Oscar Milosz
Encyclopedia
Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz (May 28, 1877—March 2, 1939) was a French
-Lithuania
n writer and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations
. His literary work was concerned with symbols and associations. A recluse, his poems were vibrant and tormented, concerned with love, loneliness and anger. Milosz was primarily a poet, though he also wrote novels, plays and essays. He was a distant cousin of Polish writer Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel Prize
for literature in 1980.
in present day Belarus
). Earlier these lands had belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
, and later to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
, but at the time was part of the Russian Empire
. It was here that he spent his childhood. He was christianized July 2, 1886, at Saint Alexander Church in Warsaw
. His father, Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz, was a former officer in the Russian army and his mother, Marie Rosalie Rosenthal, was a Polish Jew
from Warsaw
. His parents did not marry until Oscar Milosz was 17. In 1889, Milosz's parents placed him at the Lycée Janson de Sailly
in Paris
. He began writing poems in 1894 and started to frequent artistic circles, meeting Oscar Wilde
and Jean Moréas
. After finishing at the Lycée, he enrolled at the École des langues orientales, where he studied Syriac
and Hebrew
.
His first book of verse, Le Poème des Décadences, appeared in 1899. Milosz travelled widely in Europe
and North Africa
and explored many foreign literatures. He was an excellent linguist and was fluent in English
, German
, Italian
, Spanish
, Russian
and Polish
, as well as being able to read Latin and Hebrew. Later in life, he would learn Lithuanian and Basque
too. He chose to write his works in French.
In 1916, during World War I
, Milosz was conscripted to the Russian division of the French army
and was assigned to the press corps. Here he learned about the growing movement for Lithuanian independence
. By the end of the war when both Lithuania
and Poland
were effectively independent again, Milosz chose to identify with Lithuania - even though he did not yet speak Lithuanian — because he believed that it had been the original homeland of his ancestors in the 13th century. After the Russian revolution
of 1917, Milosz's estate at Čareja came under Soviet control and was seized by the Bolshevik
s. In 1920 when France
recognized the independence of Lithuania, he was appointed officially as Chargé d'Affaires
for the new state. In 1931 he became a French citizen and was awarded the Légion d'honneur
the same year. Ill with cancer, he died of a heart attack at his house in Fontainebleau
in 1939.
Some of his works in French:
Works translated into English:
Opera based on his poems:
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
-Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n writer and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
. His literary work was concerned with symbols and associations. A recluse, his poems were vibrant and tormented, concerned with love, loneliness and anger. Milosz was primarily a poet, though he also wrote novels, plays and essays. He was a distant cousin of Polish writer Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
for literature in 1980.
Life
Oscar Milosz was born in Čareja (near MogilevMogilev
Mogilev is a city in eastern Belarus, about 76 km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105 km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast. It has more than 367,788 inhabitants...
in present day Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
). Earlier these lands had belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 12th /13th century until 1569 and then as a constituent part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1791 when Constitution of May 3, 1791 abolished it in favor of unitary state. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic...
, and later to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
, but at the time was part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. It was here that he spent his childhood. He was christianized July 2, 1886, at Saint Alexander Church in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. His father, Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz, was a former officer in the Russian army and his mother, Marie Rosalie Rosenthal, was a Polish Jew
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
from Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. His parents did not marry until Oscar Milosz was 17. In 1889, Milosz's parents placed him at the Lycée Janson de Sailly
Lycée Janson de Sailly
Lycée Janson de Sailly is a lycée located in the XVIe arrondissement of Paris, France. It is generally considered as one of the most prestigious lycées in Paris...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He began writing poems in 1894 and started to frequent artistic circles, meeting Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
and Jean Moréas
Jean Moréas
Jean Moréas , was a Greek poet, essayist, and art critic, who wrote mostly in the French language but also in Greek during his youth.-Background:...
. After finishing at the Lycée, he enrolled at the École des langues orientales, where he studied Syriac
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
and Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
.
His first book of verse, Le Poème des Décadences, appeared in 1899. Milosz travelled widely in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
and explored many foreign literatures. He was an excellent linguist and was fluent in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, as well as being able to read Latin and Hebrew. Later in life, he would learn Lithuanian and Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
too. He chose to write his works in French.
In 1916, during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Milosz was conscripted to the Russian division of the French army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
and was assigned to the press corps. Here he learned about the growing movement for Lithuanian independence
Act of Independence of Lithuania
The Act of Independence of Lithuania or Act of February 16 was signed by the Council of Lithuania on February 16, 1918, proclaiming the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania, governed by democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital. The Act was signed by all twenty...
. By the end of the war when both Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
were effectively independent again, Milosz chose to identify with Lithuania - even though he did not yet speak Lithuanian — because he believed that it had been the original homeland of his ancestors in the 13th century. After the Russian revolution
Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution can refer to:* Russian Revolution , a series of strikes and uprisings against Nicholas II, resulting in the creation of State Duma.* Russian Revolution...
of 1917, Milosz's estate at Čareja came under Soviet control and was seized by the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s. In 1920 when France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
recognized the independence of Lithuania, he was appointed officially as Chargé d'Affaires
Chargé d'affaires
In diplomacy, chargé d’affaires , often shortened to simply chargé, is the title of two classes of diplomatic agents who head a diplomatic mission, either on a temporary basis or when no more senior diplomat has been accredited.-Chargés d’affaires:Chargés d’affaires , who were...
for the new state. In 1931 he became a French citizen and was awarded the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
the same year. Ill with cancer, he died of a heart attack at his house in Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
in 1939.
Works
Milosz collected Lithuanian folk tales, wrote fiction, drama, and essays. Largely neglected during his lifetime, Milosz has increasingly come to be considered as an important figure in French poetry.Some of his works in French:
- 1899 : Le Poème des Décadences (poetry)
- 1906 : Les Sept Solitudes (poetry)
- 1910 : L'Amoureuse Initiation (novel)
- 1911 : Les Éléments (poetry)
- 1913 : Miguel Mañara. Mystère en six tableaux. (play)
- 1915 : Poèmes
- 1917 : Épitre à Storge (first part of Ars Magna)
- 1918 : Adramandoni (six poems)
- 1919 : Méphisobeth (play)
- 1922 : La Confession de Lemuel
- 1924 : Ars Magna (philosophy)
- 1926-27 : Les ArcanesLes ArcanesPublished in 1927, Les Arcanes is the second of Oskar Milosz's two cosmological poems, the first being Ars Magna . Upon the publication of Les Arcanes, Milosz declared that his poetic period was completed and that the "scientific" period of his work was beginning...
(poetry) - 1930 : Contes et Fabliaux de la vieille Lithuanie (translation of folk tales)
- 1932 : Origines ibériques du peuple juif (essay)
- 1933 : Contes lithuaniens de ma Mère l'Oye (translation of folk tales)
- 1936 : Les Origines de la nation lithuanienne (essay)
- 1938 : La Clef de l'Apocalypse
Works translated into English:
- 1928, a collection of 26 Lithuanian songs;
- 1930, Lithuanian Tales and Stories;
- 1933, Lithuanian Tales;
- 1937, The origin of the Lithuanian Nation, in which he tried to persuade the reader that Lithuanians have the same origin as Jews from the Iberian PeninsulaIberian PeninsulaThe Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
. - 1985, The Noble Traveller: The Life and Writings of Oskar Milosz, ed. Christopher Bamford (Lindisfarne Press).
Opera based on his poems:
- 2004, Books of Silence, Composer - Latvian Andris Dzenitis