Herbert, Zbigniew 1924-1998

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Herbert, Zbigniew 1924-1998

PERSONAL:

Born October 29, 1924, in Lvov, Poland; died July 28, 1998, in Warsaw, Poland; son of Boleslaw (an attorney) and Maria Herbert; married Katarzyna Dzieduszyska, April 30, 1968. Education: University of Crakow, M.A., 1947; Nicholas Copernicus University of Torun, M.A., 1948; University of Warsaw, M.Phil., 1950. Religion: Roman Catholic.

CAREER:

Worked as a bank clerk, manual laborer, and journalist; member of the Polish underground during World War II. California State College (now University), Los Angeles, professor of modern European literature, 1970; University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland, professor, 1972. Gave poetry readings at universities and for national organizations throughout the United States, including the World Poetry Conference, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1968, and Lincoln Center Festival, 1968.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Polish Radio Competition prize, 1958; Millennium Prize, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences (United States), 1964; Nicholas Lenau Prize (Austria) for contribution to European literature, 1965; Alfred Jurzykowski Prize, 1973; Herder Prize, 1973; Knight's Cross, Order of Polonia Restituta, 1974 (refused); Petrarch Prize, 1979; Bruno Schulz Prize, 1988; Jerusalem Literature Prize, 1991; Jurzykowski Foundation Award.

WRITINGS:

IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Barbarzyn ca w ogrodzie, Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1962, translation by Michael March and Jaroslaw Anders published as The Barbarian in the Garden (essays), Carcanet (Manchester, UK), 1985, Harcourt Brace (San Diego, CA), 1986, Wydawn (Warsaw, Poland), 1996.

Selected Poems, translated from the original Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1968, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Pan Cogito, Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1974, translation by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter published as Mr. Cogito, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Selected Poems (includes selections from Pan Cogito), translated from the original Polish by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1977.

Raport z oblezonego miasta, Instytut Literacki (Paris, France), 1983, translation by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter published as Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Report from a Town under Seige (single poem), translated by Boguslaw Rostworowski, Trace (Portland, OR), 1984.

Still Life with a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas, translation by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, translation by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The King of the Ants (essays), translation by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Zbigniew Herbert: Epilog burzy = Zbigniew Herbert: Epilogue of the Storm, edited by Maria Dorota Pie'nkowska, Libros, Grupa Wydawnicza Bertelsmann Media (Warsaw, Poland), 2001.

The Collected Poems 1956-1998 (nine volumes), Ecco Press (New York, NY), 2007.

IN POLISH

Struna swiatla (poems; title means "A String of Light"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1956.

Hermes, pies i gwiazda (poems; title means "Hermes, a Dog and a Star"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1957, Wydawn (Warsaw, Poland), 1997.

Studium przedmiotu (poems; title means "The Study of an Object"), Czytlenik (Warsaw, Poland), 1961.

Napis (poems; title means "The Inscription"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1969.

Dramaty (plays; title means "Dramas"; includes "The Philosophers' Den," "The Reconstruction of the Poet," and "The Other Room"), Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 1970.

Wiersze zebrane (title means "Collected Verse"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1971, 1982.

Wybor poezji; Dramaty (title means "Selected Poems, Plays"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1973.

Az angyal kilhallgatasa, Europa (Budapest, Hungary), 1979.

Wybor Wierszy (poems; title means "Selected Poems"), Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 1983.

18 wierszy (poems; title means "18 Poems"), Oficyna Literacka (Cracow, Poland), 1983.

Arkusz (title means "A Sheet"), Krag (Warsaw, Poland), 1984.

Elegia na odejscie, Instytut Literacki (Paris, France), 1991, Wydawn (Warsaw, Poland), 1995.

Studium przedmiotu, Wydawn (Warsaw, Poland), 1996.

Labirynt and morzem, Zeszyty Literackie (Warsaw, Poland), 2000.

Listy do muzy: Prawdziwa historia niesko'nczonej milo'sci, Malgorzata Marchlewska Wydawn (Gdynia, Poland), 2000.

"Kochane zwierzatka—": Listy zbigniewa herberta do przyjaciol, magdaleny i zbigniewa czajkowskich, Pa'nstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 2000.

(With Jerzy Zawieyski) Korespondencja 1949-1967 (correspondence), Bilioteka "Wiezi" (Warsaw, Poland), 2002.

(With Henryk Elzenberg) Korespondencja (correspondence), edited, selected by Barbara Torunczyk, Zeszyty Literackie (Warsaw, Poland), 2002.

Author of Hanba domowa, 1991, and of radio plays and dramas, including Lalek, rekonstrukcja poetry, 1973. Work represented in anthologies, including The Broken Mirror, edited by Pawel Mayewski, Random House (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1958; Introduction to Modern Polish Literature: An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry, edited by Adam Gillon and Kudwik Krzyzanowski, Twayne, 1964; and Postwar Polish Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, Doubleday, 1965; contributor to literary magazines, including Tworczosc, 1955-76; editor of Przegld Kupiecki ("Merchant's Gazette"), 1956; coeditor of Poezja (poetry journal), 1965-68.

SIDELIGHTS:

"One of Poland's most honored and influential poets," as Robert Hudzik described him in Library Journal, the late Zbigniew Herbert enjoys an international reputation. His poetry, marked by a direct language and a strong moral concern, is shaped by his experiences under both the Nazi and Soviet dictatorships. Herbert began writing poetry when he was seventeen years old but did not publish until 1956, "after fifteen years of writing for the drawer." Certainly one factor in the late publication of his work was the political climate in Poland during the forties and fifties: the suppression of all publishing during the Nazi occupation and the severe literary censorship of the repressive Stalinist regime. (Herbert has referred to Joseph Stalin ironically as "the Great Linguist" for his corruption of the language.) And as Czeslaw Milosz pointed out: "Before 1956 the price for being published was to renounce one's own taste and he [Herbert] did not wish to pay it." Herbert, however, is not bitter about the fifteen-year wait; on the contrary, he considers it "a period of fasting" which gave him time to work on his attitudes without external pressures.

Herbert can be considered a political poet, but as Stephen Miller advises in The Rarer Action: Essays in Honor of Francis Fergusson: "The word political may be misleading for it brings to mind the bad verse of the thirties, verse damaged by causes…. The political poet who deals directly with the events of contemporary history usually plays a losing game. His moral outrage will probably overwhelm his poetry, making it self-righteous, predictable, and shrill…. Although Herbert's poetry is preoccupied with the nightmares of recent history … it is not public speech. Subdued and casual, his poems shun both hysteria and apocalyptic intensity." Robert Hass, writing in the Washington Post Book World, called Herbert "an ironist and a minimalist who writes as if it were the task of the poet, in a world full of loud lies, to say what is irreducibly true in a level voice." According to A. Alvarez in Beyond All This Fiddle: Essays, 1955-1967, Herbert "is political by virtue of being permanently and warily in opposition. … His opposition is not dogmatic: during the Nazi occupation he was not, to my knowledge, a Communist, nor during the Stalinist repression was he ever noticeably even Catholic or nationalist. Herbert's opposition is a party of one; he refuses to relinquish his own truth and his own standards in the face of any dogma."

Perhaps Herbert's "political" attitude can be found in his interpretation of the role of the poet. "In Poland," Herbert once stated, "we think of the poet as prophet; he is not merely a maker of verbal forms or an imitator of reality. The poet expresses the deepest feelings and the widest awareness of people…. The language of poetry differs from the language of politics. And, after all, poetry lives longer than any conceivable political crisis. The poet looks over a broad terrain and over vast stretches of time. He makes observations on the problems of his own time, to be sure, but he is a partisan only in the sense that he is a partisan of the truth. He arouses doubts and uncertainties and brings everything into question." Still, poetry has limited influence. Speaking to Jacek Trznadel in Partisan Review, Herbert explained: "It is vanity to think that one can influence the course of history by writing poetry. It is not the barometer that changes the weather."

Although Herbert's purpose as a poet and the subjects of his poetry are serious, he mixes humor and satire effectively. Herbert's poetry is also laced with biblical and Greek mythological allusions. Miller contends that "the lens of myth reduces the glare of contemporary experience, placing it in a perspective that enables [Herbert] to view it without losing his sanity and sense of humor." He also points out that the use of myth "liberates [Herbert] from the confines of particular historical events…. At the same time the use of myth fleshes out the thin bones of the satire, making it sly and elegant, not obvious and heavy-handed." For example, a poem titled "Preliminary Investigation of an Angel" offers a comparison between totalitarian regimes and biblical mythology: an "angel" of the state, a member of the hierarchy, is put on trial and judged to be guilty of crimes against the "heavenly" government. The poem is reminiscent of the Stalin purges when no "faithful" member of the party was free from suspicion. In another poem, "Why the Classics," Herbert contrasts Thucydides, the Greek historian who accepted the responsibility for the failure of his mission to capture Amphipolis, with the "generals of most recent wars" who wallow in their self-pity and state that everyone, and therefore no one, is responsible for their failures and actions.

Pan Cogito is one of Herbert's most pessimistic works. Mr. Cogito, the book's central character, is a problem to many critics. Unable to determine satisfactorily the relationship between Herbert and Cogito, some have labeled the character petty and mediocre. His concerns are practical and his life ordinary. Cogito enjoys reading sensationalist newspaper features, and he fails when he tries transcendental meditation. Various critics have dismissed such criticisms by noting that Cogito is a very human and universal man and a device used by Herbert to create based upon the ordinariness we all share. With regard to the role of characters in his work, Herbert once stated: "The speaker of my poems is a generalized figure who speaks not for himself or for me but for humanity. He is representative; he speaks for a generation, if you like; he makes historical and moral judgements."

In addition to his poetry, Herbert's essays and short prose works, or "apocrypha," collected in Still Life with a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas, are also noteworthy. Seeking an apparent antithesis to the totalitarian regimes under which he grew up, Herbert seeks answers in the historical background of middle-class capitalism in what Matthew Stadler in the New York Times Book Review called "our great cultural ancestor, the Dutch bourgeois of the 17th century." Part travel writing, part fiction, part essay, in Still Life with a Bridle Herbert explores history, science, architecture, documents, and painting, looking for a pattern of meaning to emerge from the collage, only to conclude that, according to Stadler, "the past does not dwell in the geography of the present, but in our imaginations." Herbert uses images of lightness, darkness, and color to illustrate his point: "Dusk is falling, the last acrid, Egyptian yellows go out, cinnabar becomes gray and fragile, the last fireworks of the day grow dark. All of a sudden there is an unexpected pause, a short-lasting interval in the darkness as if somebody in a hurry opened the door from a light room into a dark room."

Herbert traveled throughout the West, reading from his work and teaching at several universities. But in his na- tive land, much of his work was for many years first printed in underground publications because of its political implications, or else it was published in the West. Polish writers who followed the communist line, in contrast, were treated very well. "Whoever chooses [in the West] to become a writer takes an immense risk, whereas here they lived in the lap of luxury, above the average of other professionals," Herbert explained to Trznadel. "The only risk was political. One had to know which way the wind blows…. If one was a member of the Writers' Union it was obvious that his books would be published. I do not know of a single case where a book was turned down because it was badly written."

Once described by Stanislaw Baranczak in the New Republic as "undoubtedly the most admired and respected poet now living in Poland," Herbert had a tremendous influence on younger writers. His advice to them, he once told Trznadel, is that "life is more complicated, more mysterious and more convoluted than the party, the army, the police. Let us detach ourselves a little from this truly horrible everyday reality and try to write about doubt, anxiety, and despair."

Poet of the historical, the philosophical, the political, the individual, Herbert's sparse, carefully crafted lines and ironic tonality earned him an international reputation. At the time of his death in 1998 at age seventy-three, he was called by Hass "one of the most influential European poets of the last half-century, and perhaps—even more than his contemporaries Czeslaw Milosz and Wladislawa Symborska—the defining Polish poet of the post-war years." "In a just world Mr. Herbert would have received the Nobel Prize long ago," stated Stephen Dobyns in the New York Times.

Herbert was coeditor of the poetry journal Poezja from 1965 to 1968, but he resigned in protest of its anti-Semitic policies. He traveled widely and lived in Paris, Berlin, and the United States, where he taught briefly at the University of California, Los Angeles. He died in Warsaw. Following his death, his poems and essays were collected in several volumes. Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems and The King of the Ants, a collection of essays, both are translated by John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, frequent Herbert translators, and were published eight months following Herbert's death. In reviewing the two volumes in the New York Times Book Review, Richard Eder also referenced the Nobel, writing that at the time of his death, Herbert was "perhaps an artery or two away" from the prize.

Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems consists of four sections containing Herbert's poems in chronological order from the several periods of his writing. Eder called the collection "major Herbert…. Some of the short prose pieces in Part 3, written in the 1960's, seem facile, even whimsical. Here and in several of the earlier poems it is as if Herbert's cutting instrument were incising a substance softer than his customary granite. Yet some of the poems written in the 1950's remain memorable. They call up the rending losses of war, but even here they do it not head on but by an examination of small obliterations." Eder commented that Herbert "used allegorical satire with whiplash grace; the more cutting because of its moments of forbearance. The essence of his poetry, though, is something else: a small phrase with the expansive radiation of a split atom."

The King of the Ants is a collection of prose variations about mythical Greek heroes, who in Herbert's interpretations represent the underdog, such as Atlas and his chore of carrying the weight of the world. Eder wrote: "It is minor Herbert, on the whole, though the poet's wit and moral bite are evident."

Herbert: Epilog burzy = Zbigniew Herbert: Epilogue of the Storm is Herbert's final collection before his death. E.J. Czerwinski discussed the volume in a tribute to Herbert's life and work published in World Literature Today. Czerwinski wrote: "Herbert dwells largely on death and finality. In the titles of the poems themselves one senses the desperation and hopelessness of the situation: ‘Kant. Ostatnie dni’ (Kant. The Last Days), ‘Koniec’ (The End), ‘Czas’ (Time). In the opening lines of ‘Koniec,’ Herbert, with his characteristic sly smile, speculates on the contents of his eventual obituary: ‘And now I will not appear in any / group photograph (a proud record of my death / in all the literary weeklies of the world).’"

Herbert's works are collected in nine volumes titled The Collected Poems 1956-1998. Reviewing the collection in the Weekly Standard, Colin Fleming commented that "for all of the consistent political themes … that were central to Herbert's work over his fifty years of composition, his late 1990s poems summon all of the attendant moods and imagery of the deathbed, political railings still intact. His range was impressive." Fleming added that the collection "posits Herbert less as formal creator and more as an author assuming narrative guises that were often a long way from the man himself, and yet entirely indicative of the artist who ultimately made the man."

In reviewing The Collected Poems 1956-1998, David Orr noted in the New York Times Book Review that many of Herbert's books are now out of print, and that this collection "is the likeliest path to this poet's achievement. … The quiet but determined insubordination that marked his public life is echoed in his poetry, which is lucid, low-pitched and saturated with irony. A typical Herbert poem uses spare diction and a meticulously orchestrated syntax to investigate ethics as much as aesthetics—indeed, a Herbert poem often points out the blurred border between these two categories." Orr concluded by saying that with this collection, "Herbert is now a complete poet in English."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Alvarez, A., Under Pressure, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1965.

Alvarez, A., Beyond All This Fiddle: Essays, 1955-1967, Random House (New York, NY), 1969.

Baranczak, Stanislaw, A Fugitive from Utopia: The Poetry of Zbigniew Herbert, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1987.

Blessington, Francis C., and Guy L. Rotella, editors, The Motive for Metaphor, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1983.

Cheuse, Alan, and Richard Koffler, editors, The Rarer Action: Essays in Honor of Francis Fergusson, Rutgers University Press (Piscataway, NJ), 1970.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 9, 1978, Volume 43, 1987.

Contemporary World Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1993.

PERIODICALS

Biblio, April, 1999, James Pollock, review of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, p. 60.

Booklist, February 1, 1999, Ray Olson, review of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, p. 957; February 1, 1999, Ray Olson, review of The King of the Ants, p. 957.

Book World, April 29, 2007, "The Reemergence of a Modern Master," p. 7.

Cambridge Quarterly, December, 2001, "Poetry and the Cogwheels of History," p. 358.

Christian Science Monitor, July 3, 1986, review of The Barbarian in the Garden, p. 4.

Library Journal, March 1, 1985, Robert Hudzik, review of Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 92; September 1, 1985, review of The Barbarian in the Garden, p. 198; February 1, 1999, Mary Paumier Jones, review of The King of the Ants, p. 87; April 15, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, p. 100; April 1, 2007, Diane Scharper, review of The Collected Poems 1956-1998, p. 95.

Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1985, Richard Eder, review of Barbarian in the Garden, p. 8.

Nation, September 28, 1985, Mark Rudman, review of Reports from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 287.

New Republic, September 9, 1985, Stanislaw Baranczak, review of The Barbarian in the Garden, p. 35; September 9, 1985, Stanislaw Baranczak, review of Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 35.

New Yorker, December 21, 1998, review of The King of the Ants, p. 22.

New York Review of Books, March 17, 1983, Czeslaw Milosz, review of Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 20.

New York Times Book Review, February 16, 1986, Eva Hoffman, review of Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 14; June 15, 1986, review of The Barbarian in the Garden, p. 34; January 19, 1992, Matthew Stadler, review of Still Life with a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas, p. 15; August 21, 1994, Stephen Dobyns, review of Mr. Cogito, p. 22; April 4, 1999, Richard Eder, reviews of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems and The King of the Ants; July 29, 2007, David Orr, "Translating Zbigniew Herbert," p. 14.

Partisan Review, fall, 1987, Jacek Trznadel, interview, p. 559.

Poetry, August, 2000, David Orr, review of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, p. 289; May, 2007, "A Dead Necktie," p. 117.

Publishers Weekly, February 8, 1985, review of Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 66; July 12, 1985, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of The Barbarian in the Garden, p. 41; December 21, 1998, review of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, p. 63; December 21, 1998, review of Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems, p. 63; January 25, 1999, review of The King of the Ants, p. 73; January 22, 2007, review of The Collected Poems 1956-1998, p. 163.

Washington Post Book World, July 21, 1985, Robert Hass, review of Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, p. 4.

Weekly Standard, May 21, 2007, Colin Fleming, review of The Collected Poems 1956-1998.

World Literature Today, September 1, 2007, Piotr Florczyk, review of The Collected Poems 1956-1998, p. 70.

ONLINE

Poets.org,http://www.poets.org/ (November 27, 2007), biography.

OTHER

An Evening with Zbigniew Herbert, October 25, 1997, readings of Herbert's poems accompanied by classical music, sponsored by the Polish Children's Foundation, held at the Polish General Consulate, New York, NY.