“I am a citizen of the world, and my nationality is Vilnius” once said the Lithuanian-born Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature, Czesław Miłosz (Česlavas Milošas) (1911-2004).
The writer’s connection to Vilnius is not only his love for the city in general but also its many places. We invite you to take a walk along a route through the streets, buildings, and other places associated with Czesław Miłosz’ life in Vilnius between 1920-1937. These places that are important to the writer are mentioned in quotations from which the route is drawn.
Miłosz studied at the Stepono Batoro (now Vilnius) University and published his first two books of poetry. In 1951, after requesting political asylum, he chose the life of an exile. He lived in France and the USA. It was not until 1981 that he went to Poland, and in 1992, he visited Vilnius, the city of his youth.
I could never leave you, the city,
The miles were long, but they pushed me back like a chess piece.
I was running on the ground, which was spinning faster and faster,
But I was always there: with the books in a canvas box,
After gazing at the bronze hills behind St. James Towers…
It is a blessing if one is destined to study in a city such as Vilnius – the strangest city of Baroque and Italian architecture transplanted to the northern forests; stories imprinted on every stone, a city of forty Catholic churches and numerous synagogues, once known as the Jerusalem of the North.
My youth was mainly Parisian-Vilnius. And at the same time, if we talk about my hunch at that time, around the 1930s, Vilnius seemed to me to be an opportunity for happiness. A chance of happiness that, for various reasons, remained unrealised, either in my personal life or in the life and history of the city. A great opportunity for happiness, perhaps because of the blended interplay of city and nature…
