This week, on Friday 28 July, was the 25th anniversary of the passing of Zbigniew Herbert.
Perhaps not as popular - or as frequently read - as Wiesława Szymborska or Czesław Miłosz (both Nobel Laureates), Zbigniew Herbert was highly regarded by such intellectual and artistic authorities as Charles Taylor (who discusssed Herbert at length in his "Sources of the Self") and Seamus Heaney.
At an event organised by the Irish Polish Society Dublin, Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation and the Polish Embassy in Ireland in 2012 (and available here), the Irish poet and Nobel laureate said the following:
"He has an ethic of solidarity with the victims of history, his fidelity is to the values of those who stood against the powerful. He's a poet who thereby became a source of spiritual strength and by extension - by extension - a source of political strength to the Polish people."
It is perhaps unfortunate that the name of Herbert has become embroiled in political disputes and it cannot be denied that he courted controversy. His name is associated with the right because of his stern opposition to the "let bygones be bygones" message of the Round Table talks.
How far he is, as a poet, from such simple political identities can be gauged from the words of a famous poem, "At the Gate of the Valley" whose metaphors invite the reader to compare the Last Judgment with the selections at Nazi death camps. It would be hard to imagine a more challenging comparison for Christian culture or a better expression of the "solidarity with the victims of history" that Heaney spoke of:
"At the Gate of the Valley"
After the rain of stars
on the meadow of ashes
they all have gathered under the guard of angels
from a hill that survived
the eye embraces
the whole lowing two-legged herd
in truth they are not many
counting even those who will come
from chronicles fables and the lives of the saints
[...]
those who as it seems
have obeyed the orders without pain
go lowering their heads as a sign of consent
but in their clenched fists they hide
fragments of letters ribbons clippings of hair
and photographs
which they naively think
won't be taken from them
so they appear
a moment before
the final division
of those gnashing their teeth
from those singing psalms"
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott.
Sources: Zbigniew Herbert, Selected Poems, Penguin Books; Youtube
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