Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Czeslaw Milosz" - New World
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Born to a Polish-speaking family living in Lithuania, Milosz studied law in its capital city, Wilno, (today, Vilnius), a meeting point between East and West. In the ancient city, Lithunians, Poles, Byelorussians, and Tartars, Christians, Jews, and Muslims intermingled peacefully. | Born to a Polish-speaking family living in Lithuania, Milosz studied law in its capital city, Wilno, (today, Vilnius), a meeting point between East and West. In the ancient city, Lithunians, Poles, Byelorussians, and Tartars, Christians, Jews, and Muslims intermingled peacefully. | ||
| − | Yet Milosz, like other Central Europeans who had experienced at close range the impact of the first World War and of the rise of | + | Yet Milosz, like other Central Europeans who had experienced at close range the impact of the first World War and of the rise of Communism in nearby Russia, felt a sense of foreboding, of impending catastrophe. |
His first published poems, a 1933 volume entitled Poem of Frozen Time (Poemat o czasie zastyglym), deal with the imminence of yet another war and the worldwide cataclysm that it portends. | His first published poems, a 1933 volume entitled Poem of Frozen Time (Poemat o czasie zastyglym), deal with the imminence of yet another war and the worldwide cataclysm that it portends. | ||
| − | When the Nazis did invade Poland, Milosz moved | + | When the Nazis did invade Poland, Milosz moved to Warsaw to join the resistance. There he edited an underground anthology of Polish wartime poetry, Independent Song (Pien niepodlegla, 1942). The defeat of Poland and the tragic fate of the Poles and Jews surrounding him were deeply burned into his life. He personally witnessed the end of the walled Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. |
| − | In response to the horror, Milosz offered “The World (A Naive Poem)” (1943) . Reaching beyond the intensity of the suffering that penetrated his life, Milosz helped his readers sense divine promise within ordinary things, a presence that suggests that evil in the world is not an expression of its innermost nature and will pass. | + | In response to the horror, Milosz offered “The World (A Naive Poem)” (1943). Reaching beyond the intensity of the suffering that penetrated his life, Milosz helped his readers sense divine promise within ordinary things, a presence that suggests that evil in the world is not an expression of its innermost nature and will pass. |
After the war, Milosz, then a socialist, joined the Polish diplomatic corps. He served in New York and Washington DC before being sent to Paris where he asked for political asylum in 1951. Stalinism had increased its hold on Poland. In France, Milosz published The Captive Mind (Zniewolony Umysl), a critique of the Polish Communist Party’s assault on the independence of the intelligentsia. | After the war, Milosz, then a socialist, joined the Polish diplomatic corps. He served in New York and Washington DC before being sent to Paris where he asked for political asylum in 1951. Stalinism had increased its hold on Poland. In France, Milosz published The Captive Mind (Zniewolony Umysl), a critique of the Polish Communist Party’s assault on the independence of the intelligentsia. | ||
| − | Governments can use more than censorship to control people; they can even | + | Governments can use more than censorship to control people; they can even change the meaning of words, Milosz reminds us. The intensity of the struggle for an authentic history and culture makes those in Central Europe especially mindful of the value of history. It is no exaggeration to say, as Milosz does in his History of Polish Literature, that “a sense of history is a specific contribution of our geographic area of the world to literature.” |
| + | |||
In the early 1960s, Milosz left Paris to become professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1970, he became a United States citizen. He is not often thought of as a commentator on American politics and culture, but in Visions from San Francisco Bay, he talks at length about America in the 1960s. | In the early 1960s, Milosz left Paris to become professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1970, he became a United States citizen. He is not often thought of as a commentator on American politics and culture, but in Visions from San Francisco Bay, he talks at length about America in the 1960s. | ||
| − | Milosz frequently experienced his life as one of exile; not only because of the years in which he was separated from his native land, but in the larger sense that the human condition as he knew it was one in which all humanity endures metaphysical or even religious exile. This spiritual awareness touched every dimension of his life, and he wrote of The Unattainable Earth (Nieobjeta Ziemia). | + | Milosz frequently experienced his life as one of exile; not only because of the years in which he was separated from his native land, but in the larger sense that the human condition as he knew it was one in which all humanity endures metaphysical or even religious exile. This spiritual awareness touched every dimension of his life, and he wrote of The Unattainable Earth (Nieobjeta Ziemia). The longing awoken by an intimate, pure, and unconcious childhood bond with nature, one that almost spontaneously identified with the entire world, could not be fulfilled. |
| − | In The Land of Ulro, | + | In The Land of Ulro, Milosz writes about his relationship with nature in order to talk about good and evil, “When my guardian angel...is triumphant, the earth looks precious to me and I live in ecstasy...surrounded by divine protection...my dreams are of magically rich landscapes, and I forget about death, because whether it comes in a month or five years it will be done as it was decreed, not by the God of the philosophers but by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When the Devil triumphs, I am appalled...I look at trees in bloom as they blindly repeat...what has been willed by the law of natural selection...I am oppressed by the randomness and absurdity of my individual existence...and then the terror: my life is over, I won’t get another, only death now.” |
Milosz was much influenced by William Blake (Ulro is Blake’s creation), Emanuel Swedenborg, and Milosz’ cousin, poet and mystic Oscar Milosz. | Milosz was much influenced by William Blake (Ulro is Blake’s creation), Emanuel Swedenborg, and Milosz’ cousin, poet and mystic Oscar Milosz. | ||
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Throughout his life, he remained deeply involved in Polish letter. In his later years, he translated the writing of Polish authors largely unknown in the West such as Alexander Wat, a man whose time in Communist concentration camps produced a profoundly honest theological and literary voice. Wat’s autobiography, My Century, was edited from conversations between Milosz and Wat. | Throughout his life, he remained deeply involved in Polish letter. In his later years, he translated the writing of Polish authors largely unknown in the West such as Alexander Wat, a man whose time in Communist concentration camps produced a profoundly honest theological and literary voice. Wat’s autobiography, My Century, was edited from conversations between Milosz and Wat. | ||
| − | During his lifetime, Milosz received many honors. He is listed at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial to the holocaust as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” His poems were placed on a monument to fallen shipyard workers in Gdansk. He received the Prix Litteraire European (1953), the Marian Kister Award (1967), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), the Neustadt International Prize (1978), and National Medal of Arts (1989). He was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Institute of Arts and Letters (1982). He was granted | + | During his lifetime, Milosz received many honors. He is listed at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial to the holocaust as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” His poems were placed on a monument to fallen shipyard workers in Gdansk. He received the Prix Litteraire European (1953), the Marian Kister Award (1967), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), the Neustadt International Prize (1978), and National Medal of Arts (1989). He was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (date) and of the American Institute of Arts and Letters (1982). He was granted four (?) honorary doctorates and held the Eliot Norton chair at Harvard. |
Milosz’ first wife, Janina Dluska, the mother of his two sons, Anthony and John Peter, died in 1986. Milosz’ second wife, Carol, an American-born historian, passed away in 2001. | Milosz’ first wife, Janina Dluska, the mother of his two sons, Anthony and John Peter, died in 1986. Milosz’ second wife, Carol, an American-born historian, passed away in 2001. | ||
Revision as of 00:43, 3 May 2007
| 200px Czesław Miłosz, Kraków, December 1998. | |
| Born: | June 30, 1911, Šeteniai, near Vilnius. |
|---|---|
| Died: | August 14, 2004, Kraków. |
| Occupation(s): | Poet, essayist. |
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Czeslaw Milosz
Czeslaw Milosz (June 30, 1911-August 14, 2004), Polish poet and novelist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.
Milosz works are notable for insights into religion, philosophy, nature, and politics. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Milosz declared that the books that linger should “deal with the most incomprehensible quality of God-created things.”
Born to a Polish-speaking family living in Lithuania, Milosz studied law in its capital city, Wilno, (today, Vilnius), a meeting point between East and West. In the ancient city, Lithunians, Poles, Byelorussians, and Tartars, Christians, Jews, and Muslims intermingled peacefully.
Yet Milosz, like other Central Europeans who had experienced at close range the impact of the first World War and of the rise of Communism in nearby Russia, felt a sense of foreboding, of impending catastrophe.
His first published poems, a 1933 volume entitled Poem of Frozen Time (Poemat o czasie zastyglym), deal with the imminence of yet another war and the worldwide cataclysm that it portends.
When the Nazis did invade Poland, Milosz moved to Warsaw to join the resistance. There he edited an underground anthology of Polish wartime poetry, Independent Song (Pien niepodlegla, 1942). The defeat of Poland and the tragic fate of the Poles and Jews surrounding him were deeply burned into his life. He personally witnessed the end of the walled Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.
In response to the horror, Milosz offered “The World (A Naive Poem)” (1943). Reaching beyond the intensity of the suffering that penetrated his life, Milosz helped his readers sense divine promise within ordinary things, a presence that suggests that evil in the world is not an expression of its innermost nature and will pass.
After the war, Milosz, then a socialist, joined the Polish diplomatic corps. He served in New York and Washington DC before being sent to Paris where he asked for political asylum in 1951. Stalinism had increased its hold on Poland. In France, Milosz published The Captive Mind (Zniewolony Umysl), a critique of the Polish Communist Party’s assault on the independence of the intelligentsia.
Governments can use more than censorship to control people; they can even change the meaning of words, Milosz reminds us. The intensity of the struggle for an authentic history and culture makes those in Central Europe especially mindful of the value of history. It is no exaggeration to say, as Milosz does in his History of Polish Literature, that “a sense of history is a specific contribution of our geographic area of the world to literature.”
In the early 1960s, Milosz left Paris to become professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1970, he became a United States citizen. He is not often thought of as a commentator on American politics and culture, but in Visions from San Francisco Bay, he talks at length about America in the 1960s.
Milosz frequently experienced his life as one of exile; not only because of the years in which he was separated from his native land, but in the larger sense that the human condition as he knew it was one in which all humanity endures metaphysical or even religious exile. This spiritual awareness touched every dimension of his life, and he wrote of The Unattainable Earth (Nieobjeta Ziemia). The longing awoken by an intimate, pure, and unconcious childhood bond with nature, one that almost spontaneously identified with the entire world, could not be fulfilled.
In The Land of Ulro, Milosz writes about his relationship with nature in order to talk about good and evil, “When my guardian angel...is triumphant, the earth looks precious to me and I live in ecstasy...surrounded by divine protection...my dreams are of magically rich landscapes, and I forget about death, because whether it comes in a month or five years it will be done as it was decreed, not by the God of the philosophers but by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When the Devil triumphs, I am appalled...I look at trees in bloom as they blindly repeat...what has been willed by the law of natural selection...I am oppressed by the randomness and absurdity of my individual existence...and then the terror: my life is over, I won’t get another, only death now.”
Milosz was much influenced by William Blake (Ulro is Blake’s creation), Emanuel Swedenborg, and Milosz’ cousin, poet and mystic Oscar Milosz.
Throughout his life, he remained deeply involved in Polish letter. In his later years, he translated the writing of Polish authors largely unknown in the West such as Alexander Wat, a man whose time in Communist concentration camps produced a profoundly honest theological and literary voice. Wat’s autobiography, My Century, was edited from conversations between Milosz and Wat.
During his lifetime, Milosz received many honors. He is listed at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial to the holocaust as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” His poems were placed on a monument to fallen shipyard workers in Gdansk. He received the Prix Litteraire European (1953), the Marian Kister Award (1967), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), the Neustadt International Prize (1978), and National Medal of Arts (1989). He was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (date) and of the American Institute of Arts and Letters (1982). He was granted four (?) honorary doctorates and held the Eliot Norton chair at Harvard.
Milosz’ first wife, Janina Dluska, the mother of his two sons, Anthony and John Peter, died in 1986. Milosz’ second wife, Carol, an American-born historian, passed away in 2001.
After the Soviet empire fell apart, Milosz was once again able to live in Poland. He eventually settled in Cracow where his 90th birthday was widely celebrated. There he died.
Unification Aspects
Czeslaw Milosz published original poetry in the World & I magazine in September, 1986. Milosz was drawn to the magazine because of a critique of scientism that had appeared in the second issue of the World & I. The magazine was founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
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Czesław Miłosz (June 30, 1911 – August 14, 2004), was a Polish poet, writer, academic, and translator. In 1961, he became a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1980 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Life
Czesław Miłosz was born at Šeteniai (Polish: Szetejnie), Lithuania, in what was then part of the Russian Empire, into a Polonized Lithuanian family of the Lubicz coat-of-arms. Although he did not speak Lithuanian, he emphasized — as had Adam Mickiewicz and Józef Piłsudski — his family connections with the ancient Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which for centuries had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He spent part of his childhood, about the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, in Russia. His law studies were at Vilnius, then part of the Second Polish Republic.
After World War II, in 1951, as cultural attaché of the communist People's Republic of Poland in Paris, Miłosz broke with his government and obtained political asylum in France. In 1953 he received the Prix Littéraire Européen (European Literary Prize).
In 1960 Miłosz came to the United States, and in 1970 he took U.S. citizenship. In 1961 he began a professorship in Polish literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1978 Miłosz received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He retired that same year, but continued teaching at Berkeley. In 1980 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
When the Iron Curtain fell, Miłosz was able to return to Poland, at first to visit and later to live there part-time.
In 1989 Miłosz received the National Medal of Arts and an honorary doctorate from Harvard University.
His book The Captive Mind (1953) is considered one of the finest studies of intellectuals under a repressive regime. He observed that those who became dissidents were not necessarily the ones with the strongest minds, but rather those with the weakest stomachs. The mind can rationalize anything, he said, but the stomach can take only so much. He also said that as a poet he avoided touching his nation's wounds, for fear of making them holy.
Czesław Miłosz is honored, at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust, as one of the "Righteous among the Nations." Poems by him were placed on a monument to fallen shipyard workers in Gdańsk.
His books and poems have been translated into English by many hands, including Jane Zielonko (The Captive Mind), Miłosz himself, his Berkeley students, and his friends and Berkeley colleagues, Peter Dale Scott, Robert Pinsky and Robert Hass.
Miłosz spoke English with a Polish accent. Once, during a 1966 lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, he startled students with a reference to "the Juice in Poland" (he had meant "the Jews in Poland").
Miłosz took pleasure occasionally in deflating academic pomposity, as when he recounted the stir he had caused in referring at a literary conference to "turpism" (same root as the English "turpitude"), which some in the audience took to be a new literary movement.
Though somewhat reserved in manner, in the 1960s he would playfully greet a Polish-Argentinian-American coed with, "How's your sex life?"
Miłosz died in 2004, at his home in Kraków, aged 93. His first wife, Janina, had died in 1986; and his second wife, Carol, a U.S.-born historian, in 2002. Miłosz was buried at Kraków's Skałka Church.
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 / Visions 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 Learning (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)
- Wiersze ostatnie / The Last Poems (2006)
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Faggen, Robert, ed. Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996. ISBN 978-0374271008
- Maciuszko, Jerzy J. Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz.: An article from: World Literature Today. University of Oklahoma, September 22, 1997, v. 71, Issue n4, p 88.
External links
- Milosz.pl — official website of Czesław Miłosz (Polish)
- Interview with Czesław Miłosz (Georgia Review)
- 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)
- Czesław Miłosz memorial (San Francisco Chronicle)
- 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 Official site 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
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1976: Saul Bellow | 1977: Vicente Aleixandre | 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer | 1979: Odysseas Elytis | 1980: Czesław Miłosz | 1981: Elias Canetti | 1982: Gabriel García Márquez | 1983: William Golding | 1984: Jaroslav Seifert | 1985: Claude Simon | 1986: Wole Soyinka | 1987: Joseph Brodsky | 1988: Naguib Mahfouz | 1989: Camilo José Cela | 1990: Octavio Paz | 1991: Nadine Gordimer | 1992: Derek Walcott | 1993: Toni Morrison | 1994: Kenzaburo Oe | 1995: Seamus Heaney | 1996: Wisława Szymborska | 1997: Dario Fo | 1998: José Saramago | 1999: Günter Grass | 2000: Gao Xingjian |
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