Czeslaw Milosz
Czeslaw Milosz
Czesław Miłosz; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer, translator and diplomat. His World War II-era sequence The World is a collection of twenty "naïve" poems. Following the war, he served as Polish cultural attaché in Paris and Washington, D.C., then in 1951 defected to the West. His nonfiction book The Captive Mindbecame a classic of anti-Stalinism. From 1961 to 1998 he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 June 1911
CitySeteniai, Lithuania
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.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person...
Men will clutch at illusions when they have nothing else to hold to.
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
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.
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.
Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.
The soul exceeds its circumstances.
The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.
I've always regretted that I'm made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends.
Language is the only homeland.
Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.
The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.
The true enemy of man is generalization.