Czesław Miłosz
The Captive Mind, one of Miłosz's notable works, appeared alongside a body of writing that also includes the poems Campo di Fiori, Piosenka o końcu świata, and Ocalenie, as well as A Treatise on Poetry.
Czesław Miłosz was born on 30 June 1911 in Šeteniai and studied at Vilnius University. Over the course of his life he worked as a poet, writer, essayist, translator, literary historian, diplomat, university teacher, and pedagogue. He held citizenship in Lithuania, Poland, and the United States, and he worked across multiple languages, including Polish, French, Spanish, Czech, and English. That breadth of role and language ran through a career that produced both poetry and prose and that placed him at the intersection of several literary and cultural traditions.
In 1980, Miłosz received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died on 14 August 2004 in Kraków.
Quotes by Czesław Miłosz
Czesław Miłosz's insights on:
A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.
The masses in highly industrialized countries like England, the United States, or France are largely de-Christianized. Technology, and the way of life it produces, undermines Christianity far more effectively than do violent measures.
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
I've always regretted that I'm made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.