reminiscences of the neighborhoods he recalls
from his childhood there. A survivor of both
World Wars I and II, Milosz is one of the best-
known Polish writers in the West, and he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.
Author Biography
Czeslaw Milosz was born to Weronika Kunat
Milosz and Aleksander Milosz on June 30, 1911,
at Szetejnie, in Lithuania, which was then part of
the Russian Empire. His father, a civil engineer,
served in the Imperial Russian Army from 1914
through 1918, during World War I. From 1921
through 1929, Milosz attended secondary school
in Wilno (now known as Vilnius), which was the
historical capital of Lithuania but after the war
had become part of Poland. He then began
studying law at Stefan Batory University, also
in Wilno. There he published his first poems in
the university newspaper. In 1933, Milosz pub-
lished his first volume of poetry,Poemat o czasie
zastyglym (A Poem on Frozen Time). Upon
completion of his law studies in 1934, Milosz
left Poland to study in France. He returned to
Wilno in 1936 and that same year published his
second book of poems, Trzy zimy (Three
Winters).
In 1940 Milosz left Wilno, which was then
occupied by the Soviet army, and arrived in
Nazi-occupied Warsaw, procuring a position as
a janitor in a university library. He married Jan-
ina Dluska in 1944; the couple would eventually
have two sons. In 1945 Milosz and his wife left
Poland, which was once again under Soviet rule,
in order for Milosz to take a diplomatic position
in the United States, working in the service of the
Polish Communist government. During this
time Milosz translated the work of American
poets into Polish. Soon disillusioned by the
Communist Party, Milosz defected from Com-
munist Poland, and in 1951 he made a request to
the French government for political asylum; he
accepted a diplomatic position in Paris that same
year. He publishedZniewolony umsyl, translated
asThe Captive Mind, in 1953. The English and
French translations were both published at the
same time. This political work explores the
power of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.
During his years in Paris, Milosz published two
novels, a collection of poems, and an autobiog-
raphy, among other works.
In 1960 Milosz was offered a position as a
lecturer in Polish literature at the University of
California, Berkeley. He was soon offered ten-
ure, and he settled in Berkeley. Meanwhile he
continued to write and publish poetry and essays
in Polish. In 1973 Milosz’s first volume of poetry
in English was published, titledSelected Poems.
The following year he published the volume of
poetryGdzie wschodzi słon ́ce i kedy zapadain
Polish, a work for which he received the I. Wan-
dycz Award. The slim collection was later trans-
lated by Milosz himself, along with Lillian Vallee
and Robert Hass (who publishes poetry under
the name Robert Hass), asFrom the Rising of the
Sunand was included in its entirety in his larger
collectionThe Collected Poems: 1931–1987. The
collectionFrom the Rising of the Suncontains the
poem by the same name. Milosz’s second collec-
tion of poetry in English,Bells in Winter, was
published in 1978.
When Milosz was seventy years old, in 1980,
he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. At about
the same time the Solidarity worker protest move-
ment in Poland was emerging in opposition to
Communist rule, a development Milosz followed
closely. Several years later, in 1986, Milosz’s wife,Czeslaw Milosz(Keystone / Getty Images )From the Rising of the Sun