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Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the European Union, Permanent Representation of Poland to the European Union and Member of the European Parliament, Prof. Leonidas Donskis are jointly organizing a commemorative event on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of writer and poet Czesław Miłosz. The event will feature a screening of a documentary, a panel discussion of Lithuanian and Polish intellectuals, historians and scholars of literature, as well as the inauguration of an exhibition.

This anniversary is included into the list of anniversaries with which the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is associated in 2010-2011. Moreover, the Parliaments of Lithuania and Poland have declared 2011 as the year of Czesław Miłosz.
Patron of the event, President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek, Permanent Representative of Lithuania to the European Union Raimundas Karoblis and Permanent Representative of Poland to the European Union Jan Tombiński will give welcome speeches.

Among those who are invited to attend the event there are heads of diplomatic representations abroad, European Commissioners and officials, diplomats, academics, members of the Lithuanian and Polish communities in Brussels.

Guests of the solemn commemorative event will view a documentary film ‘The Vilnius of Czesław Miłosz’ directed by Vytautas Damaševičius and Juozas Matonis. This film depicts Vilnius as the city of the memories of the childhood and youth of Cz.Miłosz with all the places that were so dear to him.

The event will culminate in a panel discussion “The Native Realm, or Searching for Europe of Czesław Miłosz” of Lithuanian and Polish intellectuals, historians and scholars of literature.

The event will be hosted and moderated by L.Donskis, who will share his thoughts about and insights into the personality and literature of Cz.Miłosz, and features of the concept of the European identity emerging from Miłosz’s writings together with historian from Vytautas Magnus University Egidijus Aleksandravičius and Professor of Literature Andrzej Romanowski from Cracow University, Member of the European Parliament Bogusław Sonik.

On this occasion, an exhibition entitled ‘Sugrįžimas / Powrót / Return’ will run at the European Parliament. The exhibition was prepared by the Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Lithuanian, Polish and English. This exhibition comprises photographs, poems and extracts from the Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in Stockholm and the VMU Honorary Doctorate Acceptance Speech in Kaunas that illustrate the story of Miłosz’s return to Lithuania after 52 years. The exhibition consists of photographs that testify to an episode of Miłosz’s historical journey in time and space.

Cz.Miłosz is a poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, also the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1980, and of many other prestigious literary awards. His works were translated into more than forty languages of the world. The writer holds honorary doctorates of universities in the U.S.A., Poland and Lithuania. He is the honorary citizen of Lithuania and the city of Cracow.

Cz.Miłosz was born on 30 June 1911 in Šeteniai, Lithuania. He spent his childhood and youth in Vilnius, where he debuted as a poet. During the German occupation, the writer lived in Warsaw. After the war he worked in the Polish diplomatic service in the U.S.A. and France. In 1951, he asked for political asylum in Paris. In 1960, he left for California, where he was a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, for twenty years.  From 1989 until his death on 14 August 2004 in Cracow, the writer lived both in Berkley and Cracow, Poland, where he is buried.

The event is organized by the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the European Union and Member of the European Parliament L.Donskis in cooperation with the Permanent Representation of Poland to the European Union and the International Cultural Programme Centre of Lithuania. The project is sponsored by the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture.

The event will take place in the Josef Antall Building, the European Parliament, Room 4 Q1 (entrance through the Altiero Spinelli Building), at 6:30 p.m.