Enslaved mind. Milos Ch.

The book “The enslaved mind” of the Polish poet and thinker Cheslav Milos - long before the award of Milos Nobel Prize in Literature (1980) - made his name widely known in West countries.

Milos wrote this book in emigration. In 1953, she published in Paris in Polish and French, in the same year a German edition appeared and several English -speaking (in London, in New York, Toronto), and soon - Italian, Swedish and others. In Poland, the book was transported for many years, was read secretly, printed in Polish Samizdat.

ceasing to be a sensation in the West and the forbidden fruit in our East, the book became the classics of political and philosophical journalism. The name, topic, genre and style of the book are correlated with the traditions of Swift, Montesquieu, Voltaire, with the traditions of the eighteenth century, the age of reason. Milos calls his book a treatise, more precisely, this is a treatise_pamflet. The depth of thought is combined with the brilliance of wit.

in the fate of Milos - the fate of intellectuals, especially writers, in the twentieth century, the century of totalitarianisms, the century of great mental pressure on people of thinking people. The book interprets this on the example of the situation of East European intellectuals subjected to pressure of totalitarian ideology.

The fate of the book, eagerly read in the following years in various countries, showed that interest in this book does not weaken. The translation, preface and comments of Vladimir Britanish, poet, prose writer, essayist, translator of the Polish, American and English poetry, author of books about Polish literature (“Polish -Lithuanian Speeses”, St. Petersburg, 2005; “Poetry and Poland”, M., 2007).