Czesław Miłosz (1911 - 2004), 10 zl

A 10-złoty silver numismatic coin commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Czesław Miłosz

Obverse:
In the center, with a fragment of a sheet of paper with handwritten notes in the background, there is a stylized image of a bird feather in oblique position. With this image in the background, there is an oblong inscription: Czesław Miłosz. To the left, there is a stylized image of a  sheet of paper fragment with handwritten drawings. To the right, there is an inscription: 10/ZŁ. At the bottom, there is a semi-circular inscription with the year of issue: 2011. At the bottom, from left to right, there is a semi-circular inscription: RZECZPOSPOLITA POLSKA. At the bottom, in the central position, there is the image of an eagle from the national emblem of the Republic of Poland. Under the eagle’s left foot there is the symbol of the mint: M/W.

Reverse:
In the center, there is a stylized image of Czesław Miłosz’s bust, with stylized images of clouds in the background. At the bottom, on a separate surface, there is an oblique inscription: Czesław Miłosz. Below, there is another oblique inscription: 1911-2004.

Designer of the coin: Robert Kotowicz

Czesław Miłosz
Poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, author of several dozen books translated into many languages. Laureate of the Noble Prize (1980) and other prestigious literary awards, honorary doctorate holder at universities in the USA and Poland, honorary citizen of Lithuania and the City of Kraków. Born on 30 June 1911 in Šeteniai, Lithuania, debuted as a poet in Vilnius, the city where he spent his school and university years, and which he left in 1937 for Warsaw. He spent the German occupation in Warsaw. After the war, he worked at the People’s Republic of Poland’s embassies in the USA and France until 1951, when he applied for political asylum in Paris. Since 1960, after leaving France, for twenty years he had been giving lectures at the University of California in Berkeley as a professor of Slavic languages and literatures. Until 1989, he mainly published works at the emigration Literary Institute of the Paris-based Culture”, and, in Poland, beyond censorship. Since 1993, he had lived in Berkeley and in Kraków. He died on 14 August 2004 in Kraków and was buried in the Crypt of the People of Merit at the Pauline monastery, next to Stanisław Wyspiański, Jacek Malczewski, Karol Szymanowski and other eminent Polish authors.