Herbert, Zbigniew

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A Balancing Act
Porcupine
At last, the collected poems
Ironic and beutiful
A Unique Voice - Understated and All knowing

The Collected Poems: 1956-1998
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: Ecco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060783907
Release Date: 2007-02-06

Book Description

Every great poet lives between two worlds. One of these is the real, tangible world of history, private for some and public for others. The other world is a dense layer of dreams, imagination, fantasms. It sometimes happens...that this second world takes on gigantic proportions, that it becomes inhabited by numerous spirits, that it is haunted by leo Africanus and other ancient magi. </p>

These two territories conduct complex negotiations, the result of which are poems. Poets strive for the first world, the real one, conscientiously trying to reach it, to reach the place where the minds of many people meet; but their efforts are hindered by the second world, just as the dreams and hallucinations of certain sick people prevent them from understanding and experiencing events in their waking hours. except that in great poets these hindrances are rather a symptom of mental health, since the world is by nature dual, and poets pay tribute with their own duality to the true structure of reality, which is composed of day and night, sober intelligence and fleeting fantasies, desire and gratification. </p>

There is no poetry without this duality.... </p>

And this is the common vector of all Herbert's poetry; let us not be misled by its adornments, its nymphs and satyrs, its columns and quotations. this poetry is about the pain of the twentieth century, about accepting the cruelty of an inhuman age, about an extraordinary sense of reality. And the fact that at the same time the poet loses none of his lyricism or his sense of humor—this is the unfathomable secret of a great artist. </p>

—from the introduction by Adam Zagajewski (translated by Bill Johnston) </p>

Customer Reviews:

A Balancing Act.......2007-06-08

I purchased this book as soon as I saw it. Although I am not as disappointed as Mr. Dobyns (a wonderful writer himself), early on I did take a number of poems and place them side by side with their respective John and Bogdana Carpenter translations. (Although I don't know Polish, I had sensed something.) Dobyns is right; the Alissa Valles translations are flat and stiff in comparison. Considering Zbigniew Herbert is not only one of the most original poets of the last century but also one of the weightiest, this testament to his life's work falls short. However, it is a great pleasure to have even a reasonable facsimile of his collected poems. Even in the hands of inept translators, Herbert's poems can shine.

Porcupine.......2007-05-29

These are awful translations. Alissa Valles hardly knows Polish and her English is clumsy and graceless. These translations of one of the greatest modern poets are a terrible disappointment. Why Daniel Halpern, the publisher, chose Valles instead of John and Bogdana Carpenter, who had published a number of excellent books of Herbert translations with the same press (Ecco) is mind-boggling. Valles has taken a great poet and turned him into a minor poet. It is unlikely that a new collected poems will be published in English for many years and to have the Halpern/Valles edition stand as the only collected poems is like having Popeye stand for Michelangelo. Michael Hofmann's hard review in the May 2007 POETRY is the only accurate review. Simic's review in the New York Review of Books has good information about Herbert, but is otherwise useless. DO NOT BUY this book before reading Hofmann's review. Believe me, I have been reading and teaching Herbert since the early 1970's and Alissa Valles' translations are a travesty. What Herbert predicted in his prose poem, "Episode in a Library," has come true: "Now as I watch the death of the words, I know there is no limit to decay. All that will be left after us in the black earth will be scattered syllables. Accents over nothingness and dust."

At last, the collected poems.......2007-04-10

I teach comparative literature with an emphasis on twentieth century poetry, and over the years I've seen the western world's slow recognition of eastern european writers. I've also seen the immense influence (salutary, I might add) they've had on contemporary American poetry. Clearly, Zbigniew Herbert is one of the giants of that literature and now at last we have all his poems in one book. An occasion for celebration!

Ironic and beutiful.......2007-03-22

Outstanding poetry, ironic and classical. A must have, must experience, will mean a lot for you.

A Unique Voice - Understated and All knowing.......2007-03-12

Herbert was a unique poetic voice. One needs to live with him over time. Every new book of his added wisdom. Having them collected is a candy story for one who believes in life, has felt its blows, but has Herbert to share the continuing yes belief. He is post-cogito and still standing. Don't just buy this book. Experience it

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Selected Poems
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: Ecco
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0880010991

Book Description

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.

<DIV ALIGN=RIGHT>-- Joseph Brodsky</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>

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Intelligence, wisdom, beauty

Barbarian In The Garden
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156106817

Book Description

Ten lyrical and passionate essays on the culture, art, and history of Western Europe written from the perspective of the post-Stalinist thaw of the 1960s.

Customer Reviews:

Intelligence, wisdom, beauty.......1999-03-06

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 the medieval architecture of the great cathedrals, to the quiet consummate perfection of the Flemmish Masters. The rich meditation on art and life is your reward for joining the eccentric and humane poet with his 19th century Baedekker guide.

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Go read Mr. Cogito instead

The King of the Ants
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Collected Poems: 1956-1998
Barbarian In The Garden

ASIN: 0880016183

Amazon.com

Although he never quite attained the fame of his compatriots Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, the late Zbigniew Herbert was one of the giants of contemporary Polish letters--not to mention European literature at large. His witty, superbly ironical verse flourished in the face of totalitarian censorship: indeed, with its overlay of parable, allegory, and deadpan allusiveness, it seemed almost to be nourished by the ideological obstacle course of 20th-century Poland. But Herbert was an equally gifted essayist. The pieces collected in Barbarian in the Garden and Still Life with a Bridle are wickedly intelligent and unfailingly humane. And even when the author is letting loose with a satirical dart, his imagination always functions as "an instrument of compassion."

The King of the Ants combines his twin vocations. That is, these are short prose pieces, which Herbert called "mythological essays." Yet the form itself--in which he takes apart the classic myths and expertly tinkers with their innards--has the speed and epigrammatic suavity of his best poetry. Here, for example, is Herbert's take on Atlas, whom we might call the king of mythological heavy lifting: <blockquote> The whole character of Atlas, his entire being, is contained in the act of carrying. This has little pathos, and moreover it is quite common. The titan reminds us of poor people who are constantly wrestling with burdens. They carry chests, bundles, boxes on their backs, they push them, or carry them behind, all the way to mysterious caves, cellars, shacks, from which they come out after a moment even more loaded, and so on to infinity. </blockquote> Herbert is no less intrigued by Antaeus, who went head to head with Heracles himself in a celebrated wrestling match. On one hand, he tries to visualize the actual bout, taking his clues from accounts by Plato, Pindar, and the Renaissance miniaturist Antonio Pollaiuolo. But it's the metaphorical implications of the match that really get him going--the way it reverses our usual image of victor and vanquished. His subject, he reminds us, "had to overcome the concept, deeply rooted in us all, of what we call high and low, the elevation of the victor and the throwing of the defeated down into the dust. For every time Antaeus was lifted up, it meant death for him." In the author's hands, these musty figures become almost alarmingly contemporary--and entertaining. And while he never weighs down his essays with philosophical ballast, they do contain more than their share of casual wisdom. Like the philosophers he mentions in the title essay, Herbert too had "the not very tactful habit of teaching others how to live." --James Marcus

Book Description

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."

Customer Reviews:

Go read Mr. Cogito instead.......2002-06-08

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.

Still Life With a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas
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Still Life With a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas
Zbigniew Herbert , John Carpenter , and Bogdana Carpenter
Manufacturer: Ecco Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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In Still Life with a Bridle, poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artisitic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland. These sixteen essays reveal Hervert's discriminating artistic eye and poetic sensibility, one that revels in irony, humor, and a satirist's appreciation of the absurd. An inveterate museum-goer, he focuses on the art of the Dutch masters, using it as a stepping-off point for a thoroughly individual and entertaining examination of the foibles, genius, and character of the Dutch people as a whole. The result is an unorthodox and revealing glimpse into the past that gives us a keener understanding not only of a distant people, but of ourselves as well.

The King of the Ants: Mythological Essays

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The King of the Ants: Mythological Essays
Zbigniew Herbert
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effortlessly intelligent lyric poetry
A lovely collection by an unheralded master
Herbert deserves the acclaim he is finally getting.

Elegy For The Departure
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: Ecco
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John Keats, in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn," first described scenes of sylvan revelry before proclaiming, "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." In "Fragment of a Greek Vase" Zbigniew Herbert takes a different lesson from the ancient world. Describing the image of a dead Greek soldier, he writes: <blockquote> he has closed his eyes
renouncing the world
leaves droop in the silent air
a branch trembles touched by a shadow of flying birds
and only the cricket hidden
in Memnon's still living hair
proclaims a convincing
praise of life </blockquote> Herbert's world-view was indelibly shaped by two events: the Nazi invasion of Poland when he was 15 and the subsequent Communist takeover after the war. His poems are filled with elegiac images of a gentler past juxtaposed with the grim realities that replaced them. In "Three Poems by Heart" he writes first of "the children in our street / scourge of cats / the pigeons-- / softly gray" and then later comments, "the children on our street / had a difficult death / pigeons fell lightly / like shot down air." And in "The Ardennes Forest" even descriptions of wild strawberry leaves and ripening wild pears cannot erase the deeper associations with that place of wartime slaughter: "a charred cloud / forehead branded by black light / and a thousand lids pressed / tightly on motionless eyeballs."

Indeed, the dead are seldom absent from these poems. Herbert describes the objects in a still life as "violently separated from life." In the prose poem "Bears" even A.A. Milne's famous character becomes a potential victim : "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." Herbert, who died in 1998, used a wide variety of poetic forms to explore the power of memory, the betrayal of the past, and the bonds between the living and the dead. Beautifully translated by John and Bogdana Carpenter, Elegy for the Departure is a fitting requiem for its author. --Alix Wilber

Book 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.

Customer Reviews:

effortlessly intelligent lyric poetry.......2007-04-06

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.......1999-06-29

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 the Ingersoll Foundation a few years before his death with The T.S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing, an award conferred for merit, not idealogy. Herbert's poems have an elegant austerity born out of his own privations and the loss he experienced and witnessed for most of his life, first at the hands of the Nazis, then the Communists. But he is not without hope and humor. The book is divided into three sections: the first comprised of early poems, the second by a sequence of wry, lovely, surprising prose poems, the last of latterday work. Among the outstanding pieces here are "A Small Bird" and the title poem, a magnificent farewell to art and to life that could well serve as Herbert's epitaph. Here's hoping his name and work win the widespread attention they deserve.

Herbert deserves the acclaim he is finally getting........1999-04-13

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.

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Report From The Besieged City
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: Ecco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Selected Poems
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ASIN: 0880010940

Mr. Cogito (Modern European Poetry Series)

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A Poet for the Twenty-First Century

Mr. Cogito (Modern European Poetry Series)
Zbigniew Herbert
Manufacturer: Ecco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Eastern European | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0880013303

Customer Reviews:

A Poet for the Twenty-First Century.......2000-01-04

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 and geography. His self-restraint is an admirable and comforting response to the bewildering abundance of contemporary culture, and his modesty and penchant for contemplation reassure us that "looking out for number one" is not the most important thing in life. Truly a timeless book of poetry.

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The Paris Review 121, Winter 1991
Harold / Price, Reynolds / Minot, Susan / West, Paul / Hall, Donald / Herbert, Zbigniew / Tomlinson, Charles Brodkey
Manufacturer: 1991
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NZR9AG

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