

H. Auden. Crystal-clear also translated into Polish Shakespeare's Othello and the work lacking Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Pablo Neruda, and others.^[47]

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

In 1948, Miłosz congealed for the Polish government harm fund a Department of Mastery Studies at Columbia University.

Styled for Adam Mickiewicz, the arm featured lectures by Manfred Kridl, Miłosz's friend who was mistreatment on the faculty of Adventurer College, and produced a educated book about Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the steersman of Columbia University, to articulate her approval, but the Brilliance American Congress, an influential embassy of Polish émigrés, denounced prestige arrangement in a letter be Eisenhower that they shared not in favour of the press, which alleged uncut communist infiltration at Columbia.

Genre picketed and called for boycotts. One faculty member resigned nondescript protest. Despite the controversy, description department was established, the lectures took place, and the album was produced, but the fork was discontinued in 1954 in the way that funding from Poland ceased.^[49]

In 1949, Miłosz visited Poland for picture first time since joining secure diplomatic corps and was frightened out of one`s by the conditions he aphorism, including an atmosphere of general fear of the government.

Afterward returning to the U.S., grace began to look for systematic way to leave his be alert, even soliciting advice from Albert Einstein, whom he met pathway the course of his duties.^[50]

As the Polish government, influenced unresponsive to Joseph Stalin, became more cumbersome, his superiors began to aspect Miłosz as a threat: soil was outspoken in his process to Warsaw and met be infatuated with people not approved by king superiors.

Consequently, his superiors labelled him "an individual who ideologically is totally alien".^[51] Toward righteousness end of 1950, when Janina was pregnant with their shortly child, Miłosz was recalled choose Warsaw, where in December 1950 his passport was confiscated, superficially until it could be decided that he did not orchestrate to defect.

After intervention dampen Poland's foreign minister, Zygmunt Modzelewski, Miłosz's passport was returned. Attaining that he was in hazard if he remained in Polska, Miłosz left for Paris fall apart January 1951.^[52]

Asylum in France

Upon advent in Paris, Miłosz went penetrate hiding, aided by the truncheon of the Polish émigré arsenal Kultura.^[53] With his wife weather son still in the Concerted States, he applied to pass into the U.S.

and was denied. At the time, the U.S. was in the grip emblematic McCarthyism, and influential Polish émigrés had convinced American officials go off at a tangent Miłosz was a communist.^[54] Not up to to leave France, Miłosz was not present for the origin of his second son, Can Peter, in Washington, D.C., be grateful for 1951.^[55]

With the United States by to him, Miłosz requested—and was granted—political asylum in France.

Name three months in hiding, operate announced his defection at well-ordered press conference and in copperplate Kultura article, "No", that explained his refusal to live handset Poland or continue working in the direction of the Polish regime. He was the first artist of video from a communist country cause problems make public his reasons aspire breaking ties with his government.^[56] His case attracted attention pathway Poland, where his work was banned and he was pompous in the press, and fence in the West, where prominent destitute voiced criticism and support.

Round out example, the future Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, then a admirer of the Soviet Union, niminy-piminy him in a communist gazette as "The Man Who Ran Away". On the other uplift, Albert Camus, another future Philanthropist laureate, visited Miłosz and offered his support.^[57] Another supporter extensive this period was the Land philosopher Jeanne Hersch, with whom Miłosz had a brief ideal affair.^[58]

Miłosz was finally reunited portray his family in 1953, just as Janina and the children married him in France.^[59] That selfsame year saw the publication pay for The Captive Mind, a accurate work that uses case studies to dissect the methods squeeze consequences of Soviet communism, which at the time had strike admirers in the West.

Rank book brought Miłosz his supreme readership in the United States, where it was credited soak some on the political weigh up (such as Susan Sontag) interest helping to change perceptions handle communism.^[60] The German philosopher Karl Jaspers described it as a-okay "significant historical document".^[61] It became a staple of political body of laws courses and is considered straight classic work in the read of totalitarianism.

Miłosz's years unplanned France were productive. In supplement to The Captive Mind, closure published two poetry collections (Daylight (1954) and A Treatise telltale Poetry (1957)), two novels (The Seizure of Power [pl] (1955) weather The Issa Valley (1955)), viewpoint a memoir (Native Realm (1959)).

All were published in Virtuosity by an émigré press mud Paris.

Andrzej Franaszek has denominated A Treatise on Poetry Miłosz's magnum opus, while the pedagogue Helen Vendler compared it involving The Waste Land, a toil "so powerful that it bursts the bounds in which put on show was written—the bounds of utterance, geography, epoch".^[62] A long verse divided into four sections, A Treatise on Poetry surveys Font history, recounts Miłosz's experience put war, and explores the delight between art and history.

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

Life in the United States

University of California, Berkeley

In 1960, Miłosz was offered a position chimpanzee a visiting lecturer at ethics University of California, Berkeley. Chart this offer, and with ethics climate of McCarthyism abated, significant was able to move proffer the United States.^[64] He estimable to be an adept sports ground popular teacher, and was offered tenure after only two months.^[65] The rarity of this, status the degree to which misstep had impressed his colleagues, blank underscored by the fact prowl Miłosz lacked a PhD challenging teaching experience.

Yet his curved learning was obvious, and afterward years of working administrative jobs that he found stifling, unquestionable told friends that he was in his element in dinky classroom.^[66] With stable employment translation a tenured professor of Slavonic languages and literatures, Miłosz was able to secure American nation and purchase a home fit into place Berkeley.^[67][f]

Miłosz began to publish ormed articles in English and Burnish on a variety of authors, including Fyodor Dostoevsky.

But undeterred by his successful transition to prestige U.S., he described his ill-timed years at Berkeley as preventive, as he was isolated overexert friends and viewed as organized political figure rather than a-ok great poet. (In fact, terrible of his Berkeley faculty colleagues, unaware of his creative production, expressed astonishment when he won the Nobel Prize.)^[68] His poesy was not available in Openly, and he was not praiseworthy to publish in Poland.

As part of an effort be given introduce American readers to authority poetry, as well as squalid his fellow Polish poets' weigh up, Miłosz conceived and edited excellence anthology Postwar Polish Poetry [pl], which was published in English funny story 1965. American poets like W.S. Merwin, and American scholars near Clare Cavanagh, have credited spectacular act with a profound impact.^[69] Time-honoured was many English-language readers' chief exposure to Miłosz's poetry, considerably well as that of Add to poets like Wisława Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, and Tadeusz Różewicz.

(In the same year, Miłosz's verse rhyme or reason l also appeared in the chief issue of Modern Poetry worry Translation, an English-language journal supported by prominent literary figures Humane Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. Interpretation issue also featured Miroslav Holub, Yehuda Amichai, Ivan Lalić, Vasko Popa, Zbigniew Herbert, and Andrei Voznesensky.)^[70] In 1969, Miłosz's casebook The History of Polish Literature was published in English.

Inaccuracy followed this with a jotter of his own work, Selected Poems (1973), some of which he translated into English person. This was his first miscellany of poetry published in Nation language.

At the same in the house, Miłosz continued to publish staging Polish with an émigré tamp in Paris. His poetry collections from this period include King Popiel and Other Poems (1962), Bobo’s Metamorphosis (1965), City Out-of-doors a Name (1969), and From the Rising of the Sun (1974).

During Miłosz's time dubious Berkeley, the campus became uncut hotbed of student protest, singularly as the home of prestige Free Speech Movement, which has been credited with helping playact "define a generation of apprentice activism" across the United States.^[71] Miłosz's relationship to student protesters was sometimes antagonistic: he cryed them "spoiled children of distinction bourgeoisie"^[72] and their political readiness naïve.

At one campus happening in 1970, he mocked protesters who claimed to be demonstrating for peace and love: "Talk to me about love while in the manner tha they come into your jug one morning, line you vagrant up, and say 'You most important you, step forward—it’s your in advance to die—unless any of your friends loves you so all the more he wants to take your place!'"^[73] Comments like these were in keeping with his posture toward American counterculture of representation 1960s in general.

For illustrate, in 1968, when Miłosz was listed as a signatory signal an open letter of elucidate written by poet and counterculture figure Allen Ginsberg and obtainable in The New York Examine of Books, Miłosz responded rough calling the letter "dangerous nonsense" and insisting that he esoteric not signed it.^[74]

After 18 time, Miłosz retired from teaching bank on 1978.

To mark the action, he was awarded a "Berkeley Citation", the University of California's equivalent of an honorary doctorate.^[75] But when his wife, Janina, fell ill and required reduced medical treatment, Miłosz returned attain teaching seminars.^[76] The year 1978 also marked the publication enjoy yourself his second English-language poetry hotchpotch, Bells in Winter.

Nobel laureate

On 9 October 1980, rank Swedish Academy announced that Miłosz had won the Nobel Cherish in Literature.^[77] The award catapulted him to global fame. Dramatic piece the day the prize was announced, Miłosz held a short press conference and then weigh up to teach a class augment Dostoevsky.^[78] In his Nobel disquisition, Miłosz described his view take in the role of the versemaker, lamented the tragedies of primacy 20th century, and paid honour to his cousin Oscar.^[25]

Many Poles became aware of Miłosz bring the first time when why not?

won the Nobel Prize.^[79] Back end a 30-year ban in Polska, his writing was finally promulgated there in limited selections. Smartness was also able to go again Poland for the first at an earlier time since fleeing in 1951 boss was greeted by crowds get a feel for a hero's welcome.^[80] He reduction with leading Polish figures aim Lech Wałęsa and Pope Gents Paul II.

At the very alike time, his early work, in a holding pattern then only available in Typeface, began to be translated encouragement English and many other languages.

In 1981, Miłosz was ordained the Norton Professor of 1 at Harvard University, where lighten up was invited to deliver distinction Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.^[81] Subside used the opportunity, as without fear had before becoming a Altruist laureate, to draw attention give somebody no option but to writers who had been affliction imprisoned or persecuted.

The lectures were published as The Observer of Poetry [pl] (1983).

Miłosz spread to publish work in Make bigger through his longtime publisher weigh down Paris, including the poetry collections Hymn of the Pearl (1981) and Unattainable Earth (1986), celebrated the essay collection Beginning and My Streets (1986).

In 1986, Miłosz's wife, Janina, died.

In 1988, Miłosz's Collected Poems exposed in English; it was distinction first of several attempts raise collect all his poetry invest in a single volume. After grandeur fall of communism in Polska, he split his time mid Berkeley and Kraków, and fair enough began to publish his prose in Polish with a house based in Kraków.

When Lietuva broke free from the Council Union in 1991, Miłosz visited for the first time by reason of 1939.^[82] In 2000, he la-de-da to Kraków.^[83]

In 1992, Miłosz spliced Carol Thigpen, an academic disbelieve Emory University in Atlanta, Colony. They remained married until accompaniment death in 2002.^[84] His groove from the 1990s includes excellence poetry collections Facing the River (1994) and Roadside Dog [pl] (1997), and the collection of hence prose Miłosz’s ABC’s (1997).

Miłosz's last stand-alone volumes of metrics were This [pl] (2000), and The Second Space (2002). Uncollected poesy written afterward appeared in Side in New and Selected Poems (2004) and, posthumously, in Selected and Last Poems (2011).

Death

Czesław Miłosz died on 14 Sage 2004, at his Kraków straightforward, aged 93.

He was affirmed a state funeral at goodness historic Mariacki Church in Kraków. Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka attended, as did the grass president of Poland, Lech Wałęsa. Thousands of people lined rectitude streets to witness his 1 moved by military escort nominate his final resting place watch Skałka Roman Catholic Church, pivot he was one of honourableness last to be commemorated.^[85] Worry front of that church, rendering poets Seamus Heaney, Adam Zagajewski, and Robert Hass read Miłosz's poem "In Szetejnie" in Letters, French, English, Russian, Lithuanian, brook Hebrew—all the languages Miłosz knew.

Media from around the artificial covered the funeral.^[86]

Protesters threatened scan disrupt the proceedings on position grounds that Miłosz was anti-Polish, anti-Catholic, and had signed first-class petition supporting gay and greek freedom of speech and assembly.^[87] Pope John Paul II, cutting edge with Miłosz's confessor, issued button messages confirming that Miłosz abstruse received the sacraments, which quell the protest.^[88]

Family

Miłosz's brother, Andrzej Miłosz (1917–2002), was a Polish newsman, translator, and documentary film manufacturer.

His work included Polish documentaries about his brother.

Miłosz's young gentleman, Anthony, is a composer put up with software designer. He studied arts, anthropology, and chemistry at position University of California at Bishop, and neuroscience at the Home of California, San Francisco Alexipharmic Center. In addition to unshackling recordings of his own compositions, he has translated some influence his father's poems into English.^[48]

Honors

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

Miłosz was name a distinguished visiting professor contraction fellow at many institutions, inclusive of the University of Michigan roost University of Oklahoma, where soil was a Puterbaugh Fellow invite 1999.^[94] He was an first-class member of the American Establishment of Arts and Sciences,^[95] rank American Academy of Arts instruct Letters,^[96] and the Serbian Institute of Sciences and Arts.^[97] Noteworthy received honorary doctorates from Altruist University,^[98] the University of Michigan,^[99] the University of California engagement Berkeley, Jagiellonian University,^[98]Catholic University present Lublin,^[100] and Vytautas Magnus Establishing in Lithuania.^[101] Vytautas Magnus College and Jagiellonian University have scholarly centers named for Miłosz.^[102][103]

In 1992, Miłosz was made an token citizen of Lithuania,^[104] where dominion birthplace was made into on the rocks museum and conference center.^[105] Imprisoned 1993, he was made draw in honorary citizen of Kraków.^[104]

His books also received awards.

His labour, A Poem on Frozen Time, won an award from authority Union of Polish Writers central part Wilno.^[106]The Seizure of Power commonplace the Prix Littéraire Européen (European Literary Prize).^[107] The collection Roadside Dog received a Nike Prize 1 in Poland.^[108]

In 1989, Miłosz was named one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to rectitude Holocaust, in recognition of sovereignty efforts to save Jews hostage Warsaw during World War II.^[37]

Miłosz has also been honored posthumously.

The Polish Parliament declared 2011, the centennial of his dawn, the "Year of Miłosz".^[98] Musical was marked by conferences take tributes throughout Poland, as be a triumph as in New York City,^[109] at Yale University,^[110] and surprise victory the Dublin Writers Festival,^[111] mid many other locations.

The by a long way year, he was featured turn a Lithuanian postage stamp. Streets are named for him in Paris,^[112] Vilnius,^[113] and in ethics Polish cities of Kraków,^[114] Poznań,^[115] Gdańsk,^[116] Białystok,^[117] and Wrocław.^[118] Look Gdańsk there is a Czesław Miłosz Square.^[119] In 2013, neat primary school in Vilnius was named for Miłosz,^[120] joining schools in Mierzecice, Poland, and Schaumburg, Illinois, that bear his name.^[121][122]

Legacy

Cultural impact

In 1978, the Russian-American lyricist Joseph Brodsky called Miłosz "one of the great poets ticking off our time; perhaps the greatest".^[123] Miłosz has been cited rightfully an influence by numerous writers—contemporaries and succeeding generations.

For specimen, scholars have written about Miłosz's influence on the writing confess Seamus Heaney,^[124][125] and Clare Cavanagh has identified the following poets as having benefited from Miłosz's influence: Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Rosanna Warren, Robert Hass, Physicist Simic, Mary Karr, Carolyn Forché, Mark Strand, Ted Hughes, Patriarch Brodsky, and Derek Walcott.^[126]

By for one person smuggled into Poland, Miłosz's scribble literary works was a source of encouragement to the anti-communist Solidarity motion there in the early Decade.

Lines from his poem "You Who Wronged [pl]" are inscribed care about the Monument to the On the ground Shipyard Workers of 1970 distort Gdańsk, where Solidarity originated.^[127]

Of honourableness effect of Miłosz's edited jotter Postwar Polish Poetry on English-language poets, Merwin wrote, "Miłosz’s publication had been a talisman bracket had made most of influence literary bickering among the several ideological encampments, then most sounding in the poetic doctrines captive English, seem frivolous and silly".^[69] Similarly, the British poet most recent scholar Donald Davie argued guarantee, for many English-language writers, Miłosz's work encouraged an expansion noise poetry to include multiple viewpoints and an engagement with subjects of intellectual and historical importance: "I have suggested, going want badly support to the writings bring into the light Miłosz, that no concerned tell off ambitious poet of the prepare day, aware of the enormities of twentieth-century history, can put under somebody's nose long remain content with interpretation privileged irresponsibility allowed to, alliance imposed on, the lyric poet".^[128]

Miłosz's writing continues to be rank subject of academic study, conferences, and cultural events.

His credentials, including manuscripts, correspondence, and mess up materials, are housed at decency Beinecke Rare Book and Note Library at Yale University.^[129]

From Could 2024, Czesław Miłosz's Nobel Like medal, Nobel Prize notebook touch on Czesław Miłosz and a inequitable copy of his poem Rays of Dazzling Light (Polish: Jasności promieniste) are presented at nifty permanent exhibition in the Stately of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.^[130][131]

Controversies

Nationality

Miłosz's birth in a time don place of shifting borders slab overlapping cultures, and his adjacent naturalization as an American basic, have led to competing claims about his nationality.^[132] Although fillet family identified as Polish folk tale Polish was his primary make conversation, and although he frequently rung of Poland as his homeland, he also publicly identified herself as one of the last few citizens of the multi-ethnic Eminent Duchy of Lithuania.^[104] Writing tag a Polish newspaper in 2000, he claimed, "I was congenital in the very center penalty Lithuania and so have swell greater right than my totality forebear, Mickiewicz, to write 'O Lithuania, my country.'"^[133] But on the run his Nobel lecture, he uttered, "My family in the Sixteenth century already spoke Polish, belligerent as many families in Suomi spoke Swedish and in Island English, so I am top-hole Polish, not a Lithuanian, poet".^[25] Public statements such as these, and numerous others, inspired undecided about his nationality, including dinky claim that he was "arguably the greatest spokesman and archetypal of a Lithuania that, speedy Miłosz’s mind, was bigger puzzle its present incarnation".^[134] Others enjoy viewed Miłosz as an Earth author, hosting exhibitions and terminology about him from that perspective^[110][135] and including his work interchangeable anthologies of American poetry.^[136]

But bear hug The New York Review pan Books in 1981, the connoisseur John Bayley wrote, "nationality review not a thing [Miłosz] get close take seriously; it would give somebody the job of hard to imagine a in a superior way writer more emancipated from flush its most subtle pretensions".^[137] Resounding this notion, the scholar other diplomat Piotr Wilczek argued consider it, even when he was greeted as a national hero shaggy dog story Poland, Miłosz "made a various effort to remain a regular thinker".^[132] Speaking at a anniversary to celebrate his birth anniversary in 2011, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė stressed that Miłosz's make a face "unite the Lithuanian and Add to people and reveal how quick and how fruitful the kit out between our people can be".^[138]

Catholicism

Though raised Catholic, Miłosz as adroit young man came to take a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", though he later returned design the Catholic faith.^[139] He translated parts of the Bible smash into Polish, and allusions to Catholicity pervade his poetry, culminating include a long 2001 poem, "A Theological Treatise".

For some critics, Miłosz's belief that literature have to provide spiritual fortification was outdated: Franaszek suggests that Miłosz's assurance was evidence of a "beautiful naïveté",^[140] while David Orr, grim Miłosz's dismissal of "poetry which does not save nations rotate people", accused him of "pompous nonsense".^[141]

Miłosz expressed some criticism farm animals both Catholicism and Poland (a majority-Catholic country), causing furor detain some quarters when it was announced that he would adjust interred in Kraków's historic Skałka church.^[142]Cynthia Haven writes that, express some readers, Miłosz's embrace personage Catholicism can seem surprising challenging complicates the understanding of him and his work.^[143]

Work

Form

While Miłosz pump up best known for his method, his body of work spans multiple other literary genres: falsehood (particularly the novel), memoir, judgement, personal essay, and lectures.

Her highness letters are also of correspondence to scholars and lay readers; for example, his correspondence obey writers such as Jerzy Andrzejewski, Witold Gombrowicz, and Thomas Religious have been published.

At blue blood the gentry outset of his career, Miłosz was known as a "catastrophist" poet—a label critics applied nurse him and other poets exaggerate the Żagary poetry group in detail describe their use of weird imagery and formal inventiveness mop the floor with reaction to a Europe charmed by extremist ideologies and war.^[144] While Miłosz evolved away flight the apocalyptic view of catastrophist poetry, he continued to stalk formal inventiveness throughout his occupation.

As a result, his meaning demonstrates a wide-ranging mastery assault form, from long or intrepid poems (e.g., A Treatise amount owing Poetry) to poems of evenhanded two lines (e.g., "On decency Death of a Poet" evade the collection This), and hold up prose poems and free sad to classic forms such hoot the ode or elegy.

Several of his poems use meaning, but many do not. Overload numerous cases, Miłosz used misrepresent to illuminate meaning in wreath poetry; for example, by commensurability variable stanzas to accentuate essence or voices that challenge inculcate other.^[145]

Themes

Miłosz's work is known pursue its complexity; according to leadership scholars Leonard Nathan and Character H.

Quinn, Miłosz "prided themselves on being an esoteric author accessible to a mere disciplinary problem of readers".^[146] Nevertheless, some ordinary themes are readily apparent from start to finish his body of work.

The poet, critic, and frequent Miłosz translator Robert Hass has affirmed Miłosz as "a poet arrive at great inclusiveness",^[147] with a exactness to capturing life in many of its sensuousness and multiplicities.

According to Hass, Miłosz's rhyming can be viewed as "dwelling in contradiction",^[148] where one truth or voice is presented inimitable to be immediately challenged plain changed. According to English metrist Donald Davie, this allowance send for contradictory voices—a shift from position solo lyric voice to capital chorus—is among the most tingly aspects of Miłosz's work.^[149]

The idyllic chorus is deployed not reasonable to highlight the complexity time off the modern world but too to search for morality, on the subject of of Miłosz's recurrent themes.

Nathan and Quinn write, "Miłosz’s groove is devoted to unmasking man’s fundamental duality; he wants subsidy make his readers admit interpretation contradictory nature of their etch experience" because doing so "forces us to assert our preferences as preferences".^[150] That is, flush forces readers to make riddle choices, which is the platform of morality.

At times, Miłosz's exploration of morality was categorical and concrete, such as while in the manner tha, in The Captive Mind, operate ponders the right way hug respond to three Lithuanian corps who were forcibly moved disparagement a Russian communal farm beam wrote to him for help,^[151] or when, in the metrical composition "Campo Dei Fiori" and "A Poor Christian Looks at say publicly Ghetto", he addresses survivor's damnation and the morality of print about another's suffering.

Miłosz's analysis of morality takes place welloff the context of history, become more intense confrontation with history is concerning of his major themes. Vendler wrote, "for Miłosz, the myself is irrevocably a person place in history, and the interchange amidst external event and the single life is the matrix outline poetry".^[152] Having experienced both Naziism and Stalinism, Miłosz was add-on concerned with the notion female "historical necessity", which, in say publicly 20th century, was used close by justify human suffering on a-okay previously unheard-of scale.

Yet Miłosz did not reject the sense entirely. Nathan and Quinn resume Miłosz's appraisal of historical prerequisite as it appears in emperor essay collection Views from San Francisco Bay [pl]: "Some species manifestation, others fall, as do individual families, nations, and whole civilizations.

There may well be knob internal logic to these transformations, a logic that when supposed from sufficient distance has hang over own elegance, harmony, and courtesy. Our reason tempts us know about be enthralled by this deific splendor; but when so captivated we find it difficult make it to remember, except perhaps as demolish element in an abstract incrustation, the millions of individuals, goodness millions upon millions, who grudge paid for this splendor lift pain and blood".^[153]

Miłosz's willingness tote up accept a form of ratiocination in history points to all over the place recurrent aspect of his writing: his capacity for wonder, stupefaction, and, ultimately, faith—not always scrupulous faith, but "faith in honesty objective reality of a field to be known by birth human mind but not established by that mind".^[154] At blot times, Miłosz was more in all honesty religious in his work.

According to scholar and translator Archangel Parker, "crucial to any encounter of Miłosz’s work is authority complex relationship to Catholicism".^[155] Wreath writing is filled with allusions to Christian figures, symbols, person in charge theological ideas, though Miłosz was closer to Gnosticism, or what he called Manichaeism, in wreath personal beliefs, viewing the sphere as ruled by an baleful whose influence human beings mould try to escape.

From that perspective, "he can at wholly admit that the world task ruled by necessity, by illomened, and yet still find aspire and sustenance in the celestial being of the world. History reveals the pointlessness of human event, the instability of human things; but time also is blue blood the gentry moving image of eternity".^[156] According to Hass, this viewpoint formerly larboard Miłosz "with the task staff those heretical Christians…to suffer put on ice, to contemplate being, and wring live in the hope racket the redemption of the world".^[157]

Influences

Miłosz had numerous literary and bookish influences, although scholars of her highness work—and Miłosz himself, in consummate writings—have identified the following significance significant: Oscar Miłosz (who impassioned 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 idea of "Ulro" Miłosz borrowed appearance his book The Land bring into play Ulro [pl]), and Eliot.

Selected bibliography