Product Description

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entire poetic output, from his first book of poems, String of Light, in 1956, to his final volume, previously unpublished in English, Epilogue Of the Storm.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

Customer Reviews (12)

the collected at last
Herbert may be less well-known in America than a hundred other lesser poets, though the Collected Poems makes such a convincing case for him as a major twentieth century poet that one can only welcome its appearance and hope that it provides the spark necessary to launch him into the general readership. A masterful poet.

AGreat Modern Poet
There is simply no excuse for not owning this book. Herbert is a great poet in the same way that T. S. Eliot is a great poet. Like Eliot he is modern and yet timeless but unlike Eliot there is a profound compassion at work in his greatest poems. He can be humourous but it is often a disconcerting humour perhaps suitable to the difficult life he was forced to lead. Though he was a witness to the horros of wars and occupations the voice of sanity that he created for himself is more than a voice of witness. It is the voice of a great writer tempered by his times but not overwelmed. This book gives us all of Herberts published poetry begining with his first volume Chord Of Light and finishing with his last book Epilogue To A Storm. Unlike Yeats his late poetry is not amongst his best but even in his last book ther are a few gems such as the exquisite Tenderness. He was beyond any question one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Fluent in English and Polish: Great Collection of Herbert's Poetry
My five-star review is for both Zbigniew Herbert's writing and Alissa Valles' translation.

Herbert's poetry can carry monumental meanings, like in "The Envoy of Mr Cogito", or can be humorous, like in "Forest": "A path runs barefoot through the forest.In the forest there are a lot of trees, a cuckoo, Hansel and Gretel, and other small animals.There aren't any dwarfs; they got out in time.When it gets dark the owl locks the forest with a big key, because if a cat got in there, then there would be some damage done."

One reviewer, giving a one-star to this book, criticized it for inaccurate use of words by the translator, Ms. Valles.He wrote "I am not a poet or translator, but I did study Polish during three years I spent in Warsaw in the 1990s."Polish, one of Slavic languages, takes substantially more than three years in order to master it and I would suggest caution prior to claiming any expertise based on "three years in (anywhere)".I am fluent in both Polish and English (each language took me substantially more than three years, especially to be able to understand poetry, and more degrees to back my knowledge) and I actually find the translation by Alissa Valles to be very good.I don't expect a good translation to be completed literally word-for-word, verbatim.Poetic translation should not be an exercise in opening a dictionary and finding precisely matching words.Synonyms are allowed if they don't distort the essence and capture the theme and rhythm of a poem.Ms. Valles' translation does precisely that.

As for Mr. Allen's criticism of the English version of "Biology Teacher" and his calling of misuse of words such as a "bow-tie" vs. a "neck-tie", one explanation may be considered: it was not uncommon for Polish teachers of 1930s to wear bow-ties.Could it be that Herbert himself chose the word "krawat" (neck-tie) over "muszka" (bow-tie) for its sound?English sounds of a "neck-tie" or a "bow-tie" do not differ much.Is it fair to give a book one-star review for that?Returning to the "Biology Teacher" poem and what matters in it, the poem is not about what this biology teacher wore, but how he influenced the youngsters, how he died and what impact he left on a poet:
"(...)
he was the first to show us
(...)
he led us
through golden binoculars
into the intimate life
(...)
in the second year of the war
our biology teacher was killed
by history's schoolyard bullies
(...)"

Herbert grew up in Lvov, a city in eastern Poland (today belonging to Ukraine).The "Second year of the war" would be 1940.This and "history's schoolyard bullies" most likely suggests his teacher's death in Katyn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn).At the time Herbert wrote this and most of his poems, it was forbidden to talk about certain atrocities of WWII, certain ideologies.Considering this, how much shall we care about whether it was a "neck-tie" or a "bow-tie"?The translated into English poem captures its original Polish essence, style and meaning.

I also have a special sentiment to Herbert's poetry.Here is why: my high-school history teacher in Poland was forced to resign because the communistic authorities in 1980s disapproved of his teachings (he taught us about Katyn; that was forbidden).During his last lecture, our professor read us a poem by Zbigniew Herbert, "The Envoy of Mr. Cogito."I found this poem translated by B. and Z. Carpenters but it is Ms. Valles' translation that I find more eloquent and true to the original Polish version:

"Go where the others went before to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last reward

go upright among those who are down on their knees
those with their backs turned those toppled in the dust

you have survived not so that you might live
you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when reason fails you be courageous
in the final reckoning it is the only thing that counts

and your helpless Anger - may it be like a sea
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten

may you never be abandoned by your sister Scorn
for informers executioners cowards - they will win
go to your funeral with relief throw a lump of earth
a woodworm will write you a smooth-shaven life

and do not forgive in truth it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

beware however of overweening pride
examine your fool's face in the mirror
repeat: I was called - was there no one better than I

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
they do not need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you

Keep watch - when a light on a hill gives a sign - rise and go
as long as the blood is still turning the dark star in your breast
repeat humanity's old incantations fairy tales and legends
for that is how you will attain good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those who crossed a desert and perished in the sand

for this they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap

go for only thus will you be admitted to the company of cold skulls
to the company of your forefathers: Gilgamesh Hector Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without bounds and the city of ashes

Be faithful Go"

Forest / Trees
The translation of literature and poetry in particular into another language has always been a source of distress, debate, denunciations.Does anyone remember the flogging of Donald Walsh over his translations of Neruda?But were they bad?Translation is another art form, an invisible one, in which the translator must disappear in order to make her subjects appear and grow luminous in another language.But a translator can't "improve" on the subject or else she is not translating any more.And each language has its own music and power.Just listen to any audio reading by the actual poet.It's not the same as reading the poem silently, it's not the same as reading it in another language.

The reviews of the Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert seem to be unfortunately all about the translations, which will never be more than what they are:substitutes.How many translations of Homer or Virgil or Pushkin are there?And which one is best?The one you like?I agree with Helen Vendler on the subject:"Like many reviewers of Herbert, I cannot read Polish, but it has seemed clear to me, as to others, that Herbert's verse is of the spare sort that can carry over many of its strengths, its essential characteristics, into another language."

Please do not be deterred from reading this collection because of the translation.Read the poems for yourselves and discover the staggering brilliance.

Hoffman is right
This is a bad book and not just because the translator made some poor stylistic choices in English, which she clearly did. Daniel Halpern as editor has done a disservice to Herbert and English readers by turning over such an important project to an inexperienced translator.

I am not a poet or translator, but I did study Polish during three years I spent in Warsaw in the 1990s. So take my thoughts for what they are worth. I knew the earlier translations and was quite disappointed by the Valles' versions.When I read Michael Hoffman's very critical review in the May 07 Poetry, I found myself agreeing with nearly every point he made about the superiority of the Carpenters' translations to Valles'. It could be that, like Hoffman, I just prefer the English version the Carpenters provided, regardless of the Polish original. But I suspected that it also had to do with carelessness on the part of the translator. So I looked at the original language for the five excerpts for which Hoffman compares the Carpenters' version to Valles'. In every case, I found the Carpenters' choices very well grounded in the Polish of the originals. In Valles', I found numerous puzzling choices--and some outright mistakes.

Her tendency is to inflect the English version with meanings the language doesn't have in Polish. For example, in "Mother," she translates the second sentence as, "He unwound himself in a hurry and beat it into the distance." The Polish phrase "uciekal na oslep" means to escape "blindly." Since the adverbial phrase has the same derivation as the verb "blind," it seems a poor choice to substitute an idea of distance for one of lack of sight. In "Biology Teacher" she uses "bow-tie" for the Polish word, "krawat," which means necktie, as the Carpenters translated it. Polish has a separate word, "muszka," for bow-tie. She may have wanted to create the image of pinned bow-tie, but Herbert didn't.These choices, combined with some of her stylistic choices in English have the effect of creating a new poem in English, and not a very good one. ... Read more

Product Description

Available for the first time in English, Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems is an important collection from the late Zbigniew Herbert. Translated from the Polish by award-winning translators John and Bogdana Carpenter, these sixty-eight verse and prose poems span forty years of Herbert's incredible life and work. The pieces are organized chronologically from 1950 to 1990, with an emphasis on the writer's early and late poems.

Here Zbigniew Herbert's poetry turns from the public--what we have come to expect from this poet--to the more personal. The title poem, "Elegy for the Departure of Pen Ink and Lamp , is a three-part farewell ode to the inanimate objects and memories of childhood. Herbert reflects on the relationship between the living and the dead in "What Our Dead Do," the state of his homeland in "Country," and the power of language in "We fall asleep on words . . . " Herbert's short prose poems read like aphorisms, deceptively whimsical but always wise: "Bears are divided into brown and white, also paws, head, and trunk. They have nice snouts, and small eyes.... Children who love Winnie-the-Pooh would give them anything, but a hunter walks in the forest and aims with his rifle between that pair of small eyes."

Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems confirms Zbigniew Herbert's place as one of the world's greatest and most influential poets.

Indeed, the dead are seldom absent from these poems. Herbert describes theobjects in a still life as "violently separated from life." In theprose poem "Bears" even A.A. Milne's famous character becomes a potentialvictim : "Children who love Winnie-the-Pooh would give them anything, but ahunter walks in the forest and aims with his rifle between that pair ofsmall eyes." Herbert, who died in 1998, used a wide variety of poetic formsto explore the power of memory, the betrayal of the past, and the bondsbetween the living and the dead. Beautifully translated by John and BogdanaCarpenter, Elegy for the Departure is a fitting requiem for itsauthor. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

effortlessly intelligent lyric poetry
Herbert's spare poems have the elemental force of haiku. Those written in the context of Soviet Poland are also encoded--the multivalent language gives one the same thrill of Emily Dickinson-type riddles, with the additional excitement of secret messages passed to your hand through the Iron Curtain.Makes for marvellous reading.

A lovely collection by an unheralded master
Had Herbert hewed to the leftwing/socialist line, he would have won the Nobel Prize years ago. He didn't, however, and, like Borges, he was denied the prize in favor of much lesser writers. Thankfully he was honored by theIngersoll Foundation a few years before his death with The T.S. Eliot Awardfor Creative Writing, an award conferred for merit, not idealogy. Herbert's poems have an elegant austerity born out of his own privationsand the loss he experienced and witnessed for most of his life, first atthe hands of the Nazis, then the Communists.But he is not without hopeand humor.The book is divided into three sections: the first comprised ofearly poems, the second by a sequence of wry, lovely, surprising prosepoems, the last of latterday work.Among the outstanding pieces here are"A Small Bird" and the title poem, a magnificent farewell to artand to life that could well serve as Herbert's epitaph.Here's hopinghis name and work win the widespread attention they deserve.

Herbert deserves the acclaim he is finally getting.
While I havent read this book, I have read much of his earlier work, and certainly his poems are the genuine article.The Rain, Apollo and Mauryas are two quite wonderful pieces that combine emotion and intellect in a seldom-encountered way.Read him. ... Read more

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Blessed is the nation that in the course of a century could give the world two poets of Czeslaw Milosz's and Zbigniew Herbert's scope. Doubly blessed is the English-reader, for in this volume he gets Zbigniew Herbert's work rendered by Czeslaw Milosz: like the poor, or better yet like nature herself, Polish genius takes care of its own.

This collection is bound for a much longer haul than any of us can anticipate. 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 norethical discount, this poet, in fact, saves them frorn that poverty which every form of human eviI finds so congenial. As long as the species exists, this book will be timely.-- Joseph Brodsky ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

the mind of the poet
Herbert possesses an intelligence and wisdom that allows him to write about worldly as well as literary matters in a wonderfully penetrating way.His insights into landscape, history, people, places make this, as well as his other books of essays, a delight to read. I give this a 4 only because I like the other collections a little better.

As profound as his poetry, Herbert's Prose
I am embarrassed to admit it, but I had never even heard of Zbigniew Herbert until I read the New York Review of Books' article on him some months ago. Milosz and Szymborska were my main Polish "experience."Herbert's poetry opened new worlds and new understanding of my own cultural past (my mother's family came from Poland).This "little book," from its charming and self-deprecating title---a boomerang, a cross-cultural, linguistic pun--to its conclusion, a genuinely new look (new to me, at least) at old "places" and cultural presumptions.He made me re-think oh so many things. He lost me a couple times (he seems to know everything and read everything), but his sharp perceptions and love of all things human soon charmed me all over again.
This book gave me a glimpse into the person who became the poet Herbert.We all know how hard it is to find someone to go to museums with, to travel with, to talk over "what we did today."Z. Herbert is the ideal travel companion.And you get a glimpse into the mind and heart of a great poet. A charming side kick to his searing, compassionate and monumental poetry.He's not only a poet equal to any of the 20th century, he's a charming person you wish you had gotten to know when he was alive.A great read.(can think of no better small book to bring to the places he (the barbarian) finds in corners of the "garden."

Intelligence, wisdom, beauty
Zbigniew Herbert (died 1998) is counted among the finest poets of 20th century Poland, on a par with Szymborska and Milosz, world-famous Nobel Prize winners. This book of essays is a record of his journeys in France,Italy and the Netherlands: from the rock-paintings of Lascaux, through themedieval architecture of the great cathedrals, to the quiet consummateperfection of the Flemmish Masters. The rich meditation on art and life isyour reward for joining the eccentric and humane poet with his 19th centuryBaedekker guide. ... Read more

Product Description
In this work, Dr. Kraszewski has undertaken the analysis of the dramatic currents in the writings of Zbigniew Herbert, something that critics have up until now busied themselves with but slightly in comparison to the other genres in which the poet worked. There are relatively few works dealing with Herbert's dramas, while those touching upon his lyrics or essays are legion. Charles S. Kraszewski, the author of this book, has undertaken the analysis of the dramatic currents in the writings of Zbigniew Herbert, something that critics have up until now busied themselves with but slightly in comparison to the other genres in which the poet worked. There are relatively few works dealing with Herbert's dramas, while those touching upon his lyrics or essays are legion. Kraszewski has been fascinated with Herbert's writings for many years. The path he followed in order to embrace the literary output of this poet is industrious, moving, and worth our recognition. He first came across Herbert's poetry in the English versions of Czeslaw Milosz, after which he moved on to the Polish originals.Then, he himself began translating Herbert's poetry into his mother tongue, and finished by bringing over into English all of the plays mentioned in this book. The book which we now put into the reader's hands is the fruit of this work. Its six chapters treat the dramatic and theatrical works of Zbigniew Herbert. What differentiates this book from earlier treatments of the same topic is that Kraszewski understands that it is not only Herbert's works expressly written for the stage or the radio which possess dramatic elements and the possibility of realisation on stage. In the first chapter of his work entitled "The Phenomenon of Herbert on Stage", he seeks to introduce the reader to the other, non-dramatic texts of Zbigniew Herbert which have been exploited theatrically. Up until now, critics have passed over this characteristic element of Herbert's dramatic opus. Herbert was a poet, an essayist, and a playwright. But it is actually quite difficult to separate and differentiate his lyrical poems, essays and plays from each other according to their problematics and the themes they explore.For all of Herbert's writing constitutes one whole, and particular works differ amongst themselves only in a formal sense. Each lyric poem, essay, or play is one part of a larger whole. In each particular work we find the author's guiding principle unchanged. Likewise, each lyric poem, each essay, contains some drama, some human suffering. Hence arises their theatricality, their dramatic potential, which demands expression, demands transfer in a living contact with living people. The strength of these works operates with special force when the transfer takes place between a living actor and an audience of living spectators. A special type of theatre is created, which authenticates the theatricality of seemingly un-dramatic letters, in something like the realisation of T.S. Eliot's words when he claims that the most ideal medium of expression for poetry, and its best means of social usefulness, is the theatre. The very time in which the creator of Don Cogito was fated to live was dramatic. One had to choose a position and stand up for one's values. He expressed himself on this matter most fully in the verse "Przeslanie Pana Cogito" ("Don Cogito's Envoi").Herbert remained a free man, independent malgre tout, as he himself put it when asked about his life's motto. "The sense of suffering, the sense of collision with reality is all." One must "invest one's life with significance and make the sense of significance a general principle." And in art, to which he devoted himself all his life long, the most important thing was to help the human being find his own road through the artist's presenting him with his own spiritual experiences. Not only his poems, but his essays as well have their dramatic potential and these too were exploited for the stage. One such example is the "Obrona Templariuszy" "In Defence of the Knights Templar" of which Kraszewski speaks in detail in chapter one. I myself, in my long years as actor and director, have many times experimented with theatrical adaptations of Herbert's work not originally written for the stage, and from the "heap of broken images" dramatic works have arisen.Lately I have had the occasion to add one more work to the list of adaptations given in chapter one of this book: a play staged at the Stary Teatr in Krakow made up of poems, interviews and sung musical compositions based on Herbert's work entitled Przyjaciele odchodzq (My Friends are Passing Away). This play has enjoyed great public interest as well as positive critical reviews. However, the present book, in the main, is made up of penetrating essays dealing with all of the theatrical works per se of Zbigniew Herbert, that is, those which were written expressly for stage or radio production. These are five, and a separate chapter is dedicated to each. These essays constitute an overture to a fuller understanding of the problems contained in these dramas, from the author's critical point of view. Charles S. Kraszewski presents us with analyses of individual scenes, fragments, and entire dramas, engaging us as it were in a conversation, in which he expresses his understanding of the themes and associations found in Herbert's work. He insightfully studies and analyses the characters of the protagonists, and searches for a connections to the overarching thought and envoi of the poet.This book will be of value to all persons, casual readers and researchers, men and women of the theatre, all who hold dear and understand the value of the literary opus of Zbigniew Herbert, who is certainly one of the greatest names of XXth century literature, well deserving of a place beside T.S. Eliot and R.M. Rilke. This work also serves as an introduction to the content of the five dramas, and will certainly be welcome to a wide audience, especially those to whom Polish is a barrier to the original texts. For the author includes in his essays many key fragments of the plays themselves, citing them in both the original Polish and in his own English translation. This allows the reader a deeper entry into the structure of the plays, and should encourage him to approach the entire texts directly. Herbert's dramas differ from typical plays written for stage performance. They differ not only in their poetics, or their inimitable semantics and allusions. Herbert strives for maximum compactness; he is sparing, even severe. The plays are also short. Various "stage professionals" have complained that this makes their presentation in the normal two-hour theatrical timeframe impossible.Herbert answered such criticism with the following words: "The author is under no obligation to write a lot, to write profusively, but there does exist the obligation of writing to the point." In a 1991 television interview, he spoke thus of his dramatic works: They are quite peculiar as plays go...I have met with stage professionals (in Poland we have quite a few professionals: camera professionals, stage and film professionals, poetry professionals) and they told me, "Well, you know, the things you write are...first of all, short. Will you ever write a full-fledged production?" And I ask, what is a "full-fledged production?" They reply, "Well,...one that is two hours long, with two intermissions. And besides that, you don't have to start from important, serious topics - you have the tendency to begin with a sermon...'Cos you know, people are arriving from the cloakroom, they've got their candies, right? and the husband starts complaining to his wife that it's her fault they're late...So the first ten minutes, that's got to be about the weather, and then after that you can get the ball rolling..." And that's not the way I write.It is also interesting to note the reasons behind Herbert's decision to speak of various topics in a dramatic form. The plays often arose - as is the case with all of the poet's work, probably - as reactions to events, his own life, the lives of people close to him: Lalek was inspired by a very concrete event. The victim's mother approached me for help, and at her request I even began to write letters to the Tribune of the People1; I visited the /Home/ Ministry, told them that whoever killed the boy got off scot-free, with no result. The mother felt that a "writer" from Warsaw should be able to do anything. From my feelings of injustice, unrighteousness and my own inability to help arose this little play, for which I was paid. That's how it happens sometimes. I don't feel any moral absolution, but I couldn't do anything more...The Other Room deals with problems of living space...2 In a letter to young actors published in Teatr (Nr 4, April 1995), Herbert writes that the theatre is obliged to "stir up uneasiness."We must "force our neighbours to reflect on human fate, to the difficult love which we are obliged to devote to matters of great import, and also to contempt for all who, with a stubbornness better spent on more dignified matters, strive to beat down mankind and strip away his intrinsic value." Herbert once said that what intrigues him about theatre is its "strangeness": I arrive at the theatre with my own, manifold worries, and there on the stage I see: three sisters wandering about, moaning, complaining...it's Chekhov's Three Sisters. And I say to myself: what the hell do I care if they're going to go to Moscow or not? Let 'em go, or let 'em stay home! It's none of my business, right?...And then, suddenly, after about ten minutes or so, the fate of those three sisters becomes my business, frightfully so, and I do care, and in the process I forget about my own worries and cares. This is the catharsis of art, which works by adding misery to misery...And how does a work of art come to be created, according to Herbert? "Art is created by talent. Josef Brodski, standing in a filthy courtroom in Leningrad, testified quietly, that it comes from God." ... Read more

Product Description
This is the long-awaited translation of the volume Pan Cogito (Warsaw, 1974), now published in English translation as a full sequence of 40 poems for the first time. Writing of earlier volumes, the New Yorker said that `Herbert is one of the finest and most original writers of this century...a stubbornly idiosyncratic poet of isolation, disinheritance, and grief.' Mr Cogito acts as the award-winning poet's alibi, alias, persona, or as Seamus Heaney has said, `as a representative of the most courageous, well-disposed and unremittingly intelligent members of the species. This book is intended for admirers of Zbigniew Herbert; readers of poetry; libraries; universities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Poet for the Twenty-First Century
I reread "Mr. Cogito" recently, and I realized that, as all good poetry, it has not aged. Mr. Cogito is an Everyman, and he offers companionship to readers regardless of their location in time andgeography. His self-restraint is an admirable and comforting response tothe bewildering abundance of contemporary culture, and his modesty andpenchant for contemplation reassure us that "looking out for numberone" is not the most important thing in life. Truly a timeless book ofpoetry. ... Read more

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The leading Polish poet still residing in his native land, Zbigniew Herbert as not been the subject of a book-length study in English until now. Stanislaw Baranczak, himself a poet, critic, and translator, emigrated from Poland only in 1981, and is therefore eminently qualified to supply a politico-cultural context for Herbert while describing and analyzing the texts and themes of his poems.

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. Baranczak illustrates these oppositions by examining, first, the complex relations between "disinheritance" and "heritage" as they appear in Herbert's work on various structural levels, from symbolic key words to lyrical characters; second, the forms and functions of Herbert's "unmasking metaphor"; third, his uses of irony; fourth, his ethical system, which enables him to be both ironist and moralist. Baranczak pays special attention to irony as the most conspicuous feature of Herbert's poetic method.

A Fugitive from Utopia makes Herbert's poetic ideas fully accessible to the general reader, and will also be of interest to students of Polish literature, of East European culture and society, and of modern poetry. Those who have already encountered Herbert's poetry in one of the several translations into English currently available will welcome this lucid explication of his work.

Product Description
Zbigniew Herbert, one of the most notable poets living in Europe, was born in Poland in 1924, and fought in the underground resistance against the Nazis. ... Read more

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Hybrids of the short story and the essay, these prose pieces contest traditional interpretations of history and present Herbert's very different ("apocryphal") views. This new work of prose from the much celebrated Zbigniew Herbert--available for the first time in English--is a fascinating rewriting of myths and tales "as old and as simple as the world." In the title story, "The King of the Ants," Herbert considers the tension between humankind's "solemn idleness" and "progress-that treacherous force." Other pieces include a new reading of the old story about Alexander the Great hacking the great knot to bits ("The Gordian Knot"), an ode to the mythic suffering of "the catatonic of mythology" ("Atlas"), and a Chinese tale about the dangers of vanity and authority ("Mirror"). All of the pieces on "The King of the Ants" have been translated by John and Bogdana Carpenter, who have been praised for their "linguistic precision and poetic mastery" by "Choice."Amazon.com Review
Although he never quite attained the fame of his compatriots Czeslaw Miloszand Wislawa Szymborska, the late Zbigniew Herbert was one of the giants ofcontemporary Polish letters--not to mention European literature at large.His witty, superbly ironical verse flourished in the face of totalitariancensorship: indeed, with its overlay of parable, allegory, and deadpanallusiveness, it seemed almost to be nourished by the ideological obstaclecourse of 20th-century Poland. But Herbert was an equally gifted essayist.The pieces collected in Barbarian in the Gardenand Still Life with aBridle are wickedly intelligent and unfailingly humane. And evenwhen the author is letting loose with a satirical dart, his imaginationalways functions as "an instrument of compassion."

The King of the Ants combines his twin vocations. That is, these areshort prose pieces, which Herbert called "mythological essays." Yet theform itself--in which he takes apart the classic myths and expertly tinkerswith their innards--has the speed and epigrammatic suavity of his bestpoetry. Here, for example, is Herbert's take on Atlas, whom we might callthe king of mythological heavy lifting:

The whole character of Atlas, his entire being, is contained in the act ofcarrying. This has little pathos, and moreover it is quite common. Thetitan reminds us of poor people who are constantly wrestling with burdens.They carry chests, bundles, boxes on their backs, they push them, or carrythem behind, all the way to mysterious caves, cellars, shacks, from whichthey come out after a moment even more loaded, and so on to infinity.

Customer Reviews (1)

Go read Mr. Cogito instead
This is the first of Herbert's books I've read. I should probably have started with one of his more-acclaimed works. The essays in this book are urbane, literate, and ironic, but they're also extremely inconsistent. Though each is centered on a mythological figure, each jumps around a myriad of topics, only very casually touching on any of them.

Often I felt his mythological inversions were facile or far-fetched to the point of being irritating - maybe they had been leavened with a humor that was lost in translation. What remains is a tone that seems academic, ponderous, and occasionally repetitive to me, like a lecturer who likes too well to listen to himself speak, and makes sweeping statements that seem, on scrutiny, to be a load of hooey - "Two gifts that rarely come in pairs and are therefore considered contradictory: beauty and strength. Beauty . . . is content with itself, sure of its own rights, and can ultimately dispense with confirmation, a contest or wreath. The beautiful lead a quiet life and are rarely entangled in dramatic adventures." Prettily put, but you could negate every sentiment and declare the result with just as much authority. ... Read more