He was one of the most important Polish poets and writers of the 20th century, with his works translated into dozens of languages. His nonconformist stance during the totalitarian regime in the Polish People’s Republic became a point of reference for independent circles. Despite his outstanding artistic achievements and international recognition, he remained very private. “I invented Mr. Cogito to speak for me because I really don’t like direct confessions,” he admitted.
by Jan Hlebowicz
Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924, in the multinational city of Lwów (now in Ukraine). He was almost the same age as the “war generation” poets Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, Tadeusz Gajcy, and Andrzej Trzebiński. During World War II, while Lwów was occupied first by the Russians and then by the Germans, Herbert suffered a personal tragedy – his younger, twelve-year-old brother died of appendicitis. At sixteen, Zbigniew had already written two poems, one of which he considered brilliant. “I believed that to save my brother, I had to sacrifice something most precious to me. So I burned the poems […]. The little one died in my arms,” he recalled years later. A few months after his brother’s death, escaping another Soviet invasion of Lwów, the Herbert family moved to Krakow. “Herbert’s life had a distinctly tragic dimension. It was marked by personal suffering, the illness he battled, and also by various, truly complicated twists of fate, starting with the fact that his youth occurred during the war. Exile and suffering in various dimensions constantly appear in his biography,” said Professor Andrzej Franaszek, the poet’s biographer.
On a Completely Different Subject
After earning a degree in economics from the Krakow Academy of Commerce, Herbert became involved with the informal Logofago Club, modeled after Oxford debating societies. The members discussed issues outside the Marxist canon. Many later prominent Krakow intellectuals were members of this elite group. Herbert attended these meetings and took part in discussions. “It turned out that he was also interested in literature, poetry […], and not only in double-entry bookkeeping, accounting, and business correspondence,” said the poet’s friend Tadeusz Chrzanowski. Around the same time, Herbert decided to continue his education, beginning law studies at Jagiellonian University, which he completed at the Faculty of Law and Philosophy of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. “He was different from most students—those from Vilnius were typically ‘in a frenzy.’ They were direct, open, and willing to confide in others and make friends. The people of Lwów, like Herbert, were also warm, but less so, coming from a completely different mold,” remembered Irena Sławińska, a professor from the Nicolaus Copernicus University. In 1951, Herbert moved to Warsaw and made his debut in the weekly Dzień i Jutro, published by a circle led by Bolesław Piasecki and aligned with the communist authorities. He also occasionally collaborated with Tygodnik Powszechny and Słowo Powszechny, where he published poems under the pseudonyms Patryk and Stefan Martha. Herbert consistently avoided the Marxist press. “It exceeded my aesthetic possibilities and clashed with my sense of humor,” he claimed.
He increasingly withdrew into silence and “internal emigration.” He lived in difficult conditions for several years, sharing a small apartment on Wiejska Street with twelve subtenants. He earned a meager sum from the Disabled People’s Cooperative and “Peatprojekt.” “Herbert is not yet thirty, slim, not tall, a bit frail. He looks like a schoolboy, dresses poorly and modestly but neatly, and has a small, funny face with a turned-up, cheerful nose and kind, bright, smiling eyes […]. Of course, he lives in exemplary poverty, earning a few hundred miserable złoty as a calculator timekeeper in some disabled people’s cooperative. The cheerfulness with which Zbyszek endures this toil after completing three faculties is reminiscent of hagiographic parables from the first centuries of Christianity,” writer Leopold Tyrmand wrote in his “Diary 1954.” He may have embellished a bit but he did not entirely deviate from the truth either.
Herbert’s Masterpiece
After the political thaw in 1956, generally known as the Polish October, Herbert published his debut collection of poems Struna światła (String of Light). This literary success improved his living conditions, allowing him to travel to Italy and Greece, as well as to Germany, France, and the Netherlands. What captivated him most about discovering new places? “To land in the evening in some city, I don’t know but have a feeling about, one I’ve read about. To put my suitcases in a hotel room and immerse myself in the city. It is an adventure, almost like love. Discovering the streets, the architecture shrouded in mystery at night, and my nocturnal wanderings during my first visits – it was like absorbing the city into myself. It is one of the forms of dialogue with the world,” he said in one of his radio recordings. Herbert referred to architecture as “art made of fantasy and stone.” He held it in even higher regard than music or even literature. Herbert’s expeditions resulted in his volumes of famous essays “Barbarian in the Garden” and “Still Life with a Bridle.”
Drawing on the symbols and traditions of Mediterranean civilization and the Christian culture of Europe, Herbert posed questions about the spiritual condition of modern humanity. He published several more volumes: Hermes, Dog, and Star, Study of the Object, Inscription, and finally, most notably, Mr. Cogito. “This is Herbert’s masterpiece, the most perfectly composed volume of his poetic books, and also […] at the time of its publication changed the way Polish readers thought about its author,” assessed Professor. Franaszek. In the preface to the Italian edition of Herbert’s poetry, Joseph Brodsky wrote: “In poems, he makes his case not by raising the temperature, but by lowering it—until his lines, his stanzas – like a metal fence in winter – start to burn when touched.”
Herbert’s reputation began to grow in Europe and around the world. He received numerous prestigious international awards, including the Kościelski Foundation in Geneva (1964), the Internationaler Nikolaus-Lenau-Preis (1965), and the Gottfried-von-Herder-Preis (1973). Herbert was a serious contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature for decades. His works have been translated into dozens of languages.
“He wrote what he wanted, did what he wanted, traveled modestly, yet to the world’s most beautiful corners, read his favorite works, viewed masterpieces in museums, and studied various subjects […]. So, there were reasons for him to feel his life was happy, but it was clearly not enough. He was tormented by anxiety and always returned to Poland when something was happening here. The fact that he relied on alcohol to “bolster himself” mentally is reprehensible to many, but on the other hand, it speaks to his moral sensitivity because it is difficult to be fully happy in times of such rampant evil, lies, poverty, and injustice,” said Joanna Siedlecka, the poet’s biographer.
It Has A Negative Ideological Influence
The poem The Envoy of Mr Cogito became an anthem for the burgeoning opposition movement in Poland, in which Herbert played a significant role. He was one of the signatories of the so-called “Letter of 17” (signatories), demanding leniency for members of the independence organization “Ruch.” He also defended the Kowalczyk brothers, who had been convicted of blowing up an auditorium in Opole on the eve of the anniversary celebrations in honor of the Citizens’ Militia and the Security Service. He also edited “Letter of 15,” demanding that Poles living in the Soviet Union be given access to Polish culture. When proposed changes to the constitution sought to include the leading role of the Polish United Workers’ Party and eternal friendship with the USSR, Herbert signed “Memorial 59” in protest.
Due to his pro-democratic activism, Herbert was under constant surveillance by the security service. They surrounded the poet with a network of agents. They installed a whole network of wiretaps in his apartment in Warsaw’s Mokotów district. This way, the Security Service gained full access to Herbert’s social life, contacts, and conversations. One of the surveillance reports described him as someone who: “with his attitude, exerts an ideologically negative influence on the creative attitudes of young adepts of writing, which is reflected in the antagonism of the young literary community towards socialism.”
The communist security services were particularly interested in the poet’s foreign travels and the state of his health. “They closely monitored his stays in psychiatric clinics, where he was treated for depression and alcohol addiction, as well as his hospital visits for several surgeries. Intelligence officers kept a watchful eye on him even when he traveled abroad solely for treatment,” wrote Joanna Siedlecka. “Information is collected to be used. It is possible that it was the secret service that added fuel to the fire, spreading meticulously collected rumors about Herbert’s mental illnesses. They were conducting a smear campaign […] discrediting him, particularly in the West, and undermining his career and chances for the Nobel Prize,” the reporter assessed.
Politically Incorrect
In 1986, the literary community was outraged by an interview with Herbert in Hańba domowa (Domestic Disgrace) by literary historian, critic, and writer Jacek Trznadel, which examined writers’ attitudes during Stalinism. In the interview, Herbert criticized fellow writers such as Kazimierz Brandys, Tadeusz Konwicki, and Jerzy Andrzejewski, who had once been involved in communism. “Of course, his statement was outrageous because he did not believe in any refined, sophisticated self-justifications, in metaphysics, or appeals to Pascal’s nights and Hegel’s bite (because it was not Hegel who bit, but Berman), or fascination with ideology – although I was arguing here – instead he believed only in fear, opportunism, cynicism, pride and material motives: the privileged status of the communist engineers of souls,” said Prof. Trznadel years later.
Following the publication of the interview with Herbert, the government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, responded in the communist newspaper Trybuna Ludu, claiming that “only a mentally ill person could have written this.” Even after the breakthrough of 1989, Herbert did not mince his words, critically referring to the political changes in Poland. He openly supported lustration and decommunization. For this reason, he was attacked. Aleksander Małachowski, a former oppositionist and politician, criticized the poet’s views at the time, writing in the article The Second Face of Herbert: “How can we explain the phenomenon of Herbert, who, in addition to his talent, received wisdom from God, and suddenly revealed himself to us as a Bolshevik propagandist? When he steps into the journalistic arena, he shows us the dull face of a Chekist.”
In the last years of his life, despite being gravely ill with asthma, Herbert did not give up participating in political life. He organized a fundraiser to help Chechnya, which was at war with Russia. He wrote an open letter of support for the Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev, whom Moscow did not recognize. Herbert also demanded that President Lech Wałęsa rehabilitate Colonel Ryszard Kukliński and signed petitions to reopen the investigation into the death of Stanisław Pyjas, a student most likely murdered by the Security Service. He also called for the declassification of their files up to 1956.
While the poet was vocal about his controversial views on Polish socio-political matters, he remained fiercely protective of his private life. “He was discreet, reserved, and not prone to personal revelations. He did not publish diaries that facilitated an understanding of his inner world, instead shrouding himself in a cloak of irony, the armor of heroism, the figure of Mr. Cogito. In his few interviews, he deflected questions, escaped […]. He remained a mystery, an enigma,” emphasized Joanna Siedlecka.
Herbert passed away on July 28, 1998, after a serious illness. Those familiar with his work claimed that he seemed to have choreographed his own death. His final volume of poems, Epilogue of the Storm, was aptly named, as a storm raged over Warsaw—with thunder and lightning—on the day of his passing.
