A Hero's Farewell
Czeslaw Milosz, the grand old man of Polish letters, was laid to rest this afternoon in Cracow's mythical 'Church on the Rock'. The send off followed a tradition that is awarded only to legendary figures in the national canon - the honour was well-merited.
The Nobel Prize winning author and poet was ninety-three when he died a fortnight ago. He is survived by two sons.
The morning of the funeral began in a blustery fashion, but by midday the sun had begun to win through. A preliminary mass was held at 11 o'clock in the towering gothic church of St. Mary's on Cracow' s main market square. The church was packed to the rafters, and hundreds more watched the service from a screen placed outside the western doors.
Just before 1.p.m, the coffin was brought out into the square and a procession began towards the final resting place, the Pauline Church on the Rock, which lies a mile to the south in the ancient district of Kazimierz.
The small crypt of the Church on the Rock contains some of the most distinguished figures in Polish culture. The last to be granted the honour of a burial there was the astronomer Tadeusz Banachiewicz, who passed away precisely fifty years ago in 1954.
Approximately two thousand mourners followed the procession down the 'Royal Way'. Having passed the castle, the procession then continued down the pilgrims route to the Church on the Rock - the site of the martyrdom of Saint Stanislas, the patron saint of Poland.
The closing ceremony was held beneath a cluster of chestnut trees that stands at the foot of the church. Amongst the distinguished guests were Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka, Solidarity veteran and newspaper owner Adam Michnik, and the poets Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska, all of whom made speeches during the service. The entombment was presided over by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, Archbishop of Cracow.
Born into a noble family in what is now Lithuania, Milosz remains one of the most widely celebrated authors of his day. His scholarly work in translating English literary works into Polish is also of considerable value, as is his 'History of Polish Literature', which the author wrote in English whilst a Professor at Berkeley, California.
However, he will perhaps be remembered most for his novels, above all the 1953 work 'The Captive Mind'. Milosz wrote this book in exile after a brief alliance with Poland's post war socialist Republic. The book was described by the New York Times as 'a central text in the modern effort to understand totalitarianism,' but it is much more than a dry analysis of a repressive one-party state.
A resident in Warsaw during the Second World War, Milosz witnessed the century's cataclysms from the heart of the storm. His work is shot through by a keen perception of the dark side of human nature, yet to the end Milosz retained an insatiable appetite for the varied forms of beauty in the world. He was a dignified man who was compelled to sail savage, often unforgiving waters.