The Collected Poems (36 page)

“sogno/miracolo/crocifissione”:
dream/miracle/crucifixion.

Prayer of the Traveler Mr Cogito

Tarquinia: Italian city, site of the largest Etruscan temple known to history.

Corkyra: ancient name of the island Corfu.

“kato kyrie kato”:
Greek—“that way, sir, that way.”

In Memoriam Nagy László

László Nagy (1925–1978): a Hungarian poet; he translated Herbert's work but the two never met.

To Ryszard Krynicki—A Letter

Ryszard Krynicki (1943): prominent Polish poet of the “New Wave” generation of 1968 (with Stanisńaw Barańczak, Julian Kornhauser, and Adam Zagajewski), whose poetry in the
1970s and 1980s was characterized by harsh criticism and often satire of the Communist regime and its language. Also a distinguished translator and publisher.

Mr Cogito and Longevity

Hippoglossus vulgaris:
the halibut, known to live up to ninety years.

Lullaby

Ca d'Oro: fifteenth-century palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, properly Palazzo Santa Sofia, called the “golden house” because of the gilt and polychrome decorations on its exterior walls.

Photograph

Hypanis: now the Bug River.

Babylon

Petrus Christus (1420–1472 or 1473): Netherlandish painter, thought to have been a pupil of Jan van Eyck; his
Portrait of a Young Woman
now hangs in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie.

The Divine Claudius

Claudius (10 BCE–54 CE): became Roman emperor in 41 CE after the assassination of Caligula. Claudius invented three letters, which he proposed to add to the Roman alphabet, two of which served the function of the modern
W
and
Y.

Regicides

Dr Émile Régis: author of
Les regicides dans l'histoire et dans le présent,
published in 1890.

François Ravaillac (1578–1610): the assassin of Henry IV of France, captured immediately after the crime on May 14, 1610; under torture and interrogation, he denied acting with any accomplices. He was drawn and quartered on May 27, 1610.

Gavrilo Princip (1894–1918): Bosnian Serb nationalist, assassinated Prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, prompting the Austrian action against Serbia that led to the outbreak of the First World War. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison but died of tuberculosis at Theresienstadt in 1918.

Gregory Clement (1594–1660): English merchant and member of Parliament, appointed to the high court of justice in 1647, a signatory to the death warrant of King Charles. At the Restoration he went into hiding to avoid prosecution for regicide, but he was captured, sentenced to death, and drawn and quartered at Charing Cross on October 17, 1660.

Sante Jeronimo Caserio (1873–1894): Italian anarchist, assassin of the French president Marie-François-Sadi Carnot; he fatally stabbed the president of the Third Republic at a banquet on June 24, 1894, and was put to death by guillotine.

Mr Cogito and Maria Rasputin—An Attempt at Contact

“A certain Svetlana”: Svetlana Alleluyeva, the daughter of Joseph Stalin, published her memoirs
Twenty Letters to a Friend
in 1967.

Isadora Duncan

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927): American dancer and pedagogue who founded a dance school in Moscow in 1921. Duncan had a stormy relationship with the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin (1895–1925). She died in Nice, France, when her shawl caught in the wheel of the car in which she was a passenger.

September 17

On September 17, 1939, Poland was invaded and its eastern provinces annexed by Soviet troops, in accordance with the Soviets' agreement with Hitler, whose armies had attacked Polish territory from the west weeks before.

Józef Czapski (1896–1993): Polish painter and writer, captured by the Soviets and interned in a series of camps with a large number of fellow Polish officers, the vast majority of whom were executed at Katy? in 1940. After the war, having published an account of his wartime experiences in the Soviet Union,
On Inhuman Land,
Czapski lived and worked in Paris.

“painted lads”: a quotation from an anonymous army song of World War I.

The Power of Taste

Professor Izydora Dambska (1903–1983): Polish philosopher. Born and educated in Lwów, Dambska took part in underground university instruction during the occupation. She settled in Kraków after the war but was removed from her position at the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in the 1960s because of her critical stance toward Marxism.

Livy's Metamorphoses

“res tam foeda”:
a reprehensible matter after all.

The Nepenthes Family

“Jean-Jacques the Tender”: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

Blackthorn

Konstanty Jeleński (1922–1987): Polish essayist, editor of the Polish émigré journal
Kultura;
he fought with the Polish army of General Wtadyslaw Anders in World War II.

Mass for the Imprisoned

Adam Michnik (1946): Polish dissident, a leading figure of the Polish anticommunist movement in the 1970s and 1980s; now chief editor of the newspaper
Gazeta Wyborcza.
Author of several essay collections, including
Letters from Prison and Other Essays.

A Small Heart

Jan Józef Szczepański (1919–2003): Polish prose writer, reporter, and screenwriter, a soldier in the September 1939 campaign, and a resistance fighter during the German occupation.

Landscape

“prince of Parma”: Alessandro Farnese, sixteenth-century regent of the Netherlands, known for his cruel persecution of Dutch insurgents against Spanish power.

Journey

This poem begins with a nearly exact quotation from Constantine Cavafy's poem “Ithaca.”

Kalambaka, Orcho menos, Kavalla, Levadia: Greek towns.

Wit Stwosz: The Dormition of the Virgin

Wit Stwosz (c. 1447–1533): German sculptor who came to Kraków in 1477 to design the Dormition altarpiece for St Mary's Cathedral.

Leo's Death

“a bright clearing”: In Russian
yasnaya polyana,
the name of Leo Tolstoy's estate.

“Nation shall rise against nation …”: from Luke 21: 5–38.

To Henryk Elzenberg on the Centennial of His Birth

Henryk Elzenberg: see note to “To Marcus Aurelius.”

“dialectical frauds”: in 1950, Elzenberg was forced to withdraw from his teaching position at the university in Toru?, having refused to adapt to Marxist-Leninist doctrine. He continued to conduct a private philosophy seminar at his home.

The Book

Ryszard Przybylski (1928): Polish literary critic, author of many articles on Herbert's poetry.

Pacific III (on the Peace Conference)

This poem was written in 1950 and constitutes an ironic commentary on the Second World Peace Congress organized in November 1950 by communist authorities in Warsaw. It was part of a sequence which, for political reasons, could not be published at the time.

Wolves

Maria Oberc: A fellow Lvovian, Maria Oberc became a friend of both Herbert and Professor Izydora Dambska and one of Herbert's most regular correspondents.

Many wartime partisan groups who fought the Nazi occupation in Poland also fought against the communists taking control after the war.

Buttons

“the crime”: The murder of tens of thousands of Polish officers and civilians by the NKVD during the war, most infamously at Katy?. Captain Edward Herbert, the son of Herbert's paternal uncle Marian Herbert, perished in one such mass execution.

Clouds over Ferrara

Maria Rzepińska: Polish critic and historian of art.

A Postcard from Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski (1945): poet and essayist, prominent member of the “New Wave” of Polish poets; author of, among other works,
Without End
and
A Defense of Ardor.

“Das war sehr schön … das war wirklich sehr schön”:
“That was very beautiful, Mr Zagajewski.”

“Really very beautiful.” “Thank you.” “My pleasure.” “That was really very beautiful.”

“drzewo”— “der Baum”:
tree.

“obtoki”—“die Wolken”:
clouds.

“stońice”—“die Sonne”:
sun.

Mitteleuropa

Alexander Schenker (1924): literary scholar, professor at Yale University.

To Piotr
Vujičič

Piotr Vujičič was a Serbian translator of Herbert's work.

“white City”: Belgrade.

Dinosaurs' Holiday

Jan Adamski (1923): friend of Herbert's from his student days; actor and writer.

To Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000): Israeli poet; he and Herbert met in the Netherlands in 1988.

A Mirror Wanders the Road

Leopold Tyrmand (1920–1978): Polish writer and an old friend of Herbert's.

“Svetlana”: Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alleluyeva.

Cheka: secret police in the early years of the USSR.

Khodasevich

On its publication in Poland this poem caused a scandal: it was read as a description not of the Russian poet and émigré Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939) but of the poet Czeslaw Milosz.

Dmitri Merezhkovsky (1865–1941): Russian literary critic.

Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945): Russian poet, married to Merezhkovsky.

Mr Cogito on a Set Topic: “Friends Depart”

Wladyslaw Walczykiewicz: friend and at one time roommate of Herbert's.

Mr Cogito's Appointment Books

Zbigniew Zapasiewicz: a well-known Polish actor who often recited Herbert's poetry on stage.

Rovigo

“a play by Goethe”: perhaps
Clavigo.

Dalida

“Dalida”: Yolande Christina Gigliotti (1933–1987), Egyptian-born singer, popular in France and Poland.

“Halina Kunicka (b. 1938), Irena Santor (b. 1934)”: Polish singers.

Two Prophets. A Voice Test

Rapallo: In April 1922, Germany and Russia signed the treaty of Rapallo, in which they granted each other favorable trading status and Russia gave up its demands for war reparations.

Flowers

“For whom are these lavish gifts”: echoes a poem by the Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584),
“Czego chcesz od nas, Panie, za twe hojne dary”
(“What would you have from us, Lord, for your lavish gifts”), Hymn XXV 1562.

The Last Attack. To Klaus

Klaus Staemmler, a translator of Herbert's work into German, suffered from Parkinson's disease.

Mr Cogito. Ars Longa

Krzysztof Karasek (1937): Polish poet, translator, and essayist.

Pica Pica L.

Jan Twardowski (1916–2006): Catholic priest and poet.

Song

Zbigniew Kuźmiak, a friend of Herbert's, was executed by the NKVD during the Soviet occupation of Lwów in 1939–1941.

Chess

In May 1997, the reigning world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, lost a six-game match against IBM's supercomputer, Deep Blue.

“hallali”: fanfare played on the hunting horn to signal a kill. Used by Joseph Haydn in
The Seasons
(1801).

Phone Call

Thomas Merton (1915–1968): American mystic and poet who entered the Trappist order in 1941. He was profoundly influenced by Zen Buddhism. Merton died in an electrical accident in Thailand.

“naplevat”:
(Russian) to hell with it; who cares? Literally, “spit.”

Thomas

Father Józef życiński (1948): archbishop and theologian.

In the City

This poem echoes a poem by Czeslaw Milosz written in 1937, “In My Homeland,” which begins: “In my homeland, to which I won't return/there is an enormous lake in the forest.”

High Castle

Leszek Elektorowicz (1924): poet and translator from Lwów.

“High Castle”: hill near Lwów with a view of the city.

Józef and Teofil: Józef Kapuścinski (1818–1847) and Teofil Wiśniowski (1806–1847), leaders of the Galician insurrectionist movement in 1846, were condemned to death by the Austro-Hungarian authorities and hanged on July 31, 1847, in Lwów, on the hill now known as Execution Hill (Góra Stracenia); in 1894 an obelisk was erected to commemorate their deaths.

Artur

Artur Międzyrzecki (1922–1996): poet; fought with the Polish army in the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in May 1944.