News

9 – 10 November, 2011. Celebrations of Czeslaw Milosz centenary continue with a Symposium on Czeslaw Milosz at the UCL SSEES (School of Slavonic and East European Studies) on the 9th November and a talk organized by the British-Lithuanian Society “The Insider's Criticism: Czeslaw Milosz in Independent Lithuania” on the 10th November. Both events will feature Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, literary critic and translator, Director of the Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute, the major research institution for literature in Lithuania.

Czeslaw Milosz in Vilnius, photo by Adam Bujak / Bialy Kruk

At the Symposium on the 9th November Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas will focus on the theme of “Poet as Mediator: Milosz and Local Memory”. According to Kvietkauskas, Czeslaw Milosz perceived the loss of local belonging, displacement and uprootedness as one of the crucial problems and experiences of a modern individual. Many times he underlined his own attachment to the obscure and far-away native provinces, his lost places of origin as a necessary cure to the futility of modern imagination, and stated that the full emancipation of an individual from the concrete place leads to artistic and intellectual mimicry.

The other speakers of the Symposium include Cynthia Haven (Stanford University), George Gömöri (formerly University of Cambridge), Mira Rosenthal (Stanford University) and Richard Reisner. The event will be chaired by Robin Aizlewood, Director UCL SSEES. It is an introductory Symposium to the Conference on Polish Literature since 1989 to be held at University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies 10-11 November 2011.

More information on symposium and conference: http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/polishlitconf.htm

Conference website: http://polish-literature-since1989.blogspot.com/

Talk by Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas “The Insider's Criticism: Czeslaw Milosz in Independent Lithuania” at the Lithuanian Embassy on the 10th November will focus on the final stage of Czeslaw Milosz's life (approximately from 1990 to 2004), which like his youth, was closely related to Lithuania. Together with Jerzy Giedroyc, Milosz made a considerable contribution to the formation of Polish-Lithuanian relations of the new epoch. He visited Vilnius, spoke in universities, was conferred an honorary doctorate by Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, became the first Honorary Citizen of Lithuania, and took part in political meetings that promoted relations between Poland and Lithuania. He visited his native Šeteniai, where his consciousness was stirred by creative inspiration - the return after fifty-two years left an important mark in his poetry. He was open and critical towards what was going on in Lithuania: it was an insider's criticism to other insiders and very important to Lithuanian contemporary self-reflection.

Mindaugas Kvietkauskas (b. 1976) is a Lithuanian literary critic and translator. Since 2008 he is a director of the Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute, the major research institution for literature in Lithuania. Kvietkauskas was awarded his Ph.D. at Vilnius University for his doctoral thesis The Multinational Literary Modernism in Vilnius 1904-1915, a comparative examination of Polish, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Russian and Belarusian urban texts (published in 2007). His research interests include urban literature and Jewish studies, which he pursued at the University of Oxford, Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies (2002-2003). In 2011, together with professor Viktorija Daujotytė Kvietkauskas, he published a study The Lithuanian Contexts of Czeslaw Milosz, and was one of the main organizers of the Miłosz anniversary events in Lithuania. A collection of critical essays The Post-Soviet Turn in Lithuanian Literature edited by Kvietkauskas will be published by Rodopi Publishers in Amsterdam this year. Kvietkauskas has translated the poetry and essays of Adam Mickiewicz, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Abraham Sutzkever.

9 November, 5.30-7.30pm, UCL Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Theatre, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY. This event is free, but registration necessary: http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/polishlitconf.htm

10 November, 7pm, Lithuanian Embassy, 84 Gloucester Place, London W1U 6AU. Please register by e-mail to blssecretary@hotmail.com or by phone to 020 8673 5385 and pay at the door (cheque or exact amount in cash, please). Entrance £8.