Research Journal

I've decided to post my journals after completing these two assignments since I was so preoccupied with research, I promise to do better this time (Though in respect to this blog I guess I'm promising myself).

On a separate note, I listened to a presentation regarding Polish author/poet, Czeslaw Milosz today. He attended law school and spent a year in Paris with his uncle Oscar. The presenter described how Milosz is different from other poets in regard to his distinct poems with distinct places in contrast to abstract poetry. His political views forced him to keep a 'low-profile' during World War II. Eventually he moved to California. Milosz's autobiographical poem, The Issa Valley, he composed during this era was incredibly detailed. The demonic mentioned in The Issa Valley may have been Stalin or Russia - not a huge leap for the presenter regarding Russian-Polish relations over the last two hundred years. Milosz personally dictated the history of Polish literature to his secretary when he realized there wasn't one available. Milosz spoke of the concrete and the personal. Milosz won the Nobel Prize in 1980 for Literature. His lecture encompassed topics as far reaching as history, style, memory, childhood, genocide, etc. He was notably irritated by the ignorance of Polish suffering during the Holocaust. Milosz retired in 1978, he eventually moved back to Poland after the fall of the Iron Curtain - he was forced out during the ascension of communism. Milosz died August 15, 2004.