REVIEWS The Courage to Live by Ewa Thompson “Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.” —Vittorio Alfieri, Oreste (1785) The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 once fell on his knees before him. After by Zbigniew Herbert the suppression of Solidarity by the Mos- New York: Ecco Press; 600 pp., $34.95 cow-controlled government of Poland in 1981, Herbert continued to publish in ⁄ Tygodnik Solidarnogc´ (Solidarity Weekly). Angered by the fraternizing of the Pol- his volume is the first complete ish neocons such as Michnik (who had English translation of Zbigniew moved from the leftist to the neocon po- Herbert’sT poetry—a cause for rejoicing. sition, just as many Americans did) with And, although Alissa Valles’s transla- the ex-communists, he criticized them, tions are a bit gray, as if sprinkled with and they retaliated devastatingly in Mi- fine dust, they are invariably precise and chnik’s daily Gazeta Wyborcza, which, never overstated. While there is more through the cat’s paws of its writers, sug- sonorousness in the original Polish, and gested that Herbert wrote himself out or I like some of the earlier translations by even lost his marbles. the Milosz-Scott-Carpenter teams, this The necessity to go into these details volume’s completeness weighs heavily illustrates the difficulty of writing about in its favor. The notes, chronology, and the great literary figures who are unsup- Scott P. Richert index help navigation considerably. Artist ported by common knowledge of their Zbigniew Herbert, a Polish poet, died following in America, and hundreds of countries’ literary and intellectual his- in 1998 of causes attributable to pover- people on American campuses recited tory. This is what Edward Said had in ty. The T.S. Eliot Award for Creative his poetry; there was a Mr. Cogito Press mind when he lamented the “orientalist” Writing, which he gratefully received (named after one of Herbert’s poetic alter ways of Western intellectuals pontificat- from the Ingersoll Foundation in 1995, egos) somewhere in Oregon at one time; ing on countries whose language and his- brightened his final years somewhat, but and his collections of poetry have been tory they do not know, instructing those it could not undo the circumstances in reviewed in all the journals that possess who know even less. The texture of allu- which he spent his youth and middle the correct zip codes. In Soviet-occupied sions, memories, connotations, and nu- age. Poverty shortens lives in ways that Poland, he was one of the points of light ances can only be lamely recreated even are not always traceable. Score one more that appear so unexpectedly and against by those who lived in the poet’s country; point for that great Darkness that came all odds among Poles in all epochs of his- here, I am trying to do precisely this. from the East. tory. His literary debut was delayed until How best then to describe Herbert to Years ago, Leopold Tyrmand told me 1956, when he was 30, because he did not those who do not know him? Imagine that Herbert should have received the wish to enter a Devil’s deal with the re- T.S. Eliot conceiving The Waste Land Nobel Prize, and I heartily agreed. But gime. His consecutive volumes of poetry and Four Quartets in a Soviet-controlled there was no mighty society of friends were snatched from bookstores by Polish country, while being exposed to the “in- standing behind him: He never lived students the way that pop stars’ CDs are vigorating knowledge that we are alone” near the centers of power and came from in today’s America. He was adored by the (“September 17,” Herbert’s poem refer- an unprestigious country. Still, he had a left and the right, and it is said that Adam ring to the Soviet Union’s attack on Po- Michnik—the leftist Polish intellectual land two weeks after the Nazi attack of Ewa Thompson is research professor of (now a neocon) who, in the 1990’s, did September 1, 1939). Eliot had to come to Slavic Studies at Rice University. his best to destroy Herbert’ reputation— terms with the Prufrocks, with typists who 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 EliotU 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.