“A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one.”

—  Czeslaw Milosz , book The Captive Mind

The Captive Mind (1953)
Context: Whoever saw, as many did, a whole city reduced to rubble — kilometers of streets on which there remained no trace of life, not even a cat, not even a homeless dog — emerged with a rather ironic attitude toward descriptions of the hell of the big city by contemporary poets, descriptions of the hell in their own souls. A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one. Whoever has not dwelt in the midst of horror and dread cannot know how strongly a witness and participant protests against himself, against his own neglect and egoism. Destruction and suffering are the school of social thought.

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Czeslaw Milosz 106
Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator 1911–2004

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