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Czesław Miłosz

Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) has come to be regarded as the finest Polish writer of the 20th century, his work influencing generations of natives and foreigners alike. Born in what is now Lithuania, Milosz opted to study law at uni, though the course was to prove a bit of a thorn in his backside – a fear of statistics saw him flunk numerous exams, before finally graduating in 1934. He published his first collection of poetry that same year, and in 1937 took a position at a Vilnius radio station. It was to prove a disastrous union and he was fired for his lefty views. He took another job in radio in Warsaw, though was out of town on holiday when the outbreak of WWII was announced. The next few years saw him lead a transient existence – from escaping the clutches of the Red Army in Lithuania, to seeking refuge in Romania, to working as a janitor in wartime Warsaw. With the war over Milosz moved to Krakow, taking up digs on ul. Krupnicza 22 (A-2). After that his story takes on a bit of a murky look. Depending on which source you believe he either relocated to Paris as a cultural attaché, or was sent to Washington, in a similar role. Either way by 1970 he was a US citizen as well as a lecturer at Berkeley, and in 1978 he received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. More success followed and two years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Milosz returned to Poland after the fall of the Iron Curtain, splitting his time between Kraków and the US. He died in 2004 and is buried in the crypt of Krakow’s Skalka Church (C-7). His best known work remains his 1953 masterpiece The Captive Mind, a challenging tome which investigates the intellectual psyche.

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