Polish Poetry Unites is a new video series for anyone interested in literature, history and reading. In each episode Edward Hirsch, a distinguished American poet, and the president of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, will introduce a celebrated Polish poet to American audiences. Ed Hirsch compares Zbigniew Herbert to W.H. Auden or T.S. Elliot as a point of reference for American audiences. He says “Americans should read him because we have such a poor sense of history. But also, because Herbert is interested in universal truths, he’s interested in what he calls universal compassion.” He sees Herbert as a timeless poet, an avant-garde classicist, one who searches for moral values in both art and philosophy from all eras of history. Herbert was born in Lviv which was Polish at the time, then Nazis invaded, and after Nazis communists came, so Herbert had to defy two totalitarianisms. During the cold war times, for Polish citizens was extremally difficult to travel abroad. Herbet, on shoe-string budget ..” did whatever he could to be able to go and see the old masters. So that he could go to travel to the museums, so that he could go to Lascaux. So that he could go to Orvieto. So, he could travel to Holland and see the world that he wanted to see of the Dutch masters. Not just to go and see museums, but to see the country itself. because he was continually testing what he saw in the present with what he knew from the past.” In the video the landscapes Herbert drew during his travels, as well as ancient Greek art that inspired him, serve as a backdrop to Hirsch’s words. Edward Hirsch says: “(Herbert) invented a figure called mister Cogito, which is based on Descartes, I think therefore I am. and Mr. Cogito is a kind of Polish everyman, […] In “Report from the Besieged City” there’s a poem called “Mr. Cogito and the Imagination”, and there’s a moment of found poetry in this poem that I think tells you a lot about Herbert’s project. Because there are things that Mr. Cogito doesn’t know or wants to think about to the very end. Some of those things are historical and personal, like the dreams of Mary Stewart the night before she’s executed, or the dreams of the last Aztecs. That is not only when a person is being destroyed, but when a whole civilization is being destroyed, what do people think about?” Herbert was also a non-fiction writer. Two books of his essays were published during his lifetime in the U.S.: “Barbarian in the Garden” in 1962 and “Still Life with a Bridle” in 1993. Both books were written thanks to his travels. Moderator: Edward Hirsch Director: Ewa Zadrzyńska Cinematography: Jacek Mierosławski Editor: Anna Jędrzejewska Executive Producer: Bartek Remisko Learn more: https://instytutpolski.pl/newyork/2022/12/29/zbigniew-herbert-a-timeless-poet/
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