The Polish author and poet Czeslaw Milosz (born 1911), winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, explored in his work both the rebirth of Christian belief and the corruption of thought by ideology.

Czeslaw Milosz is one of the most important writers and poets to have emerged in Poland since World War II. Terence De Pres stated that Milosz' poetry deals "with the central issues of our time: the impact of history upon being, the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in a ruined world." He was born on June 30, 1911 in Szetejnie, Lithuania then in Tsarist Russia, to Polish-Lithuanian parents. His father, Alexander, was a road engineer and was recruited by the Tsar's army during World War I. Young Milosz and his mother traveled with Alexander on the dangerous bridge-building expeditions to which he was dispatched near Russian battle zones.

His family returned to Lithuania in 1918, and Milosz...