Czesław Miłosz ( 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer and translator of Lithuanian origin.
.jpg "to see more, click the image")
His World War II-era sequence The World is a collection of 20 "naive" poems. After serving as a cultural attaché for the Republic of Poland (1945–1951), he defected to the West in 1951, and his nonfiction book The Captive Mind (1953) is a classic of anti-Stalinism. From 1961 to 1998 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. Miłosz later became an American citizen and was awarded the 1978 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Czesław Miłosz was born on June 30, 1911 in the village of Szetejnie (Lithuanian: Šeteniai), Kaunas Governorate, Russian Empire (now Kėdainiai district, Kaunas County, Lithuania) on the border between two Lithuanian historical regions of Samogitia and Aukštaitija in central Lithuania. As the son of Aleksander Miłosz (d.1959), a civil engineer, and Weronika, née Kunat (d.1945), descendant of the Siručiai noble family,[citation needed] Miłosz was fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English and French.[8] His brother, Andrzej Miłosz (1917–2002), a Polish journalist, translator of literature and of film subtitles into Polish, was a documentary-film producer who created Polish documentaries about his brother.
Miłosz was raised Catholic in rural Lithuania and emphasized his identity with the multi-ethnic Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a stance that led to ongoing controversies; he refused to categorically identify himself as either a Pole or a Lithuanian. He said of himself: "I am a Lithuanian to whom it was not given to be a Lithuanian.", and "My family in the sixteenth 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. But the landscapes and perhaps the spirits of Lithuania have never abandoned me". Miłosz memorialised his Lithuanian childhood in a 1955 novel, The Issa Valley, and in the 1959 memoir Native Realm.
In his youth, Miłosz came to adopt, as he put it, a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", though he was later to return to the Catholic faith. After graduating from Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium in Vilnius, he studied law at Stefan Batory University and in 1931 he travelled to Paris, where he was influenced by his distant cousin Oscar Milosz, a French poet of Lithuanian descent and a Swedenborgian. In 1931, he formed the poetic group Żagary together with the young poets Jerzy Zagórski, Teodor Bujnicki, Aleksander Rymkiewicz, Jerzy Putrament and Józef Maśliński.
Miłosz's first volume of poetry was published in 1934. After receiving his law degree that year, he again spent a year in Paris on a fellowship. Upon returning, he worked as a commentator at Radio Wilno, but was dismissed, an action described as stemming from either his leftist views or for views overly sympathetic to Lithuania. Miłosz wrote all his poetry, fiction and essays in Polish and translated the Old Testament Psalms into Polish.
Miłosz spent World War II in Warsaw, under Nazi Germany's "General Government". Here he attended underground lectures by Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy and aesthetics, Władysław Tatarkiewicz. He did not participate in the Warsaw Uprising since he resided outside Warsaw proper.
After World War II, Miłosz served as cultural attaché of the newly formed People's Republic of Poland in Paris and Washington DC. For this he was criticized in some emigre circles. Conversely, he was attacked and censored in Poland when in 1951 he defected and obtained political asylum in France. In 1953 he received the Prix Littéraire Européen (European Literary Prize).
.jpg "to see more, click the image")
.jpg "to see more, click the image")
.jpg "to see more, click the image")
His World War II-era sequence The World is a collection of 20 "naive" poems. After serving as a cultural attaché for the Republic of Poland (1945–1951), he defected to the West in 1951, and his nonfiction book The Captive Mind (1953) is a classic of anti-Stalinism. From 1961 to 1998 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. Miłosz later became an American citizen and was awarded the 1978 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Czesław Miłosz was born on June 30, 1911 in the village of Szetejnie (Lithuanian: Šeteniai), Kaunas Governorate, Russian Empire (now Kėdainiai district, Kaunas County, Lithuania) on the border between two Lithuanian historical regions of Samogitia and Aukštaitija in central Lithuania. As the son of Aleksander Miłosz (d.1959), a civil engineer, and Weronika, née Kunat (d.1945), descendant of the Siručiai noble family,[citation needed] Miłosz was fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English and French.[8] His brother, Andrzej Miłosz (1917–2002), a Polish journalist, translator of literature and of film subtitles into Polish, was a documentary-film producer who created Polish documentaries about his brother.
Miłosz was raised Catholic in rural Lithuania and emphasized his identity with the multi-ethnic Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a stance that led to ongoing controversies; he refused to categorically identify himself as either a Pole or a Lithuanian. He said of himself: "I am a Lithuanian to whom it was not given to be a Lithuanian.", and "My family in the sixteenth 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. But the landscapes and perhaps the spirits of Lithuania have never abandoned me". Miłosz memorialised his Lithuanian childhood in a 1955 novel, The Issa Valley, and in the 1959 memoir Native Realm.
In his youth, Miłosz came to adopt, as he put it, a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", though he was later to return to the Catholic faith. After graduating from Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium in Vilnius, he studied law at Stefan Batory University and in 1931 he travelled to Paris, where he was influenced by his distant cousin Oscar Milosz, a French poet of Lithuanian descent and a Swedenborgian. In 1931, he formed the poetic group Żagary together with the young poets Jerzy Zagórski, Teodor Bujnicki, Aleksander Rymkiewicz, Jerzy Putrament and Józef Maśliński.
Miłosz's first volume of poetry was published in 1934. After receiving his law degree that year, he again spent a year in Paris on a fellowship. Upon returning, he worked as a commentator at Radio Wilno, but was dismissed, an action described as stemming from either his leftist views or for views overly sympathetic to Lithuania. Miłosz wrote all his poetry, fiction and essays in Polish and translated the Old Testament Psalms into Polish.
Miłosz spent World War II in Warsaw, under Nazi Germany's "General Government". Here he attended underground lectures by Polish philosopher and historian of philosophy and aesthetics, Władysław Tatarkiewicz. He did not participate in the Warsaw Uprising since he resided outside Warsaw proper.
After World War II, Miłosz served as cultural attaché of the newly formed People's Republic of Poland in Paris and Washington DC. For this he was criticized in some emigre circles. Conversely, he was attacked and censored in Poland when in 1951 he defected and obtained political asylum in France. In 1953 he received the Prix Littéraire Européen (European Literary Prize).
0 comments:
Post a Comment