Slavic Studies at Rice University. Ewa Thompson is research professor of an unprestigious country. Still, he had a near the centers lived of never power He and him: came frombehind standing friends of society mighty no was there heartilyagreed.ButI and Prize,Nobel the received have should Herbert that from the East. greatDarknessthatpointforcamethat are not always traceable. Score one morePovertyshortens age. thatwayslives in middle and youth his spent he which circumstancestheundocouldnot it in brightened his final years somewhat, but fromIngersollthe Foundation 1995,in received gratefully he which Writing, Creative for Award Eliot T.S. The ty. poverattributablecausesto of 1998 in index help navigation considerably. in its favor. The notes, chronology, and heavily weighs completeness volume’s this teams, Milosz-Scott-Carpenter the likeIsome theof earlier translations by sonorousness in the original Polish, and more is there While overstated. never fine dust, they are invariably precise and withsprinkled if as gray, bit a are tions And, although Alissa Valles’s transla Valles’s Alissa although And, Herbert’spoetry—arejoicing.cause for T New York: Ecco Press; 600 pp., $34.95 Years ago, Leopold Tyrmand told me Zbigniew Herbert, a Polish poet, died The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 English translation of Zbigniew Zbigniew of translation English complete first the is volume his by Zbigniew Herbert ⁄ “Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.” The Courage to Live - - all odds among Poles in all epochs of his that appear so unexpectedly and against Poland, he was one of the points of light the correct zip codes. In Soviet-occupied reviewedallthejournalsin thatpossess collectionshisandpoetrybeen have of egos) somewhere in Oregon at one time; (named after one of Herbert’s poetic alter hispoetry; there was aMr. Cogito Press recited campuses American on people hundredsof America,and followingin his best to destroy Herbert’ reputation— neocon)(nowa who,the1990’s, in did Michnik—theleftistPolishintellectual left and the right, and it is said that Adam in today’s America. He was adored by students thethe way that pop stars’ CDs are were snatched from bookstores by Polish gime. His consecutive volumes of poetry wish to enter a Devil’senterwishtoa deal withrethe 1956, when he was 30, because he tory. did His not literary debut was delayed until by Ewa Thompson REVIEWS —Vittorio Alfieri, - - ArtistScott P. Richert the suppression of Solidarity by the Mos once fell on his knees before him. After Angered by the fraternizing of the Pol the of fraternizing the by Angered terms with the Prufrocks, with typists whoSeptember 1, 1939). Eliot hadof attack Nazi the afterweeksto two land come to ringtotheSoviet Union’s attack onPo (“September17,”Herbert’s poemrefer vigorating knowledge that we are alone” conceiving Eliot T.S. Imagine him? know not do who those here, I am trying to do precisely this. by those who lived in the poet’s country; ances can only be lamely recreated even ing on countries whose language and his ways of Western intellectuals pontificat mind when he lamented the “orientalist”in had Said Edward what is This tory. his intellectual and literary countries’ their of knowledge common by ported thegreat literary figures who are unsup illustratesthedifficulty writingof about even lost his marbles. gested that Herbert wrote himself out or daily chnik’s moved from the leftist to the neocon po neoconsishMichnik suchas (whohad through the cat’s paws of its writers, sug sions,memories, connotations, nu and retaliatedtheyanddevastatingly Mi in ex-communists,the criticizedhe them, sition, just as many Americans did) with Tygodnik Solidarno in publish to continued Herbert 1981, cow-controlled government of Poland in who know even less. The texture of allu torythey do not know, instructing those country, while being exposed to the “in and Howbest then to describe Herbert to necessityTheintothesedetailsgo to Four Quartets Oreste Gazeta Wyborcza Gazeta in a Soviet-controlled g (1785) c´ ( Solidarity Weekly The Waste Land Waste The , which, , MAY 2007/ ). ------

27 “lay out food in tins,” with “the women pain. Herbert (and Eliot) belong to the colonialism and ignorance, but deep- [who] come and go / talking of Michel- second category. This is evident in the ly Thomistic in their core, deeply com- angelo.” Imagine him having to come volume Hermes, Dog, and Star (1957), mitted to the premise that two plus two to terms with total loss: “They who lost where, in “A Knocker,” the poet says: equals four; that discourse is not merely now dance with bells on their ankles . . . a human creation and therefore cannot they gave up history and fell into the sloth There are those who grow be infinitely manipulated; that names are of showcases” (“They Who Lost”). This gardens in their heads . . . firmly attached to objects because there is why “The Envoy of Mr. Cogito” (Mr. exists the One who told us He has a name, Cogito, 1974) is more profound than any- it’s easy for them to write and that name is hallowed. thing that can be found in Eliot: Greater they close their eyes Poems invoking the name of Mr. Cogi- suffering creates deeper knowledge. immediately schools of images to abound. In “Mr Cogito and the imagi- In other words, Herbert is difficult to stream down . . . nation,” the speaker declares that he has explain to the conservative Anglo audi- never trusted the imagination, and in- ence. While he did make it to the New my imagination stead has adored tautologies: “a bird is York Times and the New York Review of is a piece of board a bird / slavery slavery / a knife a knife / Books, he served there for many years my sole instrument death is death.” This is a fundamental- as one of the “dissidents,” to be paraded is a wooden stick . . . ly Thomistic observation of a poet who, before liberal and enlightened America unlike T.S. Eliot, had to cope not only and then discarded for newer pursuits. In I thump on the board with the Prufrocks and evenings resem- communist times, the dissidents “from and it prompts me bling patients etherized against the sky, over there” replaced Michelangelo in with the moralist’s dry poem. but also with “the abrupt change / of life New York’s casual party conversations. into archeology” when the poet takes long In such circumstances, the reception of nlike the poets who have received walks “down avenues of burned houses” Herbert’s poetry was necessarily super- the Nobel Prize since 1948 (when and observes a city “without morning pa- ficial: Beyond a few oh’s and ah’s, there UEliot got his), Herbert distrusts meta- pers / without evening papers / [where] was no chance for a deeper assimilation phors and favors metonymies, and some- there is no / prison / clock / or water” or academic analysis. It is not true that times eschews both, achieving poetic ef- (“Abandoned”). great poets need no interpreters. The in- fects with rhythm only. He writes “free” Herbert, as the chronicler of objects, corporation of Shakespeare into the Eng- verse, with hardly any punctuation and easily moves from tables and chairs to the lish language and thinking was a gradual using as few verbs as possible. His is a Dutch and Italian masters, to the still lifes process; it is doubtful that the profanum world of things—things that are. No painted by painters long dead, cathedrals vulgus watching his plays in Elizabethan poet makes us rediscover ordinary things built by builders unknown yet living in times fully grasped their greatness. To be better than Herbert—things such as their designs. He is deeply immersed in incorporated into a culture, the great po- tables, chairs, and beds, objects toward the material world; he is a “materialist” et needs much attention. Many people which we should feel gratitude, for they in the sense in which Dostoyevsky’s char- have to ponder and rephrase his mean- never fail us. “I have never observed a acters sometimes describe themselves as ings. In the English language, Herbert chair shift from one foot to another, or a “materialist” (Prince Myshkin); by the has had no such army of facilitators, and, bed rear on its hind legs,” states the poet, same token, the Devil is an idealist. Her- even in his native Poland, the urgent task “I suspect that objects do this from peda- bert holds firm to the material world— of removing the rubble of Soviet colo- gogical considerations, to reprove us con- not for him the parallel worlds of dreams nialism has delayed many serious read- stantly for our instability” (“Objects”). invoked by some contemporary poets. ings. To incorporate Herbert’s insights The physical world on which Herbert Herbert’s poems proclaim the futili- into the English language the way Shake- lavished attention was contained in a ty of manipulating language in ways that speare’s insights have been incorporated three-room flat in a grim block of flats some contemporary philosophers take (although I am not placing an equation in southern Warsaw, where all the in- for granted. These poems confirm the mark here) would take a host of disser- conveniences of the multiple uses of the existence of an area of thought to which tations, articles, books, and discussions. same room were clearly visible. Only the vulgarizers and the “flatteners” have In their absence, the chances of Herbert Herbert’s cat lived in luxury. no access. While the telling of untruths transforming Anglophone thinking are In Study of the Object (1961), “Pebble” has been perfected in postmodern times slim. Yet my suggestion that he has this is not a rehearsal of the Platonic essence, and good writers have emerged that are potential should alert readers that Alis- as a casual reader might conclude. It is no more than public-relations men, not sa Valles’s book is a treasure trove worth a deeply Thomistic meditation on the all the territory has been conquered. Her- exploring. Herbert’s vision of the world phenomenon of being. The poems in bert’s poems remind us that winning has and the rhythm of his poetry are pro- this volume could have only been writ- many meanings, and that the most pop- foundly original, and his ability to infuse ten in a country permeated—nay, satu- ular meaning is not necessarily the one his readers with the courage to live is un- rated—with a Thomistic worldview. This we are looking for. In “What Mr. Cogito matched. is what distinguishes Poland from other thinks of Hell” we read: One could divide all poets into those European countries and makes it sui ge- whose words flow effortlessly and abun- neris. Only in Poland has the Thomistic Contrary to popular opinion [the dantly (Walt Whitman or, in Poland, Ju- Weltanschauung become the bedrock of lowest circle of hell] is not populat- liusz Slowacki—both Romantics) and both artistic expression and public de- ed by despots, matricides, or those those who drop words sparingly, as if in bates—such as they are, mutilated by who lust after the flesh of others. It

28 / CHRONICLES is a retreat for artists, full of mirrors, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Re- saying has it. While the Germans have instruments, and paintings. public. Some of these books take on lit- formed a Preußische Treuhand and nois- erary production under communism; ily demand the return of their properties This defiance of the Zeitgeist also op- others are histories based on the prem- from the impoverished Poles to whom erates on a lower level. “Silk of a soul” ise that only those who can write a histo- they have caused indescribable losses, describes a lover overwhelmed by what ry deserve a history. Thus, they use the Poles prefer quiet mourning that is miles fellow poet Anna Akhmatova has called most falsifying principle of selection— away from making any demands on the the desire to penetrate to the innermost namely, group interest. To paraphrase impoverished Ukrainians. (The Germans depths of the beloved. In Herbert, the Kevin Brennan, “Sovietologists of all po- lost Breslau/Wrocław to Poland, whereas lover surreptitiously uses the open mouth litical stripes [have been] given strong in- the Poles lost Lwów/Lviv to the Ukraine.) of the sleeping beloved to peek inside. “I centives to ignore certain facts and focus Herbert was born in Lwów, and in one of expected . . . a house by a lake great and their interest in other areas.” Toward the his last poems (“In the city”), he discreetly silent.” Instead, he catches sight of “a pair end of his life, Herbert became aware of laments: “In the borderland city I’ll nev- of silk stockings.” Crushed, he will buy this situation and tried to address it in Ep- er see again / there’s a winged stone light her these dreamed-of stockings but asks ilogue to a Storm (1998). The poems in and immense . . . / in the faraway city himself what will replace them: “Will it this section of Valles’s book require the I’ll never see again / there is water that’s be something / which cannot be touched support of the texture of references men- heavy and nourishes / he who gives you / even with one finger of a dream?” tioned earlier, or at least exceptional at- a drink of that water.” The tone of Her- tention to detail. They express the dying bert’s poem makes it clear that, though he tone of Herbert’s poetry is som- poet’s gentle disagreement with much an expellee, he realizes that “my city. . . ber, as befits a man who has seen that passes for “the history of the com- doesn’t exist on any map.” monstersT go unpunished and straight munist period in Central and Eastern The first poem in the collection con- shooters maligned and executed; one Europe”: the elbowing out and dropping tains an epigraph from Juliusz Slowacki who has seen cities vanish, as Samar- into the memory hole of inconvenient added by translators Milosz and Scott: kand did under Ghenghis Khan. Even facts. Like Paul Ricoeur, Herbert knows “No time to grieve for roses, when the for- though he does not always write about that certain events in history are overre- ests are burning.” Being torn between his these things, they are the silent back- membered, whereas others are underre- predilection to contemplate roses and the ground of his poetry. The more one membered, and he whispers this knowl- moral duty to ring the bells for the dying reads Herbert, the clearer the contours edge into the reader’s ear. forests, Herbert learned to do both. His become of the historical horrors he part- In that regard, it should be stated that— “Odes to the Confederate Dead” encour- ly witnessed and partly heard about from unlike his more famous contemporary, age us to live, whereas his meditations on other inhabitants of Mitteleuropa who Czeslaw Milosz, and the poet who wrote God’s world make us see it anew. In spite lived under the Soviet military occupa- the introduction to this volume, Adam of his somberness, he is a nourishing po- tion for 50 long years. Zagajewski—Herbert is a deeply commit- et. ¤ There is also a playful side to Herbert: ted Polish patriot. He takes seriously the The equivalents of Old Possum’s Book of “imagined community” of people, ideas, Practical Cats are scattered throughout strivings, and suffering that together make his oeuvre. I particularly like the short what Benedict Anderson has called, in a prose poems about “Bears,” “Elephant,” less famous phrase, “an attractive ideol- and “Hermes, Dog, and Star.” ogy . . . that encourages good behavior.” Herbert was a cult figure in Soviet-oc- Herbert’s invocations of the gnawing pain cupied Poland, somewhat like Walter of loss, misrepresentation, and honors Benjamin among American humanities denied to the dead will appeal to those professors in the first part of this century. who cherish a similar tissue of remem- While the comparison may be unsavory, brances about the American South. To it does convey the worshipers’ feeling that them, I recommend one of Herbert’s best a certain body of writings will eventually known poems, “The Envoy of Mr. Cogi- destroy what the worshipers deem unde- to,” which begins with the following ad- sirable. Herbert’s poetry provided Poles vice: “Go where the others went before to and others with the assurance that one the dark boundary / for the golden fleece is not alone, and that the victory of the of nothingness your last reward.” This po- powerful is not profound or permanent. em cannot be reduced to an existentialist Herbert belonged to the category of peo- exclamation, because existentialism was ple for whom the awareness that this is so born in the secure coffee shops of West- was enough. Yes, he did indulge in con- ern Europe and not among the corpses tempt. He never overcame this weakness of Mitteleuropa. of noble minds, and several of his poems Speaking of Mitteleuropa, the reread- speak of it. ing of Herbert made me realize how pro- A slew of books now exists about com- foundly differently Poles and Germans munist times in countries situated be- (please, these are metonymies) have re- tween Germany and Russia: the Baltics, sponded to dispossession and loss, to be- Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Rumania, coming Vertriebenen, as the German

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