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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