WRITER

Zbigniew Herbert

1924 - 1998

Zbigniew Herbert

Zbigniew Herbert (Polish: [ˈzbiɡɲɛf ˈxɛrbɛrt] ; 29 October 1924 – 28 July 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s (a volume titled Chord of Light was issued in 1956), soon after he voluntarily ceased submitting most of his works to official Polish government publications. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Zbigniew Herbert has received more than 207,049 page views. His biography is available in 35 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 33 in 2019). Zbigniew Herbert is the 1,861st most popular writer (up from 2,108th in 2019), the 276th most popular biography from Ukraine (up from 297th in 2019) and the 38th most popular Ukrainian Writer.

Memorability Metrics

210k
Page Views (PV)
56.71
Historical Popularity Index (HPI)
35
Languages Editions (L)
3.47
Effective Languages (L*)
4.10
Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Pan Cogito

This is the long-awaited translation of the volume Pan Cogito (Warsaw, 1974), now published in English translation as a full sequence of 40 poems for the first time. Writing of earlier volumes, the New Yorker said that Herbert is one of the finest and most original writers of this century...a stubbornly idiosyncratic poet of isolation, disinheritance, and grief.' Seamus Heaney has said, as a representative of the most courageous, well-disposed and unremittingly intelligent members of the species. libraries; universities.

1974

Korespondencja

2002

Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie

1962

The Collected Poems

Poetry

A new translation of poetic works by the Polish Nobel Prize candidate includes pieces from his entire body of work, from String of Light to Epilogue of the Storm, in a volume that offers insight into his perspectives on such topics as imagination, art, and exile.

20055 / 5

Raport z oblężonego miasta i inne wiersze

Fiction

Poems deal with the ethical need to discover and portray the truth, the power of propaganda, and the experience of political repression

19835 / 5

Selected poems

Poetry

Blessed is the nation that in the course of a century could give the world two poets of Czeslaw Milosz's and Zbigniew Herbert's scope. Doubly blessed is the English-reader, for in this volume he gets Zbigniew Herbert's work rendered by Czeslaw Milosz: like the poor, or better yet like nature herself, Polish genius takes care of its own. This collection is bound for a much longer haul than any of us can anticipate. For Zbigniew Herbert's poetry adds to the biography of civilization the sensibility of a man not defeated by the century that has been most thorough, most effective in dehumanization of the species. Herbert's irony, his austere reserve and his compassion, the lucidity of his lyricism, the intensity of his sentiment toward classical antiquity, are not just trappings of a modern poet, but the necessary armor--in his case well-tempered and shining indeed--for man not to be crushed by the onslaught of reality. By offering to his readers neither aesthetic norethical discount, this poet, in fact, saves them frorn that poverty which every form of human eviI finds so congenial. As long as the species exists, this book will be timely. -- Joseph Brodsky

1968