Oscar Milosz

While battling cancer at the age of 61, he had a heart attack and died on his Fontainebleau Estate on March 2, 1939.

In 1966, the Les Amis de Milosz Poet Society added a plaque to the Fontainebleau Estate where he died. The group still gathers there every year on the anniversary of his death.

Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz was born on May 28, 1877 in the then Russian-controlled city of Čareja.

His father was a former Russian army officer named Vladislasde Lubicz Milosz. His mother, Marie Rosalie Rosenthal, was a Jew from Warsaw.

He was baptized on July 2, 1886 at the St. Alexander Roman Catholic church in Warsaw.

He was the only child of his parents. His parents did not become officially married until he was 17.

In 1889, at the age of 12, he was sent to secondary school at Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris.

In 1889, he published his first poem, Le Poème des Décadences while traveling throughout Europe and North Africa.

His 1906 poem, Les Sept Solitudes, was published with the help of poet Nicolas Beauduin.

His 1911 poem, Les Elements, highlights his younger and darker writing style.

He published two plays - Miguel Mañara: mystère en six tableaux in 1913 and Méphisobeth in 1919.

From 1915 to 1922, he published smaller poems, choosing to focus more on his plays and essays. These poems were Nihumim, Adramandoni and La Confessions de Lemuel.

He published his first and only novel ‘L’Amoureuse Initiation’ in 1910. It is a story about the passion and jealousy of an 18-year-old man growing up in Venice.

In 1924, he published a philosophy essay that would later become one of his most famous works - Ars Magna.

In 1927, he published Les Arcana, a collection of 106 verses that would later become his most famous metaphysical and cosmological work. After its release, he declared his poetic career over.

In 1933, just three years before his death, he released a single and final poem, Psalm of the Morning Star.