Czesław Miłosz

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Czesław Miłosz in September 1999

Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004), Cracow (Poland), December 1998

Czesław Miłosz([pronunciation] ([Media helphelp]·[info])); (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004) was a Polish poet and essayist. Czesław Miłosz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, when he lived in California. He spent the last days of his life in Kraków, Poland.

He was born in Šeteniai, Lithuania and always underlined his connection to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Miłosz studied law at the University in Vilnius. His childhood was spent partly in Russia around the time of the Revolution.

In 1944 he refused to take part in the Warsaw Uprising.

A diplomat for the communist People's Republic of Poland, he broke with the government in 1951 and sought political asylum in France. In 1953 he received the Prix Littéraire Européen, a European literature prize.

In 1960, he came to the United States, but it wasn't until 1970 that he became a naturalized citizen. In 1961 he became a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired in 1978 but continued to teach there. When the Iron Curtain fell he was able to return to Poland.

Czeslaw Milosz received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in 1989.

In addition to his poetry, his book The Captive Mind is considered one of the finest studies of the condition of the intellectual under repressive regimes. In this book, he observed that the intellectuals who became dissidents were not necessarily the ones with the strongest minds, but those with the weakest stomachs. The mind can rationalize anything, he said, but the stomach can only take so much.

He also said that as a poet he avoided touching his nation's wounds for fearing of making them holy.

He also founded a school of Polish Poetry.

Czesław Miłosz is honored at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust as one of the "Righteous Among The Nations."

His poems were put on the monuments of fallen shipyard workers in Gdańsk. Many of his books and poems have been translated into English by his friend and Berkeley colleague Robert Hass.

Miłosz died in 2004 at his home in Kraków at age 93. His first wife, Janina, died in 1986. His second wife, Carol, a U.S.-born historian, died in 2002.

Lubicz Coat of Arms

Works

• Kompozycja (1930)
• Podróż (1930)
• Poemat o czasie zastygłym (1933)
• Trzy zimy / Three Winters (1936)
• Obrachunki
• Wiersze / Verses (1940)
• Pieśń niepodległa (1942)
• Ocalenie / Rescue (1945)
• Traktat moralny / A Moral Treatise (1947)
• Zniewolony umysł / The Captive Mind (1953)
• Zdobycie władzy / The Seizure of Power (1953)
• Światło dzienne / The Light of Day (1953)
• Dolina Issy / The Issa Valley (1955)
• Traktat poetycki / A Poetical Treatise (1957)
• Rodzinna Europa / Native Realm (1958)
• Kontynenty (1958)
• Człowiek wśród skorpionów (1961)
• Król Popiel i inne wiersze / King Popiel and Other Poems (1961)
• Gucio zaczarowany / Gucio Enchanted (1965)
• Widzenia nad Zatoką San Francisco / A View of San Francisco Bay (1969)
• Miasto bez imienia / City Without a Name (1969)
• The History of Polish Literature (1969)
• Prywatne obowiązki / Private Obligations (1972)
• Gdzie słońce wschodzi i kiedy zapada / Where the Sun Rises and Where It Sets (1974)
• Ziemia Ulro / The Land of Ulro (1977)
• Ogród nauk / The Garden of Science (1979)
• Hymn o perle / The Poem of the Pearl (1982)
• The Witness of Poetry (1983)
• Nieobjęta ziemio / The Unencompassed Earth (1984)
• Kroniki / Chronicles (1987)
• Dalsze okolice / Farther Surroundings (1991)
• Zaczynając od moich ulic / Starting from My Streets (1985)
• Metafizyczna pauza / The Metaphysical Pause (1989)
• Poszukiwanie ojczyzny (1991)
• Rok myśliwego (1991)
• Na brzegu rzeki / Facing the River (1994)
• Szukanie ojczyzny / In Search of a Homeland (1992)
• Legendy nowoczesności / Modern Legends (1996)
• Życie na wyspach / Life on Islands (1997)
• Piesek przydrożny / Roadside Dog (1997)
• Abecadlo Miłosza / Milosz's Alphabet (1997)
• Inne Abecadło / A Further Alphabet (1998)
• Wyprawa w dwudziestolecie / An Excursion through the Twenties and Thirties (1999)
• To / It (2000)
• Orfeusz i Eurydyka (2003)
• O podróżach w czasie / On Time Travel (2004)

Books on or relating to

• Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz, edited by Robert Faggen (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996)

External links

• [Milosz.pl] — official website of Czesław Miłosz (Polish)
• [Czesław Miłosz, Poet and Nobelist Who Wrote of Modern Cruelties, Dies at 93] (New York Times)
• [Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz dies] (CBC News)
• [Nobel laureate poet Miłosz dies] (BBC News)
• [Czesław Miłosz Obituary] (The Economist)
• [Nobel poet Czesław Miłosz of Poland and Berkeley, one of the icons of the Solidarity movement, dies] (UC Berkeley Press Release)
• Open Directory Project: [Czesław Miłosz]
• [Biography of Czesław Miłosz]
• [Miłosz reading his poems in English and in Polish] [at the Internet Poetry Archive] [on ibiblio.org]
• [Miłosz reading his poems in English at UC Berkeley, February 3, 2000] (online audio file)
• [Miłosz reading his poems in English at UC Berkeley, April 4, 1983 (with Robert Hass and Robert Pinksy] (online audio file)
• Information relating to Miłosz as the winner of the [1980 Nobel Prize in Literature] (official site)

[[zh-min-nan:Czesław Miłosz]]

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