About VMU Honorary Doctor Czesław Miłosz Atnaujinta: 2012-01-02 16:21:45

Czesław Miłosz was born on June 30, 1911 in Šeteniai (Kėdainiai Distr.). He started learning in the Zygmunt August gymnasium in Vilnius in 1921 and graduated from the Faculty of Law in Vilnius’ Stefan Batory University in 1934. In 1937 he moved to Warsaw, where he lived through the years of the second World War. After the war ended, Miłosz became a diplomatic attaché for Poland in New York and Washington, but suffered from the growing oppression in the communist Poland. After being assigned to Paris in 1951, he requested political refuge there. For ten years, he lived and wrote in France. In 1960, he moved to North California in the USA and worked at the University of California in Berkeley. The poet, writer and literature scientist Czesław Miłosz received the Nobel Prize in 1980. In 1992, he was awarded the title of VMU Honorary Doctor. Miłosz died at the age of 93 on August 14, 2004 in Kraków, Poland and was laid to rest in that town as well. Miłosz's works have been translated into 42 languages.

The first biography of Czesław Miłosz is currently in the works. In the January 25 edition of Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Marta Kijowska wrote: "How can one tell the story of busy and controversial life led by a writer and make all the connections clear? In the case of Polish writer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Czesław Miłosz, who would have been 100 years old in June 2011, this issue is especially relevant, because he still doesn't have a biography, even though experts consider him to be one of the greatest lyrical poets. This may be because there is a large volume of his works and they impose strict requirements. Or it may also be because throughout his long life, which in terms of space was spent in Lithuania, Poland, France and California and in terms of time continued from the October Revolution to both World Wars to the Eastern expansion of the European Union, Miłosz left an impact on so many different people, regions, cultures, religions and political systems, that the thought alone of writing about all this can make many literature historians less than enthusiastic or completely turned off to the idea. But not Andrzej Franaszek, a publicist from Kraków. This 40-year-old Polonist and literature critic from the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny will soon publish the eagerly anticipated biography of Miłosz, which he has been working on for many years and where the details of even the slightest relevancy have been taken into account. It will come out only in May, but already a lot is known from the many early hints by the author and his colleagues", Marta Kijowska wrote in an article of the prestigious Swiss newspaper.

More information about VMU Honorary Doctors is available here.