SOURCE: Carpenter, Bogdana. “Zbigniew Herbert, the Poet as Witness.” The Polish Review 32, no. 1 (1987): 5-14.

In the following essay, Carpenter argues that Report from the Besieged City (1983) provides a compelling example of poetry as testimony, with a unique ability to relate more recent events to a broad historical framework.

The unusual intensity of political life in Poland during the last eight or ten years has had an impact on literature and created a new sense of social obligation among writers and intellectuals. I use the word “obligation” rather than the romantic but worn-out term “mission,” or the more contemporary terms “commitment” or “engagement” that have become suspect since their use by Jean-Paul Sartre. The sense of social obligation was shown in direct political activity, and the best example was the creation in 1976 of the well-known Committee for the Defense of the Workers (KOR). It also resulted—and this bears...