Going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards from 10 box Tuesdays 10 box for all this football mix number 170 random team style There's a look again at your random results as always guys can find those on the website under the results tab as well as link in chat guys Thank you all again for selling everything out tonight. I really really really appreciate it. That was awesome We're gonna have plenty of time for personals tonight if you guys would like some boxes But let's keep on moving here Let me grab this Make sure I have the right breaks Go dolphins. Yeah, that's right. I'm from like a small town kind of like 20 minutes south of Hartford Cory I'm from like central Connecticut Herlock your billboards in Chicago there are legendary now. That's fair now. No, herlockers up there Herlocker and buckets for both greats. I think bucket still has the record for most force fumbles Buckets was just on some really bad Bears teams in the 70s. That was the only issue really bad Oh, let's go Zach. That's right. You got the Falcons in this. Oh sisters in Bristol. Gotcha. Yeah. Oh, Daffy. Oh, yeah Yeah, I was like two towns over from Bristol two towns over from Bristol. I lived in Berlin Billy zappy rookie. Let's see it Zach. That is a Kirk Cousins Yeah, right one town over from Middletown I bordered Middletown Jim Yes, I'm very a lot of ties in Middletown for sure My uncle owns the Middits in Middletown actually There's Jordan, uh, Jerry Judy and Hassan Haskins. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what we were talking about. Yes We're saying who's the who's the best after Lawrence Taylor 100 it's Lawrence Taylor number one There's Randy Moss Lawrence Taylor is the best player to ever play in the defensive side of the football And I think that's pretty unanimous among NFL fans Yes, I did work at Ken's tie. Yeah, I worked at Ken's there in coven Yes, there Jake Ferguson, uh Derek Stingley rated rookie. Uh, that is a David Bell Candlewood nice. That's awesome Jim. Hell yeah, dude Hell yeah, yeah, Middletown's cool. I always like Middletown. Yeah, Reggie whites up there too. I still think LT is a little better Like Reggie whites the best like He was like an interior lineman. I'm pretty sure right. I'm not mistaken Uh, David and Joku. He was like a DT Drake London rated rookie Parsons That's Evan Ingram Desmond Ritter rated rookie Need a couple. Yeah a couple of packs like this with just one card in it games cook No, Ken's cards. Yeah, Ken's cards in Berlin Diamond hands is AJ Brown I like the CT representation. Hell yeah. I asked you got it, buddy Uh, red hot rookies is sauce gardener Jalen Petrie my LT was I mean Like just an absolute game racker, man. Yeah D. E. D. T. Exactly Because I mean you could theoretically say that yes Taylor's best offensive line or outside linebacker and then Reggie whites the best like DN slash DT Uh, okay, we're gonna do that was optic retail. We'll do optic team all next Optic team or a Connecticut folks Here I have to say a lot of Connecticut People I love it dude Jalen hurts Schuyler Thompson rated rookie hollow. Yeah, my parents still live there CD lamb and Tyrion David's price on your red stars. Nice ones there Uh, we'll do 23 legacy My island sound from the um, don't know if you've ever seen the guy with the stone engine is your yeah Yeah The ones from Guilford. Yeah. Yeah Nice one there. Um, all right, so we've got this is 23, right? Yes, 23 trading cards because they do they're exactly sick because Montana's on the one last year Yeah, mean joe green bob lily both up there as well. Absolutely Absolutely parents are still in Greenwich Greenwich is nice dude Greenwich is awesome I had a couple buddies that went to Sacred Heart and now it's like, uh, it's Randall Cunningham It's a 50 awesome Echler To be fair, we know to be fair couch. That's most of the most athletes in the 1980s did the same thing base This is thick. He's got something in it. It's like a Hatch auto of dollon kinkade to 249 nice one there bills Discount of personal That's served up jeff. Yeah prime time you got to put up there, too I mean, we now we could talk about who's the who's the best defensive backs of all time Yeah, no kidding honestly that documentary on the 86 mess is unreal, dude. Yeah unreal what happened there Yeah, Aaron donald's up there, too. Jay watts up there. I would say There's uh, orange bruce smith to 199 Bijan joey porter I wish watt would have stayed a little healthier. That's the only thing That is a oh Jared gough signature highlights. We're Spencer at I swung there congrats lions. That's cool. I hope you hear Other jared gough thumbs up feel that one Yeah, you have to put deon probably is the best db of all time. I think it's hard to come hard to argue with that one Like who else would be put up there for corners and safeties? Yeah, chimp Bailey was good That's a dare-to-tear marshal fault to 65 for the rams. Congrats rams Brian branch on the bronze to 100 Branch is a lion. I believe I'm not mistaken there Peanut to peanut tillman was the best at punching the ball out the peanut punch Dude, that's what it's uh, that's literally what they call it. Jeff is the peanut punched one to 2.99 Like if you ever see like a highlight of somebody doing that somebody's going into punching the ball It's like up. He just like So and so peanut punches the ball out Yeah, woodson lot Tylaw night night train lane night train lane you have to put up there. That's a slept on name for sure That is two 125. Uh, joey porter jr. Yeah, champ bailey revus. Yeah Best safety all-time see shon taylor probably would have been if his career wasn't Tragically cut short under lights k-shon beauty. I want to throw paul kraus into the ring I'm throwing paul kraus into the ring for the ages is 249 charles woodson Paul kraus is the nfl's all-time c speaking of there. He has spoke that into existence paul kraus all-time nfl interceptions leader playing in the 70s and 80s and then it's wrote a ball Pretty impressive to be honest, you know what? I mean fair. That is a clayton tune mini Yeah, edry paul amalou Champ was really good brian dawkins post 2000. Yeah, meld blunt another good name Well, he's raven right now. Oh, yes. He is uh, 22 illusions. I should be 22 illusions, uh, you're gonna you might get your first taste of funcadelic Of where where the name originates from Oh brian finneran What brian finneran Blue is brie salt 199 and a jerry writes came cards Nice malik willis on the rookie auto to 49 congrats titans. There you go, tennessee Wayne with some spot or some spots tomorrow. Thank you. Wayne. Uh, david montgomery Wayne p That's pretty cool. Uh, rishad. That's awesome, dude there's two 499 is Garrett wilson rookie and 299 sam howell mystique Michael pitman picket and terry bradshaw nice one there on the deja vu Congrats on that stealers And russia wilson operation detonation. It's a weirdly set up box sauce gardener 2 399 And king of cards 2 399 is emet smith I think bruce smith's another name you got to throw in dina So he I think he's the all-time sax leader. He never led the league in sacks Toddled pen Nice sam howell to 150 congrats washington going to jody Jody had a pretty solid day today Nice one there congrats jody with the howell rookie auto brie salt pen. I love it, dude. That's funny Raider legend. He was a buck. I think for a bit Nice trayvon walker rookie endorsements to 199 auto for the jazz. It's actually a pretty good box Willis howell and walker Bad cards and desmond ridder shining stars Oh, did he win did he win at the year he won defensive player of the year? I could I could be wrong on that. I feel like I saw that somewhere to 75 dalvin cook and 250 mystique kenny picket Nice one there. Yeah, bruce smith is a beast, dude. That is travis calcy to 499 At 18 that year. That's tray mcbryde. Nice one there for the cardinals Resolve tyquan thorton Uh instant impact for the patriots. Nice one there new england and malik willis on the amazing No, I don't think he ever did I don't think he ever did to be honest It never has a league leader in sacks. He just had a lot every single year, dude. Um, okay 23 luminance. I could be wrong on that though. I don't know Drake london That is a hendon hooker to 175. Nice one there Miles murphy rookie auto for the bangles to 350 Clemson target. It's kyle's favorite school To a tag by loa vestige Got that word though. I did Win to win. A win is a win is a win is a win Uh, erin rogers to 150 For packers will anderson nice one there, uh, 250 rookie auto for the texans Yeah, ricky was a beast, dude. Ricky was such a beast kshawn beauty. I'm just gonna do it now. That's points random to all at the end Sorry about that. Everybody 250 that is a unforgettable justin fields Such a cool card in that Rain game Madre steven said 250s. Yeah Turnip key that is an aj brown. Nice one there the jumbo jersey for the eagles Uh, jonathan mingo for the panthers to 150, uh, jesson fields to 100 and engaged is in huntonson Right elites up next 23 elites nice orange jay kainer to 399 for you telling me about elite when i first walked in on the release day You're like there is a kid reporter at every single fax that's embedded to 149 High life davante smith and always four base on the back between three and four depending if there's an insert or an auto Uh, jetevis martin to 99 999 that is a dalton kinkade pen pals on card auto for the bills. Congrats buffalo Yes, second kinkade of the break. Good. Good call on that one. That's very true very true Not a bad guy to get two autos of Leap that dj wants Jalen hyatt Yeah green as well. Good point Hobbs that staffer to 99 sake one barkley to 75 That is a michael meyer to 999. We've got moxie. Justin herbert to 375 jersey for the Steelers and a cj stroud to 149 That's one there who's turning out to be quite the uh, quite the qb Oh gunslinger. Yeah Gonna huck the rock dude That is a nick chubb to 999 High life tyreek. Yeah, there have been some good herberts tonight. Yep Chase claypool to 349 Yeah, never a bad thing to pull good herberts for sure Never a bad thing at all Joe burrow. Yep, joey bosa to 149 orange dac to 399 So look at our second auto in this, I think I'm not mistaken Say quantly deck is drake london playmakers Hopefully he can pick it up a little bit. So my fantasy team these things is that That is lucas van ness and a michael meyer. So we had two tight end on card autos. Congrats raiders nice one there That's gonna work just fine. I've got brian m with three and sapphire tomorrow and david with the pelicans on friday And contenders optic basketball releases on friday everybody. You have me in the morning doing PYT's We'll have forest at night doing some random teams and PYT sending hookers and base Kid reporters in the trash Plates and patches next Save everything. Oh, we do it. It's right. We've got a Miles sanders to 25 for the panthers Nice one there panthers That is a miles garret It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be an anthony richardson. Nice one there on the jersey card two 59 for the colts They are 15 action that I redemption stetson benet rookie patch auto that's going to the Uh ramps congrats ramps It's actually pretty cool That is very cool First time I fit a vet in this.   I saw a video of it so bad Oh my god And any duels in this Will be random if there is one To the two teams that are shown got trevor lorenz. That's going to the uh Jags to 99 Going to the texans zavier hutchinson 42 of 99 I think he's like the guy we can never remember. Nope not zavier university Uh, yeah texan zavier hutchinson Nice one here going to the lions brian branch Uh 59 of 99 two colored patch auto two colored patch auto brian branch To 49 we've got a trenton simpson for the ravens T simp hoping he can be a beast Really hoping he's gonna be good We used a second round drawn so you better be come to the commanders premium uh patch uh patches rookie autographs chris rodriguez jr Again, he's gonna double check. He's still in there chris rodriguez jr Is he Oh no, hey, what's up chuck town raiding with a party of two welcome welcome to everybody What's up chuck town and chuck town and friends That is going to be marvin mim's going to the broncos 60 of 99 boomer sooner marvin mim's the we're bronco All right, we've got up next is 23 mosaic one box of 23 mosaic Good luck here everybody Stuff's been good, man Stuff's been real good We got a gold already Josh downs. All right their call It's a brown dorian thompson robinson I'll do nfl debut seven of ten congrats cleveland. That's gonna do just fine Brown's drew b. Let's go drew Dtr Dtr. Thanks for the follow there ct It's not bad. Do you think this is mad? I'd say so right?  Yeah for the giants. That's sweet, man Congrats to new york more of a ronde guy there there That's hall of famer ronde barber now too. Correct. Taylor hyatt silver and menomastry of elix Kid reporter in the trash now Jordan nattison rookie That's mar mosaic allen page silver and that's a carbon copy One two three left four five six right for the rest of the carbon copies in this one box of mosaic There's a gold one or lower it will be Separate the random at the end It's going to be a two going to go to left with tony power Will anderson uh 299 felix and wike uzoma blue auto for the cheats. Congrats kc As a sam la porta and an anthony richardson red And a silver nick foals filly filly Filly special We'll probably put that in madden Yeah, anthony richardson Trade talker orange rookie for the raiders to 199 silver tyler scott And a purple carbon copy that's going to the left with gillitrave and the cheats to 49 dtr Stray hand and silver of jalen wall Garrett wilson orange cmc to 199 Zay flowers and moments of time tony dorsett last pack of mosaic Then we're into flawless the main event of inbox tuesday today Is a flawless Zach charbonne red dac prescott national pride silver is Dove and cook and a silver straight fire of joe burrow Okay, again guys. We're into the main event flawless 22 nitty flawless. Let's go. Let's do it everybody. Good luck April showers That brings a flowers. There's a lot for zay. I always say the zay tobin tagline to zay tell then What's up zay A lot of zay Zay tobin man Like in one of the colors I see That is a triple for the lions to a 15 jargonfaman ronj mal williams Nice one there either wise zang with a spot in left side serial numbers We've got gronk. That's kind of nasty Three color two color three color for the patriots. Oh, you missed the jared goff auto earlier spencer Nice one there patriots pull the jared goff in this That is going to be a that's cool 14 of 15 Jarvis Landry for the browns. That's kind of nasty Grats cleveland nice one there. That's I think an older flawless. That is yep last year Juice Jarvis Landry. No, it's juice Landry the jungle Followed by obj on him quite the uh Intros on something Brown when they're still on the browns nice one here two of three. How about a shawn alexander nike swoosh Uh patch auto congrats. Seattle going to curtis curtis d That's sick. That is really awesome Grats on that one Sitting absolute tanks earlier. Let's go spencer Oh, yeah, uh, go to houston. That's gonna be five of 25 Damian pierce Nice one there probably magda and this one Nice one there. It's actually pretty nice 24 25 That is going to be a her cousins Let's go into the Vikings congrats minnesota Jim there you go, Jim Nice one there, buddy. Hey, here we go. Zach 4 of 20 the guy on the track. That's drake london Congrats on that very nice Zach H with the Atlanta falcons Have to pick up their slack I probably nagged this one too to be honest Okay And then probably the last one as well That's nasty four of ten distinguish patch auto troi palamalu Going to the stealers Oh, it does a good call on that Nice one there Yes, good call Kyle, uh, there is a little bit of damage on that curt cousins On the patch window. We'll send the empty uh briefcase and wrapper for you, uh, jim. Sorry about that Man, if you'd like to get in touch with Nini About getting that possibly replaced My two friends can only muster four or five hits and nine total in it. That was like jays carrying me, dude I don't tell jays to get it together a little bit here. Come on jays. Tell them to dial it in a little bit more Yeah, jays just screwing around We've got one of ten david mott gummary going to the bears Nice one there You've got eight of 20 drake london rookie diamond So there you go. Zach not quite a ritter But london auto and london encased diamond will do For sure. Congrats, buddy And our last encased card 11 of 15 Jerry rice Flawless greats on the encased auto the greatest receiver of all time Congrats to steven l and the niners Very nice very very very nice again empty briefcase This is going to go to jim. I gave you the place patches, right? We're good. Yep. Okay Um, do you need the outer part to think or no? There's a little uh, probably just a case that's cool. All right Yeah, I figured uh, that is going to be a points random Yeah, rice and montana is there was a rice and a montana auto. That's true. That's very true chris jays is literally eight hits eight strikeouts no in between Um, all right guys, it's going to do a quick dice roll for the points whatever teams on top after six times I'll get the points one two three four five and six that is going to the titans Titan's gonna get that one Yeah, niners had a good break there for sure Um, all right do a quick recap here Yeah, that sounds a bit like me spencer same dude. I'm usually zero hits. Yeah, we're all strikeouts That is rob gronkowski Uh triple for the lions. We've got a zavier hutchinson anthony richardson justin herbert AJ brown tyke wanthor in and picket and bradshaw dual We've got mortos that is going to be kirk cousins jarvis landry Trenton simpson felix in the week at usoma chris rodriguez jr Marvin mims ryan branch joe montana Stetson vennett michael myer dalton concaid willanderson myles murphy Trava walker sam howell malik willis jared gough serious spencer gone concaid and tiki barber Now magslash and case cards We had the david montgomery and drake london So 80s rex in montana honestly, uh, this is kind of nasty gold debut dorian thompson robinson going to the uh Browns We had the damien pierce five of 25 rpi for the texans We had a drake london rookie auto four of 20 Murakami to the murakami card. So broken in that game two of three. Sean alexander nike swoosh That is player one Of course, I didn't wear nike when he was playing, but it's player one That is troi palamalu distinguish patch auto four of ten on card from no this is from this year nice And jerry rice 11 of 15 going into the niers that's going to do it for the break guys. Thanks again for the film up next is personal


Today, in world literature, we turn to Eastern European fiction, Professor Nikos Telefokus' on two writers, Poland's Czeslaw Miloš and Czechoslovakia's Milan Kundera. Recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature, Miloš is considered one of the world's greatest contemporary poets. Joseph Brotsky had said that he has no hesitation whatsoever in stating that Czeslaw Miloš is one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest. Since 1951, Miloš has lived in exile from his native Poland, where his work was banned by authorities. Influenced by his youth in Lithuania and his experiences during World War II, Miloš work addresses the harsh world created by humankind, but nevertheless celebrates nature and ordinary life. English translations of his poetry appear in selected poems, 1973, and his collected poems, 1988. Czechoslovakia's Milan Kundera is perhaps best known for the 1984 publication of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which gathered praise and was adapted into a film. Born and raised in Czechoslovakia, the son of a famous composer, Kundera, studied script writing and directing and taught cinematography. After battling with the censorship of the Communist Party after Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet forces in 1968, his government revoked his citizenship. He lives in Paris. As is the case with an earlier famous Czechoslovakian writer Franz Kafka, Kundera is interested in the value of truth and beauty in a chaotic world. To speak of Eastern European literature as a single entity is to speak of a fiction. The countries between Austria and the Ural Mountains that divide Europe from Asia are inhabited by peoples of different ethnic origins, speaking different languages and adhering to different religions. Poles, Albanians, Croats, Hungarians, Serbs, ethnic Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Bosnian Muslims, and Gypsies, among others, all call this area home. The Magyar population of Hungary has little in common genetically without of Romania, last bastion of the Roman legions. The Aryan occupants of Vilnius in Lithuania are quite different in linguistic background from the Slavs in Poland, their brothers in Catholicism. And the Poles, who by language and race are so close to the Russians, are removed from them by tradition, by religion. The Russians, like the Serbs, follow Orthodox Christianity, while the Poles, custodians of Roman Catholicism for many centuries, consider themselves the guardians of Western intellectual tradition and have rarely been pan-Slovak in their aspirations at all. So Eastern Europe is an imaginative construct. But this construct bears some relation to reality. There are similarities between and among these peoples, sometimes because they stem from a single tree, and sometimes simply because they inhabit a single piece of territory. Think of the fiction then as psychologically an extended family, a wide-ranging clan, mostly peaceful, and yet, as you know from the papers in the case of the former Yugoslavia, capable of the most terrible infighting and atrocities. Like a family, as I say, the cultures and literatures of Eastern Europe share certain characteristics. Some of the following, an intensity and passion that is seldom found in the 20th century West. Eastern Europe has been a veritable crucible of political ferment given to World Wars, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and the dissolution in our own time of Tito's tenuous union of the Southern Slavs. A heightened political awareness has also given rise to much satire, the Czechs being more playful and the former Yugoslavs more sardonic. And learning occupies a central place in national life. Subsequently, the literary intellectual plays a prominent role. The president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, is a writer. The peoples of Eastern Europe take literature seriously, and literature, in turn, has been a source of great strength to them. The Eastern European country that has contributed the most to world literature, if such a thing can be measured by the number of Nobel Prizes awarded and translations made, is Poland. Adam Gillon and Ludwig Kurzanowski, in their introduction to modern Polish literature, stress Poland's Western bias from the beginning of its recorded history in the second half of the 10th century to the present. I quote, based with the choice between the Western Christian culture of Rome and the Eastern Christianity of Byzantium, Poland decided in favor of Latinity. This spiritual orientation made her distinct from many other Slavic nations to which she was related by race and language, but who were molded by Byzantine influence and tradition. Thus the Poles do not fit into the popular notion of a Slav spirit, which imputes to the Slavic nations characteristics that properly belong to the Russians. The Poles have undergone and participated in all the great movements of the West, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernism, and the great Polish poets today could not be better versed in the history and mythology, the mores and manners of the West. The intensity, however, with which they hold these ideas seems to me to be a particularly Eastern one. The Polish writer and poet best known in the West is Shestiaw Mielosz. An erudite and scholarly man, a professor for many years at the University of California at Berkeley, Mielosz left his native land in 1951. He suffered, as your book tells you, under fascism and Stalinism, fought in the Polish underground against the Nazis, and in his exile continued a centuries old Polish tradition of maintaining a love for his country at a considerable distance from it. What has sustained him in this exile is a belief in humanism, perhaps an inheritance from the time in which Poland itself was a stronghold of Renaissance philosophy and art. In Campo di Fiori, translated by Adam Gillon, the poet juxtaposes the pagan sensuality of the unthinking multitudes with the spiritual ascendance of the great philosopher Giordano Bruno, martyred in his search for truth. The ashes of this intellectual giant in Italian are compared with those of the martyrs of the Warsaw ghetto. Although bestiality, selfishness, and indifference prevail in the present, at the end of the poem, the fires of the spirit rise from the flesh to conquer the barbarian within us that strives to put them out. Campo di Fiori, the field of flowers. In Rome, on the Campo di Fiori, baskets with olives and lemons, the pavements spluttered with wine and broken fragments of flowers, the hawkers pour on the counters the pink fruits of the sea and heavy armfuls of grapes fall on the down of peaches. Here, on this very square, Giordano Bruno was burned. The hangman kindled the flame of the pyre in the ring of the gaping crowd and hardly the flame extinguished. The taverns were full again and hawkers carried on heads, baskets with olives and lemons. I recalled Campo di Fiori in Warsaw on a merry-go-round, on a fair night in the spring by the sound of vivacious music, the salvos behind the ghetto walls were drowned in lively tunes and vapors freely rose into the tranquil sky. Sometimes the wind from burning houses would bring black kites along and people on the merry-go-round caught the flying charred bits. This wind from the burning houses blew open the girls' skirts and the happy throngs laughed on a beautiful Warsaw Sunday. Perhaps one will guess the moral that the people of Warsaw and Rome trade and play and love passing by the martyr's pyres and other perhaps will read of the passing of human things, of the oblivion growing before the flame expired. But I on that day reflected on the loneliness of dying men, on the fate of lone Giordano, that when he climbed the scaffold, he found no word in your human tongue with which to bid farewell to those of mankind who remain. Already they were on the run to pedal starfish, gulp their wine. They carried olives and lemons in the gay hum of the city and he was already remote as though ages had passed and they waited a while for his flight in the fire.  And then after many years, the poet's word shall stir a revolt on the new compel de fiori. The tragic mask is not the only one on the Eastern European, the Eastern European news recognizes. The comic mode is also prominent. The best known of Czech writers in the 20th century is Franz Kafka. Kafka's sense of the ridiculous in human affairs, his morbid and trenchant humor was rooted in the realities of Eastern European life, the bureaucracy that attended the remains of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, the conquests, the lowering Nazi power, somehow leavened by the fun-loving Czech temperament. All right, so the trial is not your idea of comedy but compare it to the brothers Karamazov. Nor is it an accident, I think, that the partition of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia was accomplished without bloodshed. Perhaps it is a reflection of being educated in the ways of the good soldier Schweik Karl Chopik's reluctant soldier of World War I that schooled the Czechs and Slovaks in dovishness. Pacifism is one thing, however, and passivity another. In most of his works, Miloš Kundera chronicles the spiritual and intellectual deliriums of the communist period. His work details an ennui and a sense of alienation that stops just a little short of tragedy. Social commentary that reflects the stifling nature of the modern present rather than the horrors of the Nazi past. Edward and God, which is in your textbooks, is one such satire, a scathing indictment of conformity that manages to be both highly serious and hilariously funny. The story reveals what happens when human beings distort their feelings in the service of some abstract concept, whether that concept is a God or the future good of the state. And also shows how the opportunist in each of us tries to gratify his senses at the expense of his ideals. Edward is an agreeable young man, too agreeable in fact. He really has no self and takes his cues constantly from others. What he does have are instincts. He wants to secure a teaching position and sleep with a prettiest girl in town. His older brother, a man of principle who jinxed his own career by laughing at the wrong person at the wrong time, lives at peace with himself and with nature. He's a farmer. Edward, however, has no such intentions of going back to the soil. He is willing to claim he believes in God in order to seduce the virtuous but cold-blooded Alice. And when someone reports that he has crossed himself in public, he is willing to sleep with a school directoress in order to keep his job. Alice, the pretty girl, is using her faith to justify rebellion against the state that confiscated her father's property.   When word of Edward's profession of faith, in quotes, gets around town, Alice suddenly capitulates to his desires. She thinks he has made a genuine avowal of faith and is thus going to be persecuted. Edward is first amazed, and the narrator tells us, quotes, he hadn't sufficiently realized how very useful he was to his fellow countrymen who, as is well known, do not really like heroes, men who struggle and conquer, but rather martyrs, where such men soothingly reassure them about their loyal inactivity and corroborate their view that life provides only two alternatives, to be submissive or to be destroyed. In the end, our spineless everyman, a shadow of a shadow, is thoroughly disillusioned. Even the people he believed had beliefs are simply using the beliefs to further their own personal ends. How could Alice's God, for example, whom he calls the God of no fornication, suddenly permit her to caper around before him in the nude? How could the director's communist ideals permit her to kneel in the Our Father in order to get Edward to fling her on the couch? Having been disabused about human idealism, per se, Edward develops a more realistic assessment of human nature. And now that he has accommodated the directorous and has had his fill of other women, too, a kind of spirituality sets in. Going for solitary walks in the country, he now and again visits a church where, quote, even if he was almost certain that God did not exist, after all, felt happy and nostalgic entertaining the thought of him, unquote. Of course, is our ironic narrator. Ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously. And that is why Edward longs for God, for God alone is relieved of the distracting obligation of appearing and can merely be. And so Edward occasionally sits in church and looks thoughtfully at the cupola. Edward is sitting in a pew tormented with sorrow because God does not exist. But just at this moment, his sorrow is so great that suddenly from its depth emerges the genuine living face of God. Look, Edward is smiling. He is smiling and his smile is happy. Please keep him in your memory with this smile. Translator Suzanne Rappaport. Here, in a playful and loving way, is commentary on politics that goes to the heart of human destiny. So while much of the art of Western Europe and the United States has become entertainment, amusement, diversion, even serious artists seduced by Disney associates, in Eastern Europe, the poet or writer has remained closer to the seer, the visionary, the voice of conscience, someone crucial for the health and well-being of all. In Eastern Europe, Professor Stiller tells us, the poet takes on the role of seer without which the sunna cannot hold. The nature of this seer is described in a famous passage from a 1961 poem of Miloche throughout our lands. If I had to tell what the world is for me, I would take a hamster or a hedgehog or a mole and place him in a theater seat one evening and bring my ear close to his human snout would listen to what he says about the spotlights, sound of music, the movements of the dance. As a renowned critic Helen Vendler put it, no other poet has wanted to bring ear to snout for epistemological information. In this sense of laughter, clever, guarded, smart, ever contemptuous, this is a key attribute of the poet in Eastern Europe and beauty. The poet is one who knows the mountain ridges where the heavenly forest where beyond every sentence a new essence awaits and hope. As he once wrote, Miloche said, Polish literature is energy incessantly renewed against all possibilities.