Oscar Milosz 1886, at St. Alexander's Church in Warsaw. In 1889, when he was 12, his parents placed him at the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. He began writing poems in 1894 and started to frequent artistic circles, meeting Oscar Wilde and Jean Moréas. After finishing at the Lycée, he enrolled at the École des langues orientales, where he studied Syriac and Hebrew. His first book of verse, "Le Poème des Décadences", appeared in 1899. In the first years of the twentieth century, Milosz travelled widely in Europe and North Africa and explored many foreign literatures. A European poet of the
Oscar Wilde a stringed lute on which all winds can play "Punch" was less enthusiastic, "The poet is Wilde, but his poetry's tame" was their verdict. Aestheticism was sufficiently in vogue to be caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in "Patience" (1881). Richard D'Oyly Carte, an English impresario, invited Wilde to make a lecture tour of North America, simultaneously priming the pump for the US tour of "Patience" and selling this most charming aesthete to the American public. Wilde journeyed on the SS "Arizona", arriving 2 January 1882, and disembarking the following day. Originally planned to last four months, it continued for almost