Miłosz Czesław was a poet, essayist, novelist, translator and literary historian. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980. He was born in 1911 in Szetejnie, Lithuania.
For 5 years he studied law at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, then he was also one of the organizers of the Żagary poetry group. He debuted with poems in the academic journal “Alma Mater Vilnensis” in 1930. Three years later, he published the first volume of his poems “Poemat o czasie zastygłym” (A Poem on Frozen Time). In 1937 he moved to Warsaw. During the German occupation, he was active in the underground of cultural life. After the war, he lived for a short time in Kraków at świętego Tomasza street, and later became a cultural advisor to Polish institutions in New York, Washington and Paris. He died in 2004 in Krakow.
His most famous works:
- poetry
- “Ocalenie” (Rescue)
- “Traktat moralny” (A moral treatise)
- “Który skrzywdziłeś człowieka prostego” (You who hurt a simple man)
- “Traktat poetycki” (A Treatise on Poetry)
- “Gdzie wschodzi słońce i kędy zapada” (Where the Sun Rises and Where it Sets)
- novels, stories, essays
- “Zniewolony umysł” (Captive Mind)
- “Zdobycie władzy” (The Seizure of Power)
- “Dolina Issy” (The Issa Valley)
- “Rodzinna Europa” (Native Realm)
- “Człowiek wśród skorpionów” (The Man Among Scorpions)
- “Widzenia nad zaroką San Francisco” (A View of San Francisco Bay)
- “Ziemia Urlo” (The Land of Ulro)
- “Ogród nauk” (The Garden of Science)
Czesław Miłosz is the winner of many awards:
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- Polish PEN Translation Prize
- Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts
- Neustadt International Prize for Literature
- National Medal of Arts
- Robert Kirsch Award
- Order of the White Eagle