The Collected Poems, 1956-1998

by Zbigniew Herbert

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Herbert's entire poetic output, from his first book of poems, String of Light, in 1956, to his final volume, previously unpublished in English, Epilogue Of the Storm.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."

Genres: Poetry, Polish Literature, Poland, Classics, Literature, 20th Century, Nonfiction

717 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Zbigniew Herbert was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. He was also a member of the Polish resistance movement. Herbert is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers, and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Reviews

[Théo d'Or]

" I would like to describe the simplest emotion

joy or sadness
but not as others do

reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me

but I know it does not resemble
any star

for it is not so bright
not so pure

and is uncertain.

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me

a dusty lion
and also anxiety

without shaking a glass
full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors

in return for one word
drawn out of my breast

like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love

I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds

and my tenderness
which after all is not

made of water

asks the water for a face
and anger different from fire

borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me

what white -haired gentlemen
separated once and for all

and said this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep with one hand under
our head

and with the other in a mound
of planets

our feet abandon us and taste the earth

with their tiny roots
which next morning

we tear out painfully. "

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

’At night the poet builds
a paradise for his dead’
Born from the suffering and slaughter of his countrymen under the totalitarian rule of both the Nazi’s and the Communists alike, Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish born warrior of words, inks out powerful testimonies to the human race. To read Herbert is to join him, hand in hand, on his ’long walks down avenues of burned houses and broken glass’ as he pays homage to the fallen and tries to squeeze bright drops of hope from the darkness. Herbert writes in a prose poem of the world moving on past the trauma:

’It happens very rarely. The earth’s axis screeches and comes to a stop. Everything stands still then, storms, ships and clouds grazing in the valleys. Everything. Even horses in a meadow become immobile as if in an unfinished game of chess.
And after a while the world moves on. The ocean swallows and regurgitates, valleys send off steam and the horses pass from the black field into the white field. There is also heard the resounding clash of air against air.’

In 1952, Herbert supplemented his income by selling his blood to survive. I can think of no more poignant an image of a poet as this. At a young age, Herbert joined the underground resistance movements and watched many a fellow friend and poet succumb to the bullet and bomb. Much of his work reflects on these Fallen Poets as this poem is named:

’Silent one receive A shrieking bullet
lodged in his arm so he fled surprise
Grass will cover this mound of poems
Under the malevolent cast of horizons
Your silence will drink to the dregs’

A memorial of words to those who have gone before us is erected through this collection. 'They who sailed at dawn/ but now will never return/ left their trace on a wave'. Through the eyes of his prose we witness cities blown apart, comrades execute by firing squads (Five Men delivers one of the most impactful moments in his whole collection) and the sadness of loss. However, all is not lost, and Herbert manages to rise above the squalor and ‘in dead earnest/ offer to the betrayed world/ a rose’ . My soul would shudder and crawl, yet, pages later he offers a warmness that would perk it right back up and fill me with a glow while reading.

Herbert was a close friend of Czesław Miłosz, Polish Nobel laureate and my personal favorite poet, whom he learned much of his trade from. Together the two took to political activism beyond the written world and were very outspoken against communism. Herbert was certainly a poet who walked what he talked, raining down bullets, potent prose and good old fashion activism against all who stood in his way. 'Our steps pounding the pavings skin/ a proud step that will turn the world/ into one procession and one slogan'. How can you not respect this man? And then take a look at the cover of this life-long collection, how can you not respect a man with that awesome of a cover photo?!

While there is a large focus on his political and wartime poetry, as well as other dark themes such as abandonment and fear, there are still a vast variety of other lighter themes flowering in this collection. I personally greatly enjoyed his poetry about poetry, and the art of creating it. Writing, offers a whimsical description of the writing process:

’When I mount a chair
to capture the table
and raise a finger
to arrest the sun
when I take the skin off my face
and the house off my shoulders
and clutching
my metaphor
a goose quill
my teeth sunk into the air
I try to create
a new
vowel-’

Herbert also writes heavily about a certain Mr. Cogito (an alter-ego, if you will, with a name that reminded me of Jim Morrison’s Mr. Mojo Rising), where he is able to detach and examine the human soul and conscious. These are some of the finest, and funniest poems in the bunch, as harnesses existential dilemmas and irony to create a portrait of his hero. Much deals with the search for identity, redemption, and the will to push on after so much suffering has befallen the countryside. There is a comical poem where Mr. Cogito reflects on Hell, and decides the inner circle is filled with poets, artists and musicians, but they happy there are because ’Beelzebub supports the arts. He guarantees his artists tranquility, a healthy diet, and complete isolation from infernal life. He boasts his [artists] outdo those in heaven.’

This is a great collection of poetry, especially for those interested in wartime Europe and the Polish poets (they do well with the Nobel awards, that’s for sure. Herbert never received one, but he is right up there with Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska). The translation seemed fine by me, although I have nothing to compare it to, only the fact that this edition is a revision of the translations by Miłosz himself. Speaking of whom, Herbert writes in the poem Czeslaw Miłosz: Angels descend from heaven/Halleluiah/when he sets down/his slanted/azure-spaced/letters’. If that’s not a sell for him, I don’t know what is. Herbert weaves a tapestry of words that will take your breath away. He will be missed. Rest in peace: 1924-1998
4/5

we must
arm in arm
go blindly on
toward new horizons
toward contracted throats
from which rises
an unintelligible gurgle

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translator's Note
Introduction, by Adam Zagajewski

--Chord of Light (1956)

--Hermes, Dog and Star (1957)

--Study of the Object (1961)

--Inscription (1969)

--Mr Cogito (1974)

--Report from a Besieged City (1983)

--Elegy for the Departure (1990)

--Rovigo (1992)

--Epilogue to a Storm (1998)

Notes
Zbigniew Herbert: A Chronology
Index of Titles and First Lines

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edward Hirsch says that the poem is a muscular and composed thing. It moves like a wave and dissolves literalizations. We participate in its flow; we flow in its participation. We give ourselves up to its rhythm, to the process of individuation, the process of merging.
[...]
The poem moves from the eye to the ear, to the inner ear, the inner eye. It drenches us in the particulars of our senses, it moves us through the articulations of touch, taste, and scent. It actualizes our senses until we start to feel an animal alertness opening up within us. It guides our reflections. It actualizes an intuition flowing deeper than intellect. It's always these feelings that I search in a poetry too, sadly, I couldn't find them in Herbert's collection. There wasn't any mutuality between me and the poet. I wasn't struck by the beauty of the poems which often, except very few , reminded me a simple talk between neighbours that is organised in a poem. I should have listened to my inner voice and not start reading this collection at all.

In the end what can I do with you—tenderness
tenderness for birds and for people for a stone
you should sleep in a palm in the eye’s depths
that’s your place may you be woken by no one

You spoil everything you get it back to front
you contract a tragedy into a pocket romance
you change the high-toned flight of a thought
into sobbing and exclamations into moaning

To describe is to murder because it’s your role
to sit in the darkness of a cold and empty hall
to sit solitary where reason blithely rattles on
with mist in a marble eye tears running down

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

in the evening I like to wander along the edges of the city
skirting the borders of our uncertain liberty
I watch from above an ant procession of troops their lights
I listen to the noise of drums and barbarians shrieking
it is truly beyond me why the City is still defending itself

the siege is taking a long time our enemies have to take turns
nothing unites them apart from the desire for our destruction
Goths Tartars Swedes Caesar's men ranks of the transfiguration
who can count them
the banners change their colors like a forest against the horizon
a delicate bird yellow in spring through green to winter's black

— — —

Her burning look holds me fast as if in an embrace. She utters words
mixed up with dreams. She invites me. You will be happy if you believe and
hitch your wagon to a star. She is gentle when breast-feeding the clouds;
but when calm abandons her, she runs along the seashore and waves her
arms in the air.
Reflected in her eyes I see two angels standing at my shoulders: the pale
malevolent angel of irony and the mighty, loving angel of Schizophrenia

— — —

I saw prophets tearing their false beards
I saw frauds joining sects of flagellants
executioners in sheep's clothing
who fled the people's wrath
playing shepherd's pipes

I saw it I saw it

I saw a man subjected to torture
he sat safely now with his family
telling jokes eating soup
I looked at his parted lips
his gums—two blackthorn twigs stripped of bark
it was shameless beyond all words
I saw the whole nakedness
the whole humiliation

— — —

She was doing her hair before going to bed
and before the mirror it took an infinitely long time
between one arm bending at the elbow and the other
epochs passed her hair soundlessly spilled soldiers
of the second legion called Augustus Antoninian's
Roland's comrades artillery gunmen from Verdun
with resilient fingers
she secured the halo over her head
it took so long
that when she
finally began her swaying
march toward me
my heart till now so docile
stood still
and on my skin I felt
coarse grains of salt

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poet Robert Hass calls him “one of the most influential European poets of the last half-century, … 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.” Stephen Stepanchev describes Herbert as “a witness to his time,” and Stephen Miller calls him a political poet whose “subdued and casual” poems “shun both hysteria and apocalyptic intensity.”
Zbigniew Herbert is an avant-garde poet whose experiments and precise, restrained rhythms have sent Polish prosody off in a new direction. Trained in law, he is a man with a passion for classical literature and for history, and with all the intellectual tautness associated with a poet like T. S. Eliot.
For Herbert, objects never represented an escape from the human; he continues to be intrigued by them and to study them, finding unexpected new qualities and aspects of reality. He humanizes them and at the same time respects their fundamental opacity.
Herbert argues for the acceptance of suffering without big words and dramatic gestures, for a deflation of attitudes. Herbert's poetry is based on permanent confrontation--the confrontation of Western tradition with the experience of a "barbarian" from Eastern Europe, of the classical past with the modern era, of cultural myth with a practical, empirical point of view.
Zbigniew Herbert, a poet who, at least for me, transcends the Polish culture and even European intellectualism and speaks to all of humanity.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I already said much of what I would say about Herbert's poetry in my review of Mr. Cogito (included in this, the collected works), I'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that I enjoy Herbert's gentle humor, introspective bent, love of art and mythology, and habit of slowing me down as a reader by not using much in the way of periods, commas, or capital letters. I take on the burden of careful reader, instead, and I can't do that very well unless I slow down and reread--something every poet would ask of his readers. Here's a last poem from his penultimate book, Rovigo:

Shame

When I was very ill shame abandoned me
willingly I bared for alien hands surrendered to alien eyes
the poor mystery of my body

They invaded me brutally increasing the humiliation

My professor of forensic medicine the old Mancewicz
fishing a suicide's remains from a pool of formaldehyde
bent over him as if he wished to ask him for his pardon
then with a deft movement he opened the proud thorax
the basilica of the breath fell silent

delicately almost tenderly

So--faithful to the dead respectful of ash--I understand
the wrath of the Greek princess her stubborn resistance
she was right--a brother deserved a dignified burial

a shroud of earth carefully drawn
over the eyes

[Eadweard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
Favorite poems:

To Apollo
To Marcus Aurelius
On a Rose
Architecture
Warsaw Cemetary
Testament
Nike Who Hesitates
I Would Like To Describe
A Knocker
Rosy Ear
Substance
The Return of the Proconsul
Preliminary Investigation of an Angel
Report From Paradise
Cernunnos
Curatia Dionisia
Livy's Metamorphoses
Journey
Wagon
Mademoiselle Corday
A Mirror Wanders the Road
-----





living—despite
living—against
I reproach myself with the sin of forgetting
you left an embrace like a needless sweater
a gaze like a question
our hands won’t pass on the shape of your hands
we let them go to waste touching common things
our eyes reflect a question
tranquil as mirrored glass
unclouded by warm breath
every day I refresh my eye
every day my touch grows
tickled by the nearness of so many things
---



a rose bows its head
as if it had shoulders
leans against the wind
the wind goes off alone
it cannot speak the word
it cannot speak the word
the more the rose dies
the harder to say: rose
---



a good memory cures
the scar a loss leaves
radiance may descend
down our bent backs
verily verily I say unto you
great is the abyss
between us and the light
---



I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun
I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any starfor it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain
---



There are those who grow
gardens in their heads
paths lead from their hair
to sunny and white cities
it’s easy for them to write
they close their eyes
immediately schools of images
stream down from their foreheads
my imagination
is a piece of board
my sole instrument
is a wooden stick
I strike the board
it answers me
yes—yes
no—no
---



So many feelings fit between two heartbeats
so many objects can be held in our two hands
Don’t be surprised we can’t describe the world
and just address things tenderly by name
---



In a nest pleated from the flesh
there lived a bird
its wings beat about the heart
we mostly called it: unrest
and sometimes: love
---



(The Dead)
As a result of being confined in dark and unaired accommodation their faces have been radically changed. They would love to speak but sand devoured their lips. Only occasionally do they clutch the air with their fists and try to raise their heads clumsily like infants. Nothing can cheer them, neither chrysanthemums nor candles. They can’t reconcile themselves to their condition, the condition of things.
---



(Crypt)
I can still adjust the devotional picture so your reconciliation with necessity may be known, and the scarf as well, so that the inscription “to my beloved” might be a cause of tears. But what to do with the fly, the black fly that creeps into the half-closed mouth and carries out the remaining crumbs of the soul?
---



(War)
A convoy of steel quiffs. Boys painted with chalk. Aluminum filings bring down houses. Deafening missiles are sent into completely crimson air. No one flies off into the sky. The earth attracts bodies and lead.
---



(Chimney)
On top of the house grows another house, only without a roof—a chimney. From it drift kitchen smells and my sighs. The chimney is equitable, it doesn’t keep them apart. One big plume. Black, very black.
---



(Heart)
All man’s internal organs are bald and smooth. The stomach, intestines, lungs, are bald. Only the heart has hair—reddish, thick, sometimes quite long. This is a problem. The heart’s hair inhibits the flow of blood like water plants. The hair is often infested with worms. You have to love very deeply to pick these quick little parasites from your beloved’s cardiac hair.
---



I could write a treatise
on the abrupt change
of life into archaeology
---



art tries to ennoble
to raise to a higher level
praise in song dance and chatter
decayed human matter
washed-out sufferings

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who's ever tried to express the inexpressible:

I Would Like to Describe
Zbigniew Herbert, 1924 - 1998

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

the eye says it is bearable
only if one could
enter inside
there where the painter was
without wings
in slippers that fall off
without Virgil
with a cat in the pocket
a benevolent fantasy
and a hand
that unknowingly
corrects the world

3.5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed the device of Mr. Cogito, this grim protagonist, a sidelong approach to the harrowing tides of History. I was also moved by Herbert's insertion into Rome and especially into the milieu of Shakespeare's imagination. There were also flat stretches, ones which failed to affect me. It is winter after all and I am tired, discretion is advised.

I place Herbert alongside Borges and Brecht, an erudite tradition which might not meet the needs of many. Herbert is then tentatively established, at least in my cosmos as being against Yevtushenko, and even Ginsburg: for every mention of Biafra or a penis, we are expected to be transported. This reader is moved rather seldom by such. He does however provide a taxonomy of folly and grief. Despite the Collected Poems being uneven, I firmly regard this Herbert's work as being worth your time.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex poems; most need several readings. But they are written by a poet who is exploring a complex and very dark world around him, not one writing self-absorbed confessional or abstract language poetry. My favorites are the Mr. Cogito poems, for their somewhat whimsical gloss on serious reflections. The early poems are interesting for completeness, but Herbert seems to really find his voice in the third book, Study of the Object. Its short prose poems, which I usually don't like, are wonderful.

Of course Herbert treats the political regime in many poems. He also draws heavily on the classics and mythology, asks the questions of a yearning skeptic in religious matters, and writes of old age and mutual experiences in poems addressed to friends (and not friends) in later poems.

No poet makes every poem a masterpiece, but this books contains enough excellent work to repay extensive reading.

[Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly love Herbert's poems. However, not that I can read Polish, but these are some sloppy translations. They come nowhere near the grace and subtle shifts of voice that I found when reading an earlier translation of Selected Poems, translated with care and polish (tee hee) and power by John and Bogdada Carpenter.
Sometimes the translations in this volume are so unsuccessful that not only do the words have no music, but I also have no idea what is going on.
Take this example from 'Mr. Cogito Reflects on Suffering':
Valles translation: "joke around with it / very solicitously / as with a sick child / cajoling in the end / with silly tricks / a wan / smile."
Compare with how clear the Carpenters translation is: "entertain it / very cautiously / like a sick child / forcing at last / with silly tricks / a faint / smile."
And just one more example, from 'Mother,' a gorgeous poem:
Valles translation: "He fell from her lap like a ball of yarn. He unwound himself in a hurry and beat it into the distance. She held onto the beginning of life. She wound it on a finger hospitable as a ring; she wished to shelter it. He rolled down steep slopes, sometimes labored up mountains. He came back all tangled up and didn't say a word. He will never return to the sweet throne of her lap.
He outspread arms glow in the dark like an old town."
But look at how much more nuance, how much more clear emotion is in the Carpenters version:
"He fell from her knees like a ball of yarn.
He unwound in a hurry and ran blindly away.
She held the beginning of life. She would wind it
on her finger like a ring, she wanted to preserve him.
He was rolling down steep slopes, sometimes
he was climbing up. He would come back tangled, and be silent.
Never will he return to the sweet throne of her knees.
The stretched-out hands are alight in the darkness
like an old town."

However, that being said, I can't not be grateful. Without this translation I would not have been able to read this previously-untranslated haunting and powerful early poem,

'How We Were Initiated':

I was playing out in the street
no one one was minding me much
I was busy making sand pies
absently muttering Rimbaud

once an older guy heard me
why you are a poet my boy
we're just not putting together
a grassroots literary movement

petting my dirty little head
he gave my a big lollipop
he even bought me clothes
in youth's camouflage colors

I hadn't had clothes as nice
since my first communion
short trousers and a shirt
with a great collar

black patent leather shoes
buckles and white socks
the old guy took my hand
and led me off to the ball

there were other boys too
in short trousers like me
their faces clean-shaven
shuffling with their feet

have a good time of it lads
why stand off to the side
-the older men asked-
why not form a mill wheel

but we didn't want to play
at tag or blindman's bluff
we had enough of geezers
we were nearly starving

so quickly they sat us down
around a magnificent table
and gave us sweet lemonade
and to each a piece of cake

now boys got to their feet
changed into adult clothes
praising us in deep voices
rapping us on the knuckles

we couldn't hear a thing
we couldn't feel a thing
staring with eyes wide
at those pieces of cake
which were melting fast
in our feverish hands
and life's first sweetness
was lost in a dark sleeve

[Dylan Popowicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poetry that bleeds open like a window to the life that sits behind the words. I am in no fair position to judge the translation of the work, but the work in-itself, separate from comparison with the original, rings true as a subtle but profound human expression.



Although the whole book is worth its labour in reading, it is the mid-section that conceals the peak of poetical prowess; starting with Mr. Cogito. Here the real insistence on deploring the world and it dehumanising features come to light--but not in a vulgar, overbearing and violent manner: but in the gentle tones of something more human, lost within the strengths of old-fashioned values such as Friendship. And this is what the whole book really captures for me, the reluctance to give in to the modern automation and disqualification of love, dream, passion etc. but at the same time refusing to harbour itself into a fantasy realm. The book denies the truths of reality as any sort of just cause, or correct manner, but without taking the escapist notion, the infertile venture into a Second World, as an answer.



The collection does falter towards the end, at least in a stylistic sense. Yet, in the place of the stronger poetry of the 70s and 80s I found Herbert's latter years, especially within the poetry of the last book (Epilogue to a Storm), were filled with a sweet and timely sense of regret for a life to be soon lost (and parts already lost), love for the humanity of friends and family, and more importantly, a humble expression of deep honesty and sincerity--Herbert does not feign any false sense of strength and perverted monstrosity . . .



Herbert's poetry, although not always balancing at some absurd peak of perfection, never falters away from the humane core. Beautiful, at times thought provoking, always warming, this is a wonderful introduction to a sometimes overshadowed poet.

[Anima · Rating 5 out of 5]

THREE POEMS BY HEART
" 1
I cannot find the title
for a memory of you
with a hand torn from the dark
I move on the remains of faces
faint profiles of friends
froze into hard outlines

revolving around my head
empty as the wind’s forehead—
the silhouette of a black paper
man
2.
living -despite
living—against
I reproach myself with the sin of
forgetting
you left an embrace like a needless
sweater
a gaze like a question
our hands won’t pass on the shape of
your hands
we let them go to waste touching
common things
our eyes reflect a question
tranquil as mirrored glass
unclouded by warm breath
every day I refresh my eye
every day my touch grows
tickled by the nearness of so many
things

life purls like blood
Shadows softly melt
let’s not let the fallen perish—
a cloud will pass on their memory—
the worn profiles of Roman coins
........."

ON A ROSE
To Tadeusz Chrzanowski

1 Sweetness bears a flower’s name—
Spherical gardens tremble
suspended over the earth
a sigh turns its head away
a wind’s face at the fence
grass is spread out below
the season of anticipation
the coming will snuff out
odors it will open colors

the trees build a cupola
of green tranquility
the rose is calling you
a blown butterfly pines
after you threads burst
instant follows instant
O rosebud green larva unfold

Sweetness bears the name: rose
an explosion— purple’s standardbearers
emerge from the interior
and the countless ranks
trumpeters of fragrance
on long butterfly-horns
proclaim the fulfillment

2
the intricate coronations
cloister gardens orisons
gold-packed ceremonies
and flaming candlesticks
triple towers of silence
light rays broken on high
the depths—

O source of heaven on earth
O constellations of petals • • •

do not ask what a rose is A bird may
render it to you
fragrance kills thought a light
brushing erases a face
O color of desire
O color of weeping lids
heavy round sweetness
redness torn to the heart

3 a rose bows its head
as if it had shoulders

leans against the wind
the wind goes off alone
it cannot speak the word
it cannot speak the word

the more the rose dies
the harder to say: rose"

[Moniek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mam taką śliczną relację z Herbertem, że w zasadzie od szkoły podstawowej byłam popychana w jego stronę, jakby miał być tą moją bratnią duszą na twórczym poziomie, i tak się do niego przyzwyczaiłam, że cały czas się go trzymałam i cieszyłam się na jego widok. Jednak dopiero teraz, jako już dojrzała osoba, postanowiłam otworzyć mój najnowszy prezent bożonarodzeniowy i zapoznać się z całą jego twórczością, chronologicznie.

Na początku miałam dawkować sobie Wiersze zebrane po tomiku po każdej innej przeczytanej książce, ale kilka dni temu porzuciłam ten plan i weszłam w wydanie z biegu, i wcale tego nie żałuję. Zbiór rozpoczyna się "Struną światła" z 1956, a kończy "Epilogiem burzy" z 1998 (a rok moich narodzin, nie mogłam się powstrzymać przed łezką). Przechodzimy więc z Herbertem od samego środka wojny, która go jeszcze długo nie opuści, i z której chcę go wyciągnąć, bo to przerażające miejsce; poznajemy jego rodzinę, rodzeństwo, mamę, tajemniczą postać taty, miłość, która boi się moralistów; wojna się kończy, ale Zbigniew Herbert nie potrafi wyjść z wojny i obok siebie stawia utwory o nowej bardziej kolorowej rzeczywistości z piekłem i zimnymi szklankami soku pomarańczowego oraz nadal żywe wspomnienia z okresu wojny, z których nie potrafi wyjść; razem z nim przemierzamy świat, oglądamy Monę Lisę, patrzymy na ludzi znanych z opowieści i się boimy; w końcu spotykamy pana Cogito, który próbuje przedstawić nam perspektywę pana Cogito; patrzymy, jak kolejni ludzie domagają się słów, a nawet odchodzą, a Herbert im to daje; patrzymy, jak Herbert powoli odchodzi ze świata, i zdaje sobie z tego sprawę. Czuję, jak w drugiej połowie Herbert mówi do mnie, do czytelnika, i czuję czyjeś duszkowe ręce na moich ramionach. Chcę go wysłuchać. Żegnam się, kiedy odchodzi do innego miejsca, pięknego, dziwnie podobnego do tego może.

Co jest przepiękne w poezji Herberta to tworzenie z ludzi budowli i, mimo wszystko, trzymanie rzeczywistości pod kontrolą, trzymanie rzeczywistości, czasu i przestrzeni pod kontrolą, a to wszystko wraca do życia, cały czas w jego głowie.

Olśniewająco piękne.

[Μαρία · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Όλες οι απόπειρες να πεις
"απελθέτω απ' εμού το ποτήριον τούτο"-
καταφεύγοντας σε διανοητικές ασκήσεις
σε ξέφρενες εκστρατείες υπέρ αδέσποτων γατών
σε ασκήσεις αναπνοής
στη θρησκεία
κατέληξαν σε αποτυχία

πρέπει να συναινέσεις
να χαμηλώσεις ευγενικά το κεφάλι
να μη σφίξεις τα χέρια
να χρησιμοποιήσεις τη δυστυχία απαλά με μέτρο
σαν προσθετικό άκρο
χωρίς ψεύτικη ντροπή
αλλά και χωρίς αλαζονεία

μην κραδαίνεις το ακρωτηριασμένο σου μέλος
πάνω από τα κεφάλια των ανθρώπων
μη χτυπάς τη λευκή σου ράβδο
στο τζάμι των καλοζωισμένων

πιες ένα ρόφημα από πικρά βότανα
αλλά όχι ως τον πάτο
φρόντισε ν' αφήσεις
μερικές γουλιές για το μέλλον

αποδέξου την
όμως ταυτόχρονα
απομόνωσέ την μέσα σου
κι αν γίνεται
πλάσε από την ύλη της δυστυχίας
ένα πράγμα ή ένα πρόσωπο

παίξε
μαζί της
παίξε

κάνε της αστεία
γλυκά
όπως σ' ένα άρρωστο παιδί
καταφέρνοντας στο τέλος
με χαζά τεχνάσματα
να της αποσπάσεις
ένα ασθενικό χαμόγελο."

[Michael Arnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry, even in translation, is remarkably fluid, simple, and subtle. Herbert’s poems are typically unpunctuated, giving them a sense of flow and fluidity. There is a gentle surrealist element in his poems that illuminate or extend quotidian experience, as in “Wooden Bird”. Herbert lived during both the Nazi and Soviet occupation of Poland and themes of violence and oppression crop up throughout his work, as in the striking “Five Men” about an execution, and “The Rain” about the narrator’s older brother’s mental and emotional struggle after returning from WW2. There are also many poems on poetry itself and the craft of poetry, as in “Writing” and “Nothing Special”.

[Nadxieli Mannello · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really dig this guy, and not only because he looks like a Polish Frank Sinatra on the cover of this book. Here's an excerpt (though they're not all this short, humorous, or prose-y):

"Dwarfs"
Dwarfs grow in the forest. They have a peculiar smell and white beards. They appear alone. If a cluster of them could be gathered, dried, and hung over the door--we might have some peace.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best poetry ever written

[Rex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume contains the nine collections of poetry published in Herbert’s lifetime. The first two, and most of the third, did not greatly impress me. However, around the time I got to the first Herbert poem I ever loved—“Pebble,” on page 197—

The pebble / is a perfect creature […] / filled exactly / with a pebbly meaning

something changes. The imagery grows more coherent and visceral, and by the start of the fourth collection, Inscription (1969), one seems to encounter gem after gem. Eventually one arrives at the sustained introspective genius of Mr. Cogito (1974), which culminates in the famous Przesłanie:

beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring / the bird with an unknown name the winter oak / the light on a wall the splendor of the sky

Herbert’s poems of the 1990s are less veiled in their politics and religious allusions, but his work retains a vitality to the end.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. As I wrote in my review of the first book included here: "A collection that emphasizes ruin and rebirth, destruction and renewal." Herbert's verse chronicles a 20th century of loss, ruin, and remembrance, moving back-and-forth from melancholy to hopeful. My favorites were his prose poems, which is very odd, since I tend not to enjoy that style of poetry.

[Tom The Great · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tylko nad herbertem tak się wzruszam

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Herbert, at least in this translation, is prosaic with little rhyme, rhythm, metaphor. Still, Cogito is a fun Everyman. Top tips: Biology Teacher, Last Request, Besieged City.

[Anthoney]

NEVER OF YOU

I never have the courage to speak of you
vast sky of my neighborhood
nor you roofs holding off cascades of air
lovely downy roofs the hair of our homes
Nor you chimneys laboratories of sorrow
spurned by the moon stretching out necks
Nor of you windows opened and closed
which burst when we are dying overseas

I cannot even describe the house
which knows all my escapes and my returns
though so small it stays under my shut eyelid
nothing can render the smell the green curtain
the creak of stairs I ascend carrying a lit lamp
nor the greenery over the gate

In fact I want to write of the house’s gate latch
of its rough handshake and its friendly creaks
but although I know so much about it
I use only a cruelly common litany of words
So many feelings fit between two heartbeats
so many objects can be held in our two hands

Don’t be surprised we can’t describe the world
and just address things tenderly by name"

Wow

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far I've read only Mr Cogito, from 1974, but I feel comfortable saying that it's one of the better books of late twentieth century poetry I've read. Harder--not more difficult, harder--than a Milosz, more intellectual and open to the world (the actual world, I mean, i.e., other people, ideas, history etc) than the current crop of American chamomile tea sipping navel-gazers, but eminently readable? Yes, that's more or less my ideal for poetry. Recommended for anyone who's ever tried to read, or has read, Berryman's dream songs and kind of wished they were a little more comprehensible. Particular favorites: Mr Cogito's Abyss; Mr Cogito's Game; Mr Cogito on Upright Attitudes.

[Petya Kokudeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Веднъж един чудесен български писател ми каза, че като попорасна, вече няма да имам такъв стресиращ проблем със субективността в литературата (какъвто аз имам: нали всичко е субективно, значи всичко може да е и добро, когато очевидно не е:). Та каза, че ще се науча с времето да разпознавам интуитивно (и не само) качественото. Винаги, като чета Херберт, имам чувството, че ей сега, в рамките на секундата, пораствам и съм внезапно уверена, че да!,ей го качеството - в цял ръст. И никакъв субективизъм не играе тука.

[Cassandra Kay Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent! Such a beautiful collection, Cogito I feel that I know you! Some of these were extremely memorable, the professor turning into a bug, the spinning over Nefertiti's head, lots of buttons, eyelids and nails. What more could you want from poetry than this? I loved it!

[christopher leibow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am loving the depth and breadth of this collection, Herbert is independent, brilliant, ironic, wary, a bit conetmptuous, and pained. Lovely

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valles' translations don't quite stand up to Carpenters' or Milosz's but many or most of the poems aren't available by the Carpenters or Milosz.

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good.

The prose poems especially.

Wisdom and wit.