MILOSZ DIALOGUE BORDERLAND

The manor in Krasnogruda situated on a slope descending to a lake at the Polish-Lithuanian border, embodies the legacy of the Jagiellonian Commonwealth. According to one document from 1676 the owner of the estate was Krystyna née Gibl, daughter of a Vilnius merchant. From the late 18th century until 1939, the estate belonged to the gentry families of Eysymont and Kunat. Weronika, Czeslaw Mitosz's mother, descended from the latter family.
This was the corner of Europe closest to the heart of the poet. Here was the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, crucial for the poets worldview; here he experienced his first heartaches and wrote his first poems. In his poetry he would often return, even many years later, to this place of "many mixed experiences". Enjoying the gift of return in 1989, Milosz wished to revive the manor house, despite the verdict of history, so that it might serve as "connective tissue" linking nations and cultures. Together with his brother Andrzej he symbolically handed over Krasnogruda to the "Borderland" and assumed honorific patronage over the International Centre for Dialogue.