WEBVTT

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Here was this life.

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Anyway, let me read you
what a Polish scholar says

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about him at this time.

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"After all, this poet, the
future author of The Captive

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Mind," which is his prose
book about the totalitarian

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imagination, "this
Polish citizen,

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after the experience of war,
occupation, the imposition

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of a totalitarian
system in his homeland,

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finds himself on the other
end of the world, where

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historical experience
seems to shape

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individual and
collective attitudes only

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to a small extent.

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This witness to the brutal
degradation of humanity,

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to cruel Nazi terror, roundups
on the streets, executions,

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the Holocaust, the Warsaw
ghetto uprising in 1943,

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the Warsaw uprising in 1944,
the total extermination

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of a city of more than
a million residents,

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and the invasion
of the Red Army.

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This poet is confronted
with a society

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for which the war happened
far away, while respect

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for individual rights and
for fundamental principles

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remained-- where respect
for individual rights

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and fundamental
principles remained

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obvious and indisputable.

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This European, coming
from the old world that

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was ruined and
impoverished by war,

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finds himself in the new world
which boasts of its prosperity,

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a far higher level
of development

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and forms of social and
political organization

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little known to him."

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