Oscar Milosz Biography

Oscar Milosz was a French-Lithuanian poet. While mostly unrecognized in his time, he later became a classic figure of turn-of-the-century poetry. A writer of verse, drama, essays, fiction and a compiler of Lithuanian folk tales, in his later years, he became an esteemed diplomat for Lithuania at the League of Nations. Raised in the countryside of present day Belarus, he was sent to study in Paris at the age of 12. His early works, like the 1889 Le Poème des Décadencesn, are characterized by his loneliness and melancholy away from his family. In 1914, while studying Emanuel Swedenborg and Dante Alighieri, he is said to have experienced a divine vision that forever changed his style. Today, Milosz is primarily associated with his more mature and imagery rich style, packed with alchemical symbolism, Christian cosmology and isolated imagery. During World War I, he was conscripted into the Russian army. During this time, he became associated with the Lithuanian independence movement. When Lithuania attained independence, he became a highly esteemed diplomat of the new country to France. Over his career, he produced three plays, two novels and a staggering number of poems, most of which have only been recently assembled into collections