Oscar Milosz

Oscar Milosz (1877-1939) was a French-language poet, novelist, essayist and diplomat who represented Lithuania at the League of Nations. Born in Čareja, in what is now Belarus and then part of the Russian Empire, he belongs to the literary world of the Belle Époque, and his work stands out for a dense and highly personal metaphysical vision.

His father was an ethnic Lithuanian and his mother was a Jewish Pole, and Polish was spoken at home. In 1889 his parents sent him to Paris, where he began writing poems and frequented artistic circles that included Oscar Wilde and Jean Moréas. He studied Syriac and Hebrew and became an accomplished linguist, though he wrote most of his work in French. After a period of literary experimentation, a spiritual experience in 1914 pushed his writing toward an ambitious Christian cosmogony, developed in Ars Magna and Les Arcanes.

During the First World War he worked for the French army's press service. When Lithuania became independent he chose to identify with it, even though he did not yet speak the language well, and in 1920 he was appointed chargé d'affaires for the new state. He died in Fontainebleau in 1939.

He was little read during his lifetime, but today he is regarded as an original figure of twentieth-century French poetry. His translations of Lithuanian folk tales and his diplomatic work remain subjects of study, and admirers still honour him in Vilnius and Fontainebleau.