On November 18, Clare Cavanagh, a professor at Northwestern University who specializes in nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian, Polish, and Anglo-American poetry, delivered a lecture titled “The Cold War and Poetry: The Case of Czeslaw Milosz.” This was the third lecture in the series “Overcoming Bipolarity: New Approaches to the Cold War,” which is sponsored by Princeton’s Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies along with the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the Princeton University Humanities Council.

Cavanagh began her lecture by noting that she started this biographical project of Czeslaw Milosz, a renowned Polish-American poet, when he was still alive. He passed away in 2004 at the age of 93, concluding a long-lived, highly productive life. She joked that it seems as though “he never stops writing. I think he was writing posthumously.” During her work on his biography, she became interested in the idea of “Milosz contra Milosz,” a concept which stems from Witold Gombrowicz, a polish writer and playwright. In 1951, Gombrowicz wrote the following in the journal Kultura: “I am Milosz, I must be Milosz, / Being Milosz, I don’t want to be Milosz, / I kill the Milosz in myself / in order to be more Milosz…” She noted that this idea was something even Milosz himself acknowledged.

            Before diving into the life and work of Milosz, Cavanagh motivated the subject of the lecture, stressing the profound impact of Central and Eastern European poetry. She first quotes Justin Quinn, an Irish poet and critic, who writes in his Between Two Fires: Transnationalism & Cold War Poetry, “How could there be a study of poetry in America during the Cold War that doesn’t deal with Milosz and Brodsky?” Cavanagh noted that this question arises from the fact that “there are plenty of studies that deal with the Cold War and completely exclude the enormous intersection— not just between Eastern, Central European poets and American poets—but the impact of these poets on the American perception of the Cold War.” According to Cavanagh, “in literary terms, the impact of Eastern and Central European writing was absolutely enormous on the development of modern poetry since … the mid 60s.” Here, she cited Maureen McLane, an American poet and critic, who in the Chicago Tribune, “What would American poets and critics do without the Central Europeans and the Russians to browbeat themselves with?” McLane includes Milosz in the group of Central European poets with an extensive impact on American poetry, a statement with which Cavanagh concurs. She concluded this section of her lecture, noting, “The impact of the poetry from this part of the world is clear, and it’s clear that it stretches beyond poetry and has implications in terms of cultural politics as well.” Milosz, in her view, was one of the most influential Polish poets.

            Then, Cavanagh pivoted to a summary of Milosz’s life, the events of which contribute to a better understanding of the idea of “Milosz contra Milosz.” He was born into a family of impoverished gentry in the rural village of Szetejnie, Lithuania. His father was a civil engineer who was eventually conscripted into the Russian Army and brought his family around Russia during his military service. Eventually, his family relocated to Vilnius, which at this point was part of Poland. His father, however, was trapped in Lithuania, which had very poor diplomatic relations with Poland. This “complicated geopolitical past” deeply influenced Milosz. In 1934, he went to Paris on scholarship, eventually moving to Warsaw. Cavanagh described 1945 to 1951 as the critical “juncture of his life.” During this period, he was a member of People’s Poland Diplomatic Corps, with which he separated in 1951. Following the split, he was forced to reside in France and was denied an American visa, as he found himself caught between the Stalinism of People’s Poland and McCarthyism in the United States. He often describes this as the worst decade of his life. After Paris, he was offered a position at U.C. Berkeley, where he taught from 1960 to 1978.

            Here, Cavanagh transitioned to a brief overview of his writing. She noted that in the early 1950s, his works were smuggled into Poland. In fact, she described this period as “Milosz the cultural attaché writing against himself partly, saying the poet and the political-cultural apparatus are two separate people.” He was someone within the system writing in opposition to it, embodying the idea of "Milosz contra Milosz.” Then, he became a figure of the opposition when his poetry was inscribed on the Three Crosses Monument, memorializing shipyard workers who died during protests in 1970. As a result, Milosz is the “diplomatic attaché being turned into the commemorator of the victims of the regime.” Cavanagh contended that “he [Milosz] knows how doubled his positions always are” during this era. When he split from the regime in 1951, he attributed his departure to his distaste for socialist realism. Cavanagh offered the poem “A Song About Coca-Cola” by Adam Wazyk as an example of precisely what Milosz did not want to write.

            In 1953, The Captive Mind was published in both Polish and English. Cavanagh argued that it was “turned into fodder immediately” by the Central Intelligence Agency’s book and translation program. Dozens of underground editions were published in Poland during the 1980s, all of which were used as Cold War rhetoric. According to Cavanagh, “The Captive Mind makes his reputation, but it’s not the reputation he wants.” In this divide between his reputation and how he wanted to be perceived, we again see the idea of “Milosz contra Milosz.” Even during his tenure at U.C. Berkeley, he was “not at home in either place” (i.e., East or West).

            To conclude, Cavanagh read Milosz’s poem “Bypassing Rue Descartes,” pointing out the evident themes of “sin,” “darkness,” and the implicit, inescapable idea of “Milosz contra Milosz.” By the end of the lecture, Cavanagh established the importance of studying poetry from the ‘Second World,’ highlighting Czeslaw Milosz as a striking example of an influential Polish writer who struggled with inner-conflict and bifurcation.