Press Releases

Czesław Miłosz – citizen of the world, a link between Lithuanian and Polish nations

Sunday, July 26, Vilnius - President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė attended a ceremony of unveiling a plaque in the University of Vilnius to mark the 100th birth anniversary of Czesław Miłosz, a prominent writer and laureate of the Nobel Prize.

"Czesław Miłosz's works unite the Lithuanian and Polish people and reveal how close and how fruitful the ties between our people can be. They build up a person as an individual and pave the way to mutually beneficial relationships," the President said during the ceremony.

According to the President, this world-known writer is important today not only for his works but also for his ideas, as Czesław Miłosz, being a man of the world, was honored as one of the Righteous among the Nations and was always a Lithuanian and a Pole in one person, contributing actively to the collapse of the Communist totalitarian rule.

Czesław Miłosz, one of the most prominent poets of the last century, an honorary citizen of Lithuania, was born on 30 June 1911 in Šateiniai, near Kėdainiai, studied at the Žygimantas Augustas (Zygmunt August) Gymnasium in Vilnius and later at Stefan Batory University in Vilnius to graduate from the Faculty of Law in 1934. A world-scale intellectual, he always stressed his allegiance to both cultures.

The President noted that 2011 was announced the Year of Czesław Miłosz and underlined the need to disseminate more widely his literary heritage, which already became a symbol and a source of pride for the two nations.