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- On July 28, 1998, Zbigniew Herbert dies
- he is considered one of the greatest poets beginning after the war and next to Czesław Miłosz, the most important claimant to the Nobel Literary Prize
- . 19659002] The book, as the author himself says, is not written "kneeling", rather tries to understand Herbert in all the complexity of his humanity
Kantown poet – such a picture of Zbigniew Herbert is held by someone who briefly studies his poetry. The love of antiquity and the Mediterranean tradition. Respect of the European masters of the pen and the canvas. Attention to details, precision, artistic distance. Even Stanisław Grochowiak once scribbled the author of "Mr Cogito", calling him an "image maker", building a "mosaic of words". What a difference between Herbert's style and the brutal and uncompromising language of the first volumes of his contemporary Tadeusz Różewicz
But to know Zbigniew Herbert, you have to go further. The task of Andrzej Franaszek, who published this year the biography of the author of "Barbarian in the Garden" in two large volumes, has put a lot of effort into this task. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest Polish poets of the twentieth century. It's worth looking at these different stories. And see the poet in all the complexity of his personality.
Pedigree Paradoxes
The name of Herbert would have Welsh roots. Andrzej Franaszek cites the words of a written biography to publish the poems of the author of "Lord Cogito" in the West: "My male ancestors came from England and were religious emigrants who, in their many country married a German, Austrians I emphasize this fact because, feeling like a Polish writer – and even an old-fashioned patriot – I can not justify with a genealogy. "He mentions elsewhere that his ancestors had to emigrate from England of the seventeenth century, fleeing persecution as self-proclaimed Catholics.
The romantic mentions of the ancient and eventful history of the Herberts have certainly awakened the imagination of readers and perhaps even the poet. But his most expensive city for Zbigniew Herbert has always remained Lviv, in which he came into the world. The poet grew up in a cultural melting pot, where Poles, Ukrainians, Jews and Armenians lived. He missed this multiculturalism after 1945. His greatest love? Grandmother. Armenian. Even Katarzyna Herbert admitted that no other woman in the poet's heart could compete with her.
But traveling in Herbert's footsteps on the map, we encounter another paradox. In the background, the story of Catholic fugitives, then education in a Polish and strongly patriotic spirit in a multicultural Lviv, and finally nostalgia for Mediterranean culture. Apparently, Herbert could not live without a trip. "The personal life was complicated, and the most important thing was the gradual obscuration of the emotional key.In the simplest language, the author of the Second Chamber is more often tormented by the depression, anxiety, he drinks more and more, the price he pays for the lines of poems, especially himself, but also his loved ones, becomes more and more important, "writes Andrzej Franaszek
in a violent and unpredictable way.First, the darkest background of depression, darkness and fears, then an unexpected change – attacks of euphoria, awakening In bipolar disorder, formerly known as cyclophrenia or manic depressive psychosis, the depression phase is the most expensive for the patient, the manic phase – for the environment.The first is the despair and inability to act, the second – the unexpected Isability and Madness
Zbigniew Herbert was unable to write either during depression or at the stage of madness. When after the dark days of pain and fears came the phase of excitement, the poet was unable to concentrate. The treatment? At that time, little was known about bipolar disorder, and American psychiatrist Ronald Fieve was just beginning to implement a revolutionary therapy for lithium treatment in the United States. Many artists have suffered from comics, including Wojciech Młynarski in Poland. Fieve was convinced that bipolar disorder was suffering from political figures as important as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosvelt or Winston Churchill.
The biographer of Zbigniew Herbert notes in his interviews that the production of the author Barbarian in the Garden is relatively modest. . Zbigniew Herbert had to wrest his poems from his illness. To raise ups and downs of despair and doubt, wait for times of madness. It is only when peace came that you could write. Who knows, maybe the tonic and toned language of the poetry of Mr. Cogito's author is born from the need to calm down? Recover the clarity of the mind in times when the illness is extinct
The Seducer
The first love of the young poet was the elderly wife and married Herbert mysteriously called Muz. According to the sources quoted by Andrzej Franaszek, their turbulent and dissatisfied feeling was marked by doubts, skirmishes, dramas, which it was not always difficult to weave. Katarzyna Herbert confessed to Jacek Żakowski that her husband has written to Muses throughout his life. Maybe of the feeling of guilt that he left him?
Herbert, especially in the early years, did not have an attractive physiognomy. Round face, unusual features, stocky construction. "When I saw him, he made me laugh a little" – said Katarzyna Herbert. But the author of the train Fortinbras was seduced. Above all, poetry, although Zbigniew Herberna points out, is never his. He recited Miłosz, Gałczyński, Czechowicz and Wierzyński. When asked about his poems, he replied that he did not know them by heart. The relationship of Catherine and Zbigniew before the marriage lasted a long time, marked by breaks and returns, tries to tighten or relax the relationship – it is by one, on the other side . When, after years, Herbert decided to declare, the future wife accepted the offer with astonishment. "Zbyszek is Zbyszek" – she said. It was hard to understand what was pushing him. We know that he had a lot of lovers and never hid them. Maybe he was not handsome, but he had a gift of seduction.
Zbigniew Herbert
"I like to compare Zbigniew Herbert to a cat." He was extremely gracious, in his case it was intelligence, charisma, but he was gallant, he could adore women, s in remembrance, listen to them, which is not so common among men. And he really had a lot of relationships, he let people down and there were also men who worshiped him up to a certain point – Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, Konstanty Jeleński, had a soft spot for him, but as the cat came down from those knees and somewhere he walked "- said Andrzej Franaszek in the program" Reservation "by Katarzyna Janowska
A poet is appropriate?
It's bad when politicians try to put artists on their banners, even worse when they use their creativity for their own games.This happened in the case of Zbigniew Herbert in the nineties.His work and his vision of the world were tried to flatten useful slogans at that time in the right camp
That's why Katarzyna Herbert decided to give an interview to Jacek Żakowski in December 2000. It's a touching conversation because both parties do not do not hide their scene from this meeting. They know that difficult, uncomfortable, often painful topics need to be addressed. "Mr. Jack, I'm also scared of this conversation, but it must finally take place, it can not be postponed anymore, we need to right things, explain them, say, because people do not understand , it weighs on me, people appreciate Herbert, what he wrote, but they also have a grudge about what he sometimes said, especially at the end of his life: "It takes to understand who was Zbigniew Herbert, "explains the widow of the poet Franszek Franszek in the program of Katarzyna Janowska: I would even say goblets which he had been trained in the 90s to escape, and for many people, especially the youngest who remember him from this period, Herbert looks at his public statements which accuse him very harshly he speaks, advocates lustration, often in right-wing writings, I would say that Herbert was rather a conservative from the right (…) He was very attached hey to Polish tradition and Polish history, there is no doubt, but that does not mean that he has anything to do with nationalism. And that now nationalistic-radical youth could take quotes from his poems on the banners. God forbid. It is not a question of making a right or a leftist with Herbert, but of seeing him as a real man in all the complexity of his views. "
Mr. Cogito
" be careful, however, dumy niepotrzebnej / look in the mirror your błazeńską twarz / Repetition: One called me – were not you better? "
Recalling a fragment of the poem" Message of the Lord Cogito ", I have no doubt that I quote one of the poignant poems of post-war Poland Andrzej Franaszek assures that the collection" Pan Cogito "is The Chief Herbert, among his poetic books, the most beautifully composed volume, and (…) at the time of publication, changing the way Polish readers think about its author. "
The poet himself same, the legendary Cogito in a letter to Aleksander Schenker from 1969 in our critical age and critical times. "Herbert served as alter ego expressionist of the poet's thought, which at the same time would give respite to the persistent and sometimes embarrassing pronoun "I". Mr. Cogito was a kind of medium between the poet and the reader and the guarantor of distance. What else deserves to be known about Mr. Cogito? From the biography written by Andrej Franaszek, we learn that for Herbert, Mr. Cogitbył "a representative of a generation of men born in the third decade of the twentieth century, (…) entering into the world. the age of late maturity, and how it goes in this age: mainly defeats. "
If we were convinced by the school that Herbert's alter ego is a literary and philosophical creation, created as a result of the struggles of poets with Descartes, once again reach the poems from Herbert Zbigniew. We will see that Mr. Cogito has a face that he closely observes in the mirror and that he hates. It's a "clownish" face marked by ugliness or at least vagueness. Mr. Cogito himself masochistycznie laughs. He feels tired, burned, lost in his doubts. But is this the reason to suspend the weapons and stop the fight?
May your sister Pogarda
not let you go for the cowardly cowardly cowards – they will win [1965-9034] they will go to your funeral and spread a raised bump
Polished Biography
(… )
Be Faithful Go
– they sound marked by the bitter self-deprecation of the lyrics of one of Herbert Zbigniew's most shocking poems.
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