These words appeared in the speech honoring which writer that was given by a member of the Swedish academy in 1996? "During the long period of the ideological recasting of human consciousness, which we have just left behind us, some of Polish postwar poetry emerged as a sign of hope, a sewage treatment plant for mutilated and contaminated language - thus for the life of the mind and the perception of life as well. In the mere existence of poetic language, in the patient word-work of distinguishing genuine from sham, false tone from true, an entire society's purification process functioned and continues to function slowly, invisibly, underground."
Szymborska