Synopsis
In 1951, future Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz sought political asylum from his native Poland in Paris. Once in France, he immediately began work on THE CAPTIVE MIND, his seminal account of intellectual life under the political repression of the Iron Curtain. Milosz examines the inherent dangers of submitting to a regime whose dictates are purely predicated on philosophy, which he demonstrates must inevitably disintegrate due to the theoretical and, thus, ethereal nature of its foundation. According to Milosz, the intellectual hierarchy of an oppressed society is far less likely to resist the rulers than the impoverished, whose starved and subjugated bodies will inevitably react with greater immediacy than the rationalizing minds of the scholars and academics. He specifically considers the cases of four "anonymous" Polish writers (later identified as Jerzy Andrzejewski, Tadeusz Borowski, Jerzy Putrament, and Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski) who were seduced in various ways by the rule of the Communists. As one of the most cogent examinations of how intellectual and political conformity fuels a repressed society, THE CAPTIVE MIND stands as an essential text of the twentieth century.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1990-12-01 | | Edition Description: | Reissue |
| Size | | Length: | 251 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
The best known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right.
Written in the early 1950s, When Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.
Industry Reviews
"[This work] is a masterpiece...Most of the book is an argument developed with admirable concreteness: there is the bite of Milosz's teeth in every word...And, as it were, out of the entrails of his relentless seriousness, Milosz lets fall devastating pieces of irony, piercing witticisms. I am sure that in a hundred years people will read this passionate apologia, which conveys the most intense feeling of an age. More important, though, is that it should be read immediately."
New Republic - Stephen Spender (06/22/1953)
"A faultlessly perceptive analysis of the moral and historical dilemma we all face...As timely today as when it was first written."
Jerzy Kosinski
"[A] shrewd and still unsurpassed analysis of the seductions of totalitarian rule for writers and intellectuals."
New York Review of Books - Charles Simic (12/20/2001)
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