Zbigniew Herbert
| Zbigniew Herbert | |
|---|---|
Zbigniew Herbert
|
|
| Born |
29 October 1924 Lwów, Poland |
| Died | 28 July 1998 (aged 73) Warsaw, Poland |
| Resting place | Powązki Cemetery |
| Occupation | Poet, essayist |
| Language | Polish |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Notable awards |
Order of the White Eagle Austrian State Prize for European Literature Herder Prize Jerusalem Prize |
Zbigniew Herbert ['zbiɡɲɛf ˈxɛrbɛrt] (29 October 1924 – 28 July 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement, Home Army (AK), during World War II, 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 String of light was issued in 1956), soon after he voluntarily ceased submitting most of his works to official Polish government publications. He resumed publication in the 1980s, initially in the underground press.
He was a distant relative of the 17th-century Anglo-Welsh poet George Herbert.
Herbert was educated as an economist and a lawyer. Herbert was one of the main poets of the Polish opposition to communism. Starting in 1986, he lived in Paris, where he cooperated with the journal Zeszyty Literackie. He came back to Poland in 1992. On 1 July 2007 the Polish Government instituted 2008 as the Year of Zbigniew Herbert.
Herbert's ancestors probably had some English roots and they came to Galicia from Vienna. The poet's father, Bolesław (half-blooded Armenian), was a soldier in the Polish Legions during World War I and a defender of Lwów; he was a lawyer and worked as a bank manager. Herbert's grandfather was an English language teacher. Zbigniew's mother, Maria, came from the Kaniaków family.
Before the war Zbigniew Herbert attended the Państwowe VIII Gimnazjum i Liceum im. Króla Kazimierza Wielkiego we Lwowie (during the Soviet occupation the name was changed to High School nr 14). After the German and Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation of Lwów, he continued his studies at the secret meetings organized by the Polish underground, where he graduated and passed the A-level exam (matura) in January 1944. At the same time, (following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939) he probably got involved in conspiratorial action with the AK. During the occupation, he worked as a feeder of lice in the Rudolf Weigl Institute that produced anti-typhus vaccines; he also worked as a salesman in a shop with metal articles. After his A-level exam, he began Polish philology studies at the secret University of Jan Kazimierz in Lwów but had to break them off as a result of moving to Kraków (spring 1944, before the invasion of the Soviet Red Army in Lwów). Lwów after the war became a Ukrainian Soviet city, no longer within Polish borders. Its previous Polish population had been expelled. The loss of his beloved hometown, and the following feeling of being uprooted, were important motifs in his later works.
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