Editing Czesław Miłosz (section)

===Diplomatic career===
From 1945 to 1951, Miłosz served as a [[cultural attaché]] for the newly formed [[People's Republic of Poland]]. It was in this capacity that he first met [[Jane Zielonko]], the future translator of ''The Captive Mind'', with whom he had a brief relationship.<ref name=Roe9Nov2001>Roe, Nicholas (9 November 2001). [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/10/poetry.artsandhumanities "A century's witness"]. ''The Guardian''.</ref><ref name=Biegajło2018p137>{{cite book |last1=Biegajło |first1=Bartłomiej |title=Totalitarian (In)Experience in Literary Works and Their Translations: Between East and West |date=2018 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |location=Newcastle |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=h_N0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA137 137] |isbn=978-1-5275-1184-2}}</ref> He moved from [[New York City]] to [[Washington, D.C.]], and finally to Paris, organizing and promoting Polish cultural occasions such as musical concerts, art exhibitions, and literary and cinematic events. Although he was a representative of Poland, which had become a Soviet [[Satellite state|satellite country]] behind the [[Iron Curtain]], he was not a member of any communist party. In ''The Captive Mind'', he explained his reasons for accepting the role:<blockquote>My mother tongue, work in my mother tongue, is for me the most important thing in life. And my country, where what I wrote could be printed and could reach the public, lay within the Eastern Empire. My aim and purpose was to keep alive freedom of thought in my own special field; I sought in full knowledge and conscience to subordinate my conduct to the fulfillment of that aim. I served abroad because I was thus relieved from direct pressure and, in the material which I sent to my publishers, could be bolder than my colleagues at home. I did not want to become an émigré and so give up all chance of taking a hand in what was going on in my own country.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Captive Mind|last=Milosz|first=Czeslaw|publisher=Vintage International|year=1990|location=New York|pages=x}}</ref></blockquote>Miłosz did not publish a book while he was a representative of the Polish government. Instead, he wrote articles for various Polish periodicals introducing readers to British and American writers like Eliot, [[William Faulkner]], [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[Norman Mailer]], [[Robert Lowell]], and [[W. H. Auden]]. He also translated into Polish Shakespeare's ''[[Othello]]'' and the work of [[Walt Whitman]], [[Carl Sandburg]], [[Pablo Neruda]], and others.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=261}}</ref>

In 1947, Miłosz's son, Anthony, was born in Washington, D.C.<ref name=":5" />

In 1948, Miłosz arranged for the Polish government to fund a Department of Polish Studies at [[Columbia University]]. Named for Adam Mickiewicz, the department featured lectures by [[Manfred Kridl]], Miłosz's friend who was then on the faculty of [[Smith College]], and produced a scholarly book about Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz's granddaughter wrote a letter to [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], then the president of Columbia University, to express her approval, but the [[Polish American Congress]], an influential group of Polish émigrés, denounced the arrangement in a letter to Eisenhower that they shared with the press, which alleged a communist infiltration at Columbia. Students picketed and called for boycotts. One faculty member resigned in protest. Despite the controversy, the department was established, the lectures took place, and the book was produced, but the department was discontinued in 1954 when funding from Poland ceased.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=259–261}}</ref>

In 1949, Miłosz visited Poland for the first time since joining its diplomatic corps and was appalled by the conditions he saw, including an atmosphere of pervasive fear of the government. After returning to the U.S., he began to look for a way to leave his post, even soliciting advice from [[Albert Einstein]], whom he met in the course of his duties.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=266–270}}</ref>

As the Polish government, influenced by [[Joseph Stalin]], became more oppressive, his superiors began to view Miłosz as a threat: he was outspoken in his reports to Warsaw and met with people not approved by his superiors. Consequently, his superiors called him "an individual who ideologically is totally alien".<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=277}}</ref> Toward the end of 1950, when Janina was pregnant with their second child, Miłosz was recalled to Warsaw, where in December 1950 his passport was confiscated, ostensibly until it could be determined that he did not plan to defect. After intervention by [[Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Poland)|Poland's foreign minister]], [[Zygmunt Modzelewski]], Miłosz's passport was returned. Realizing that he was in danger if he remained in Poland, Miłosz left for Paris in January 1951.<ref>{{Cite book|oclc=982122195|title=Milosz: A Biography|last=Franaszek, Andrzej|pages=281–283}}</ref>