WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.700 I want you to start with a mental image. Just, 00:00:01.740 --> 00:00:04.120 you know, close your eyes for a second. Imagine 00:00:04.120 --> 00:00:05.900 you're standing on a street corner in Warsaw. 00:00:06.440 --> 00:00:10.320 It's a beautiful Sunday, spring of 1943. The 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:13.480 sky is that crisp, perfect blue. The wind is 00:00:13.480 --> 00:00:17.219 warm, maybe carrying the scent of blooming lindens. 00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:19.899 And right there in the square, there's a carnival. 00:00:20.320 --> 00:00:23.460 A carousel spinning around, playing this jaunty 00:00:23.460 --> 00:00:26.339 kind of mechanical tune. People are laughing. 00:00:26.600 --> 00:00:28.559 Girls are catching their skirts in the wind. 00:00:28.660 --> 00:00:31.719 Couples are, you know, flirting. And just beyond 00:00:31.719 --> 00:00:33.700 that carousel, maybe 50 yards away, there's a 00:00:33.700 --> 00:00:35.979 wall. And behind that wall, the Jewish ghetto 00:00:35.979 --> 00:00:38.079 is on fire. The sky isn't blue there. It's black 00:00:38.079 --> 00:00:41.240 with smoke. And pieces of ash, human ash, debris 00:00:41.240 --> 00:00:43.240 from people's living rooms are floating down 00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:47.030 like black snow. On to the writers. On the carousel. 00:00:47.049 --> 00:00:49.049 And that isn't a hypothetical. That's not some, 00:00:49.070 --> 00:00:50.829 you know, writer's invention. That is the exact 00:00:50.829 --> 00:00:52.549 scene that was captured in the poem Campo de 00:00:52.549 --> 00:00:54.710 Fury. And the man watching it, the man standing 00:00:54.710 --> 00:00:56.750 right there between the laughter and the inferno, 00:00:56.750 --> 00:00:58.570 scribbling the notes that would become one of 00:00:58.570 --> 00:01:00.270 the most important poems of the 20th century. 00:01:00.630 --> 00:01:02.869 That's Chesso Mios. Welcome back to the Deep 00:01:02.869 --> 00:01:05.989 Dive. Today, we are not just doing a biography 00:01:05.989 --> 00:01:08.969 of a writer. That's too simple. We're looking 00:01:08.969 --> 00:01:11.609 at a man whose life is a complete cross -section 00:01:11.609 --> 00:01:14.400 of the 20th century. If you want to understand 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:18.739 the modern world totalitarianism, war, exile, 00:01:18.900 --> 00:01:21.400 the clash of ideologies, you really don't need 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:23.680 a whole stack of history books. You just need 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:25.819 to understand this one man. It really is the 00:01:25.819 --> 00:01:43.010 ultimate case study, isn't it? Yeah. the west 00:01:43.010 --> 00:01:45.370 at the absolute height of the cold war and it 00:01:45.370 --> 00:01:48.450 doesn't stop there no then he watches the counterculture 00:01:48.450 --> 00:01:51.209 explode in berkeley in the 1960s and he lives 00:01:51.209 --> 00:01:53.150 long enough to see the berlin wall come down 00:01:53.150 --> 00:01:55.909 and democracy returned to his homeland it's just 00:01:55.909 --> 00:01:58.689 yeah it's the whole century it's staggering it's 00:01:58.689 --> 00:02:00.549 not like he just read about these things in the 00:02:00.549 --> 00:02:03.310 paper he was there he was a witness but the thing 00:02:03.310 --> 00:02:05.430 that really gets me is the contrast you look 00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:09.169 at his resume right nobel laureate righteous 00:02:09.169 --> 00:02:12.479 among the nations For saving Jews. I mean, a 00:02:12.479 --> 00:02:16.419 certified hero. But then there's this other part. 00:02:16.580 --> 00:02:19.520 He was also a diplomat for a communist regime 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:22.080 before he defected. And a reluctant witness, 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:24.020 which is maybe the most interesting part. What 00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:25.840 do you mean by that? Well, that's the tension 00:02:25.840 --> 00:02:29.439 we're really going to explore today. Milos didn't 00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:31.639 want to be a political poet. He wanted to be 00:02:31.639 --> 00:02:34.460 a poet of nature, of contemplation. He wanted 00:02:34.460 --> 00:02:38.379 to write about rivers and forests and the metaphysical 00:02:38.379 --> 00:02:41.259 nature of being. But history, with a capital 00:02:41.259 --> 00:02:43.400 H, kept grabbing him by the throat and forcing 00:02:43.400 --> 00:02:45.460 him to look at the ugly stuff. He wanted to look 00:02:45.460 --> 00:02:47.180 at the sky, but he was forced to look at the 00:02:47.180 --> 00:02:49.199 blood in the mud. That's a perfect way to put 00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:52.439 it. So our mission for this deep dive is to try 00:02:52.439 --> 00:02:55.659 and unpack the toolkit he left for us. Because 00:02:55.659 --> 00:02:58.520 he didn't just observe, he analyzed. He basically 00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:02.080 wrote a manual on how the human mind gets seduced 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:05.620 by authoritarian ideas. And frankly, in our current 00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:08.180 age of, you know, information warfare, polarized 00:03:08.180 --> 00:03:11.379 narratives, echo chambers, that manual is more 00:03:11.379 --> 00:03:14.039 relevant than ever. Absolutely. We have a massive 00:03:14.039 --> 00:03:17.199 stack of sources today. His autobiography, Native 00:03:17.199 --> 00:03:19.939 Realm, which is incredible. His poetry, obviously, 00:03:20.080 --> 00:03:22.460 which is the core of his soul. And of course, 00:03:22.500 --> 00:03:24.879 The Captive Mind, which is... I think you could 00:03:24.879 --> 00:03:27.639 argue the best book ever written on intellectual 00:03:27.639 --> 00:03:31.539 dishonesty and the, well, the seduction of totalitarianism. 00:03:31.599 --> 00:03:33.439 So let's start at the very beginning, because 00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:35.300 usually when we talk about a writer, we can say, 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:37.879 oh, he was Polish or she was American. With Mios, 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.580 it's just not that simple. If you asked him where 00:03:40.580 --> 00:03:43.020 he was from, he wouldn't point to a country on 00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:44.939 a modern map. No, not at all. He would say he 00:03:44.939 --> 00:03:46.740 was a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 00:03:47.050 --> 00:03:48.909 Which, for those of us who aren't, you know, 00:03:48.909 --> 00:03:51.289 experts in Eastern European history, hasn't actually 00:03:51.289 --> 00:03:53.349 existed for a very, very long time. Yeah. Oh, 00:03:53.449 --> 00:03:55.949 deeply, deeply defunct by the time he was born 00:03:55.949 --> 00:03:59.490 in 1911. But this is absolutely crucial to understanding 00:03:59.490 --> 00:04:01.490 his psychology. He was born in a place called 00:04:01.490 --> 00:04:03.889 Etiniai in what is now the Kadeniai district 00:04:03.889 --> 00:04:06.409 of Lithuania. Yeah. But the culture he was born 00:04:06.409 --> 00:04:10.050 into was this very specific borderland mix. The 00:04:10.050 --> 00:04:12.129 sources describe it as a place where languages 00:04:12.129 --> 00:04:16.209 and religions just. They overlapped almost seamlessly. 00:04:16.670 --> 00:04:19.829 You had Polish nobility, Lithuanian peasants, 00:04:19.910 --> 00:04:22.389 Jewish merchants, Russian administrators. It 00:04:22.389 --> 00:04:24.990 wasn't this rigid show me your passport kind 00:04:24.990 --> 00:04:26.970 of world. Right. It wasn't the kind of ethno 00:04:26.970 --> 00:04:29.089 -nationalism that we see so much today where 00:04:29.089 --> 00:04:31.449 it's Poland is for the Poles or Lithuania is 00:04:31.449 --> 00:04:33.769 for the Lithuanians. The Grand Duchy identity 00:04:33.769 --> 00:04:36.470 was about plurality. It was a civic identity, 00:04:36.629 --> 00:04:39.050 not just an ethnic one. Mews grew up speaking 00:04:39.050 --> 00:04:41.860 Polish. But he was hearing Lithuanian, Yiddish 00:04:41.860 --> 00:04:44.720 and Russian every single day. He considered himself 00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.240 a patriot of a vanished country. He actually 00:04:47.240 --> 00:04:49.199 claimed he had a greater right than Adam Mikovic, 00:04:49.259 --> 00:04:52.199 the great romantic poet, to say, oh, Lithuania, 00:04:52.279 --> 00:04:54.779 my country. That is a bold claim. I mean, that's 00:04:54.779 --> 00:04:56.459 like saying you're more American than Walt Whitman 00:04:56.459 --> 00:04:59.519 or something. It is. But he felt it in his bones. 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:02.079 There's a great detail in the notes about his 00:05:02.079 --> 00:05:04.120 family tree that really illustrates this. It 00:05:04.120 --> 00:05:08.250 reads like a. Like a United Nations roster of 00:05:08.250 --> 00:05:10.189 the entire region. Yeah, let's look at that. 00:05:10.329 --> 00:05:13.029 His grandfather, Zygmunt Cunat, owned the estate 00:05:13.029 --> 00:05:16.269 in Atenia. Polish nobility, but not the, you 00:05:16.269 --> 00:05:18.910 know, wealthy, drinking champagne in Paris kind. 00:05:19.050 --> 00:05:22.110 This was the squire class, connected to the soil, 00:05:22.290 --> 00:05:25.480 managing the harvest, hands in the bird. And 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:27.980 then you have his paternal grandfather, Artur 00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:31.220 Mios, who fought in the 1863 uprising against 00:05:31.220 --> 00:05:33.319 Russia. So you have rebellion baked into the 00:05:33.319 --> 00:05:36.019 DNA. Rebellion against empire specifically. Exactly. 00:05:36.019 --> 00:05:38.319 But then it gets even more mixed. His grandmother 00:05:38.319 --> 00:05:40.839 was a descendant of the Sirich family, which 00:05:40.839 --> 00:05:43.379 was of Lithuanian origin. One of her ancestors 00:05:43.379 --> 00:05:45.879 was a personal secretary to the king of Poland. 00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:48.800 And his other grandmother was a doctor's daughter 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:52.040 from Riga in Latvia from a German -Polish family, 00:05:52.199 --> 00:05:54.720 the Vanolls. And there's even a theory mentioned 00:05:54.720 --> 00:05:57.220 by his biographer, Andrzej Franacek, that the 00:05:57.220 --> 00:05:59.540 name Milos comes from Serbian roots way, way 00:05:59.540 --> 00:06:01.899 back. So he's just a walking melting pot. He's 00:06:01.899 --> 00:06:03.920 a child of Europe. And this is why he was so 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:06.339 allergic to the narrow nationalism that tore 00:06:06.339 --> 00:06:08.759 Europe apart later. He couldn't hate the Germans 00:06:08.759 --> 00:06:11.120 or the Russians or the Jews or the Lithuanians 00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:13.779 without hating a part of himself or his neighbors. 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:17.160 He saw these divisions as, I don't know, artificial 00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:19.779 overlays on a much more complex reality. His 00:06:19.779 --> 00:06:21.620 childhood, at least at first, sounds almost like 00:06:21.620 --> 00:06:24.160 a fairy tale. He wrote a novel called The Issa 00:06:24.160 --> 00:06:26.879 Valley, which memorializes this time. And it's 00:06:26.879 --> 00:06:28.800 just full of these descriptions of hunting and 00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:30.879 beekeeping, devils living in the willow trees. 00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:34.139 It sounds idyllic. It was in Eden. But like Eden, 00:06:34.279 --> 00:06:37.399 it had a snake. And the snake was the 20th century. 00:06:37.579 --> 00:06:41.199 He's born in 1911. By 1914, World War I starts. 00:06:41.319 --> 00:06:43.639 He's three years old. And his expulsion from 00:06:43.639 --> 00:06:46.290 paradise begins almost immediately. This is the 00:06:46.290 --> 00:06:48.129 part of the timeline that just blew my mind. 00:06:48.170 --> 00:06:50.389 His father was a civil engineer, right? Yes, 00:06:50.430 --> 00:06:53.170 Alexander Mishvos. He was drafted into the Imperial 00:06:53.170 --> 00:06:56.189 Russian Army to build bridges and roads for the 00:06:56.189 --> 00:06:58.610 troops. And he didn't leave his family behind 00:06:58.610 --> 00:07:00.790 in the safety of the estate. He took them with 00:07:00.790 --> 00:07:02.889 him. Just try to imagine the logistics of that 00:07:02.889 --> 00:07:05.750 for a second. You're a toddler. You are traveling 00:07:05.750 --> 00:07:08.649 in what's essentially a wagon train right behind 00:07:08.649 --> 00:07:11.209 the front lines of the Great War. It's a nomadic. 00:07:11.709 --> 00:07:14.449 terrifying existence. They were in Vilnius when 00:07:14.449 --> 00:07:17.430 the German army captured it in 1915. Then they 00:07:17.430 --> 00:07:19.829 retreated with the Russian army deep into Russia 00:07:19.829 --> 00:07:22.170 itself. They actually crossed Siberia. Siberia 00:07:22.170 --> 00:07:26.050 as a child. Yes. The sources track their movement 00:07:26.050 --> 00:07:29.129 through these vast swaths of the Russian empire 00:07:29.129 --> 00:07:31.810 as it was collapsing. I mean, imagine a six -year 00:07:31.810 --> 00:07:34.629 -old boy watching the entire Tsarist order just 00:07:34.629 --> 00:07:37.540 dissolve into anarchy. Then, just as the war 00:07:37.540 --> 00:07:40.480 ends in 1918, they trek all the way back to their 00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:42.680 valley in Lithuania thinking, OK, we made it. 00:07:42.699 --> 00:07:44.800 The nightmare is over. And the Polish -Soviet 00:07:44.800 --> 00:07:47.560 war breaks out in 1919. There's that vivid anecdote 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:50.060 in his memoir, Native Realm, about being fired 00:07:50.060 --> 00:07:52.720 upon during this return journey. Oh, it's a chilling 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:55.220 moment. It stayed with him forever. He and his 00:07:55.220 --> 00:07:58.060 mother are traveling and Polish soldiers, his 00:07:58.060 --> 00:08:00.680 own people, theoretically open fire on their 00:08:00.680 --> 00:08:03.300 carriage. In the chaos of these border wars, 00:08:03.420 --> 00:08:06.120 nobody knew who was who. So you have this young 00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:09.699 boy realizing that identity won't save you. The 00:08:09.699 --> 00:08:11.759 bullet doesn't check your passport. The bullet 00:08:11.759 --> 00:08:14.560 doesn't care if you speak Polish. It was a lesson 00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:17.279 in the absolute fragility of civilization. It 00:08:17.279 --> 00:08:19.699 really explains why his later poetry is so focused 00:08:19.699 --> 00:08:22.939 on how easily things just fall apart. He saw 00:08:22.939 --> 00:08:24.839 the structures of the world, empires, borders, 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:27.800 safety, completely dissolved before he was even 00:08:27.800 --> 00:08:29.839 10 years old. Exactly. He couldn't be a naive 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:32.440 romantic because his childhood was defined by 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:34.409 the collapse of order. And this followed him 00:08:34.409 --> 00:08:36.690 right to university. He entered Stefan Batory 00:08:36.690 --> 00:08:40.889 University in Ornel Vilnius in 1929. He studies 00:08:40.889 --> 00:08:43.490 law, but his heart is in literature. And he co 00:08:43.490 --> 00:08:45.370 -founds a poetry group. With a name that I absolutely 00:08:45.370 --> 00:08:47.769 love, the Catastrophists. The group itself was 00:08:47.769 --> 00:08:50.450 called Oogery, which means brushwood or kindling, 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:53.259 something that's ready to burn. But the critics, 00:08:53.399 --> 00:08:55.600 they're the ones who labeled them the catastrophists. 00:08:55.740 --> 00:08:58.299 And it wasn't just, you know, teenage angst. 00:08:58.299 --> 00:09:00.019 It wasn't them wearing black and being moody. 00:09:00.139 --> 00:09:02.559 It was a kind of prophetic intuition. What were 00:09:02.559 --> 00:09:04.600 they prophesying? What did they see coming? Well, 00:09:04.620 --> 00:09:06.399 you have to remember the context. It's the early 00:09:06.399 --> 00:09:09.600 1930s. Most of Western Europe is trying to pretend 00:09:09.600 --> 00:09:11.679 everything is fine. The Roaring Twenties are 00:09:11.679 --> 00:09:13.820 over, but people are still hoping for peace. 00:09:14.279 --> 00:09:16.879 But these students in Wilno, living on the fault 00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:19.440 line between the rising Soviet Union and a rearming 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:22.879 Germany. They could feel the tremors. They just 00:09:22.879 --> 00:09:27.240 knew. What was the poetry like? Dark. Very surreal. 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:29.559 Full of apocalyptic imagery. Visions of burning 00:09:29.559 --> 00:09:33.159 cities, crumbling towers, anthills being destroyed 00:09:33.159 --> 00:09:35.200 by a careless foot. They weren't writing about 00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:37.419 unrequited love or flowers. They were writing 00:09:37.419 --> 00:09:40.679 about the end of civilization. They sensed that 00:09:40.679 --> 00:09:43.320 the fragile peace of the 1920s was about to shatter, 00:09:43.379 --> 00:09:46.139 and they were screaming it in verse. And it wasn't 00:09:46.139 --> 00:09:49.159 just poetry for Mios, right? He wasn't some passive 00:09:49.159 --> 00:09:51.700 observer hiding in a library. There's a story 00:09:51.700 --> 00:09:53.620 about him standing up to a mob that I think is 00:09:53.620 --> 00:09:55.320 really important to understand his character. 00:09:55.659 --> 00:09:58.919 This is vital, because Mios often accused himself 00:09:58.919 --> 00:10:01.100 of being too passive later in life, of being 00:10:01.100 --> 00:10:04.720 too intellectual. But here, as a student, he 00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:08.240 was incredibly brave. Anti -Semitism was rising 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:11.200 in Polish universities, specifically this policy 00:10:11.200 --> 00:10:14.519 of ghetto benches, where Jewish students were 00:10:14.519 --> 00:10:16.860 forced to sit separately in lecture halls. It 00:10:16.860 --> 00:10:20.480 was segregation, 100%. It was. And a mob formed 00:10:20.480 --> 00:10:22.200 to attack Jewish students at the university. 00:10:22.820 --> 00:10:25.620 Mios, who was a distinct physical presence, he 00:10:25.620 --> 00:10:28.669 was a big guy. Thick eyebrows, very intense stare. 00:10:29.190 --> 00:10:31.809 He physically stepped in. He threw punches. He 00:10:31.809 --> 00:10:34.250 got in a fight. He fended off attacks. He defended 00:10:34.250 --> 00:10:36.230 people. And this wasn't just a shoving match. 00:10:36.250 --> 00:10:38.909 It was life or death. During that specific riot, 00:10:39.029 --> 00:10:41.070 a student was killed by a rock thrown at his 00:10:41.070 --> 00:10:43.350 head. So Mios was putting his life on the line 00:10:43.350 --> 00:10:45.769 to defend these students. He chose a side, and 00:10:45.769 --> 00:10:47.309 it wasn't the side of the nationalist. It shows 00:10:47.309 --> 00:10:49.809 his moral compass was already set against this 00:10:49.809 --> 00:10:52.029 kind of ethnic hatred. Around this time, he also 00:10:52.029 --> 00:10:54.470 travels to Paris and meets a figure who seems 00:10:54.470 --> 00:10:57.429 to belong to a different century. entirely. His 00:10:57.429 --> 00:11:00.809 cousin, Oscar Milos. Oh, Oscar Milos is a deep 00:11:00.809 --> 00:11:03.269 dive all on his own. He was living in Paris, 00:11:03.450 --> 00:11:05.889 a diplomat for Lithuania, a French -language 00:11:05.889 --> 00:11:10.929 poet, but primarily a Swedenborgian mystic. Swedenborgian. 00:11:10.990 --> 00:11:13.389 That's esoteric. We probably need to unpack that 00:11:13.389 --> 00:11:16.009 a little bit. Extremely esoteric. Emanuel Swedenborg 00:11:16.009 --> 00:11:18.269 was an 18th century scientist who turned mystic, 00:11:18.309 --> 00:11:20.590 claimed he could converse with angels, and mapped 00:11:20.590 --> 00:11:22.629 out the spiritual structure of the entire universe. 00:11:22.970 --> 00:11:26.250 Oscar was a devotee. And he taught Cesar that 00:11:26.250 --> 00:11:29.289 the material world, the world of politics, wars, 00:11:29.350 --> 00:11:32.190 economics, is not the only reality. He introduced 00:11:32.190 --> 00:11:34.629 him to the idea that there is a spiritual hierarchy, 00:11:34.990 --> 00:11:37.750 a vertical dimension to life. So you have this 00:11:37.750 --> 00:11:40.809 young Cesar Esmios. On one hand, he's a catastrophist, 00:11:40.809 --> 00:11:42.850 seeing the political doom coming, the horizontal 00:11:42.850 --> 00:11:45.350 threats. And on the other, he's an apprentice 00:11:45.350 --> 00:11:48.090 mystic, learning about the eternal soul, the 00:11:48.090 --> 00:11:50.539 vertical hope. And that duality never leaves 00:11:50.539 --> 00:11:52.500 him. For his entire life, he is always looking 00:11:52.500 --> 00:11:54.519 at the mud of history with one eye and at the 00:11:54.519 --> 00:11:56.259 heavens with the other. He refuses to give up 00:11:56.259 --> 00:11:58.740 either perspective. Then the catastrophe arrives. 00:11:59.059 --> 00:12:02.860 September 1st, 1939. Germany invades Poland. 00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:06.700 The prophecy comes true. Mios is in Warsaw, working 00:12:06.700 --> 00:12:08.700 for Polish radio when the bombs start falling. 00:12:08.899 --> 00:12:11.139 The radio station is hit. He joins this huge 00:12:11.139 --> 00:12:13.820 exodus of refugees fleeing east. He makes it 00:12:13.820 --> 00:12:17.120 to Laos, then to Bucharest in Romania. And he's 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:19.169 safe. This is a really key moment. He's in a 00:12:19.169 --> 00:12:21.929 neutral country. He has a way out. He could have 00:12:21.929 --> 00:12:23.990 gone to France or England like thousands of others 00:12:23.990 --> 00:12:25.909 and just waited out the war. But he turns around. 00:12:26.129 --> 00:12:28.950 He goes back, back into the fire. And the reason 00:12:28.950 --> 00:12:31.789 is love. Janina, his future wife, was still in 00:12:31.789 --> 00:12:33.610 German Occupy Warsaw. He couldn't leave her there. 00:12:33.710 --> 00:12:35.750 The route he took back sounds like something 00:12:35.750 --> 00:12:37.549 out of a spy thriller. I mean, it wasn't like 00:12:37.549 --> 00:12:39.690 he could just hop on a train. It's incredible. 00:12:39.909 --> 00:12:42.289 He's in Bucharest. He needs to get to Warsaw. 00:12:42.610 --> 00:12:45.210 He gets a Lithuanian identity document. He gets 00:12:45.210 --> 00:12:47.789 a Soviet visa. He travels by train through the 00:12:47.789 --> 00:12:50.629 Soviet occupied zone to Vilno. But just then, 00:12:50.669 --> 00:12:53.289 Vilno is handed over to Lithuania. Then the Red 00:12:53.289 --> 00:12:56.210 Army invades Lithuania. He realizes he has to 00:12:56.210 --> 00:12:58.629 get to the German zone to reach Warsaw. He gets 00:12:58.629 --> 00:13:01.450 fake papers. He walks a significant portion of 00:13:01.450 --> 00:13:03.129 the way crossing the green border illegally. 00:13:03.570 --> 00:13:06.629 He's risking execution by both the Soviets and 00:13:06.629 --> 00:13:09.250 the Nazis just to get back to Janina. Talk about 00:13:09.250 --> 00:13:11.570 a romantic gesture. Honey, I walked through two 00:13:11.570 --> 00:13:13.950 totalitarian regimes to get to you. And when 00:13:13.950 --> 00:13:16.139 he finds her... They spent the next five years 00:13:16.139 --> 00:13:18.480 in what he later called the most agonizing spot 00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:21.000 in the whole of terrorized Europe. Nazi -occupied 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:23.860 Warsaw. It is just so hard for us to truly grasp 00:13:23.860 --> 00:13:25.960 what that meant. It wasn't just occupation in 00:13:25.960 --> 00:13:28.240 the sense of, you know, enemy soldiers on the 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:31.019 street. It was a systematic attempt to erase 00:13:31.019 --> 00:13:34.629 a culture and a people. Schools were closed. 00:13:35.169 --> 00:13:37.889 Publishing was banned. Libraries were burned. 00:13:38.070 --> 00:13:39.590 And then there were the random street roundups, 00:13:39.649 --> 00:13:42.490 the Apanka. You'd walk out to buy bread. A truck 00:13:42.490 --> 00:13:44.470 would pull up. Soldiers would shove everyone 00:13:44.470 --> 00:13:46.470 on the street into the back. And you'd be sent 00:13:46.470 --> 00:13:49.169 to Auschwitz or a forced labor camp. You never 00:13:49.169 --> 00:13:51.470 knew if you would come home. So how did he survive? 00:13:51.570 --> 00:13:53.750 How did he stay sane in that kind of environment? 00:13:54.350 --> 00:13:57.980 By working. And by resisting. But his resistance 00:13:57.980 --> 00:14:00.019 was unique. He worked as a janitor at the university 00:14:00.019 --> 00:14:02.419 library, which gave him access to all these books 00:14:02.419 --> 00:14:03.860 that were supposed to be locked away or destroyed. 00:14:04.139 --> 00:14:06.139 And he participated in the cultural resistance. 00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:09.500 Right. He translated The Wasteland by T .S. Eliot 00:14:09.500 --> 00:14:12.200 into Polish while Warsaw was literally turning 00:14:12.200 --> 00:14:16.299 into a wasteland. The resonance is just so powerful. 00:14:16.419 --> 00:14:18.620 Think of the lines. I will show you fear in a 00:14:18.620 --> 00:14:21.320 handful of dust. He was seeing that dust every 00:14:21.320 --> 00:14:24.139 single day. Warsaw was becoming the surreal, 00:14:24.340 --> 00:14:26.500 fragmented landscape that Eliot had written about. 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:28.620 Translating it was a way of making sense of the 00:14:28.620 --> 00:14:30.860 chaos. He also published a clandestine poetry 00:14:30.860 --> 00:14:34.639 anthology under the pseudonym Jan Siric. It was 00:14:34.639 --> 00:14:36.899 typed on onion skin paper, stapled together. 00:14:37.419 --> 00:14:39.740 If the Gestapo had found that on him, he would 00:14:39.740 --> 00:14:42.149 have been shot instantly. But he believed that 00:14:42.149 --> 00:14:43.950 preserving the language was a form of warfare. 00:14:44.149 --> 00:14:46.450 But he did more than just write. We have to talk 00:14:46.450 --> 00:14:48.730 about his designation as righteous among the 00:14:48.730 --> 00:14:50.769 nations. This wasn't something that was widely 00:14:50.769 --> 00:14:53.389 known for a long time, was it? No. Mias didn't 00:14:53.389 --> 00:14:56.169 like to brag about his heroism. In fact, he often 00:14:56.169 --> 00:14:58.769 felt guilty that he didn't do more. But the record 00:14:58.769 --> 00:15:02.190 is clear. His brother, Andres, was very active 00:15:02.190 --> 00:15:04.690 in the underground, smuggling Jews out of the 00:15:04.690 --> 00:15:07.610 Vilnius ghetto. Andres here brought a Jewish 00:15:07.610 --> 00:15:10.460 couple, the Trosses, to Warsaw. and Chessa took 00:15:10.460 --> 00:15:12.460 over from there. And what did that involve? It 00:15:12.460 --> 00:15:14.039 wasn't just like opening your door for a night. 00:15:14.220 --> 00:15:16.960 Oh, no. It involved everything. Finding them 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:19.179 a safe apartment in a city where hiding Jews 00:15:19.179 --> 00:15:21.440 was punishable by death for the entire household. 00:15:21.679 --> 00:15:24.220 Getting them false Aryan papers. Bringing them 00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:26.960 food. Paying for their rent. He was their lifeline. 00:15:27.159 --> 00:15:29.480 He also helped another family, the Wukomiskas, 00:15:29.480 --> 00:15:31.659 providing money and shelter. Tragically, the 00:15:31.659 --> 00:15:34.100 Trosses didn't survive the war in the end. They 00:15:34.100 --> 00:15:36.039 died during the Warsaw Uprising. Which was a 00:15:36.039 --> 00:15:38.860 source of immense pain for Mios. But his actions 00:15:38.860 --> 00:15:41.649 were verified, and Yad Bisham honored him. This 00:15:41.649 --> 00:15:43.669 experience, though, brings us right back to that 00:15:43.669 --> 00:15:45.809 image of the carousel that we started with, the 00:15:45.809 --> 00:15:49.129 proximity of normal life to absolute horror. 00:15:49.429 --> 00:15:53.190 That poem, Campo de Fiori, and another one, A 00:15:53.190 --> 00:15:56.309 Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto, they feel 00:15:56.309 --> 00:15:58.389 different from typical war poetry. They aren't 00:15:58.389 --> 00:16:00.970 just saying war is hell. They're asking, what 00:16:00.970 --> 00:16:04.389 does it mean to be a bystander? Exactly. In A 00:16:04.389 --> 00:16:07.570 Poor Christian. Looks at the ghetto, he uses 00:16:07.570 --> 00:16:09.789 this imagery of a mole burrowing underground, 00:16:10.110 --> 00:16:12.690 listening to the bodies. He worries that he'll 00:16:12.690 --> 00:16:15.710 be counted among the helpers of death, just because 00:16:15.710 --> 00:16:18.529 he survived while others died. It's a profound 00:16:18.529 --> 00:16:21.610 interrogation of survivors' guilt. He's patting 00:16:21.610 --> 00:16:23.730 himself on the back for helping. He's terrified 00:16:23.730 --> 00:16:26.450 by his own helplessness. He felt that watching 00:16:26.450 --> 00:16:28.570 the Holocaust changed the very nature of what 00:16:28.570 --> 00:16:30.429 it means to be human. Which leads us to maybe 00:16:30.429 --> 00:16:32.590 the most controversial moment of his war years. 00:16:33.049 --> 00:16:36.710 August 1944. The Warsaw Uprising. The Polish 00:16:36.710 --> 00:16:38.950 underground army rises up to take the city back 00:16:38.950 --> 00:16:40.970 from the Germans. It's the climax of the resistance. 00:16:41.350 --> 00:16:44.480 And Musius, he does not fight. And this decision 00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:46.679 haunted his reputation in Poland for decades. 00:16:46.779 --> 00:16:48.220 You have to understand, the flower of Polish 00:16:48.220 --> 00:16:50.019 youth, his peers, his friends, they all took 00:16:50.019 --> 00:16:52.720 up arms. They fought for 63 days against tanks 00:16:52.720 --> 00:16:55.240 and bombers with barely any weapons. The city 00:16:55.240 --> 00:16:57.980 was leveled. 200 ,000 civilians died. And Yusha 00:16:57.980 --> 00:17:00.379 stood aside. Why? I mean, was it cowardice? What 00:17:00.379 --> 00:17:02.480 was the thinking? He would say it was realism. 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:05.819 He called the uprising a blameworthy, lightheaded 00:17:05.819 --> 00:17:08.400 enterprise. He looked at the geopolitical map. 00:17:08.900 --> 00:17:11.160 The Soviet Red Army was waiting right across 00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:14.450 the river. He knew Stalin wouldn't help. In fact, 00:17:14.509 --> 00:17:16.849 Stalin wanted the Polish resistance destroyed 00:17:16.849 --> 00:17:20.369 so he could take over more easily later. Mios 00:17:20.369 --> 00:17:22.289 believed the Polish leadership was sending an 00:17:22.289 --> 00:17:24.410 entire generation to slaughter for a symbolic 00:17:24.410 --> 00:17:27.549 gesture that had zero chance of military success. 00:17:27.930 --> 00:17:31.549 So he saw it as a suicide mission. Yes, a beautiful, 00:17:31.710 --> 00:17:34.589 heroic, but ultimately pointless suicide mission. 00:17:35.049 --> 00:17:37.329 And he refused to commit suicide. He refused 00:17:37.329 --> 00:17:40.049 to die for a gesture. But to the families of 00:17:40.049 --> 00:17:42.269 those who died, that refusal could look like 00:17:42.269 --> 00:17:44.390 arrogance or betrayal. It's a tension that never 00:17:44.390 --> 00:17:46.609 fully went away for him. And he almost got killed 00:17:46.609 --> 00:17:49.230 anyway, didn't he? Ironically, yes. In the chaos 00:17:49.230 --> 00:17:51.230 of the uprising's collapse, he was rounded up 00:17:51.230 --> 00:17:53.369 by the Germans and put in a transit camp. He 00:17:53.369 --> 00:17:55.809 was destined for a concentration camp or a firing 00:17:55.809 --> 00:17:58.230 squad. And then a miracle happens. A literal 00:17:58.230 --> 00:18:01.170 deus ex machina. A nun, a complete stranger, 00:18:01.410 --> 00:18:04.180 spots him in the holding area. and she somehow 00:18:04.180 --> 00:18:07.079 manages to plead with a German officer. She claims 00:18:07.079 --> 00:18:10.019 he's her relative or someone essential. We don't 00:18:10.019 --> 00:18:11.460 know exactly what she said, but she talked him 00:18:11.460 --> 00:18:13.500 out of the line. She saves the life of a future 00:18:13.500 --> 00:18:15.339 Nobel Prize winner and then just disappeared 00:18:15.339 --> 00:18:17.920 into history. That randomness that you live or 00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:20.740 die based on the whim of a stranger or the mood 00:18:20.740 --> 00:18:22.740 of a guard, that seems to be such a core lesson 00:18:22.740 --> 00:18:25.579 for him. It stripped him of any belief in a benevolent, 00:18:25.579 --> 00:18:27.779 orderly universe where good things happen to 00:18:27.779 --> 00:18:30.730 good people. If you survive that, you can't believe 00:18:30.730 --> 00:18:33.470 that everything happens for a reason. You survive 00:18:33.470 --> 00:18:36.609 because of luck. Plain and simple. So the war 00:18:36.609 --> 00:18:39.569 ends. Warsaw is a pile of rubble. The Soviets 00:18:39.569 --> 00:18:42.150 march in and set up a puppet government. And 00:18:42.150 --> 00:18:44.710 now Milosz does something that shocks his friends 00:18:44.710 --> 00:18:47.089 even more than not fighting. He takes a job with 00:18:47.089 --> 00:18:49.430 the communists. This is the Faustian Bargain. 00:18:49.809 --> 00:18:54.289 From 1945 to 1951. Czesław Miłosz, the mystic 00:18:54.289 --> 00:18:57.069 poet who hates totalitarianism, becomes a cultural 00:18:57.069 --> 00:18:59.109 attaché for the People's Republic of Poland. 00:18:59.269 --> 00:19:01.809 He gets posted to New York, Washington, D .C., 00:19:01.809 --> 00:19:04.869 and Paris. Why? I mean, this is the guy who hated 00:19:04.869 --> 00:19:07.970 the catastrophe. Why join the people causing 00:19:07.970 --> 00:19:10.269 it? It's the question everyone asks. The simple 00:19:10.269 --> 00:19:14.200 answer is he wanted to be a Polish writer. He 00:19:14.200 --> 00:19:16.180 was terrified that if he stayed in exile, he 00:19:16.180 --> 00:19:18.200 would lose his language, his roots. He thought, 00:19:18.240 --> 00:19:20.460 maybe I can work for the state without adopting 00:19:20.460 --> 00:19:23.160 the ideology. Maybe I can help rebuild Polish 00:19:23.160 --> 00:19:26.140 culture from the inside. He wanted to be printed. 00:19:26.299 --> 00:19:28.720 He wanted to be read. He thought he could outsmart 00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:30.400 the system. He thought he could wear a mask. 00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:33.059 He was practicing Ketman. Okay, we need to stop 00:19:33.059 --> 00:19:34.920 and define that. This is a concept from the captive 00:19:34.920 --> 00:19:37.160 mind. It's so, so important. What is Ketman? 00:19:37.319 --> 00:19:39.839 Ketman is an Islamic theological concept from 00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:44.089 Persia that Mios adapted. Originally, It referred 00:19:44.089 --> 00:19:46.869 to a believer hiding their true faith in a hostile 00:19:46.869 --> 00:19:50.170 environment just to survive. In Mios' context, 00:19:50.650 --> 00:19:52.730 it refers to the practice of paying lip service 00:19:52.730 --> 00:19:55.269 to the ruling orthodoxy, using the communist 00:19:55.269 --> 00:19:58.349 slogans, clapping at the speeches, while keeping 00:19:58.349 --> 00:20:00.650 your true beliefs hidden in your heart. So it's 00:20:00.650 --> 00:20:02.750 like high stakes faking it. It's more than just 00:20:02.750 --> 00:20:05.730 faking. It's a survival mechanism where you actually 00:20:05.730 --> 00:20:08.619 derive a secret pleasure. from your deception. 00:20:08.839 --> 00:20:11.160 You smile at the party boss and you think to 00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:13.640 yourself, I am smarter than you because I am 00:20:13.640 --> 00:20:17.720 lying to you. Milos was practicing Ketman. He 00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:19.640 thought he could serve the diplomatic corps while 00:20:19.640 --> 00:20:22.059 remaining intellectually free. But the mask started 00:20:22.059 --> 00:20:25.359 to eat into the face. It always does. You can't 00:20:25.359 --> 00:20:27.319 live a lie for that long. Yeah. The breaking 00:20:27.319 --> 00:20:31.059 point came in 1949. He visited Poland and saw 00:20:31.059 --> 00:20:33.640 the reality on the ground. The post -war thaw 00:20:33.640 --> 00:20:36.539 was completely over. Stalinism was clamping down 00:20:36.539 --> 00:20:39.019 hard. Friends were being arrested. The socialist 00:20:39.019 --> 00:20:41.339 realism doctrine was being forced on writers. 00:20:41.539 --> 00:20:43.440 You couldn't just write a poem about a sunset. 00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:46.119 It had to praise the tractor drivers and the 00:20:46.119 --> 00:20:48.279 party. And his bosses were onto him. They were 00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:50.430 suspicious. Oh, yeah. They wrote in a report 00:20:50.430 --> 00:20:53.269 that he was ideologically totally alien, which, 00:20:53.349 --> 00:20:56.529 to be fair, he was. Yeah. In late 1950, they 00:20:56.529 --> 00:20:58.230 recalled him to Warsaw and took his passport. 00:20:58.450 --> 00:21:00.589 He was trapped. He was moments away from being 00:21:00.589 --> 00:21:02.549 thrown in a cell or just disappearing into the 00:21:02.549 --> 00:21:04.849 gulag system. How did he get out? He had one 00:21:04.849 --> 00:21:07.369 friend left in high places, the foreign minister, 00:21:07.529 --> 00:21:11.690 Zygmunt Modzalewski. Modzalewski intervened and 00:21:11.690 --> 00:21:14.509 got his passport back, sending him to Paris for 00:21:14.509 --> 00:21:17.720 one last mission. Mears knew it was a one -way 00:21:17.720 --> 00:21:19.839 trip. He knew if he went back again, he was dead. 00:21:20.039 --> 00:21:23.779 So he gets to Paris, January 1951, and he jumps 00:21:23.779 --> 00:21:25.880 ship. He goes straight to the headquarters of 00:21:25.880 --> 00:21:29.059 Kultura, the famous Polish emigre journal run 00:21:29.059 --> 00:21:31.519 by Jerzy Gietroyk. He just walks in and says, 00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:33.759 I'm not going back. And this should be the happy 00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:35.920 ending, right? Welcome to freedom, Chesav. But 00:21:35.920 --> 00:21:38.920 it wasn't. It was a nightmare. The Polish emigre 00:21:38.920 --> 00:21:41.660 community in London and Paris, they hated him. 00:21:41.930 --> 00:21:44.230 They said, oh, now you defect. You were happy 00:21:44.230 --> 00:21:46.710 to drink cocktails in the embassy while our friends 00:21:46.710 --> 00:21:48.289 were being tortured for the last five years. 00:21:48.369 --> 00:21:51.410 You're an opportunist. They shunned him completely. 00:21:51.690 --> 00:21:53.609 And the leftist intellectuals in Parasarcha, 00:21:53.690 --> 00:21:56.029 that whole crowd, they hated him too. For the 00:21:56.029 --> 00:21:58.309 exact opposite reason. They were still in love 00:21:58.309 --> 00:22:00.430 with the Soviet dream. They saw him as a traitor 00:22:00.430 --> 00:22:03.009 to the revolution. Pablo Neruda, the Chilean 00:22:03.009 --> 00:22:05.190 poet, wrote this scathing article in a communist 00:22:05.190 --> 00:22:08.769 paper titled The Man Who Ran Away. Just bashing 00:22:08.769 --> 00:22:10.930 him. He was totally isolated. And the Americans. 00:22:11.190 --> 00:22:13.329 The Americans wouldn't let him in. The McCarran 00:22:13.329 --> 00:22:15.789 Act was in full swing. Because he had been a 00:22:15.789 --> 00:22:18.369 diplomat for a communist government, he was flagged 00:22:18.369 --> 00:22:20.710 as a security risk. So he's stuck in France. 00:22:20.970 --> 00:22:23.130 His wife and children are in the United States. 00:22:23.369 --> 00:22:25.990 He's separated from them for years. He actually 00:22:25.990 --> 00:22:28.859 missed the birth of his second son. He was suicidal. 00:22:29.059 --> 00:22:31.740 But in that darkness, in that pressure cooker 00:22:31.740 --> 00:22:34.519 of isolation, he wrote the book that changed 00:22:34.519 --> 00:22:37.140 everything, The Captive Mind. Published in 1953, 00:22:37.500 --> 00:22:40.579 it is an absolute masterpiece. And here is the 00:22:40.579 --> 00:22:43.880 key insight for our listeners. This is the toolkit. 00:22:44.500 --> 00:22:47.880 Mios explains that people don't just submit to 00:22:47.880 --> 00:22:50.619 tyranny out of fear. They submit because of a 00:22:50.619 --> 00:22:53.609 pill. The pill of Murtabing. Right. He borrows 00:22:53.609 --> 00:22:56.029 this metaphor from a novel by a Polish writer, 00:22:56.390 --> 00:23:00.269 Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. The pill of Murtabing 00:23:00.269 --> 00:23:02.690 is a philosophical drug. If you take it, your 00:23:02.690 --> 00:23:05.230 anxiety vanishes. You stop worrying about the 00:23:05.230 --> 00:23:07.069 meaning of life or the complexity of the world 00:23:07.069 --> 00:23:09.190 or all the contradictions. You accept the new 00:23:09.190 --> 00:23:11.650 faith, which is communism. You become happy, 00:23:11.769 --> 00:23:14.349 productive, and completely hollow. It's a metaphor 00:23:14.349 --> 00:23:17.859 for historical necessity. Precisely. The intellectual 00:23:17.859 --> 00:23:20.460 convinces himself that history is a train moving 00:23:20.460 --> 00:23:23.539 in one direction, towards communism. If you stand 00:23:23.539 --> 00:23:25.700 on the tracks, you get run over. If you get on 00:23:25.700 --> 00:23:28.319 the train, you're part of the future. It's seductive. 00:23:28.319 --> 00:23:30.579 It relieves you of the burden of individual conscience. 00:23:30.759 --> 00:23:32.559 You don't have to decide what's right or wrong 00:23:32.559 --> 00:23:35.920 anymore. The party decides for you. This is the 00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:38.900 aha moment for me. When you see people today 00:23:38.900 --> 00:23:41.859 adopting a really rigid ideology, whether it's 00:23:41.859 --> 00:23:43.980 left or right, and suddenly they have a simple 00:23:43.980 --> 00:23:46.099 answer for everything, and they treat anyone 00:23:46.099 --> 00:23:49.599 who disagrees as a dinosaur or a monster, they've 00:23:49.599 --> 00:23:51.980 taken the pill. They have. They've traded critical 00:23:51.980 --> 00:23:54.980 thinking for certainty. And Niosh shows us how 00:23:54.980 --> 00:23:58.000 smart people, brilliant people, rationalize this 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:00.759 lobotomy. He profiles four fellow writers in 00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:02.980 the book. He calls them Alpha, Beta, and Alpha. 00:24:02.839 --> 00:24:04.920 gamma and delta to protect their identities. 00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:07.140 And he dissects how each of them sold their soul 00:24:07.140 --> 00:24:09.579 to the system, not for money, but for a sense 00:24:09.579 --> 00:24:12.279 of belonging and historical correctness. It's 00:24:12.279 --> 00:24:14.799 a terrifying psychological study, but eventually 00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:18.519 the West starts to listen. And in 1960, the McCarthyite 00:24:18.519 --> 00:24:20.779 hysteria dies down enough that the U .S. finally 00:24:20.779 --> 00:24:23.440 grants him a visa and he lands in. Berkeley, 00:24:23.539 --> 00:24:25.880 California. From the frying pan into the hot 00:24:25.880 --> 00:24:28.819 tub. He arrives in the Bay Area just as the 60s 00:24:28.819 --> 00:24:30.799 are kicking off. I cannot imagine the culture 00:24:30.799 --> 00:24:33.519 shock. He goes from the ruins of Warsaw and the 00:24:33.519 --> 00:24:36.640 intense intellectual battles of Paris to sunshine 00:24:36.640 --> 00:24:40.119 and hippies. He called it the land of Ulro. which 00:24:40.119 --> 00:24:42.039 is a term he borrowed from the poet William Blake. 00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:45.500 For Blake, Ulroa was the realm of spiritual desolation, 00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:48.799 of cold science and materialism. To Muse, California 00:24:48.799 --> 00:24:52.079 was terrifyingly flat. No history, no tragedy, 00:24:52.279 --> 00:24:55.059 just sunshine, supermarkets, and people who were 00:24:55.059 --> 00:24:56.880 obsessed with their own happiness. And he got 00:24:56.880 --> 00:24:59.500 a job teaching at UC Berkeley. Yes, he got tenure 00:24:59.500 --> 00:25:02.279 in two months, which is just wild. But he felt 00:25:02.279 --> 00:25:05.259 invisible. Nobody knew who he was. To his colleagues, 00:25:05.420 --> 00:25:08.200 he was just this grumpy professor of Slavic languages. 00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:10.180 They had no idea they were having coffee with 00:25:10.180 --> 00:25:11.980 one of the greatest poets of the century. And 00:25:11.980 --> 00:25:14.700 then came the free speech movement, the protests 00:25:14.700 --> 00:25:18.099 against the Vietnam War. You would think Miesch, 00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:20.599 the rebel poet who defied Hitler and Stalin, 00:25:20.759 --> 00:25:23.339 would love the students rising up against the 00:25:23.339 --> 00:25:26.119 man. You would think so. But he despised it. 00:25:26.440 --> 00:25:29.200 He looked at these students, well -fed, driving 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:31.599 cars, free to say whatever they wanted, and he 00:25:31.599 --> 00:25:33.960 saw spoiled children of the bourgeoisie. Why 00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:36.339 was he so hostile to them? Because he felt they 00:25:36.339 --> 00:25:38.640 didn't understand the nature of reality. They 00:25:38.640 --> 00:25:40.599 were playing at revolution. They were waving 00:25:40.599 --> 00:25:43.859 Mao's Little Red Book around. Mews had seen what 00:25:43.859 --> 00:25:46.099 Mao and Stalin actually did. He had seen the 00:25:46.099 --> 00:25:48.880 bodies. To him, seeing American kids praising 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:51.359 communism was like seeing someone praising cancer 00:25:51.359 --> 00:25:53.160 because they liked the shape of the tumor. It 00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:55.799 was obscene to him. There's that legendary story 00:25:55.799 --> 00:25:58.339 of him at a rally that I absolutely love. Oh, 00:25:58.339 --> 00:26:01.079 it defines the disconnect. A student is giving 00:26:01.079 --> 00:26:04.039 a speech about universal love and how we just 00:26:04.039 --> 00:26:06.539 need to love everyone to solve the world's problems. 00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:09.579 You know, very flower power. Mius, the old professor 00:26:09.579 --> 00:26:12.740 with the thick accent, grabs the mic and he says. 00:26:13.279 --> 00:26:15.140 Talk to me about love when they come into your 00:26:15.140 --> 00:26:17.859 cell one morning. Line you all up and say, you 00:26:17.859 --> 00:26:20.420 and you, step forward. It's your time to die, 00:26:20.559 --> 00:26:23.039 unless any of your friends loves you so much 00:26:23.039 --> 00:26:25.839 he wants to take your place. Boom. I bet you 00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:28.440 could hear a pin drop in the quad. Absolute silence. 00:26:28.740 --> 00:26:31.220 He was bringing the gravity of the 20th century 00:26:31.220 --> 00:26:34.119 into their fantasy world. He was saying, you 00:26:34.119 --> 00:26:36.460 think you're free. You have no idea what freedom 00:26:36.460 --> 00:26:39.019 costs. You have no idea what human beings are 00:26:39.019 --> 00:26:41.140 capable of when the thin veneer of civilization 00:26:41.140 --> 00:26:43.779 is removed. Despite feeling like an alien, he 00:26:43.779 --> 00:26:45.980 was productive there. He translated Polish poetry 00:26:45.980 --> 00:26:48.259 into English. He published an anthology, Post 00:26:48.259 --> 00:26:50.680 -War Polish Poetry, which actually changed American 00:26:50.680 --> 00:26:53.880 literature. It really did. American poets like 00:26:53.880 --> 00:26:56.700 Robert Haas and W .S. Merwin read this anthology 00:26:56.700 --> 00:26:59.259 and were just blown away. American poetry at 00:26:59.259 --> 00:27:01.099 the time was often very personal, very confessional. 00:27:01.480 --> 00:27:03.819 And here were the Polish poets writing about 00:27:03.819 --> 00:27:06.619 history, about irony, about the weight of civilization. 00:27:06.920 --> 00:27:09.839 It injected a seriousness and a historical consciousness 00:27:09.839 --> 00:27:13.440 into American poetry that it really needed. And 00:27:13.440 --> 00:27:16.359 eventually the world caught up to Mios, 1980, 00:27:16.759 --> 00:27:19.220 the Nobel Prize. It came out of nowhere for most 00:27:19.220 --> 00:27:21.920 Americans, but the timing was just providential. 00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:25.539 1980 was the year that Solidarity Solidarność 00:27:25.539 --> 00:27:27.920 was born in the Gdańsk shipyards. The workers' 00:27:28.039 --> 00:27:30.000 strikes against the communist government led 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:32.880 by Lech Waszczyk. Exactly. And suddenly, Mios, 00:27:33.119 --> 00:27:36.059 who'd been banned in Poland for 30 years, his 00:27:36.059 --> 00:27:37.619 name couldn't even be printed in newspapers, 00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:40.420 his books were smuggled in like contraband, was 00:27:40.420 --> 00:27:42.480 on the front page of every newspaper in the world. 00:27:42.660 --> 00:27:45.200 He became the spiritual godfather of the revolution. 00:27:45.690 --> 00:27:47.670 There's that incredible image of the monument 00:27:47.670 --> 00:27:50.130 to the fallen shipyard workers in Gadesque. Three 00:27:50.130 --> 00:27:53.130 massive crosses. And on the base, there's a quote 00:27:53.130 --> 00:27:56.690 from Mios. From his poem, You Who Wronged. The 00:27:56.690 --> 00:28:00.289 lines are, Do not feel safe. The poet remembers. 00:28:00.630 --> 00:28:04.130 You can kill one, but another is born. The words 00:28:04.130 --> 00:28:06.490 are written down. The deed, the date. That gives 00:28:06.490 --> 00:28:09.460 me chills every time I hear it. The poet remembers. 00:28:09.779 --> 00:28:12.579 It's the ultimate threat to a dictator. You can 00:28:12.579 --> 00:28:14.339 control the army, you can control the police, 00:28:14.420 --> 00:28:16.779 but you cannot control memory. It was a total 00:28:16.779 --> 00:28:19.539 vindication. The man who refused to fight with 00:28:19.539 --> 00:28:22.400 a gun in 1944 had provided the ammunition for 00:28:22.400 --> 00:28:25.700 the final victory in 1980. The word proved stronger 00:28:25.700 --> 00:28:27.880 than the sword. He returned to Poland in 1981. 00:28:28.180 --> 00:28:31.539 It was a hero's welcome. Crowds literally carrying 00:28:31.539 --> 00:28:33.519 him on their shoulders. He met Lech Wojtyla. 00:28:33.700 --> 00:28:36.339 He met Pope John Paul II. It was a triumphal 00:28:36.339 --> 00:28:39.049 return. But... And here's the classic Mios twist. 00:28:39.390 --> 00:28:41.230 He didn't just settle into being a comfortable 00:28:41.230 --> 00:28:43.329 national statue. He didn't just sit back and 00:28:43.329 --> 00:28:45.130 accept the applause. He kept poking the bear. 00:28:45.349 --> 00:28:47.769 Right until the very end. After communism fell, 00:28:47.970 --> 00:28:50.630 he moved back to Krakow. He lived until 2004, 00:28:50.890 --> 00:28:54.369 age 93. But even at his funeral, there were protests. 00:28:55.009 --> 00:28:57.410 Protests at the funeral of a Nobel laureate and 00:28:57.410 --> 00:28:59.509 national hero? That's insane. Right -wing nationalist 00:28:59.509 --> 00:29:02.329 groups. They held signs calling him anti -Polish 00:29:02.329 --> 00:29:04.910 and anti -Catholic. Well, why? On what grounds? 00:29:05.130 --> 00:29:07.150 Because he refused to flatter the nation. He 00:29:07.150 --> 00:29:10.069 criticized Polish antisemitism. He criticized 00:29:10.069 --> 00:29:12.190 the narrow -mindedness of the church. He said 00:29:12.190 --> 00:29:13.910 that being Polish didn't mean you were automatically 00:29:13.910 --> 00:29:17.029 a martyr or a saint. He wanted Poland to be open, 00:29:17.190 --> 00:29:20.450 tolerant, pluralistic, like the Grand Duchy of 00:29:20.450 --> 00:29:22.809 his childhood. And for the nationalists, who 00:29:22.809 --> 00:29:25.809 wanted a pure Catholic Poland, that was treason. 00:29:25.930 --> 00:29:28.049 It's fitting, really. He started his life as 00:29:28.049 --> 00:29:30.609 an outsider, a citizen of a lost country. And 00:29:30.609 --> 00:29:32.690 he ended his life as an outsider, even in his 00:29:32.690 --> 00:29:34.329 own homeland. He was always the man in the middle. 00:29:34.750 --> 00:29:37.829 Between East and West, between faith and heresy, 00:29:37.930 --> 00:29:40.650 between the carousel and the ghetto, he never 00:29:40.650 --> 00:29:42.930 let himself get comfortable in any single camp. 00:29:43.069 --> 00:29:44.910 So let's try to bring this all home. We've told 00:29:44.910 --> 00:29:47.130 this story. But what's the philosophical core? 00:29:47.250 --> 00:29:50.430 If you, the listener, take one thing away from 00:29:50.430 --> 00:29:54.009 Yosu's worldview, what should it be? I think 00:29:54.009 --> 00:29:56.420 it's the rejection of the grand narrative. in 00:29:56.420 --> 00:29:58.480 favor of the specific individual human life. 00:29:58.799 --> 00:30:02.200 Mios wrestled his whole life with the Hegelian 00:30:02.200 --> 00:30:05.039 idea that history justifies suffering, that breaking 00:30:05.039 --> 00:30:07.839 a few million eggs is okay if you make a glorious 00:30:07.839 --> 00:30:11.220 socialist omelet. And he concluded, no, the terror 00:30:11.220 --> 00:30:14.059 of a single child outweighs the entire Hegelian 00:30:14.059 --> 00:30:16.960 dialectic. He champions the individual against 00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:20.240 the system every single time. In his religious 00:30:20.240 --> 00:30:21.799 view, you mentioned he was kind of a strange 00:30:21.799 --> 00:30:24.779 Catholic. He was practically a Manichean. Can 00:30:24.779 --> 00:30:27.619 you define that for us? Manicheism is this ancient 00:30:27.619 --> 00:30:30.579 worldview that sees the material world as being 00:30:30.579 --> 00:30:33.599 ruled by dark forces, by a demon, not by a benevolent 00:30:33.599 --> 00:30:36.579 God. Mius looked at nature animals eating each 00:30:36.579 --> 00:30:38.519 other, the sheer brutality of survival, and he 00:30:38.519 --> 00:30:41.640 saw evil. He looked at history, the 20th century, 00:30:41.819 --> 00:30:44.759 and he saw the demon at work. But, and this is 00:30:44.759 --> 00:30:47.119 the beautiful, crucial part, he refused to give 00:30:47.119 --> 00:30:51.619 up on wonder. Yes. or ecstasy. He loved the world, 00:30:51.759 --> 00:30:54.819 the simple things, vodka, herring, the smell 00:30:54.819 --> 00:30:57.599 of jam being made, the color of a river at sunset. 00:30:57.940 --> 00:31:00.299 He believed that despite the devil ruling the 00:31:00.299 --> 00:31:02.579 world, there were these moments of grace where 00:31:02.579 --> 00:31:05.200 you could glimpse the eternal. His poetry is 00:31:05.200 --> 00:31:07.680 this constant battle to praise the world, even 00:31:07.680 --> 00:31:10.480 though he knows deep down it's a slaughterhouse. 00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:13.339 There's a line from his poetry cycle, The World, 00:31:13.480 --> 00:31:16.420 that comes to mind. Faith is in you whenever 00:31:16.420 --> 00:31:19.319 you look at a dewdrop or a floating leaf and 00:31:19.319 --> 00:31:22.680 know that they are because they have to be. And 00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:25.980 that cycle was written in 1943 in Warsaw. While 00:31:25.980 --> 00:31:27.519 people were being rounded up and shot in the 00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:29.779 streets, Mios was writing these deceptively simple 00:31:29.779 --> 00:31:32.200 poems about children seeing a bear in a picture 00:31:32.200 --> 00:31:34.720 book or his father fixing a lamp. He was building 00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:36.299 a fortress of innocence in the middle of hell. 00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:38.519 And I think that's his legacy. You don't ignore 00:31:38.519 --> 00:31:40.859 the evil you look at right in the eye, but you 00:31:40.859 --> 00:31:42.799 do not let it consume your capacity for beauty. 00:31:43.480 --> 00:31:45.619 Chessomuos, the witness who remembered. And the 00:31:45.619 --> 00:31:47.779 poet who refused to take the pill. If you want 00:31:47.779 --> 00:31:50.559 to dive deeper into this, the captive mind is 00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:53.180 the place to start. I promise you, it will change 00:31:53.180 --> 00:31:57.029 how you watch the news. Or... Just read the world 00:31:57.029 --> 00:32:00.210 poems. They are short, they are simple, and they 00:32:00.210 --> 00:32:02.529 are heartbreakingly beautiful. I couldn't recommend 00:32:02.529 --> 00:32:05.130 them more. They're an antidote to so much. That's 00:32:05.130 --> 00:32:06.890 it for this deep dive. We'll see you next time.