Zniewolony umys? (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1953); translated by Jane Zielonko as The Captive Mind (London: Secker & Warburg, 1953; New York: Knopf, 1953);

Zdobycie w?adzy (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1955); translated by Celina wieniewska as The Seizure of Power (New York: Criterion, 1955); translation also published as The Usurpers (London: Faber & Faber, 1955);

Dolina Issy (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1955); translated by Louis Iribarne as The Issa Valley (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981; London: Sidgwick & Jackson / Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1981);

Traktat poetycki (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1957);

Kontynenty (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1958);

Rodzinna Europa (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1959); translated by Catherine S. Leach as Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981; London: Sidgwick & Jackson / Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1981);

Cz?owiek w?ród skorpionów: Studium o Stanis?awie Brzozowskim (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1962);

Król Popiel i inne wiersze (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1962);

Gucio zaczarowany (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1965);

The History of Polish Literature (New York: Macmillan /London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969; revised edition,

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); translated into Polish by Maria Tarnowska as Historia literatury polskiej do roku 1939 (Kraków: Znak, 1993);

Miasto bez imienia: Poezje (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1969);

Widzenia nad Zatok? San Francisco (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1969); translated by Richard Lourie as Visions from San Francisco Bay (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982; Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1982);

Prywatne obowi?zki (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1972);

Gdzie wschodzi s?o?ce i k?dy zapada (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1974);

Emperor of the Earth: Modes of Eccentric Vision (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977);

Ziemia Ulro (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1977); translated by Iribarne as The Land of Ulro (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984; Manchester: Carcanet, 1985);

Ogród nauk (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1979; Lublin, Poland: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, 1986);

Nobel Lecture (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981);

Hymn o perle (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1982; Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1983);

Pie?? obywatela (Kraków: Wydawnictwo ?wit, 1983);

The Witness of Poetry, Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1981-1982 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); Polish version published simultaneously as ?wiadectwo poezji: Sze?? wyk?adów o dotkliwo?ciach naszego wieku (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1983; censored edition, Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987);

Dialog o Wilnie, by Mi?osz and Tomas Venclova (Warsaw: Spo?eczny Instytut Wydawniczy “M?ynek,” 1984);

Dostojewski i Sartre (N.p., ca. 1984);

Nieobj?ta ziemia (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1984; Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1988); translated by Mi?osz and Robert Hass as Unattainable Earth (New York: Ecco, 1986);

Z ogrodu ziemskich rozkoszy, nowe wiersze i epigrafy (N.p., 1984);

Podró?ny ?wiata: Rozmowy E. Czarneckiej [Renata Gorczy?ska] z Czes?awem Mi?oszem (Kraków: Wszechnica Spo?eczno-Polityczna, 1984);

The Separate Notebooks, bilingual edition, translated by Mi?osz, Hass, Robert Pinsky, and Renata Gorczy?ska (New York: Ecco, 1984);

Zaczynaj?c od moich ulic (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1985); translated by Madeline G. Levine as Beginning with My Streets: Essays and Recollections (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991);

Kroniki (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1987; Kraków: Znak, 1988);

?wiat/The World, bilingual edition, translated by Mi?osz (San Francisco: Arion, 1989);

Rok my?liwego (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1990); translated by Levine as A Year of the Hunter (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994);

Dalsze okolice (Kraków: Znak, 1991); translated by Mi?osz and Hass as Provinces (New York: Ecco, 1991; Manchester: Carcanet, 1993);

Szukanie ojczyzny (Kraków: Znak, 1992);

Na brzegu rzeki (Kraków: Znak, 1994); translated by Mi?osz and Hass as Facing the River: New Poems (Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco, 1995; Manchester: Carcanet, 1995);

Polskie kontrasty: On Contrasts in Poland (Kraków: Universitas, 1995);

Jakiego? to go?cia mieli?my: O Annie ?wirszczy?skiej (Kraków: Znak, 1996);

Legendy nowoczesno?ci: Eseje okupacyjne: Listy-eseje Jerzego Andrzejewskiego i Czes?awa Mi?osza, by Mi?osz and Jerzy Andrzejewski (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1996); translated by Madeline G. Levine as Legends of Modernity: Essays and Letters from Occupied Poland, 1942-43 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005);

Abecad?o Mi?osza (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1997); translated by Levine as Mi?osz’s ABC’s (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001);

?ycie na wyspach (Kraków: Znak, 1997);

Piesek przydro?ny (Kraków: Znak, 1997); translated by Mi?osz and Hass as Road-side Dog (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998);

Inne abecad?o (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1998);

To (Kraków: Znak, 2000);

Druga przestrze? (Kraków: Znak, 2002), translated by Mi?osz and Hass as Second Space: New Poems (New York: Ecco, 2004);

Orfeusz i Eurydyka (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003)—includes translations into English by Mi?osz and Hass; German by Doreen Daume; Russian by Anatol Roitman; and Swedish by Anders Bodegård;

Spi?arnia literacka (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004);

O podró?ach w czasie, edited by Joanna Gromek (Kraków: Znak, 2004);

Przygody m?odego umys?u: Publicystyka i proza 1931-1939 (Kraków: Znak, 2004).

Editions and Collections: Dolina Issy (London: Oficyna Poetów i Malarzy, 1966);

Wiersze (London: Oficyna Poetów i Malarzy, 1967);

Utwory poetyckie: Poems, introduction by Aleksander Schenker (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1976);

Widzenia nad Zatok? San Francisco (Warsaw: Kr?g, 1979);

Dzie?a zbiorowe, 12 volumes (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1980-1985);

Wiersze zebrane, 2 volumes (Warsaw: Kr?g, 1980);

Wybór wierszy (Warsaw: Pa?stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980);

Gdzie wschodzi s?o?ce i k?dy zapada i inne wiersze (Kraków: Znak, 1980);

Poezje (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1981);

Prywatne obowi?zki (Warsaw, 1983; Wydawnictwo Kropka, 1983; Niezale?na Oficyna Wydawnicza “Nowa,” 1985);

Zniewolony umys? (Warsaw, 1984; Wydawnictwo Wolno??, 1986);

Nieobj?ta ziemia (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Trzeci Obieg, 1984);

Ogród nauk (Warsaw: Ksi??nica Literacka, 1984);

Gucio zaczarowany: Miasto bez imienia (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo “V,” 1985);

?wiadectwo poezji (Kraków: Oficyna Literacka, 1985; Wroc?aw: Oficyna Wydawnicza Constans, 1986);

Poszukiwania: Wybór publicystyki rozproszonej 1931-1983, edited by Konrad Piwnicki (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo CDN, 1985),

Trzy zimy & G?osy o wierszach, edited by Renata Gorczy?ska and Piotr K?oczowski (London: Aneks, 1987);

Metafizyczna pauza, selected and edited by Joanna Gromek (Kraków: Znak, 1989);

Poematy (Wroc?aw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Dolno?l?skie, 1989);

Ko?ysanka (Warsaw: Varsovia, 1990);

Wiersze, 3 volumes (Kraków: Znak, 1993);

Poezje wybrane: Selected Poems, bilingual edition (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1996);

Antologia osobista (Kraków: Znak, 1998);

Esse (Warsaw: Prószy?ski i Ska, 2001);

Dzie?a zebrane: Wiersze, 4 volumes (Kraków: Znak, 2001-2004).

Editions in English: “Not More,” translated by Adam Czerniawski, in San Francisco Review Annual, 1 (1963): 111–112;

“Campo di Fiori,” translated by Adam Gillon, in Introduction to Modern Polish Literature: An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry, edited by Gillon and Ludwik Krzy?anowski (New York: Twayne, 1964), pp. 447–449;

Selected Poems, with an introduction by Kenneth Rexroth (New York: Seabury, 1973);

Bells in Winter, translated by Mi?osz and Lillian Vallee (New York: Ecco, 1978; Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1980);

“Gus Spellbound,” translated by Andrzej Busza and Bogdan Czaykowski, in Gathering Time: Five Modern Polish Elegies, edited by Busza and Czaykowski (Mission, b.c.: Barbarian, 1983), pp. 41–48;

The Collected Poems, 1931-1987 (New York: Ecco, 1988);

New and Collected Poems, 1931-2001 (New York: Harper-Collins, 2001);

To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays, edited by Bogdana Carpenter and Madeline G. Levine (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001);

A Treatise on Poetry, translated by Mi?osz and Robert Hass (New York: Ecco, 2001);

Selected Poems, 1931-2004, edited by Hass (New York: Ecco, 2006).

RECORDING: Fire, read by Mi?osz, Washington, D.C., Watershed Tapes C-200, 1987.

OTHER: Antologia poezji spo?ecznej, edited by Mi?osz and Zbigniew Folejewski (Wilno: Wydawn. Ko?a Polonistów Universytetu Stefana Batorego, 1933);

Pie?? niepodleg?a, edited by Mi?osz (Warsaw: Oficyna Polska w Warszawie, 1942);

Kultura masowa, edited by Mi?osz (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1959);

W?gry, edited by Mi?osz (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1960);

Aleksander Wat, Mój wiek: Pami?tnik mówiony, 2 volumes, edited by Mi?osz (London: Polonia Book Fund, 1977; Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990); edited and translated by Richard Lourie, with a foreword by Mi?osz, as My Century: The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988);

Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz, The Noble Traveller, introduction by Mi?osz, edited by Christopher Bamford (West Stockbridge, Mass.: Lindisfarne, 1984);

Mowa wi?zana, edited by Mi?osz (Olsztyn, Poland: Pojezierze, 1986);

Wypisy z ksi?g u?ytecznych, edited by Mi?osz (Kraków: Znak, 1994);

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Mi?osz (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996);

Wyprawa w dwudziestolecie, edited by Mi?osz (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1999).

TRANSLATIONS: Jacques Maritain, Drogami kl?ski (Warsaw: Oficyna Polska, 1942);

Daniel Bell, Praca i jej gorycze (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1957);

Jeanne Hersch, Polityka i rzeczywisto?? (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1957);

Simone Weil, Wybór pism (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1958; Kraków: Znak, 1991);

Postwar Polish Poetry: An Anthology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965; expanded edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); republished as Polish Post-War Poetry (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1970);

Zbigniew Herbert, Selected Poems, translated by Mi?osz and Peter Dale Scott (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1968);

Aleksander Wat, Mediterranean Poems (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1977);

Ksi?ga Psalmów, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Paris: Editions du Dialogue, 1979; Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, 1982);

Ksi?ga Hioba, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Paris: Editions du Dialogue, 1980);

Ksi?gi pi?ciu Megilot, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Paris: Editions du Dialogue, 1982; Lublin: RW KUL, 1984);

Ewangelia wed?ug Marka: Apokalipsa, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Paris: Editions du Dialogue, 1984; Lublin: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski, 1989);

Anna ?wirszczy?ska, Happy as a Dog’s Tail, translated by Mi?osz and Leonard Nathan (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985);

Apokalipsa, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Paris: Editions du Dialogue, 1986);

With the Skin: Poems if Aleksander Wat, translated and edited by Mi?osz and Nathan (New York: Ecco, 1989);

Ksi?ga m?dro?ci, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Paris, 1989);

Haiku, edited and translated by Mi?osz (Kraków: WydaWnictWo M. Biblioteka NaG?osu, 1992);

Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz, Storge (Kraków: Znak, 1993);

?wirszczy?ska, Talking to My Body, translated by Mi?osz and Nathan (Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon, 1996).

SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATION-UNCOLLECTED: Robinson warszawski, by Mi?osz and Jerzy Andrzejewski, Dialog, 9 (1984): 5-17.

No Polish writer has enjoyed greater renown in the West than Czes?aw Mi?osz. Of the two Polish winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature before Mi?osz, Henryk Sienkiewicz (in 1905) and Wladyslaw Reymont (in 1924), the former gained enormous popularity in France and the United States, but only briefly; the latter remained virtually unknown and largely untranslated despite the prize. Among the post-World War II writers, several did become well known in the West, most notably Witold Gombrowicz, Tadeusz Ró?ewicz, Zbigniew Herbert; and Wis?awa Szymborska, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1996. But their recognition in the United States has not equaled that of Mi?osz, who has been described on occasion as not only a Polish but also an American poet.

Throughout most of his long literary career, however, Mi?osz was virtually unknown to the wider readership. Before World War II his first two volumes of poetry, which had a miniscule circulation, gained him critical recognition as a talented and promising poet who-although he belonged to what was called the Second Vanguard-was not truly avant-garde, having moved rather abruptly from socially committed poetry to a form of incantatory, visionary verse that many critics considered passé. After the war Mi?osz quickly made his mark as one of the foremost poets with his volume Ocalenie (1945, Rescue) and was singled out in a major article in 1946 by perhaps the most influential literary critic of the time, Kazimierz Wyka, as the leading poet of the postwar period. By 1951, following his defection to the West, Mi?osz came to be regarded by the Communist authorities as a renegade, and, except for a brief interlude in 1956-1957, a total ban was imposed on the publication of his writings; in fact, well into the 1970s special permission was required in the Soviet bloc even for his name to be printed or mentioned in the media.

The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Mi?osz in 1980 coincided with the considerable relaxation of censorship during the Solidarity period (1980-1981), and his works appeared in print and sold immediately in large numbers. Although stricter censorship was reinstated after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, the regime did not find it either possible or politically expedient to reimpose too strict a ban on Mi?osz’s works, and the collapse of Communist power in Poland in 1989 made it again possible for his works to be published, heard, and discussed extensively. Despite occasional criticism (at times quite virulent) from the nationalist and Catholic Right because of his publicly voiced dislike of nationalism and of what some have regarded as the flaunting of his Lithuanian roots and sentiments, Mi?osz’s literary reputation in Poland and his authority as a writer and thinker have remained high among Catholic, left-wing, and liberal intellectuals, while his books have continued to ensure financial success for their publishers. In fact, during the last years of his life, which he spent in Poland in the ancient city of Kraków, his authority as a poet and thinker reached a height not attained by any other Polish poet since the time of the nineteenth-century Romantic national bard, Adam Mickiewicz.

Mi?osz was born on 30 June 1911 in the manor house of Szetejnie, in what was then part of the Russian Empire. Historically, the region Mi?osz came from is known as Samogitia, one of the major provinces of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which joined the Kingdom of Poland in 1386. The nobility of Lithuania gradually adopted the Polish language and culture, but it retained many distinctive characteristics. Both Mi?osz’s father, Aleksander, and his mother, Weronika (née Kunat), came from Lithuanian stock; his paternal uncle Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Mi?osz served as a Lithuanian diplomat in Paris during and after World War I while also writing poetry and mystical prose in French. Samogitia was an ethnically diverse region comprising–in addition to the Lithuanian-speaking Catholic peasantry–a new Lithuanian intelligentsia, Polish-speaking Lithuanian patriots, Polish nationalists, Belorussian peasants and intelligentsia, Russian officials and landowners, and a large, diversified Jewish community with its own traditions, culture, and literature in Yiddish. Mi?osz’s experience of this diversity was further amplified by the travels of his father, a civil engineer, across Russia during World War I and the 1917 revolution, and also by his father’s decision to settle in the territory of independent Poland. Multinational or supranational ideals were reinforced by Mi?osz’s education from 1921 to 1929 in the King Sigismundus Augustus Secondary School in Vilnius, which gave Mi?osz a humanist grounding as well as a realization of the philosophical chasm dividing religious and scientific outlooks.

The religious diversity–not only its Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms but also local propensities for mysticism, Judaic lore, and the pagan substratum, still alive in folklore and various romanticized tales about the Lithuanian lakes, rivers, and forests–proved more important for Mi?osz’s intellectual development than ideology, whether nationalist (which Mi?osz came to regard quite early as pernicious) or Marxist (which he found more convincing, though ultimately unacceptable to his spiritual yearnings). The most significant element of the Christian tradition for Mi?osz, however, was Gnosticism, which led him to a starker view of Nature, whose wonders, imbibed from observation and books on animals (including American fauna) were tempered by the realization of the pitiless character of the struggle going on in the natural world. This realization seemed to confirm Mi?osz’s Manichaean view, derived from some of his readings, of the struggle between the principles of good and evil, and it gave his catastrophist forebodings a metaphysical character.

Despite his early naturalist and literary interests, Mi?osz became a student of law at the University of Vilnius in 1930, completing his studies with a degree of master of law in 1934. He did, however, cultivate his literary interests by becoming a member of the Section of Original writing, affiliated with the Circle of Students of Polish Literature, in which intellectual, literary, and ideological questions were hotly debated. Student life at the university was highly politicized, with left-wing and nationalist ideologies competing against each other, at times in violent forms. Mi?osz took active part in social and literary activities and in 1931 joined the poetic group ?agary (Tinder or Kindling, referring to the literary review of the same name). His left-wing leanings found expression in his first volume of verse, Poemat o czasie zastyglym (1933, Poem about Congealed Time); these poems were modeled, at least to some extent, on revolutionary Russian poetry.

The politicized phase, however, was short-lived, as by the time of the appearance of his second volume of poems, Trzy zimy (1936, Three Winters), Mi?osz had discovered a dithyrambic mode of versification as well as esoteric lore of mysticism and metaphysics, primarily because of the influence of de Lubicz Mi?osz, whom the young poet met for the first time in Paris in 1931. It was at least partly as a result of his new conception of literature and of its social and cultural function that he addressed in 1936 an open letter (“List do obro?ców kultury,” A Letter to the Defenders of Culture, Po prostu, 20 January 1936) to his fellow leftists, in which he sharply criticized their tendency to follow Soviet models in literary activity, rejected the idea of subordinating literature to the goals of political struggle, stressed the importance of the writer’s commitment to his own self and the philosophical and metaphysical dimensions of creative individualism, and, in a striking reversal of his former attitude to Vladimir Mayakovsky, called him “a loudmouth and a poseur.”

Mi?osz’s reading was quite broad in the decade that followed and during the early years of World War II. As far as his religious ideas of that time were concerned, the most significant influence was perhaps that of Marian Zdziechowski, a profoundly pessimistic Christian thinker, whose lectures Mi?osz attended at the University of Vilnius and whose writings contributed to Mi?osz’s Manichaean tendencies. Another important shaping force of Mi?osz’s outlook were Russian novelists, poets, and religious thinkers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ev, and Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyayev (and later Lev Shestov).

What is less often realized is the role that French literature, and especially the French novel, from Stendhal and Honoré de Balzac to André Gide, played in shaping Mi?osz’s views on society and Western culture and his conviction of the influence of literature on popular and ideological beliefs. As far as poetry is concerned, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Robert Browning, and T. S. Eliot were influences once Mi?osz learned enough English in occupied Warsaw; he also read modern French and Russian poets, though the earliest and most significant influence in terms of poetic language was undoubtedly the work of Adam Mickiewicz, in which Mi?osz discovered, as he later put it, “language in its state of balance.” Two contemporary Polish writers also contributed significantly to the formation of Mi?osz’s intellectual personality: the philospher and novelist Stanislaw Brzozowski, especially with his program of “intellectual deeds,” and Stanis?aw Ignacy witkiewicz, playwright, philosopher, artist, and precursor of the theater of the absurd, whose deeply pessimistic view of the political and cultural future of European civilization reinforced Mi?osz’s own catastrophist views.

Upon completion of his studies in 1934 Mi?osz obtained a scholarship from the National Culture Fund that enabled him to spend a year in Paris, where he learned French and broadened his artistic and intellectual horizons while continuing to learn from his uncle. Returning to Poland, he obtained a position in the Vilnius Broadcasting Station of the Polish Radio, but he was dismissed by the end of 1936 for his political views and his attempts to promote Belorussian culture. With the help of his left-wing and liberal friends, however, he was soon reappointed to the Warsaw Broadcasting Station, where he worked until the outbreak of World War II. Mi?osz made several important new friendships in Warsaw: with the foremost lyrical poet of the time, Józef Czechowicz; the young Catholic novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski; and the future leading critic, Kazimierz Wyka. In addition, he met Jaros?av Iwaszkiewicz, whose poetry played a role in Mi?osz’s later transition to a more classical style. Mi?osz also entered the circle of liberal Catholic intellectuals connected with the Laski monastery and the periodical Verbum (word).

The interwar years of Mi?osz’s intellectual development are portrayed most fully (though still selectively) in two later works, the novel Dolina Issy (1955; translated as The Issa Valley, 1981) and the essay Rodzinna Europa (1959; translated as Native Realm: A Search for SelfDefinition, 1968). Both may be described as depictions of the growth of awareness. Dolina Issy has as its principal theme the development of the sensibility and metaphysical awareness of a boy, Thomas, and is set in the Lithuanian landscape among historical memories, local lore, and the manners of provincial society. Rodzinna Europa, overtly autobiographical, includes experiences, observations, and ideas that the poet gathered on his journey to Western Europe and then across redrawn boundaries after the destruction of Poland; it constitutes an attempt, undertaken from the perspective of the 1950s, at a self-definition.

A further insight into Mi?osz’s early years is offered in his Rok my?liwego (1990; translated as A Year of the Hunter, 1994). Mi?osz developed a lifelong sense of radical alienation and a need to follow his own personal quest; this feeling crystallized during the German occupation, when inessentials became pared down to the existential, human core. Such radical reductionism, rather than leading to despair and abnegation, generated in Mi?osz an eruption of creative and intellectual energy, resulting not only in a reorientation of his poetics toward more classical and objective forms but also in a series of penetrating essays that were written in 1942 and 1943 but did not appear in their entirety until 1996 as Legendy nowoczesno?ci: Eseje okupacyjne (Legends of Modernity: Occupation Essays).

Except for a still somewhat mysterious journey in September 1939 to Bucharest (where Mi?osz managed to obtain a Lithuanian safe-conduct pass) and then through Ukraine and Belorussia to Vilnius, where he stayed briefly during its incorporation into Lithuania and subsequent occupation by Soviet forces, Mi?osz spent the war years with Janina D?uska (whom he married in 1944), principally in warsaw. His experience of illegally crossing the borders dividing Soviet-occupied Lithuania from Warsaw, an act that required stamina, ingenuity, and courage, is memorably described in Rodzinna Europa. Once in Warsaw, Mi?osz took part in clandestine literary activity: his Wiersze (Poems, 1939), a volume appearing under the pseudonym Jan Syru?, was the first underground publication of its kind, and with the help of his friend Andrzejewski, he edited an anthology of poetry significantly titled Pie?? niepodleg?a (1942; translated as Invincible Song: A Clandestine Anthology, 1981). He took a critical view of armed resistance, however, and did not join the underground army. He witnessed the two most terrible events of the German occupation of Warsaw: the final destruction of the Jewish ghetto in 1943, and the long but unsuccessful uprising by the Polish underground army in 1944, followed by the deliberate destruction of most of the city by the Germans. Mi?osz managed to escape from the defeated city and eventually went to liberated Kraków, where he took part in literary activity and prepared Ocalenie for publication in 1945; it was his first and only volume of poems to appear in postwar Poland between 1945 and 1980.

Mi?osz’s writings of the war period constitute a watershed in his creative and intellectual development. In witnessing the eruption of genocidal forces that turned the inheritors of one of the most accomplished cultures into instruments of mass destruction, Mi?osz acquired a sharp critical perspective on civilization in general and on literature in particular. In Zniewolony umys? (1953; translated as The Captive Mind, 1953) there is a passage that describes the nature of this dark illumination:

A man is lying under machine-gun fire on the street of an embattled city. He looks at the pavement and sees a very amusing sight: the cobblestones are standing upright like the quills of a porcupine. The bullets hitting against their edges displace and tilt them. Such moments in the consciousness of a man judge all poets and philosophers.

The passage is preceded by a statement of uncompromising severity: “The work of thought should be able to withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is worthless.”

What preserved Mi?osz from nihilistic reductionism or ideological fanaticism (such as, for instance, that of Tadeusz Borowski or of Andrzejewski, both of whom after the war embraced the Communist creed) was the fundamentally religious but at the same time nonideological, highly individualistic nature of his intellectual psyche. Mi?osz’s writings of the period display a range of theme and perspective, of personae and tones in which mordant and grim feelings are counterbalanced by compassion and affirmation. The burden, if not the guilt, of being an heir to the dark side of Western civilization finds expression in the complex poem “Biedny chrze?cijanin patrzy na getto” (translated as “A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto”), which is part of a cycle titled “Voices of Poor People” in Ocalenie. The insensitivity of people to the suffering and destruction of their fellow human beings is the theme of “Campo di Fiori.” In several poems, notably “W malignie” (In Malignant Fever), “Równina” (Plain), and “Rzeka” (River), anger and bitterness are mixed with sadness and pity as the poet addresses the absurdity of interwar Poland, the blindness and irrationality of its politics, and the vulnerability of its inhabitants to the cruel forces of history. Yet, the capacity of human nature to ignore or adapt to the “end of the world,” the impossibility of abandoning hope, and the ability to be happy and to find psychological and intellectual alibis in the midst of oppression and naked evil are revealed in poems that range from songlike lyrics to constructs of complex personae, particularly “Piosenka o ko?cu ?wiata” (translated as “Song of the End of the World”), “Piosenka pasterska” (Shepherds’ Song), and “Pie?ni Adriana Zieli?skiego” (translated as “Songs of Adrian Zieli?ski”). Two poems stand out as unquestionable masterpieces: the poignant lyric “Szed?em dzisiaj przez ogród” (translated as “As I walked through the shattered garden”), and the longer cycle of poems of formal perfection, “?wiat (poemanaiwne)” (translated as “The World”).

Mi?osz’s left-wing leanings underwent a severe test after the war. His catastrophist views predisposed him to regard Soviet Communism as an inevitable phase, perhaps of long duration, in the history of the European continent. Moreover, he was convinced that Poland needed radical social reforms. His close friend in occupied Warsaw and in the immediate postwar years, the Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel specialist Tadeusz Kro?ski (called Tiger in Rodzinna Europa), influenced Mi?osz’s attitude toward Marxism as a farfrom-spurious theory of societal and historical change and further strengthened his dislike of right-wing ideologies. But at the same time, Mi?osz’s penchant for sharp observation and his sense of the value of literature as an autonomous mode of cultural activity made him resistant to Socialist Realism, which required of the writer not only to become an instrument of Communist Party policy but also to impose a ready-made and simplistic formula on reality.

Mi?osz’s knowledge of Soviet reality under Stalin (including his firsthand observations of Soviet Ukraine in the winter of 1939-1940), the materialism of official Communist doctrine, and the gradual but unmistakable Sovietization of Poland, including increasingly severe restrictions on democratic and intellectual freedom, made him gradually recoil from even the limited approval he had initially given to the new regime in Poland. For Mi?osz, the real touchstone was poetry: its character, freedom, and future. He could, and did, write journalistic prose that he later judged harshly as an example of the general “descent into abomination”-such as a series of feuilletons in 1945 in Dziennik Polski (Polish Daily), edited by Jerzy Putrament, one of the chief cultural functionaries of the Party-but Mi?osz could not compromise his poetic principles.

These principles, as his 1946 “List pó?prywatny o poezji” (A Semi-Private Letter Regarding Poetry, reprinted in Kontynenty [Continents, 1958]) shows, were not merely technical. Poetry for Mi?osz was a way both of being one’s own person and of trying to grasp or clarify the real; it was also a crucial form of societal discourse. In 1950, after working in the diplomatic service for Poland in Washington, D.C., and Paris, Mi?osz realized that he could no longer propitiate the cultural apparatchiks by minor concessions (such as “translating” Mao Tse-tung) but would have to conform fully and unambiguously; he decided instead to seek freedom. Early in 1951 he left his job in the Polish embassy in Paris and sought refuge with the editors of the émi gré monthly Kultura, explaining in an article titled “Nie” (No) his reasons for breaking with Communist Poland.

Three books reveal the intellectual dilemmas Mi?osz faced in the immediate postwar years and express his views on Soviet Communism and the political and ideological predicaments of the postwar world. The first of them, Zniewolony umys?, in effect launched his literary career in the west While making him a significant moral and ideological influence in Poland. Generically, it is best described as a mixture of essays and biographical sketches; in addition to topical chapters, it includes “portraits” of four Polish writers who collaborated with the Communist regime in Poland. It was intended as a warning to the West (one chapter begins, “Are the Americans really that stupid?”) and an attempt to enlighten Western intellectuals about the true nature of the relationship between Communist authorities and intellectuals and the totalitarian character of Soviet Communism. It is a depiction of the lure Communism exerted on the minds of Polish intellectuals (exemplified mainly by the behavior of the Polish literary community) and the frequent “schizophrenia” that characterized their practice of dissimulation or at least mental reservations (which Mi?osz called ketman, borrowing the term from Islamic religious history). On a more personal level, the book is an apology for Mi?osz’s own collaboration in the diplomatic service and his “Hegelian sting,” which made him view Communism as a system willed by history. The book is an eloquent and penetrating document, surpassing in its complexity similar accounts written by Western as well as Eastern authors who became disillusioned with Communism.

The second book, Zdobycie w?adzy (1955; translated as The Seizure of Power, 1955, and as The Usurpers, 1955), although ostensibly a novel, is of interest mainly as an intelligent presentation of the reasoning and attitudes of those in Poland who experienced Nazi and at times Stalinist evil-people who had to make difficult political and moral choices, faced with the defeat of the prewar Polish political class (symbolized especially in the tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising) and the “betrayal” of the cause of Polish independence by the Western powers.

The third book is entirely different in character. ?wiat?o dzienne (1953, Daylight) is a fairly large volume of poems; it includes poems written after Mi?osz’s break with the regime as well as poems written since Ocalenie and mostly published in Poland. The volume opens with “Do Jonathana Swifta” (To Jonathan Swift), which bitingly sounds the central moral and political themes of the collection:

I bvisited the lands of Brobdingnag
And stopped at the Laputan isles.
Became acquainted with the Yahoo tribe
Which worships its own excrement,
A denunciators’ cursed race
Living in slavish fright.

The volume includes two poetic treatises, “Traktat moralny” (A Treatise on Morals) and “Toast,” principally discursive and narrative, respectively. “Dzieci? Europy” (translated as “Child of Europe”) is a masterpiece of ironic reasoning turned against the fraudulence of Communist dialectics. Several of the poems are about American themes, and there are free renderings of African American spirituals as well as Mi?osz’s own songlike poems. Two poems deal with contemporary Polish writers. The first, “Do Tadeusza Ró?ewicza, poety” (To Tadeusz Ró?ewicz, Poet), reaffirms Mi?osz’s view of the importance of poetry: “Fortunate is the nation that has a poet / And in its toil does not walk in silence.” The second, “Na ?mier? Tadeusza Borowskiego” (On the Death of Tadeusz Borowski), interprets Borowski’s suicide (presented as a tragic accident by the Communist authorities) as a flight into death of someone caught between two dead ends: a reactionary Polish ethos and the “smooth wall” of the East: “Borowski betrayed. He fled where he could.”

Included also are two poems written during the war, one of which is the cycle “Swiat (poema naiwne).” A “song of innocence” written in the face of and against the horror of experience, it reaffirms-with profound naiveté and serenity and with a mastery of form-the reality of faith, hope, and love, and the beauty of the natural and human world.

?wiat?o dzienne ends with a short poem, “Mittelbergheim,” signaling a new turn in Mi?osz’s poetic preoccupations. The poem, dedicated to Stanis?aw Vincenz, another of Mi?osz’s mentors, may be described as the poet’s rededication to the pursuit of a quest infinitely more fundamental than politics or ideology: the philosophical and religious search for the nature of reality. It is a poem of the rebirth of the essential Mi?osz and of the rediscovery of the concrete world and as such should be read together with another poem written roughly two years later, “Notatnik: Bonnad Lemanem” (A Notebook: Bon by Lake Leman), the final lines of which read:

  And he who finds repose,
Order and time eternal in what is,
Passes without a trace. Do you agree
To void what is, and to extract from movement,
Like a gleam from a black river’s water,
The eternal moment? Yes.

With these two poems, Mi?osz’s poetics entered a phase of epiphany, understood by Mi?osz in terms akin to those of James Joyce, who meant by it not only, as he wrote in Stephen Hero (1955), a “sudden spiritual manifestation” but also the “gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanized.”

During the first forty years of his life Mi?osz was constantly trying to find his bearings in extremely complex situations, in which personal choices were often tantamount to political acts and ideological declarations, while the sphere of private life was constantly affected by external factors and forces. Once, however, he had made his decision to break with the Communist regime and stay in the West, he gained, after an initial period of hardship, the ability to concentrate on his literary and intellectual pursuits and to deepen and refine his understanding of those forty years of experience.

Mi?osz’s post-1951 life falls into three periods: his stay in France (1951-1960); his appointment as a lecturer and then professor in the Slavic department of the University of California at Berkeley (1960-1980); and his post-1980 years, after the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of the main problems of the French period was Mi?osz’s decision to provide for himself and his family (he and his wife had two sons) by writing, which was not easy. Mi?osz was regarded as a renegade not only by the Communist authorities in Poland (hence the ban on the publication of his works) but also by a large and influential segment of the French intellectual milieu, while the Polish émigré circles in the West rejected him as a former collaborator of the regime and, in the view of some, a Communist agent. An important exception to this ostracism was the support offered Mi?osz by the editor of Kultura, Jerzy Giedroyc, and his closest associates. Giedryoc not only recognized Mi?osz’s talent but also provided a considerable portion of Mi?osz’s earnings between 1953 and 1960 by publishing twelve books either of Mi?osz’s own writings or of translations. Among these books were two of Mi?osz’s novels as well as Zniewolony umys?, ?wiat?o dzienne, Rodzinna Europa, Kontynenty (which included articles on and translations of American poets), and Traktat poetycki (1957, A Treatise on Poetry).

Traktat poetycki is a long poem that constitutes a transition between Mi?osz’s political phase and his more essential preoccupations. Modeled to some extent on Karl Shapiro’s Essay on Rime (1945), the poem treats in a major and integrated manner several of Mi?osz’s earlier themes, such as interwar Poland’s ethos and its roots, the meaning of history when judged by extreme human situations, and the nature of Nature; it also includes a brilliantly sketched outline of modern Polish poetry. In a pithy poem titled “Preface” Mi?osz formulates his poetic manifesto:

First, plain speech in the mother tongue.
Hearing it, you should be able to see
Apple trees, a river, the bend of a road,
As if in a flash of summer lightning.

And it should contain more than images....

You often ask yourself why you feel shame
Whenever you look through a book of poetry.
As if the author, for reasons unclear to you,
Addressed the worse side of your nature,
Pushing aside thought, cheating thought....

One clear stanza can make more weight
Than a whole wagon of elaborate prose.

The volume that collects most of Mi?osz’s poems written in France, Król Popiel i inne wiersze (1962, King Popiel and Other Poems), includes a new and, for Mi?osz, a rather unusual departure: “Album snów” (translated as “Album of Dreams”) is ostensibly a notebook of dreams but is more in the nature of dream-like recollections of troubling or unclear episodes from the author’s life–his only attempt, it seems, at poetically engaging the subconscious. There are also several excellent shorter poems, such as “Nic wi?cej” (No More) and “Mistrz” (The Master), both of which are ironic, melancholy, but unapologetic reflections on his powers as a poet. The thematically connected “Ballada” (Ballad) is a moving meditation on the fate of Tadeusz Gajcy, a young rightwing poet who perished in the Warsaw Uprising, written from the perspective of his mother. Finally, there are some skillful exercises in the baroque style. The last poem of the volume, “Po ziemi naszej” (translated as “Throughout Our Lands”), develops further what Aleksander Schenker describes in the introduction to Utwory poetyckie (1976, Poems) as Mi?osz’s earlier attempts “to fuse” various levels of language or voices “into one poetic idiom” so that, while retaining “their distinctive characteristics and fulfilling distinct stylistic functions,” they are “skillfully harmonized into one polyphonic whole.” This concluding poem combines not only various styles and voices but also different perspectives to illuminate a major central theme: the universal fate of all human beings, irrespective of their locus, time, culture, gender, or status. It is also the first of Mi?osz’s major poems that reflects in its imagery and descriptions the impact of the Pacific Coast on his poetic mind.

Mi?osz’s Berkeley years are often referred to as the Californian or American phase of his poetry. Indeed, images of Californian and Pacific Coast nature and cities, especially of San Francisco, often blend or contrast with vividly recollected landscapes of Lithuania. The interplay of the experience of two such different regions enriches not only the evocative and epiphanic powers and scope of Mi?osz’s poetry but also his sense of the strangeness of human society and civilization. Mi?osz made his Californian (and more broadly, North American) experience the subject of a book of short essays, Widzenia nad Zatoket San Francisco (1969; translated as Visions from San Francisco Bay, 1982) in which, probing the meaning of being in a place, he connected his new experience (“What one feels facing too large a space”) to his central preoccupations and already formulated views.

The constant thematic parallelism between Mi?osz’s discursive prose and his poetry is represented by the poem “Do Robinsona Jeffersa” (To Robinson Jeffers), in which the latter poet’s stark vision of an unfeeling and force-driven universe is contrasted with the milder, humanized Nature of “the Slavic poets”:

Thin-lipped, blue-eyed, without grace or hope,
before God the Terrible, body of the world,
Prayers are not heard. Basalt and granite.
Above them, a bird of prey. The only beauty....

And yet you did not know what I know. The earth teaches
More than does the nakedness of elements....

Better to carve suns and moons on the joints of crosses
as was done in my district. To birches and firs
give feminine names. To implore protection
against the mute and treacherous might
than to proclaim, as you did, an inhuman thing.

However formally fruitful and enriching in imagery and perspective the Californian phase of Mi?osz’s poetry is, it cannot be described as thematically American. Mi?osz observed with apprehension the turbulence of the American scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially the transformations of the intellectual climate; after all, Berkeley was one of the centers of the student movement, of counterculture, and of political, often Marxist, dissent. These and other developments of American life occasionally find their reflection in Mi?osz’s poetry, but they function principally as exemplifications of more-general and typically Mi?oszian themes.

Mi?osz also devoted considerable time and effort to acquainting American readers with Polish literature, especially poetry. The three most important publications in this respect are the anthology Postwar Polish Poetry (1965), which met with considerable interest and acclaim; The History of Polish Literature (1969); and the post-Nobel Harvard lectures published in 1983 as The Witness of Poetry, which gave Mi?osz the opportunity to formulate and argue for his own view of poetry. In the early 1970s Mi?osz started presenting his poetry and other writings to English-speaking readers, a process that began with the appearance of Selected Poems (1973) and reached its high point with the publication of The Collected Poems, 1931-1987 (1988), which despite the title is still quite selective. He was helped in the task of crossing the barrier of Polish language by several of his students at Berkeley, who translated his prose and with some of whom, as well as with some American poets, he translated his poems, insisting from roughly the mid 1970s on complete control over the translations of his poetry into English. He also gave many public readings, mostly on university campuses, thus further extending his reading public and the addressees of his writings.

The most important aspect of Mi?osz’s Californian phase, however, is the intensification of his ontological and metaphysical concerns. In having to resituate himself, Mi?osz reevaluated his view of civilization, as illustrated in the poem “Wie?ci” (translated as “Tidings”) in Gdzie wschodzi slo?ce i k?dy zapada (1974, From the Rising of the Sun). He also went deeper than before into his own past and that of his culture, especially in the cycle “Do Heraklita” (To Heraclitus) in Kroniki (1987, Chronicles). He addressed wider anthropological and philosophical concerns and increasingly shed his reticence to reveal his religious (even theological) thinking. In fact, the religious theme becomes the dominant and synthesizing framework for older as well as newer or more overtly treated themes, such as the erotic—as in “Filina,” written in 1976, and such relatively late poems as “Ogród ziemskich rozkoszy” (translated as “The Garden of Earthly Delights”) and “Annalena” from Nieobj?ta ziemia (1984; translated as Unattainable Earth, 1986). Thus, the Californian phase of Mi?osz’s poetry extended beyond two key events in his life: the awarding of the Nobel Prize, which transformed him, despite his reluctance, into a public figure and resulted in extensive publication of his work in translation, and the collapse of Communism in Poland and in the rest of Eastern Europe, which made it possible for him not only to spend longer periods of time in Poland but also to visit his native region in Lithuania.

In prose the most important single presentation of the religious theme is Ziemia Ulro (1977; translated as The Land of Ulro, 1984). Its somewhat meandering form is probably deliberate, though it no doubt also reflects the author’s uncertainties about his argument and the putative reactions of his reader. Ostensibly a discussion of the religious views of several writers and thinkers (Mickiewicz, Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, Dostoyevsky, de Lubicz Mi?osz, Gombrowicz, and Shestov), it serves as the central purpose of much of Mi?osz’s writing since his arrival in Berkeley: to create an intellectual space for religious thought outside of “academic” and confessional theology. In poetry, of the several volumes published between 1962 and the 1990s, the most important in this respect is Gdzie wschodzi s?o?ce i k?dy zapada, which includes several shorter poems on the religious theme as well as “Nie tak” (translated as “Not this Way”), “Lektury” (translated as “Readings”), “Oeconomia divina,” “0 aniolach” (translated as “On Angels”), and the long title poem, which directly discloses for the first time some of Mi?osz’s long-held convictions:

Yet I belong to those who believe in apokatastasis,
The word promises reverse movement,
Not the one that was set in katastasis,
And appears in Acts 3, 31.

It means: restoration. So believed: St. Gregory of Nyssa,
Johannes Scotus Erigena, Ruysbroeck, and William Blake.

For me, therefore, everything has a double existence.
Both in time and when time shall be no more.

The nature of Mi?osz’s religious quest, and the way in which it has contributed to the character of his poetry, has been well summed up by Aleksander Fiut in his study Moment wieczny. Poezja Czes?awa Mi?osza (1987; translated as The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of Czes?aw Mi?osz, 1990). Fiut posits that in his religious poetry Mi?osz

tries to rebuild the Christian anthropocentric vision of the world, at the same time (unlike naive traditionalists) acknowledging those theories and experiences that have undermined it. This attempt explains the constant presence in his poetry of antithetical clashes, the dialectic of opposite ideas, and the ambivalence of opinions: all are called into question and reinterpreted. From this point of view, Mi?osz’s poetry can be read as a hermeneutics of the Christian imagination, one aware of its own limitations.

However, if one takes into account Mi?osz’s later volumes and such major poetic restatements of the religious theme as his “Sze?? wyk?adów wierszem” (translated as “Six Lectures in Verse”), which pose as problematic the central Christian belief in the Resurrection, it is possible to regard Mi?osz’s poetic treatment of religious themes as something broader than the hermeneutics of the Christian imagination: as an attempt to revive convincingly religious imagination altogether while subjecting it to severe doubts and tests of experience and philosophical thought.

Mi?osz continued to extend and further diversify the already wide range of his poetic form. He worked toward achieving the most effective full line, taut or intonationally hymnic. He wrote aphoristic poems, passages made of unistichs, and whole poems written in dithyrambic versets, such as “Zdania” (translated as “Notes”) in Hymn o perle (1982, Hymn of the Pearl); the opening unistichs of another of Mi?osz’s longer masterpieces, “Gucio zaczarowany” (translated as “Bobo’s Metamorphosis”), in a 1965 volume of the same title; and “Na tr?bach i na cytrze” (translated as “With Trumpets and Zithers”) in Miasto bez imienia (1969, City Without a Name). He wrote short lyrical poems of joy, wonder, adoration, and confession, notably the serene “Dar” (translated as “Gift”) in Gucio zaczarowany, the poem of paradisiacal happiness “Po wygnaniu” (translated as “After Paradise”) in Nieobj?ta ziemia, and the humorously self-absolving “Wyznanie” (translated as “A Confession”) in Kroniki. He also mixed prose and verse in longer poems, most notably in “Gdzie wschodzi s?o?ce i k?dy zapada,” and composed sequences and whole volumes, such as “Osobny zeszyt” (translated as The Separate Notebooks, 1984), Nieobj?ta ziemia, and Kroniki, comprising his own poems, passages of discursive prose, reminiscences, epigraphs (his own and translated), and translations of poems. In Piesek przydro?ny (1997; translated as Road-side Dog, 1998), he included short pieces of prose, poems, and short essays, as well as a sequence subtitled “Tematy do odst?pienia” (Topicsfor the Taking). The book won the Nike Prize, the highest Polish literary award.

At no point in his long literary career has Mi?osz been interested in “mere literature.” From at least the mid 1930s he has tried to perfect his language and maintain what he terms its dignity. He has assiduously translated other poets, especially those who either supported his own view of poetic speech “as a more capacious form, that should not be too much like poetry nor too much like prose,” or helped him to extend and justify the range of his own poetic form and style (John Milton, William Wordsworth, Whitman, Blaise Cendrars, W. B. Yeats, Eliot, Constantine Cavafy, Chinese poets, and some contemporary American poets of the objectivist school). He has translated religious texts–from the Psalms, the Book of Job, and Ecclesiastes to the Gospel of St. Mark, the metaphysical writings of de Lubicz Mi?osz, and the essays of Simone Weil. Above all, he has steered clear of vagueness as a mode of symbolism, of the avant-garde tendency to transform language into an antiworld or pure verbal object, and of excessive lyricism, which excluded or “cheated” thought. Finally, he has rejected the worship of poetry as a substitute for religion.

Mi?osz died on 14 August 2004. According to a spokesman for Mi?osz’s family, there was no particular cause of death; he simply died of old age. He was buried in the Pauline sanctuary at Ska?ka near Kraków, despite some protests by nationalist Catholic groups.

Mi?osz’s creative powers did not abandon him in the last years of his life. Described by a somewhat unfriendly critic in the obituary in The Guardian (16 August 2004) as “perhaps the luckiest Polish writer of the last century” (a statement that certainly contradicts the poet’s own view of his long, rich, yet philosophically and morally tormented existence), Mi?osz continued despite his age and increasingly fragile health to produce works of major significance and excellence. Two collections in prose of character sketches, reminiscences, and reflections, Abecadlo Mi?osza (1997; translated as Mi?osz s ABC’s, 2001) and Inne abecadlo (1998), are remarkable distillations of memory and judgment; and the last two volumes of poetry, To (2000, It) and Druga przestrze? (2002; translated as Second Space: New Poems, 2004) are a fitting summation both of Mi?osz’s essentially religious quest, in which faith, hope, doubt, ecstasy, affirmation, sober realism, and despair are held in philosophical balance by the consciousness of their inherent contradictions, and of his poetic art. Their effect, as in much of his earlier work, is, to quote Helen Vendler’s apt characterization of his writing, “as though Mi?osz were at once Chardin, Rembrandt, Matisse, Gericualt and Cesanne, or-to turn to poetic analogies-as though he were from moment to moment Clare, Whitman, Lawrence, Auden and Marvell.” But the masterpiece of Mi?osz’s last poetic phase is the profoundly moving elegy Orfeusz i Eurydyka (2003; translated as Orpheus and Eurydice in the same volume), which Mi?osz wrote after the death of his much loved second wife, the American Carol Thigpen, whom he had married in 1992 (his first wife had died in 1986). Mi?osz’s Orpheus does not lose Eurydice the second time because he fails to heed the injunction not to look back (as in the original story); he loses her for a reason that concerns not disobedience but reality:

Under his faith a doubt sprang up
And entwined him like cold bindweed.
Unable to weep, he wept at the loss
Of the human hope for the resurrection of the dead.
He was, now, like every other mortal.
His lyre was silent and in his dream he was defenseless.
He knew he must have faith and he could not have faith.

The volume Nieobj?ta ziemia ends with a short untitled piece of poetic prose, tagged “Berkeley-Paris-Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981-1983”:

To find my home in one sentence, concise, as if hammered in metal. Not to enchant anybody. Not to earn a lasting name in posterity. An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, which three words are opposed to chaos and nothingness.

The continuously perceived failure to find such a home led Czeslaw Mi?osz to generate a massive body of work that ranks among the most philosophically penetrating and meaningful poetry of the twentieth century.

Letters

“Wa?kowicz Mi?osz w ?wietle korespondencji,” TwÓrczo??, 10 (1981);

Listy, by Mi?osz and Thomas Merton, translated into Polish by Maria Tarnowska (Kraków: Znak, 1991);

Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Mi?osz, edited by Robert Faggen (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997);

Zaraz po wojnie. Korespondeja z pisarzami 1945-1950, edited by Jerzy Illg (Kraków: Znak, 1998);

Mój wilenski opiekun”: Listy do Manfreda Kridla (1946-1955), edited by Andrzej Karcz (Torun: Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, 2005).

Interviews

Aleksander Fiut, Rozmowy z Czeslawem Mi?oszem (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1981);

Ewa Czarnecka (Renata Gorczy?ska), Podró?ny ?wiata: Rozmowy z Czestawem Mi?oszem. Komentarze (New York: Bicentennial Publishing, 1983; expanded edition, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1992);

Czarnecka and Fiut, Conversations with Czeslaw Mi?osz, translated by Richard Lourie (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987),

Fiut, ed., Czestawa Mi?osza autoportret przekorny. Rozmowy przeprowadzi? A. Fiut (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1988);

Cynthia L. Haven, ed., Czestaw Mi?osz: Conversations (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006).

Bibliography

Rimma Volynska-Bogert and Wojciech Zalewski, Czeslaw Mi?osz: An International Bibliography, 1930-1980 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983).

Biography

Andrzej Zawada, Mi?osz (Wroclaw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Dolno?l?skie, 1996).

References

Lidia Banowska, Mi?osz i Mickiewicz: Poezja wobec tradycji (Pozna?: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza, 2005);

Stanis?aw Bara?czak, “Mi?osz’s Poetic Language: A Reconnaissance,” Language and Style, 4 (1985): 319–333;

Stanis?aw Bere?, Ostatnia wile?skaplejada (Warsaw: PEN, 1990);

Ewa Bie?kowska, W ogrodzie ziemskim: Ksi ?ka o Mi?oszu (Warsaw: Sic, 2004);

Jan B?onski, Mi?osz jak ?wiat (Kraków: Znak, 1998);

Bogdana Carpenter, “The Gift Returned: Czeslaw Mi?osz and American Poetry,” in Living in Translation: Polish Writers in America, edited by Halina Stephan, Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics, 38 (Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2003), pp. 45–75;

Bo?ena Chrz?stowska, Poezje Czeslawa Mi?osza (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, 1982);

Bogdan Czaykowski, “From Rhythm and Metaphysics to Intonation, Experience and Gnosis: The Poetry of Boles?aw Le?mian, Aleksander Wat and Czeslaw Mi?osz,” in The Mature Laurel: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry, edited by Adam Czerniawski (Bridgend, Wales: Seren Books, 1991), pp. 37–87;

Donald Davie, Czestaw Mi?osz and the Insufficiency of Lyric (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986);

Davie, “From the Marches of Christendom: Mandelstam and Mi?osz,” Southwest Review, 4 (1995);

Helen De Aguilar, “A Prince Out of Thy Star: The Place of Czeslaw Mi?osz,” Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 2 (1983-1984): 127–154;

Judith A. Dompkowski, “Down a spiral staircase, never-ending”: Motion as Design in the Writing of Czestaw Mi?osz (New York: Peter Lang, 1990);

Jolanta Dudek, Europejskie korzenie poezji Czestaw Mi?osza (Kraków: Ksi?garnia Akademicka, 1995);

Aleksander Fiut, Moment wieczny. Poezja Czestawa Mi?osza (Paris: Libella, 1987); translated by Theodosia S. Robertson as The Eternal Moment: The Poetry of Czestaw Mi?osz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990);

Fiut, W stronê Mi?osza (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2003);

Witold Gombrowicz, Przeciw poetom. Dialog o poezji z Czestawem Mi?oszem, edited by Francesco M. Cataluccio (Kraków: Znak, 1995);

B. Grodzki, Tradycja i transgresja: Od dyskursu do autokreacji w estetyce i formach pojemnych Czeslawa Mi?osza (Lublin: Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Sk?odowskiej, 2003);

Joanna Gromek, ed., Czestaw Mi?osz: In Memoriam (Kraków: Znak, 2004);

K. van Heuckelom, “Patrze? w promie? od ziemi odbity”: Wizualno?? w poezji Czeslawa Mi?osza (Warsaw: Instytut Bada? Literackich, 2004);

Edward Hirsch, “Mi?osz and world Poetry,” Partisan Review, 1 (1999): 24–26;

Ironwood, special Mi?osz issue, 8 (1981);

Bo?ena Karwowska, “Czeslaw Mi?osz’s Self-Presentation in English-Speaking Countries,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 3-4 (1998): 273–295;

Karwowska, Mi?osz i Brodski: Recepcja krytyczna twórczo?ci w krajach anglojezycznych (Warsaw: IBL, 2000);

El?bieta Ki?lak, Walka Jakuba z Anio?em: Czeslaw Mi?osz wobec romantyczno?ci (Warsaw: Prószy?ski i Ska., 2000);

Andrzej S. Kowalczyk, Kryzys ?wiadomo?ci w estetyce polskiej lat 1945-1977 (Vincenz—Stempowski—Wittlin—Mi?osz) (Warsaw: LNB, 1990);

Krasnogruda, special Mi?osz issue, 13 (2001);

Jerzy Kwiatkowski, ed., Poznawanie Mi?osza. Studia i szkice o twórczo?ci poety (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1985);

Zdzis?aw Lapi?ski, Mi?dzy polityk? i metafizyk?. O poezji Czestawa Mi?osza (London: Odnowa, 1981);

Hank Lazer, “Poetry and Thought: The Example of Czeslaw Mi?osz,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 3 (1988): 449–465;

Madeline G. Levine, “Czeslaw Mi?osz; Poetry and Ethics,” in her Contemporary Polish Poetry, 1925-1975 (Boston: Twayne, 1981), pp. 36–54;

Literatura na ?wiecie, special Mi?osz issue, 6 (1981);

Ryszard Matuszewski, Moje spotkania z Czeslawem Mi?oszem (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2004);

Edward Mo?ejko, ed., Between Anxiety and Hope: The Poetry and Writing of Czeslaw Mi?osz (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1988);

Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, The Poet’s Work: An Introduction to Czestaw Mi?osz (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991);

Nils Ake Nilsson, ed., Czeslaw Mi?osz: A Stockholm Conference (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1992);

Ryszard Nycz, Sylwy wspó?czesne (Wroclaw: Zak?ad Naro dowy im. Ossoli?skich, 1984);

Józef Olejniczak, Czytajac Mi?osza (Katowice: Szko?a j?zyka i kultury polskiej, 1997);

Pami?tnik Literacki, special Mi?osz issue, 4 (1981);

Partisan Review, special Mi?osz issue, 66 (Winter 1999);

Poezja, special Mi?osz issue, 7 (1981);

Polonistyka, special Mi?osz issue, 1 (2005);

Alan Soldofsky, “Nature and the Symbolic Order: Dialogue Between Czeslaw Mi?osz and Robinson Jeffers,” in Robinson Jeffers: Dimensions of a Poet, edited by Robert Brophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1995);

A. Staniszewski, ed., Studia i szkice o twórczo?ci Czeslawa Mi?osza (Olsztyn: WSP, 1995);

?wiat i s?owo, special Mi?osz issue, 1 (2006);

Jerzy Szymik, Problem teologicznego wymiaru dzie?a literakiego Mi?osza (Katowice: Ksi?garnia ?w. Jacka, 1996);

Beata Tarnowska, Geografia poetycka w powojennej twórczo?ci Czeslawa Mi?osza (Olsztyn: WSP, 1996);

Teksty, special Mi?osz issue, 4-5 (1981);

Teksty Drugie, special Mi?osz issue, 3-4 (2001);

Lukasz Tischner, Sekrety manichejskich trucizn: Mi?osz wobec z?a (Kraków: Znak, 2001);

Twórczo??, special Mi?osz issue, 6 (1981);

Tomas Venclova, “Poetry as Atonement,” Polish Review, 4 (1986): 265–271;

Helen Vendler, “Czeslaw Mi?osz,” in her The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets, Critics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 209-223;

Andrzej Walicki, Spotkania z Mi?oszem (London: Aneks, 1985);

Walicki, “Zniewolony umys?”po latach (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1993);

Wi??, special Mi?osz issue, 3 (1981);

World Literature Today, special Mi?osz issue, 3 (1978);

Kazimierz Wyka, “Ogrody lunatyczne i ogrody pasterskie,” Twórczo??, 5 (1946): 135–147;

J. Zach, Mi?osz i poetyka wyznania (Kraków: Universitas, 2002);

Krzysztof Zajas, Mi?osz i filozofia (Kraków: Baran i Suszczy?ski, 1997);

Marek Zaleski, Zamiast: 0 twórczo?ci Czes?awa Mi?osza (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2005);

Zeszyty Literackie, special Mi?osz issues, 75 (2001); 5 (2005); 94 (2006).

Papers

Some of Czeslaw Mi?osz’s papers are in The Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University, and in The Mi?osz Institute, Archives and Library in Kraków.

Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 3