Szetejnie – Memories of a Manor House on the Niewiaża

In Szetejnie on the Niewiaża, right in the heart of Lithuania, on the border between Samogitia and Aukštaitija, Czesław Miłosz was born on 30 June 1911, the first-born son of Aleksander Miłosz and Weronika, née Kunat. Szetejnie was a farm estate that had belonged to the Syruciów family since the mid-18th century – from whom the poet’s maternal grandmother, Józefa Kunat née Syruciów, was descended.

If it was a hot summer at the time, the air outside would surely have been filled with the scent of mown meadows. The once-lush grass and wildflowers lay drying, cut by sweeping strokes of the scythe. This is how the poet remembered from his childhood the appearance of his grandparents’ manor house, where he lived until 1913, and which he later – whilst studying in Vilnius – visited during his summer holidays:

“The manor house was built of brick. Or perhaps of timber, but with a brick foundation […]. A porch with little columns […]. First came the entrance hall […]. Then one entered the main hall. To the right was the drawing room; or rather, two so-called drawing rooms. […] There stood a piano, and there was furniture covered with dust covers […]. One was the drawing room, and the other a small drawing room, in what I suppose was the Empire style. […] To the left, one entered the dining room, where there was that oilcloth-covered sofa I wrote about in *The Issa Valley*. […] It was a dining room, impossible to live in during winter, and it was locked away. […] Further on, beyond this dining room, was a sort of guest room […], and beyond that a room with a library.”
[Source: Fiut A., “Conversations with Czesław Miłosz”]

The village of Szetejnie consists of just a few houses, built parallel to the road leading towards Kiejdany. Little remains of the poet’s grandparents’ family estate. In the 1960s, the manor house was demolished, and the land of the former estate was allocated to a kolkhoz.

In 1999, the Czesław Miłosz Cultural Centre was opened in the restored granary, the only surviving building from the manor complex. Distinctive wooden signposts from the main road lead to the site of the former Miłosz estate. Within the grounds of the former manor park, a series of wooden sculptures have been erected, referring to various places and episodes described in the novel *The Issa Valley*.

Was the christening in Opitołoki or in Świętobrość?

Five kilometres from Szetejnia lies the village of Opitołoki, once a small town in the Żmudź region with a manor house, a farmstead and a church. For many years, Czesław Miłosz believed that he had been baptised in this church. In his poem *Where the Sun Rises and Where It Sets*, he put it succinctly: ‘I was baptised and renounced the devil in the parish of Opitołoki in the Kiejdany district’.

However, when the Nobel laureate visited his homeland for the first time in 52 years in 1992, he learnt that he had in fact been baptised in the branch church in Świętobrość, which belonged to the same parish. Miłosz’s parents, meanwhile, were married in the church at Opitołki. This event, which took place in 1909, is recalled in his memoirs by Aleksander Burhardt, who was present at the time:

“[…] The festivities, of course, lasted all night, until dawn. A rather good Jewish orchestra from Kiejdany provided the music, playing waltzes, contredanses, mazurkas, polkas, Hungarian dances and krakowiaks, and we danced until we were drenched in sweat, changing our stiff collars every hour, drinking buckets of light kruszon, marvellous kvass and lemonade […]. I remember that the wedding was conducted by the local parish priest, a half-Lithuanian who spoke Polish poorly. During the wedding dinner, he took the floor and, in a grandiloquent tone, proposed a toast in honour of the bride and groom […].”

The Baroque church of St Peter and St Paul was founded in 1635 by Piotr Szuksztyn, a judge from Samogitia. Renovated at the beginning of the 20th century, the three-nave church is characterised by a soaring, four-storey tower with an ornate spire. The churchyard contains numerous gravestones of local landowners, the oldest dating from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

A few hundred metres east of the church stands the Neo-Renaissance palace of the Zabiełło family, the last owners of the local estate. The building acquired its present form around 1900, following the conversion of the previous residence carried out by Karol Zabiełło, the last heir to Opitołek.

Kiejdany – the town of the Radziwiłłs and Miłosz

Kiejdany is now a small town with a population of 30,000; in Miłosz’s day, it was the administrative and commercial centre of the region. People would come here to the Jewish shops to buy kerosene, soap and herring. The future writer recalls in one of his works that from the upper windows of the ‘swirna’ (an old term for a granary) he would gaze upon the distant towers of Kiejdany’s parish church.

The town’s oldest church – the Gothic St George’s Church, dating from 1403 – stands on a high hill on the opposite bank of the Niewiaża. Inside, there are, amongst other things, statues of Saints Casimir and Stanislaus, transferred from the church in Opitołki. The town is also home to a magnificent 17th-century Renaissance Calvinist church, where the mortal remains of the Radziwiłł princes are laid to rest. In the crypt beneath the altar, in tin sarcophagi, lie, in order: Krzysztof Piorun Radziwiłł, Janusz Radziwiłł and Janusz’s siblings who died in childhood: Stefan, Jerzy, Elżbieta and Mikołaj.

The town authorities have commemorated Czesław Miłosz by naming one of the streets running along the riverfront after him. The Regional Museum houses an exhibition dedicated to the poet, and whilst he was still alive, in 1990, he was awarded the title of honorary citizen of Kiejdany. A metal chair – the ‘Milošofonas’ – has also been placed by the river to commemorate Miłosz.

The old town’s original urban layout, dating back to the 17th century, has been fairly well preserved. Admittedly, there is virtually no trace left of the Radziwiłł Castle, nor even of the Czapski Palace, which was built on its foundations. However, four of the town’s former market squares have survived. The oldest of these is the Old Market Square, flanked by the houses of former Scottish craftsmen with their distinctive gables.

In the centre stands a monument commemorating the signing of the Kiejdany Agreements in 1655. Whilst this agreement was regarded as treason in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Lithuanian historians take a different view. In another of the town’s squares – the Jewish Market Square – the buildings of two synagogues have been preserved. An architectural gem of Kiejdany is the wooden Baroque Church of St Joseph, dating from the early 18th century.

The Niewiaża Valley – The Issa Valley

It is easy to spot the similarities between the literary valley of the mythologised River Issa and the real Niewiaża Valley. The river still flows here as dreamily as it did a hundred years ago, in the days when the young Czesław stayed here. One of the episodes described in the novel concerns the story of the sinner Magdalena. Her prototype was the real-life figure of Barbara Rybaczewska, the young housekeeper of the priest in Świętobrość (where the poet was baptised).

The parishioners were convinced that the housekeeper and the priest were bound by a sinful love. It ended with the girl’s suicide. The events took place in 1920. Buried by the priest in accordance with Catholic rites, she was laid to rest at the edge of the cemetery; yet even after her death, she continued to haunt those who had slandered her. She tormented people so much in their nightmares that they began to think she was a ghost, and it was decided to dig up her body, pierce her chest with a large stake hewn from aspen, and reburial her. Apparently, she never haunted anyone again.

Near the Miłosz Museum in Šeteiniai, amidst the trees, stands a wooden sculpture of one of the most tragic figures in *The Issa Valley* – Magdalena, also known as Barbara – by Algimantas Sakalauskas.

Miłosz’s Vilnius

“[…] Vilnius cannot be erased from the history of Polish culture, owing to Mickiewicz, the Philomaths, Słowacki and Piłsudski. […]”. So wrote Czesław Miłosz in one of his letters whilst already in exile.

The poet’s time in Vilnius comprised his schooling at the King Sigismund Augustus State Boys’ Grammar School No. 1 (1921–1929) and his studies at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at Stefan Batory University (1929–1934) ( read more ) . Another important address for Miłosz in Vilnius was 5 Podógórna Street; this is where his family lived, and where he himself also lived whilst attending secondary school, as well as 6 Arsenalska Street, where, as he recalled years later, he felt at home with his other relatives.

After completing his studies, Czesław Miłosz took up a post at the Polish Radio station in Vilnius; however, in 1937, he was expelled from the editorial team for his ‘left-wing views’ and soon left the city, moving to Warsaw. The poet’s descriptions of Vilnius are often contradictory. The fact is that the city – once a magnificent Baroque capital – was, in those days, a neglected provincial town. In 1933,

Miłosz, whilst a student, wrote an essay for *Żagary*, a magazine for young writers – the writers’ meetings were held in Konrad’s Cell on the grounds of the Basilian monastery ( read more and a note on Konrad’s Cell ) . He wrote, amongst other things: “Vilnius, a beautiful and gloomy northern city. Through the window, one can see the bumpy cobblestones, puddles and piles of manure. Further on – a crumbling wall and wooden fences. In the city centre, dogs are fighting in the middle of the street and no car will scare them away. Poor capital city!” Yet, years later, in another piece, he recalls: “The city was beloved and happy, always amidst June peonies and late lilacs, its Baroque towers reaching towards the sky.”

In Vilnius, Miłosz lived for a time in a house at 1 Ludwisarska Street. The Nobel laureate is commemorated in the southern part of the Old Town, near the reconstructed city walls. The 60-step stone staircase between two streets in Vilnius – Maironio Street (formerly St Anne’s Street) and Bokšto (Polish: Baszta), has been named the Miłosz Stairs, which were unveiled in autumn 2016.

Quotations from the poet’s works, in Polish and Lithuanian, have been carved into some of the steps. In 1936, Czesław Miłosz rented a room in a house on Literary Alley. You entered through a heavy oak gate studded with metal knobs (which no longer exists) and then turned right up the staircase to the first floor. On the wall is a unique gallery of graffiti by artists associated with Vilnius – the so-called ‘Wall of Writers’. Among the many plaques (Polish figures include Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Kraszewski and Gałczyński) there is also one dedicated to Miłosz.

A granite plaque commemorating the famous alumnus can also be found on the grounds of Stefan Batory University ( now Vilnius University). Miłosz began his studies in Polish language and literature, but after two weeks he switched to law, from which he graduated. When asked on numerous occasions later in life about the reasons for changing his course, he never gave a clear answer. The writer’s biographers speculate that the reason may have been a youthful love for a certain Jadwiga (a law student)…

During his studies, he lived in a hall of residence designed by Aleksander Kodelski ( read more ) , which, incidentally, was situated directly opposite the secondary school he had previously attended. In his *Dictionary of Vilnius Streets*, Czesław Miłosz also recalls other places significant to him: Portowa Street, along which he walked to secondary school; St George’s Church; the offices of *Słowo* at the junction of Zamkowa and Królewska; Rudnicki’s café, Sory Kłok’s shop on Niemiecka Street, as well as the Vilia River winding along Antokol, a place of Sunday repose, and St George’s Church. In the poem ‘A City Without a Name’, he refers to the churches of Saints Peter and Paul and Saint Casimir, and in another poem, published in 1985 in Paris, he also mentions the bells of other churches in Vilnius:

“And then the bells. At St John’s,
At the Bernardines, at St Casimir’s,
And at the Cathedral and at the Missionaries’,
At St George’s, at the Dominicans’,
At St Nicholas’s, at St James’s.
So many bells. As if hands were pulling at the ropes
‘They were building a majestic edifice over the city’

There are more of these Vilnius sites – mentioned by Miłosz – but rather than a place, a figure – the Vilnius dragon – must still be evoked, just as Miłosz recalled him: the basilisk from Bakszta, behind whom a great procession wound its way through the city.

Druja and Przydrujsk – the Miłosz family in Polish Livonia

We shall conclude this tale of the Polish Nobel laureate on the Latvian-Belarusian border, in the former Polish Livonia. The Miłosz family had strong ties to these lands. The poet’s father, Aleksander, was born in Riga and graduated with a degree in road and bridge engineering from the local technical university. And according to family tradition, one of their distant ancestors, a certain Artur Miłosz, is said to have taken part in the Battle of Kircholm in 1605.

It is certain that the Miłosz family owned extensive estates on the Daugava in the Druja region and on the opposite bank of the Daugava in Przydrujsk. Czesław used to visit his cousins here during the summer holidays. The writer mentions his relatives and the acquisition of the local estates in his book *In Search of a Homeland*:

‘[…] Józef Miłosz, born sometime before 1790, set off eastwards and entered the service of the Sapieha princes. Here he served in the administration and, through his diligence, reliability and other commendable qualities, earned the trust and boundless confidence of Prince Sapieha.[…] In accordance with a tsarist decree, Sapieha, unwilling to accept Russian subjection, was forced to sell off his estates. Miłosz, whom Sapieha had no reason not to trust, proposed that he sell off the estates according to an agreed formula, for which he received a gift disguised as a deed of sale […]”

From 1824 until the October Revolution, the Miłosz family owned a vast fortune and numerous estates on both sides of the Daugava River, which had been in the possession of the Sapieha family for centuries. Today, Przydrujsk is a Latvian border settlement, situated on the right bank of the Daugava.

It originally formed part of the outskirts of Druja – a small town now situated on the Belarusian side. During the Second Polish Republic, the Polish-Latvian border ran along the Daugava. The mid-18th-century Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary dominates the village’s wooden buildings from afar ( read more ) .

On the approach road to the settlement stands a second church founded by the Sapieha family – the St Nicholas Orthodox Church, built in the 1770s as a Uniate church. Druja, with a population of just under 1,500, is a Belarusian village; until 1939, it was a border town in the Second Polish Republic. Due to its location, according to some pre-war politicians and economists, it was destined to become Poland’s ‘second Gdynia’. The project was doomed to failure from the outset and was primarily of a propagandistic nature. The most impressive building in the village is the 17th-century former Bernardine monastery complex, featuring the Church of the Holy Trinity, founded by Kazimierz Lew Sapieha.

This text was published as part of a series prepared to mark the designation of the Year of Czesław Miłosz ( 2024).