Czesław Miłosz’s letters to Zofia and Tadeusz Breza, Kazimierz Wierzyński and Antoni Słonimski (ed. Alina Kowalczykowa)
Listy do Zofii i Tadeusza Brezów, Kaziemirza Wierzyńskiego i Antoniego Słonimskiego (opr. Alina Kowalczykowa)
Keywords: Correspondence; Miłosz; Polish poetry; Biography
Czesław Miłosz’s letters to Zofia and Tadeusz Breza, dating 1945–1947, now published for the first time based on Professor’s Alina Kowalczykowa’s collection and edited by herself, reveal the behind-the-scenes of the future Nobel-Prize winner’s stay in the United States, as he was employed then with the Embassy of the People’s Republic of Poland. Family-life scenes and plans regarding his clerical and literary work are combined with descriptions of the poet’s first impressions form his sojourn in America whose realities have disappointed him, not satisfying his earlier expectations. Two letters to Kazimierz Wierzyński (1960) and one to Antoni Słonimski, of 1957, were written after the poet decided to settle down in the West. Problems with getting his life organised in France coincide there with his first classes at the University of California, Berkeley, and with decisions made by the then Polish communist authorities making his life difficult and persecuting him as a ‘traitor’.
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