Czesław Miłosz (Nobel)

Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish-American poet, writer and diplomat, is regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century having won a Nobel Prize for literature. While his father was a civil engineer and his mother from Polish nobility, his early years were marked by the instability of WWI as his family moved across Russia and Siberia. Graduating with a law degree, Czeslaw excelled at poetry garnering significant attention. During WWII, Milosz was captured and held prisoner by German troops, only to be rescued by a Catholic nun, who was a stranger to him, but successfully pleaded with the Germans on his behalf. After WWII, he served in positions with the Polish communist government, but defected to the west, seeking asylum in France and eventually relocating to the U.S. to become a professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he continued to write prolifically, earning the Nobel Prize in Literature. While raised a Christian, his writing reflects his struggles with themes of faith, doubt and spirituality. Despite periods of skepticism, he maintained a lifelong engagement with his Christian Faith as noted when he said: "At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the newday of a most precious delusion." Could his writings be exploring the reality of the doubts experienced during times of darkness while living with the hope realized during the light of the morning, symbolized by the actions of Catholic nun that may have saved his life?