“Paradoxical as it may seem, it is this subjective impotence that convinces the intellectual that the one method is right. Everything proves it is right. Dialectics: I predict that the house will burn; then I pour gas over the stove. The house burns; my prediction is fulfilled. Dialectics: I predict that a work of art incompatible with socialist realism will be worthless. Then I place the artist in conditions in which such work is worthless. My prediction is fulfilled.”
Excerpted from: Milosz, Czeslaw. Trans. Jane Zielonko. The Captive Mind. New York: Vintage, 1981.
Mark's Text Terminal 