This outstanding new translation brings a uniformity of voice to Zbigniew Herbert's entire poetic output, from his first book of poems, String of Light, in 1956, to his final volume, previously unpublished in English, Epilogue Of the Storm. Collected Poems: 1956-1998, as Joseph Brodsky said of Herbert's SSelected Poems, is "bound for a much longer haul than any of us can anticipate." He continues, "For Zbigniew Herbert's poetry adds to the biography of civilization the sensibility of a man not defeated by the century that has been most thorough, most effective in dehumanization of the species. Herbert's irony, his austere reserve and his compassion, the lucidity of his lyricism, the intensity of his sentiment toward classical antiquity, are not just trappings of a modern poet, but the necessary armor—in his case well-tempered and shining indeed—for man not to be crushed by the onslaught of reality. By offering to his readers neither aesthetic nor ethical discount, this poet, in fact, saves them frorn that poverty which every form of human evil finds so congenial. As long as the species exists, this book will be timely."
Zbigniew Herbert (29 October 1924 in Lvov – 28 July 1998 in Warsaw) was an influential Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement – Home Army (AK) during World War II
Zbigniew Herbert was born on November 29, 1924, in Lwów, Poland, where his father was a bank director and economics professor. When Herbert was only fourteen years old the tumult of World War II swept Poland into a series of power changes between the Soviet Union, under Stalin, and Hitler's Germany, a disillusioning, political juggling that lasted through the end of the war in the poet's twenieth year. In 1939, the Soviet army seized Lwów in accordance with the Stalin-Hitler Pact. The Germans then invaded in 1941, and the Soviets recaptured Lwów in 1944. During the war, Herbert attended an underground high school and university. He also organized an anti-Soviet resistance group dubbed “White Eagle” and was a member of the underground Home Army.
Major Works
Herbert's first collection of poems, Chord of Light, contains poems written over a span of fifteen years. Intimately affected by the brutal impact of the war, the poet considers in this volume the vulnerability of art, the failure of ideology, and the inadequacy of language to articulate experience. Poems such as “Dwie krople” (“Two Drops”), which describes lovers in a bomb shelter (“To the end they were brave / To the end they were faithful”), and “Do Marka Aurelego” (“To Marcus Aurelius”) attest to a powerful ethical system that values courage, loyalty, and faithfulness; the duty to remember and to give testimony; and the primacy of sensuous experience over ideology and abstract philosophical systems. Herbert's second volume, Hermes, a Dog and a Star, puts World War II in a universal context; its victims join all other victims of history. In a poem that displays this type of universality, called “Five Men,” he wrote: “thus one can use in poetry / names of Greek shepherds / one can attempt to catch the color of morning sky / write of love / and also / once again / in dead earnest / offer to the betrayed world / a rose.”
