Biography Essay

In many ways Zbigniew Herbert is a paradigmatic twentieth-century Eastern European poet. His life and poetry, like the fate of his native country and the history of the region, were indelibly marked by the experiences of World War II and of communism. Herbert responded to the nihilism and destructiveness of twentieth-century history and politics with moral intransigence. His respect for concrete, sensory reality made him suspicious of all philosophical systems based on transcendence and of all ideologies that serve as a screen for seizing power and for oppression. His system of values, deeply rooted in European tradition, was based on honor, loyalty, dignity, stoicism, and compassion. To convey his moral message with full force, he strove for a severe and unambiguous style stripped of embellishments; but his aesthetic sensibility counterbalanced his stern moralism, and the result is a poetry that is stylistically rich and sophisticated. Herbert's...