Identity: Czeslaw Milosz and the Borderlands

In this first episode of The Identity Series, we explore the meaning and power of identity through the fascinating case of Polish-Lithuanian Nobel Prize-winning writer Czeslaw Milosz.

Born in Lithuania, Milosz survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, became a member of the Polish Foreign Service under the communist regime, and was then exiled for being a strong critic of communism. His famous collection of essays, The Captive Mind, reveals his struggle with his own sense of identity and belonging as an artist under a communist regime and became symbolic of the Baltic-Eastern European cultural, national and geopolitical ‘borderlands’. 

We also explore other artists who were affected by the shifting of national boundaries during the first decades of the 20th century.

Speakers include British singer-songwriter Katy Carr, known for her songs about Polish history; Katia Denysova, a researcher on the influence of socio-political factors on Ukrainian art in the early 20th century; Professor Clare Cavanagh, specialist in modern Russian, Polish and Anglo-American poetry and a biographer of Milosz; and Rigels Halili, lecturer in modern history and Balkans culture at Centre for East European Studies at Warsaw University.

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