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290 x 210 mm. (11 1/4 x 8 1/4"). xi, [1], 172 pp., [2] leaves.Translated by Jane Zielonko. Publisher's beige buckram, front cover and spine lettered in black. In original gray printed paper slipcase. WITH NINE COLOR PLATES and two illustrations in the text by Janusz Kapusta. WITH AN ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATION laid in at rear (not infrequently missing). SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the half title and dated November 8, 1995; SIGNED BY THE ARTIST AND ILLUSTRATOR on the limitation page. With The Monthly Letter of the Limited Editions Club from April 1984 and a newspaper clipping about the work laid in at front. Jerzy R. Krzy anowski "The Captive Mind Revisited," World Literature Today 73, no. 4 (1999): 658 62. As new. Specially signed by the author, this is an excellent copy of the Limited Editions Club's reissue of Milosz's breakout collection of essays. Nobel Prize-winning writer Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) had been publishing poetry in his native Poland for over a decade by the time he took a diplomatic position as a cultural attaché in 1945. He spent the next six years in that capacity in the United States and France; in 1951, concerned by the increasingly oppressive Polish government, he defected, refusing to return to Poland from his post in Paris. He composed "The Captive Mind" during his period of political asylum in France, a portion of which he spent in hiding. In it, he describes his decision to defect and provides a raw perspective on the situation of the writer under the Communist regime. This study of the struggle of art and totalitarianism launched Milosz to international fame and continues to be much appreciated today--literary scholar Jerzy R. Krzyzanowski says that the present work "will remain [relevant] . . . as long as totalitarian regimes exist anywhere." Our edition is enriched by the lush, surreal illustrations of Janusz Kapusta (b. 1951). His dourly suited figures bend and warp into punishments befitting a Greek myth, eyes pinned shut with giant blacksmith's tongs, heads transforming into the slobbering maw of a boar, necks pulled off shoulders and sprouting roots. The final illustration, an original lithograph by Kapusta, literally depicts Milosz's theory of Marxism as "the new faith," showing a Christ-like figure, arms spread wide as if crucified, an ushanka hat with an oversized Soviet red star perched on his drooping head.
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