Born: 29 October, 1924, Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine)
Died: 28 July, 1998, Warsaw, Poland
Summary. "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)
“Zbigniew Herbert, … was one of the great poets of our time. His compatriots Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, who were both awarded the Nobel Prize in recent years, may now be more famous, but he surely belongs in their company, as this book with its many truly extraordinary poems fully demonstrates. Herbert was the most original of the three and the funniest.” Charles Simic: The Collected Poems, 1956–1998 by Zbigniew Herbert
Early days. His grandfather was an Englishman who came to Lwow to teach English. His father was a bank manager who 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 Lwów. Following the Nazi German invasion of Poland in 1939 he joined the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resistance movement and continued his studies at the underground King John Casimir University, where he majored in Polish literature. In 1944 he moved to Cracow 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 (Academy of Economics in Kraków), and then studying law at the Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika in Toruń.. He also studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw under Henryk Elzenberg.
Professional career. His poetry was first published in 1950 in the magazine Dziś i jutro. During the 1950s he worked at many low-paying jobs because he refused to write within the framework of official Communist guidelines. After widespread riots against Soviet control in 1956 brought about a political "thaw," Herbert became an administrator at the Union of Polish Composers and published his first collection, Struna swiatla, 1956. The book put him immediately among the most prominent representatives of the "Contemporaries" (young poets and writers associated with the weekly Contemporary Times). Soon he became an acknowledged master not only in the field of poetry but also in essays and drama.) In 1957 a collection of poems, Hermes, pies i gwiazda was published. The year 1961 brought about his third book of poems, Studium przedmiotu and in 1962 he published his famous collection of essays, Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie (Barbarian in the Garden) which was eventually translated into many languages. He has also written plays which have been broadcast in Poland and abroad. In 1968 his Selected Poems, translated into English by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, (reprinted in 1986) came out in the United States and England, making Herbert one of the most popular contemporary poets in the English-speaking world. The year 1970 marked the publication of his Dramaty, and in 1971 his first Polish edition of Selected Poems was published. The 1974 volume Pan Cogito (Mr. Cogito) brought him even more recognition. Herbert's next book of poems, Raport z oblezonego miasta i inne wiersze (Report from the Besieged City, 1984), dealing symbolically with the ethical problems of the nation under martial law, was issued simultaneously through an emigré publishing house and as an underground edition in Poland. In recent years he has published a collection of essays, Martwa natura z wędzidłem (Still Life with Bridle, 1993), as well as two more books of poetry: Rovigo and Elegia na odejscie (Elegy for the Departure , 1999). From 1965 to1968 he worked as a co-editor for Poezja magazine but resigned in protest of anti-Semitic policies. 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 he praised the Cold War anti-communist spy Colonel Ryszard Kukliński in an open letter to then president Lech Wałęsa in 1994, and later also expressed support for the Chechen Dzjochar Dudajev. 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. 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). In 2001 appeared his Król mrówek (King of the Ants). 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. In modern poetry, Herbert advocated semantic transparence. In a talk given at a conference organized by the journal Odra he said: "…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"
Awards and prizes. Koscielski Foundation Prize (1964), Nikolaus Lenau Prize (Austria, 1965), Alfred Jurzykowski Prize (1965), Herder Prize (1973), Petrarch Prize (Italy, 1979), Jerusalem Prize (1991), Vilenica Prize (1991). awards from the Foundation of Prince Gabor Bethlem, the Bruno Schulz Prize.
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Zbigniew Herbert" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
Wikipedia
Links:
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]
'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
English translations of some of his works:
Constance J. Ostrowski
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