Zniewolone slowo - albo trzy krucjaty

the long version

It is a sequence of three poems that relate crusades undertaken in the defence of language - or simply, the word. The English title would be "The Captive Word - or the three crusades" and is an allusion to the famous book by Czeslaw Milosz "The Captive Mind". When Milosz wrote his book over half a century ago the dangers to language were mainly political. Today they are more complex: aside from politics those dangers come from many directions. Media, advertising, IT, computer programming, new sciences, new technologies etc. - all use language as we know (or knew) it according to their purposes, that is mainly as an instrument. As a consequence of that purely utilitarian use of language the meaning of words changes and communication becomes increasingly more difficult. The three poems in this book describe imaginary crusades that aim at saving language - that is at freeing the word from its captivity.