CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ: THE ENSLAVED MIND [1999].

Description

We present the edition of “Captive Mind” by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) – poet, prose writer, essayist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1980), one of the most outstanding and influential Polish intellectuals of the 20th century. The publication was released in 1999 in Cracow by Wydawnictwo Literackie as part of the prestigious series “Collected Works of Czesław Miłosz.”

“The Captive Mind” is Milosz’s most famous book of essays, completed in 1951 in Maisons-Laffitte at the home of Jerzy Giedroyc’s “Kultura” and first published in 1953 by the Paris Literary Institute. The work is a groundbreaking analysis of the mechanisms of enslaving minds under a totalitarian system, written for colleagues in Poland and a Western audience to whom the author wanted to raise awareness of “the seriousness of the ideological offensive in the East.”

Milosz did not limit himself to showing that the main reason for succumbing to communist rule was fear or the desire to make a career. He pointed out that “beyond mere fear, beyond the desire to protect oneself from misery and physical destruction, there was a desire for inner harmony and happiness,” and the illusion of this was provided by the New Faith . He introduced such concepts as “ketman” (the masks that an intellectual in a totalitarian system adopts to pursue his own goals) and “murti-bin” (a man who believed his own lies). The book also includes essays “The West” – analyzing why representatives of Western civilizations cannot fully understand the mentality of the East, and “The Enemy of Order – Man” – a consideration of the struggle for spiritual power in people’s democracies.

Boleslaw Bolecki, who conducted a conversation about “Captive Mind” with Milosz himself, believes that the book is worth reading “as an essay, a parable, a parable, or even as a biographical novel. It is a thing about the human soul, about passions and ambitions, about hypocrisy and truth, about the cruelty of man and history, and about the human comedy of errors.” The immediate impetus for writing the work was reportedly a walk in Krakow in the company of Jerzy Andrzejewski, during which the writers spotted young Home Army men behind prison bars.

It is part of the prestigious “Collected Works” series – the most complete edition of Milosz’s works, covering his poetry, prose, essays and translations. “The Captive Mind” remains one of the most important testimonies to the intellectual struggle against totalitarianism in the 20th century and a must-have for the collector of the Nobel Prize winner’s works, the lover of his essays and the bibliophile seeking a representative edition of this classic of political thought.

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