Cultural impact
Miłosz's poem on the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, Gdańsk, PolandIn 1978, the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky called Miłosz "one of the great poets of our time; perhaps the greatest".[123] Miłosz has been cited as an influence by numerous writers—contemporaries and succeeding generations. For example, scholars have written about Miłosz's influence on the writing of Seamus Heaney,[124][125] and Clare Cavanagh has identified the following poets as having benefited from Miłosz's influence: Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Rosanna Warren, Robert Hass, Charles Simic, Mary Karr, Carolyn Forché, Mark Strand, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, and Derek Walcott.[126]
By being smuggled into Poland, Miłosz's writing was a source of inspiration to the anti-communist Solidarity movement there in the early 1980s. Lines from his poem "You Who Wronged" are inscribed on the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970 in Gdańsk, where Solidarity originated.[127]
Of the effect of Miłosz's edited volume Postwar Polish Poetry on English-language poets, Merwin wrote, "Miłosz’s book had been a talisman and had made most of the literary bickering among the various ideological encampments, then most audible in the poetic doctrines in English, seem frivolous and silly".[69] Similarly, the British poet and scholar Donald Davie argued that, for many English-language writers, Miłosz's work encouraged an expansion of poetry to include multiple viewpoints and an engagement with subjects of intellectual and historical importance: "I have suggested, going for support to the writings of Miłosz, that no concerned and ambitious poet of the present day, aware of the enormities of twentieth-century history, can for long remain content with the privileged irresponsibility allowed to, or imposed on, the lyric poet".[128]
Miłosz's writing continues to be the subject of academic study, conferences, and cultural events. His papers, including manuscripts, correspondence, and other materials, are housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.[129]
Controversies
Nationality
Miłosz's birth in a time and place of shifting borders and overlapping cultures, and his later naturalization as an American citizen, have led to competing claims about his nationality.[130] Although his family identified as Polish and Polish was his primary language, and although he frequently spoke of Poland as his country, he also publicly identified himself as one of the last citizens of the multi-ethnic Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[104] Writing in a Polish newspaper in 2000, he claimed, "I was born in the very center of Lithuania and so have a greater right than my great forebear, Mickiewicz, to write 'O Lithuania, my country.'"[131] But in his Nobel lecture, he said, "My family in the 16th century already spoke Polish, just as many families in Finland spoke Swedish and in Ireland English, so I am a Polish, not a Lithuanian, poet".[25] Public statements such as these, and numerous others, inspired discussion about his nationality, including a claim that he was "arguably the greatest spokesman and representative of a Lithuania that, in Miłosz’s mind, was bigger than its present incarnation".[132] Others have viewed Miłosz as an American author, hosting exhibitions and writing about him from that perspective[110][133] and including his work in anthologies of American poetry.[134]
But in The New York Review of Books in 1981, the critic John Bayley wrote, "nationality is not a thing [Miłosz] can take seriously; it would be hard to imagine a greater writer more emancipated from even its most subtle pretensions".[135] Echoing this notion, the scholar and diplomat Piotr Wilczek argued that, even when he was greeted as a national hero in Poland, Miłosz "made a distinct effort to remain a universal thinker".[130] Speaking at a ceremony to celebrate his birth centenary in 2011, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė stressed that Miłosz's works "unite the Lithuanian and Polish people and reveal how close and how fruitful the ties between our people can be".[136]
Catholicism
Though raised Catholic, Miłosz as a young man came to adopt a "scientific, atheistic position mostly", though he later returned to the Catholic faith.[137] He translated parts of the Bible into Polish, and allusions to Catholicism pervade his poetry, culminating in a long 2001 poem, "A Theological Treatise". For some critics, Miłosz's belief that literature should provide spiritual fortification was outdated: Franaszek suggests that Miłosz's belief was evidence of a "beautiful naïveté",[138] while David Orr, citing Miłosz's dismissal of "poetry which does not save nations or people", accused him of "pompous nonsense".[139]
Miłosz expressed some criticism of both Catholicism and Poland (a majority-Catholic country), causing furor in some quarters when it was announced that he would be interred in Kraków's historic Skałka church.[140] Cynthia Haven writes that, to some readers, Miłosz's embrace of Catholicism can seem surprising and complicates the understanding of him and his work.[141]
