MILLOSZ Czeslaw, Original typescript of the 1980 Nobel speech.

Original typescript of the 1980 Nobel speech.

Typescript of 12 pages (1-page typed), A4 size, on the last page below the text, handwritten signature of Czeslaw Milosz. 1st typewritten page printed "Nobel lecture 1980 Czeslaw Milosz" and "The Nobel Foundation 1980 (...)".
Good condition. Typescript pages stapled together, last sheet loose. On December 10, 1980, Milosz received the award from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The sounds of a mazurka from Stanislaw Moniuszko's opera "Halka" rang out in honor of Czeslaw Milosz. Presenting the laureate, the Academy secretary recalled his literary works and teaching activities. He stressed that the writer, who was in exile for many years, never severed ties with his country. "Czeslaw Milosz," he said, "is an eminently intellectual poet, with deep philosophical and historical-literary knowledge. His poetry is full of subtext, pastiche and irony." The speech begins with the words: "My being on this stand should be an argument for all those who celebrate the God-given, wonderfully complex, incalculability of life. In my school years, I read the volumes of the "Library of Nobel Laureates" series published in Poland, and I remember the shape of the letters and the color of the paper. At that time I thought that Nobel laureates were writers, that is, people producing thick prose works, and even when I knew that there were also poets among them, I could not get rid of this thinking habit for a long time. And printing my first poems in 1930 in our university magazine under the title "Alma Mater Vilnensis," I did not aspire to the title of writer after all. In the same way, much later, choosing solitude and devoting myself to the bizarre occupation of writing poems in Polish, although living in France or America, I upheld a certain ideal image of a poet who, if he wants to be famous, only in his village or town."(...)