'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'

“[H]e gave us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.” 

A timely, guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece each time he goes to work. Good writers spoil us. They teach us how to read their work and disappoint us when they appear to ignore their own lessons. Marius Kociejowski writes above of Zbigniew Herbert and cites “The Envoy of Mr. Cogito” and “Elegy of Fortinbras.” The latter is among the first of Herbert’s poems I read, more than half a century ago. Fortinbras is the practical man, unlike Hamlet who “believed in crystal notions not in human clay.” Herbert has him say:

 

“Adieu Prince I have tasks a sewer project

and a decree on prostitutes and beggars

I must also elaborate a better system of prisons”

 

With such poems, Herbert enters the company of Montale, Cavafy, Mandelstam and Auden. In his poem “The Stag,” dedicated to Herbert, Kociejowski writes:

 

“We were nothing in ourselves nothing more.

If you must blame, blame those who merely watched

And who were brothers to none but themselves.

Were they not summoned as we were summoned.”

 

Herbert was born on October 29, 1924, in Lviv (Lvov, Lwów, Lemberg, Lwihorod, Leopolis), then part of the Second Polish Republic, now in Ukraine.

 

[Kociejowski’s essay on Herbert, “A Meeting with Pan Cogito,” is collected in The Pebble Chance: Feuilletons and Other Prose (Biblioasis, 2014). “The Stag” can be found in his Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2019).]