Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction (Dorota Walczak-Delanois) -- Works Cited -- Part I. From Russell's World to Milosz's Words (A Problematic Commitment) -- "In the Thick of It". Bertrand Russell and the First World War (1914-1918) (Olivier Estèves) -- A Martian at the Blood Banquet -- Unlearning Patriotism in Surprising Ways -- "In the Thick of It"? Russell, the Masses and the War -- Conclusion: Freedom and Academia -- Works Cited -- The Adventures of a 20th Century Gulliver. Some Remarks on The Native Realm (Aleksander Fiut) -- Works Cited -- Czeslaw Milosz - Difficult Polishness (Anna Nasiłowska) -- Works Cited -- Metaphorizing the Vocation of the Poet. Czeslaw Milosz and the "Kernel of the Thicket" (Kris Van Heuckelom) -- Introduction -- "Avidity of the Eye" as an "Insult to Suffering Humanity" -- Hunting on the Trail of Adam Mickiewicz -- Miłosz in Search of the Kernel of the Thicket -- Towards an "Eschatology" of the Hunt -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Part II. On the Writers' Words -- Real and Virtual Witkacy. On the Roles Acted by/upon the Artist in the 20th and 21st Century (Marta A. Skwara) -- Works Cited -- Ovid and Two Types of Exile. Zbigniew Herbert and Osip Mandelstam (Arent van Nieukerken) -- I -- II -- III -- IV -- Works Cited -- Down with Monuments!? The Case of Tadeusz Rózewicz (Dorota Walczak-Delanois) -- Tadeusz Różewicz and His Monumental Story -- Różewicz's Non-monumental Aesthetics -- A Real Kafkaesque Story -- The Monumental Vision of a Poet -- Works Cited -- Populations Displaced. Jan Klata's Staging of Transfer! (Agnieszka Szmidt) -- The Scenic Device and the Genesis of Transfer! -- Rehabilitation of the Myth of Yalta for the Sake of Polish-German Reconciliation -- Political Voluntarism as Exemption from Historical Responsibility -- Testimony in Art and Its Distorting Effect.

Commitment and Its Limits -- Works Cited -- Performed Work -- Can Arab Writers Living in Europe Elude Political Commitment? (Xavier Luffin) -- Arabic Literature in Europe -- Several Figures of Political Commitment in the Arabic Literature in Europe -- Al-Tayyib Salih (1929-2009) -- Ahmad Al-Malik (born in 1967) -- Adonis (born in 1930) -- Maha Hasan (born in the 1970s) -- Habib Salmi (born in 1951) -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Part III. In the Writers' Worlds -- Finding a Voice (Meenakshi Bharat) -- Rage - that Other, Inevitable Muse (Antoine Cassar) -- I -- II -- III -- On a Commitment to Europe, "the Borderlands", and "the Three Halves of a City"… (Ostap Dzondza) -- Writing and Commitment (Joël Goffin) -- Commitment and Readability (Inga Iwasiów) -- On the Question of Political Engagement (Szczepan Kopyt) -- I -- II -- III -- A Call in a Whisper (Martin Reiner) -- In the Impatience of Love (Pierre Schroven) -- Contributors -- New Comparative Poetics -- Series Titles.