ZBIGNIEW HERBERT

'Zbigniew Herbert' (29 October 1924 in Lviv - 28 July 1998 in Warsaw) was an influential Polish poet, essayist and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement during World War II, he is one of the best known and most translated post-war Polish writers.

Contents

Biography

Poetic style

Awards and prizes

Selected works

English translations

References

External links

Biography

One branch of his family came to Polish Galicia from the United Kingdom. His grandfather was an English teacher and his father fought in the Polish Legions during World War I and its aftermath.
In 1938 Herbert began his studies at the ''Gimnazjum im. Kazimierza Wielkiego'' in Lviv. Following the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939, the start of World War II, he joined the ''Armia Krajowa'' resistance movement and continued his studies in one of the underground Polish schools during the occupation of the country. In 1944 he moved west from Lviv to Kraków just before the Red Army took the city, and first enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts before graduating from the ''Akademia Ekonomiczna w Krakowie'' (University of Economics in Kraków), and then studying law and philosophy at the ''Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika'' in Toruń.

His poetry was first published in 1950 in the magazine ''Dziś i jutro''. His first book of poetry, ''Struna światła'' ("String of Light"), was published in 1956.
During the 1950s Herbert was forced to work at a number of menial jobs because of his refusal to adhere to official Communist party doctrine in his writings. Between 1963 and 1968 he worked as an editor for ''Poezja'' ("Poetry") magazine. Between 1955 and 1983 he was a member of ''Związek Literatów Polskich'' (Polish Literary Association).
In 1968 his work was translated into English by Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott. The publication of his ''Selected Poems'' in the United States and England made Herbert one of the most popular contemporary poets in the English-speaking world.
He later traveled widely and lived by turns in Paris, Berlin and the United States, where he taught briefly at the University of California at Los Angeles.
In 1992 he returned to Warsaw, by this time seriously ill. Back in Poland he stoked controversy with his public and outspoken anti-communist opinions. He praised the Cold War anti-communist spy Colonel Ryszard Kukliński in an open letter then president Lech Wałęsa in 1994, and later also expressed support for the Chechen Dzjochar Dudajev^[1]. In one of his famous interviews for "Tygodnik Solidarność" he criticized not only the Round Table agreements and the politics of the Third Polish Republic (''III Rzeczpospolita''), but also accused some prominent public figures such as Czesław Miłosz and Adam Michnik as being personally responsible for the country's difficulties^[2]. These controversial opinions prompted counter polemics that would continue even after his death, and to some extent, the issues raised remain in the center of public debate in Poland (as of 2007).
He died on July 28, 1998, in Warsaw, Poland.
President Aleksander Kwaśniewski sought to posthomously honour Herbert with the Order of the White Eagle, but his widow Katarzyna declined to accept the honour.
On May 3, 2007, Herbert was posthumously invested with the Order of the White Eagle by President Lech Kaczyński; Herbert's widow Katarzyna and sister Halina Herbert-Żebrowska accepted the Order.

Poetic style

In his works he presented the 'reflection-intellectual' perspective, with stress on human beings and their dignity, to the background of history, where people are almost irrelevant cogs in the machine of fate. He often used elements of mediterranean culture in his works.
''"Herbert's steadily detached, ironic and historically minded style represents, I suppose, a form of classicism. But it is a one-sided classicism (.....) In a way, Herbert's poetry is typical of the whole Polish attitude to their position within the communist bloc; independent, brilliant, ironic, wary, a bit contemptuous, pained."'' - A. Alvarez, Under Pressure (1965)
''"If the key to contemporary Polish poetry is the selective experience of the last decades, Herbert is perhaps the most skilful in expressing it and can be called a poet of historical irony. He achieves a sort of precarious equilibrium by endowing the patterns of civilization with meanings, in spite of all its horrors."'' - Czesław Miłosz, Postwar Polish Poetry (3rd ed., 1983)
''"There is little doubt that at this writing Zbigniew Herbert is the most admired and respected poet now living in Poland. (...) Polish readers have always revered poets who succeed in defining the nation's spiritual dilemma; what is exceptional in Herbert is that his popularity at home is matched by a wide acclaim abroad."'' - Stanisław Barańczak, A Fugitive from Utopia (1987)
In modern poetry, Herbert advocated ''semantic transparence.'' In a talk given at a conference organized by the journal ''Odra'' he said: "So not having pretensions to infallibility, but stating only my predilections, I would like to say that in contemporary poetry the poems that appeal to me the most are those in which I discern something I would call a quality of semantic transparency (a term borrowed from Husserl's logic). This semantic transparency is the characteristic of a sign consisting in this: that during the time when the sign is used, attention is directed towards the object denoted, and the sign itself does not hold the attention. The word is a window onto reality."^[3]

Awards and prizes

★ Nikolaus Lenau Prize (1965)

★ Jerusalem Prize (1991)

★ Nagroda Vilenica (1991)

Selected works

★ ''Struna światła'' / ''Chord of Light'', Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1956

★ ''Hermes, pies i gwiazda'' / ''Hermes, Dog and Star'', Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1957

★ ''Studium przedmiotu'' / ''Study of the Object'', Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1961

★ ''Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie'' / ''Barbarian in the Garden'', Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1962

★ ''Napis'' / ''Inscription'', Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1969

★ ''Pan Cogito'' / ''Mr. Cogito'', Warszawa, Czytelnik, 1974

★ ''Raport z oblężonego miasta i inne wiersze'' / ''Report from a Besieged City and Other Poems'', Paryż, Instytut Literacki, 1983

★ ''Elegia na odejście'' / ''Elegy for the Departure'' , Paryż, Instytut Literacki, 1990

★ ''Rovigo'', Wrocław, Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1992

★ ''Martwa natura z wędzidłem'' / ''Still Life with Bridle'', Wrocław, Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1993

★ ''Epilog burzy'' / ''Epilogue to a Storm'', Wrocław, Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1998

★ ''Labirynt nad morzem'' / ''Labyrinth on the Sea-Shore'', Zeszyty Literackie, 2000

★ ''Król mrówek'' / ''King of the Ants'', Kraków, a5, 2001

★ ''Węzeł gordyjski oraz inne pisma rozproszone'' / ''The Gordian Knot and Other Scattered Writings'', Warszawa, Biblioteka Więzi, 2001

English translations

★ ''Selected Poems'', translators: Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott, with an introduction by Al Alvarez, Penguin Modern European Poets, 1968 reprinted by The Ecco Press in 1986.

★ ''Barbarian in the Garden'', translators: Michael March and Jarosław Anders, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1985

★ ''Report From the Besieged City'', translators: John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, The Ecco Press, 1985.

★ ''Still Life with a Bridle- Essays and Apocrypha'', translators: John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, The Ecco Press, 1991.

★ ''Mr. Cogito'', translators: John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, The Ecco Press, 1993.

★ ''Elegy for the Departure'', translators: John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, The Ecco Press, 1999.

★ ''The King of the Ants'', translators: John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, The Ecco Press, 1999.

★ ''The Collected Poems: 1956-1998'', translators: Czesław Miłosz, Peter Dale Scott and Alissa Valles, edited by Alissa Valles, with an introduction by Adam Zagajewski, The Ecco Press, 2007.

References

1. 'A Letter to President Dzhokar Dudayev'. In: ''Tygodnik Solidarność'', No. 2 (330), 13 January 1995. See External links.
2. 'Mr. Cogito's Duels: A Conversation with Anna Poppek and Andrzej Gelberg'. In: ''Tygodnik Solidarność'', No. 46 (321), 11 November 1994. See External links.
3. Herbert's talk at the meeting "Poet in face of the present day", organized by the "Odra" journal; print version: preface to: Zbigniew Herbert "Poezje", Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warszawa 1998, ISBN 83-06-02667-5.

External links

★ Herbert's Poems in English

★ Audio discussion of Herbert's poems, and text of several of them

★ Online Poetry Classroom - Zbigniew Herbert

★ Collection of some online poems at Poemhunter

★ 'From "Conversation on Writing Poetry: An Interview with Zbigniew Herbert"' by John and Bogdana Carpenter. ''The Manhattan Review'', Volume 3, no. 2, Winter 1984/85 [Online text]

★ Modern Polish Poetry: Zbigniew Herbert collection

★ 'Mr. Cogito's Duels: A Conversation with Anna Poppek and Andrzej Gelberg' ''The Sarmatian Review'', Volume XV, Number 2, April 1995 [Online text]

★ 'A Letter to President Dzhokar Dudayev' ''The Sarmatian Review'', Volume XV, Number 2, April 1995 [Online text]

★ 'Making introductions: John Carpenter & Zbigniew Herbert' ''Artful Dodge'', Issue 20/21, 1991 [essay on, and excerpts of, 'Dutch Apochrypha', online text]