Literature · Politics · Scholarship · 1911–2004
Born: 30 June 1911 · Died: 14 August 2004 · Age at death: 93
Czesław Miłosz died aged 93. He was born on 30 June 1911 and died on 14 August 2004.
Polish poet and diplomat who defected to the West, wrote The Captive Mind and won the Nobel Prize in Literature
Did you know?During the Second World War, he worked with the Polish underground in Warsaw to help rescue Jewish people from the ghetto.
Czesław Miłosz wrote poetry that bears witness to the darkest chapters of modern Europe. He lived through war, Nazi occupation and communist rule in Poland. During the war he took part in the underground cultural life of Warsaw. After serving as a diplomat for communist Poland, he defected in 1951. The Captive Mind explained how intellectuals came to accept tyranny. His poetry was banned at home for decades. He taught for many years at Berkeley in California. In 1980 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the same year Solidarity was born.
Czesław Miłosz ( MEE-losh, US also -lawsh, -wosh, -wawsh, Polish:; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Profile
Polish poet, 1911–2004
Czesław Miłosz was born in Šeteniai, Lithuania, on 30 June 1911.
He lived in Warsaw during the war.
The Captive Mind appeared in 1953.
He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.
Career highlights
Did you know?His lines appear on the Gdańsk shipyard monument.
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