Miłosz, Czesław (1911–2004)

Polish-born US writer. He became a diplomat before defecting and becoming a US citizen. His poetry in English translation, classical in style, includes Selected Poems (1973) and Bells in Winter (1978). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

His collection of essays The Captive Mind (1953) concerns the impact of communism on Polish intellectuals. Among his novels are The Seizure of Power (1955), The Issa Valley (1981), and The Land of Ulro (1984).

Miłosz held the Charles Eliot Norton professorship at Harvard University 1981–82 and published his lectures from that year in The Witness of Poetry (1983). In 1984 a new volume of his translated poems, The Separate Notebooks, was made available in a bilingual edition. The translation of Unattainable Earth, Miłosz's unique collection of poetry (his own and others'), letters, and historical excerpts important to his creative processes for the years 1981–84, was published in 1986. His Collected Poems, 1931–1987 (1988) includes translations by the poets Robert Hass, Leonard Nathan, and Robert Pinsky, and a later volume of poems, Provinces, was published in 1992.