Zbigniew Herbert's Attack against Myth [Volume: 3(1984), pp. 221-234]

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT'S ATTACK AGAINST MYTH
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The poem "Altar" describes a bas-relief depicting a sacrificial procession; the
stone has been broken, and the break coincides with that between past and
present, present life continuing the same events portrayed by the sculptor:
here is a the bas-relief-if you can guess
perhaps the offering wasn't liked by the eternal gods
or the reluctant moisture of duration removed the human forms
you don't know which of your words and what form (perhaps insignificant)
the wrinkle of stone preserves-not what you secretly think
and you don't know whether they choose blood and bones or perhaps
an eyebrow...
Therefore, despite his distance from the past the poet can conduct a
dialogue with it; and in the poem "To Marcus Aurelius" he can stretch out
a hand to Marcus, a gesture suggesting the possibility of mutual understanding.3 There can be relevant communication between the barbarian
reality of our own times and the wisdom of antiquity. Herbert extends a
"chord of light" that reaches over the abyss.
As Herbert continued to write he insistently questioned this closeness
and the nature of experience itself. Numerous poems in his subsequent
collections are those of a moralist, for example the well-known "Knocker"
from Hermes, pies i gwiazda (Hermes, Dog and Star, 1957); and this
ethical concern affects Herbert's relationship to experience, requiring him
to distance himself from those versions of it that are untrue, inaccurate,
or destructive. Experience and reality are less a single entity and more a
field of struggle, subject to diametrically opposed interpretations. The
poem "Three Studies on the Subject of Realism" is divided into three parts,
the first two presenting contradictory attitudes toward both art and reality.
The first describes a group or school of artists, ostensibly painters, who
interpret their role as necessarily affirmative; they are optimistic, gentle,
make liberal use of fantasy, and are basically yea-saying. The second part
describes artists who are social critics: harsh, discontented, debunking,
severe. Herbert himself adopts a third attitude: that of a moralist who sees
reality in its ethical dichotomy of both black and white, and for whom
truth is a function of a moral judgment. This attitude will characterize all
of Herbert's writings-it might be labeled ethical realism.
In the prose poem "The Sacrifice of Iphigenia," the burning of
Iphigenia on a sacrificial pyre is seen from five equally vivid but different
points of view: that of Iphigenia herself, of Agamemnon, of HippiasIphigenia's fiance-of Calchas, and of the chorus. On first reading, all five
of the points of view seem equally "justified" by their circumstances and
particular psychological perspective. In fact, however, only Iphigenia's