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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Beta the Disappointed Lover.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Beta wrote poems characterized by what?
(a) Taking bitter joy in the despair of the poet's surroundings.
(b) Leaning on the poet's weak faith in an effort to flee death.
(c) Lack of faith and the facing of death as reality.
(d) Crying out to God for deliverance.

2. Because he believed in earthly salvation, what did Beta argue?
(a) History has no force in man's present struggles.
(b) Only man can bring about his own happiness.
(c) Promises of heavenly salvation are false.
(d) Anyone opposing mankind's happiness is evil.

3. As seen in Chapter 2, how does the poet of a communist country write?
(a) Exactly what the state tells him.
(b) For the marching soldiers.
(c) As an ideal citizen.
(d) As himself.

4. What happened when Beta's artistic talent moved to the furthest boundaries of communist dictates?
(a) Words and individual man lost all meaning.
(b) It could not be satisfied, and he left the party.
(c) Words could no longer move him to action.
(d) The words he wrote were the only things he knew.

5. Harboring contempt for Russia is what type of Ketman?
(a) Sceptical Ketman.
(b) Ethical Ketman.
(c) Professional Ketman.
(d) National Ketman.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 1932, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz wrote a book entitled what?

2. What was the title of Beta's first book?

3. Dialectical materialism appeals to the Eastern man because it is, in Milosz's term, what?

4. In Witkeiwicz's novel, if man is attuned to the absurd, what does he see?

5. What is the basis of dialectical materialism, in Milosz's understanding?

(see the answer key)

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