ABSTRACT
Like Milosz and Brodsky, Seamus Heaney regards Zbigniew Herbert as that poet who ‘can still muster a sustaining half-trust in man as a civilizer and keeper of civilizations’ despite his experience of horrendous history. Following the lead of Seamus Heaney’s presentation of Zbigniew Herbert, this discussion focuses on the image of the Polish poet as a ‘keeper of civilization’. While illuminating Herbert’s work, Heaney’s perspective is also largely consistent with the critical material on this poet available in English. During the Second World War, in reaction to social, political, and physical change in Poland, Herbert responded with an ‘insistence on a clear moral stance which can resist the fluctuations of history and ideology’. The thematic connections between Herbert’s poems are strong. Herbert developed his ethical-aesthetic sense from his experience of contemporary history, his knowledge of world history, and his inherited literary tradition. Heaney’s angle is coterminous with the critical material available on Herbert in translation.
