If I could write a book review that would stop World War III, my whole life of love, study and suffering would be fulfilled. That would be the apex of my existence on Mother Earth, my infinite bow of gratitude.
It
IS terrifying how the Warsaw Polish, Baltic states’, intelligentsia and
artists’ whole populations’ Resistance movements; their annihilation and
“assimilation” in Czesław Miłosz’s The
Captive Mind, their demonization by Nazis and Stalin’s Soviet Union’s
authoritarian regimes during and after World War II; once again resemble the
threat to Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine, and even echo its “almost complete”[ii]
ruin during World War II, and also its devastation as far back as the Mongol
invasion of 1240. When will we learn? “War is Hell.”[iii]
Why do we keep recreating it here on
Earth?DetailKyivSebastianMünster’s1552mapofPolandNHungary
Propaganda,
national and world opinion are major battlegrounds. Maybe we have a chance to
“compare facts,” to turn ALL the
warmongers back. Say “STOP IT! JUST STOP IT!” as if to a bunch of angry,
self-righteous two-year-olds arguing over a sparkling medallion, a line in the ever-shifting
sands of time. The planet will not survive any more catastrophic wars, and we are
already wasting Her magnanimous resources and our own lives, families and
economies preparing for and waging them.Sack Of KIEV1240
Miłosz’s “novel” was first published in 1951, six years after he survived the leveling of Warsaw, “almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions,” “a total of 650,000 (people) were displaced, deported or sent to concentration camps”[iv] and
“Two hundred thousand people died in the street fighting,”[v]
and/or were killed by 63 days of bombing, incendiary and SS squads in 1944, out
of the previous more than one million residents of the city. German_Troops_Setting_fire_to_Buildings_Warsaw_1944
Warsaw,_January_1945-Świerczyński - Stanisław Jankowski, Adolf Ciborowski
We
and the Ukrainians could be tempted into violent resistance and crushed the
same way they were, but by even mo[vi]re
cruel and immense powers. Or NATO could stand by idly while Russia “does the
dirty work,” as Stalin’s forces did across the river from Warsaw while the
Nazis completely destroyed the city, leaving only 900 residents remaining in
the capital’s rubble.
“The ingenious methods by which the Stalinists isolate themselves from reality are amazing,” Miłosz warns us from the grave, and his portraits of four writers seduced or forced to surrender their talents to The Party after the takeover are chilling. In an authoritarian State, “Everything, thus, takes us back to the question of mastery over the mind.”[vii]
“What
is not expressed does not exist….Whoever reflects on “man” in general, on his
inner needs and longings, is accused of bourgeois sentimentality. Nothing must
go beyond the description of man’s behavior as a member of a social group.”[viii] Ruined_Kiev_in_WWII_Wikip
“This line of reasoning… ignores the facts. The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts.”[ix] If we've been unwary, we have been massaged into that same kind of internal disinformation barrage, taking on its folly, cowardice, mistrust and fear.
Like the Mongol hordes’ invasion, the terrible human legacy is that “we’ve seen this all before.” Miłosz introduces his chapter, “The Lesson of the Baltics,” with a reflection on “The rage one feels on reading sixteenth-century memoirs whose authors, mostly priests, recount the atrocities committed in America by Spanish Conquistadores …(We) cannot resurrect the Caribbean population slaughtered by Ponce de Leon, nor shelter the Inca refugees pursued through the mountains by knights fighting with faith and a sword…The historians do not speak of mothers’ despair or children’s distress…The civilization that calls itself Christian was built on the blood of the innocent…”[x]
And we must respond. “There must be, after all, some standard one dare not destroy lest the fruits of tomorrow prove to be rotten. If I think thus it is because for the last two thousand years or more there have been not only brigands, conquistadors, and hangmen, but also people for whom evil was evil and had to be called evil. Mass slaughter, the terror of revolution, the craze for gold, the misery of the working classes: who knows what dimensions these flaws might reach if every man believed he must keep silent and accept?”
“The
invasion of the Spanish must have been an appalling experience for the Aztecs.
The customs of the conquerors were incomprehensible; their religious
ceremonies, strange; the paths of their thought, impossible to follow. The
invasion of the Red Army was no less of a shock for the Estonians, Latvians,
and Lithuanians.”[xii]
Czesław_Miłosz_2011_Lithuania_stamp
Would
Putin make it a "soft" invasion and takeover? Is there such a thing?
Like "consensual" rape and murder? Do we have that sort of propaganda
and power battle going on here, in the United States, right under our noses? Vigilantes
storming the Capitol building shouting such threats? Hunting down and shooting unarmed
joggers and drivers “in self-defense?” What have we come to, morally?
Use that “vivid imagination” and memory to picture what it would be if “one-party rule” returns to the U. S. in the midterms; even worse blocking of legislation, judicial and cabinet appointments; racist, sexist, authoritarian, violent and abusive falsehoods returning to the White House two years later! “Creeping fascism” has been with us at least since the 1960s and lay under the “Manifest Destiny” and “Doctrine of Discovery” propaganda that devastated peoples, cultures and continents. Nixon's resignation here when his corruption was exposed just drove it underground. We experienced four years of domestic disaster which are not yet over. Miłosz had to flee first to France and then to the U. S. to be able to tell us his tale.
Artur Pawłowski-1999Czeslaw_Milosz_ap
He did not take up arms, he took up his pen – worked,
wrote, spoke and taught. Every single one of us has skills, skills we can use to respond.
“When people are divided into “loyalists” and “criminals” a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the “criminals” one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are direct, sincere, and true to themselves.”[xiii] These are the antagonists and protagonists in his "novel." Like Charles Dickens’, their personae, characterizations and problems are contemporary with this immediate, difficult, seemingly divided world.
Under tunnel vision, totalitarian-style propaganda and factlessness, “This way of treating literature (and every art) leads to absolute conformism…” Creativity, curiosity and even inquiry is stifled, deflected and contained because “The creative act is associated with a freedom that is, in its turn, born in a struggle against an apparently invincible resistance. Whoever truly creates is alone.”[xiv] “In rebelling, I believe I protect the fruits of tomorrow better than my friend who keeps silent. I assume the risk and I pay.”[xv]
Kings_Castle_Square,_DestWarsaw,_1945
This
is the voice of Miłosz, a writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980
and said in his acceptance speech, “The paramount duty of the poet… is to tell
the truth.” How could we "tell the truth" if we're constantly awash
with runoff spouted from gigantic and overwhelmingly well-funded silos of
excrement right next to us full of lies?
Capitalism creates fear, subservience and conformism due to want, competition, greed and materialist poverty in a pyramidic Ayn Rand hierarchy; the intense pressure on the individual abandoned and isolated from others and thourselves, scrambling to “succeed” and survive; but the flattened mass of totalitarian-ruled populations under the thumbs of the 1% Party members perpetually spying on and manipulating each other and their citizens with terror, secret police and propaganda is certainly not better. It’s just a matter of counting the hidden bodies, hungry children and “detained” minority "undesirables" in thour military-industrial-technocratic-prison complexes.
“You can’t negotiate with evil. People who are evil, a person in the Capitol wearing a Camp Auschwitz T-shirt? You don’t want to ‘meet with those people halfway.’ You don’t need to ‘understand them.’ They’re wrong. People who believe in democracy are right. You have to beat these Republicans and have more days like January 5th last year where you elect Democrats in Georgia. We’ve had flaws in democracy for 30 years, but we need representatives for democracy now. More events like January 6th will happen.”[xvii]
The contrast between how the former President, “his” “loyal” Republicans, enforcers and FOX News tear gassed, attacked, kidnapped, mass arrested, surveilled, denied and vilified the BLM peaceful protesters last year; yet used his militarized might; his coddling, elevating and encouraging of the deadly and dangerous January 6th rioters; MUST GIVE US PAUSE. These need to be seen as tactics of totalitarian governments, not a democratic republic.
Like those of both Hitler and Stalin, the treatment of “criminals” (nonviolent protestors) and “loyalists”
(toadying politicians and their violent, unquestioning followers) in the U.S. and Ukraine need to be seen as political culminations domestically and internationally parallel to recent
Hungary and other democratic or neutral peoples’ and countries’ usurpation by
dictatorial regimes, as well as the
"justified" invasion of Ukrainian sovereignty by Russia. It is all of
one, fetid, feral and fictitious stream.July 20, 2020 Portland, OR
“If he is being tortured, his voice is heard at the very least by those people who have (uncomfortable for them) a vivid imagination. And even if he is already dead, he is still part of the present; for the man who killed him or who gave the order that he be killed is sitting down somewhere, at some precise point on the face of the earth.”[xviii] The news cycle may have sped up in our era, along with the distortions, erasures and “real time” videographic revelations, but those of us “who have…a vivid imagination” DO NOT FORGET.
And we must respond…
Miłosz, Czesław, translated from the Polish by Jane Zielonko, The Captive Mind, Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1955, [1953], originally published by Alfred A. Knopf (USA) and in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited. p. 223-24.
Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia, (28 December 2021)
“Destruction of Warsaw,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw (20 January 2022)
[i] Miłosz, Czesław, translated from the Polish by Jane Zielonko, The Captive Mind, Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1955, [1953], originally published by Alfred A. Knopf (USA) and in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited. p. 223-24.
See also, (23 February 2022) “Czesław Miłosz,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82aw_Mi%C5%82osz (24 February 2022) “In the preface to his 1953 book The Captive Mind, Miłosz wrote, "I do not regret those years in Warsaw, which was, I believe, the most agonizing spot in the whole of terrorized Europe. Had I then chosen emigration, my life would certainly have followed a very different course. But my knowledge of the crimes which Europe has witnessed in the twentieth century would be less direct, less concrete than it is."
[ii] Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, (24 February 2022) “Kyiv,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv (24 February 2022) San Francisco, CA, USA.
[iii] ----- ibid., (May 1865) “William Tecumseh Sherman,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman (24 February 2022) “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
See also (23 February 2022) Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (16 February 2022) https://www.searchquotes.com/search/War_Is_Hell/#ixzz7LqAjuT2v (24 February 2022)
Warning to Southern Secessionists from Wikipedia, above. (1860) “You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ... Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.” (24 February 2022)
[iv] Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Op. Cit. (28 December 2021) “Destruction of Warsaw,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Warsaw (20 January 2022)
See also “Almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions.[9] The exact losses of private and public property, including pieces of art, other cultural artifacts and scientific artifacts, is unknown but must be considered substantial since Warsaw and her inhabitants were the richest and wealthiest Poles in pre-war Poland.
In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the city's residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, ... The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. Approximately 650,000 people passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September, and October….
Material losses were estimated at 10,455 buildings, 923 historical buildings (94%), 25 churches, 14 libraries including the National Library, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, and most of the city's historical monuments.[9]
The human toll, from Wikipedia and The Captive Mind First person witness:
• 15,000 d. Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1943;
• Warsaw Resistance uprising, Miłosz: “The revolt of a fly against two giants.” (p. 96) “Two hundred thousand people died in the street fighting,” (p. 94, The Captive Mind,) and/or killed by 63 days of bombing, incendiary and SS squads in 1944, (out of the previous one million residents of the city);
• a total of 650,000 were displaced, deported or sent to concentration camps.
• April 1945, “its demolished streets literally cemeteries …mounds of rubble…We spent several hours in a once familiar part of the city. Now we could not recognize it… total silence…” (ibid., p 64).
Other sources:
History (2020) “The destruction of Warsaw: the Nazi plan to obliterate a city,” https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-destruction-of-warsaw-the-nazi-plan-to-obliterate-a-city AETN, UK, (20 February 2022)
DuckDuckGo – “population of Warsaw before Nazi destruction” (20 February 2022) https://duckduckgo.com/?q=population+of+Warsaw+before+Nazi+destruction&t=ffsb&ia=web (20 February 2022)
[v] Miłosz, Czesław, Op. Cit. The Captive Mind, p. 94.
[vi] Ibid, p. 237.
[vii] ----, p. 197.
[viii] ----., p. 215.
[ix] ----., p. 209.
[x] ----. p. 223-24.
[xi] ----., p. 224.
[xii] ----., p. 227.
[xiii] ----, p. 209.
[xiv] ----, p. 217.
[xv] ----, p. 225.
[xvi] PBS News Hour, interview by Judy Woodruff of Stuart Stevens, Gary Abernathy, Jelani Cobb, George Packer (6 January 2022) “Jan. 6 attack was a ‘warning shot’ and likely a ‘harbinger,’ experts say. Here’s why.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/jan-6-attack-was-a-warning-shot-and-likely-a-harbinger-experts-say-heres-why (24 February 2022) (Transcript) WETA-TV, Washington, D.C., USA.
[xvii] Ibid.
[xviii] Miłosz, Czesław, Op. Cit. The Captive Mind, p. 224.
