Вибрані поезії

by Zbigniew Herbert, Збіґнєв Герберт, Віктор Дмитрук (Translator)

До книжки ввійшли поетичні твори одного з найвидатніших поетів сучасної Польщі, життєвий шлях якого розпочався у старовинному Львові. Переклади вибраних творів здійснено за поетичними збірками, перевиданими у 1992-1998 роках Видавництвом Дольношльонським (м. Вроцлав)

Genres: Poetry

567 pages, Hardcover

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

[John Carpenter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The selection of poems is excellent, the translations by three highly regarded translators of Herbert's work are exact and faithful to the Polish originals. Written by one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
The bilingual format--facing texts in Polish on the left, English on the right-- permits an English-speaking reader knowing a little Polish to enter into the texture and thought of a truly remarkable poet.

[Bert van der Vaart · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gift! Herbert's selected poems, taken over a 42 years, reflect powerfully the course of history in Poland as it suffered through the gray and meanness of Socialism and emerged into the uncertain freedom of Poland in 1998. He was never willing to write in the socialist-realistic style required on Poland under the influence of Stalin, which limited what he was able to publish and where until Stalin's death in 1956. During that time, he had to support himself across a range of menial jobs, which no doubt helped him to realize what life was like in the "Peoples' Republic" better than many of the elites who had accommodated themselves to the regime in order to remain part of the cultural elite.

Herbert's poems are filled with powerful images, but with a crystalline freshness and perceptivity. As with good Polish opera during Poland's partition, there are a number of allusions to the then current issues of the day, but with eternal eigenvectors. Thus he writes an ode to Marcus Aurelius with clear allusions towards the Soviet oppression:

"...heaven is talking some foreign tongue
this the barbarian cry of fear
your Latin cannot understand
Terror continues dark terror
against the fragile human land."

One of his characters, Pan Cogito (literally Mr. I think), embodies the tensions as Poland goes through its era of gray. In one passge:

"Mr. Cogito
would like to be the intermediary of freedom
to hold the rope of escape
to smuggle the secret message
to give the sign
to trust the heart
the pure impulse of sympathy
but he doesn't want to be responsible for what
will be written in the monthly "Freedom"
by bearded men
of faint imagination
he accepts an inferior role
he won't inhabit history"

While my Polish is not fluent, I really enjoyed the bi-lingual version. as it allows the reader to see some of the brilliant word plays Herbert used:

"senat obraduje nad tym
jak nie byc senatem"

Or "the senate is deliberating
how not to be a senate"

In 1983, in "Report from a Besieged City", he writes

"...we look in the face of hunger the face of fire face of death
worst of all--the face of betrayal
and only our dreams have not been humiliated."

As Poland's socialism finally moved towards its own place in the dustbin of history, Herbert writes
"Elegy for the Departure of (ink) Pen, Ink and Lamp", a beautiful and half-nostalgic poem about the Poland that is passing (this written in 1990). One line in particular is worth mentioning:

"I never believed in the spirit of history
an invented monster with a murderous look
dialectical beast on a leash led by slaughterers."

There are so many brilliant images, and so many pithy reflections, I feel like wandering through this book again. Like all great poetry, it is best read a poem at a time. But as a history of what it must have felt like to exist in Poland between WWII and the final fall of socialism in 1990-1991, and possibly what the imperfection is in life before heaven, Herbert and the poems published in this book, I doubt anything else could be better.

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second collection of selected poems I’ve read by Zbigniew Herbert. The first was primarily translations by Czeslaw Miłosz. The friend who first recommended Herbert to me took a look at my copy and notes that it was missing alot of the poems that Herbert wrote about a character, Mr. Cogito. They then lent me this book. This has a selection of the poems I’d already read, but the majority of the book was poems translated by John & Bogdana Carpenter. Within these new poems were many of the ‘Mr. Cogito poems’ and they were wonderful. This was a delightful collection to read through - though I didn’t (couldn’t) read any of the Polish versions on the left pages. My favourite poems from this collection were:

The seventh angel (Peter Dale Scott)
Pebble (Czesław Miłosz)
Anything rather than an angel (Miłosz)
Report from paradise (Miłosz)
The Abyss of Mr. Cogito (J & B Carpenter)
Hakeldamq (Carpenter)
Mr. Cogito tells about the temptation of Spinoza (Carpenter)
Mr. Cogito on upright attitudes (Carpenter)
Mr. Cogito - the return (Carpenter)
Mr. Cogito and the imagination (Carpenter)
To Ryszard Krynicki - a letter (Carpenter)
Mr. Cogito and longevity (Carpenter)
Eschatological forebodings of Mr. Cogito (Carpenter)
The monster of Mr. Cogito (Carpenter)
Clouds over Ferrara (Carpenter)
The calendars of Mr. Cogito (Carpenter)

[Matt McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a friend who speaks Polish recommend this after seeing I had his collected on my shelf (but she's a non-native speaker of Polish, so I don't know how that changes things). I loved the collection, but I can't say whether its the translation or just Herbert's brilliance. These selections leave out his prose poems for the most part. For some reason, these read a little more prosaically than the translations in the Valles' collected. Usually that would be a dig, but it worked here. This also had the original Polish on the facing page (not that I could read it, but it's cool to compare nonetheless).

[fiksacje♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wciąż wracam i wracam, szczególnie do Pana Cogito. Wciąż nie rozumiem, ale wracam po więcej. Jest w tym niezrozumieniu jakaś zagadka, którą odkrywam dopiero po czasie. Serdecznie miłuję.