The Collected Prose

by Zbigniew Herbert

  Human memory is like a scribe laboriously setting down letters while his left hand erases the text of the past. Every generation knocks together its own apocalypse and utopia and, confident in its own powers, believes its utopia and apocalypse will come off exceptionally well, unlike any other, will be final.

  Against the rules of ancient poetics, the satyr play came before the tragedy; the second, final photograph is truly macabre. It moves us to pity and disgust. The body of the leader who stood at the head of the procession, an athletic, powerful body, but devoid of life, hangs on the flagpole of a gas station, head down. That is his ultimate mockery of a speaker’s platform. He was stretched out there an hour before midnight on April 28, 1945, at Piazza Loreto in Milan—and so not far from the place where the march began. The circle had been closed.

  But had it really? We would like to think so. But what to do with that curious psychic mechanism in us that makes the origins of evil merely a source of lighthearted amusement, whereas the end, always cruel and bloody, makes honest souls strew oblivion’s dry flowers on the graves of the authors of catastrophe?

  1986

  SINOPE

  IN ANTIQUITY SINOPE was a Greek colony laid out on the shore of the Black Sea, and in the course of its tumultuous history it passed successively into the hands of the Persians, the Macedonians, the King of Pontus1, Rome and Byzantium, finally becoming a Turkish city of a few thousand inhabitants. Nothing indicated that it would enter human language, that is to say human memory. The city’s name became the synonym for a kind of paint and for a specific process in painting—on which more in just a moment.

  When I think of sinope I think of Pisa and its square of Miracles—its splendid ensemble of Romanesque religious architecture, emerging from the thick grass of the white Baptistery, the Cathedral and Leaning Tower and the Campo Santo—a closed area where they strewed holy earth from Golgotha, brought to Pisa in the time of the crusades—so the dead would be nearer to heaven. On the left hand, if you face the Cathedral, there is the only museum of sinopes in the world. It has its origins in a dramatic event of the last war.

  It is a hot afternoon toward the end of July 1944. Things are nearing an end in the Italian theater of war. The allies on the Ligurian coast are trying to silence the German artillery on the left bank of the Arno. A badly-aimed shot, and a stray grenade hits the Campo Santo. The building collapses in a cloud of smoke.

  The locals act to put out the fire in extremely adverse circumstances, under gunfire and in the absence of a water supply. During the feverish rescue of frescoes, the layer underneath is laid bare, representing drawings—sinopes. They were sketches drawn directly on the walls, the first phase in the creation of a wall painting.

  This raises the question of why the artists of the thirteenth century did not use paper for this purpose, as did the painters of the Renaissance—Raphael, for example. Well, paper was expensive in those days, so they made their sketches directly on the wall, then covered them with paint. The fresco technique required very rapid decisions and execution. The paint dried quickly on the wall surface and made any correction impossible. So this was a blessing in disguise. The fire in Campo Santo allowed us to deepen our knowledge of the technique of the thirteenth century painters, to discover something that was supposed to remain hidden to us—forever.

  1990

  DAVID

  DAVID WAS BORN into a wealthy family of merchants and artisans in the district of Saint-Antoine in Paris. From childhood onward he wanted to be a painter and only a painter, and he became one, the most renowned painter of eighteenth-century France.

  After his studies he is awarded the Prix de Rome and travels to the dreamt-of Eternal City for a longer period of study, following the artists of that time, to complete his education.

  But heaven turns out to be a hell. The thousands of churches and bas-reliefs crush the young artist with their stony weight. He cannot distinguish a copy from an original, a valuable from a valueless thing—for no one can—nor can he place that vast quantity of ancient works in time. He reads Winckelmann, copies marble sculptures and is in despair.

  Nevertheless, he paints his first classic work—Brutus, an exaltation of love of the fatherland. Brutus condemns to death two of his sons accused of treason. The scene shows the somber hero of the “holy crime” in the foreground, the two bodies carried home by lictors and a group of despairing women. A painting of large dimensions, life-sized figures; the severe, bitter coloring gives the story a dark majesty.

  From Rome David returns to Paris. He is now a recognized artist and receives portrait commissions from the aristocracy; it must be said that his full mastery is revealed not in his huge canvases but precisely in these portraits. The big scenes make a big impression and are lauded, the portraits are more modest and always excellent.

  The Revolution erupts and David throws himself body and soul into the whirlwind of revolutionary events. He is given a state commission for the celebration of the oaths in the Jeu de Paume1—the memorable event universally regarded as the beginning of the revolutionary changes. The painting was never finished.

  Elected a member of the National Assembly, he devotes himself enthusiastically to its work: he battles against the Academy of Fine Arts as the seat of aristocratic artists, plans national celebrations and burials of heroes, works in the police division of the Assembly, speaks eagerly, emphatically and without talent. He paints little.

  His best painting from that period is Marat. The people’s friend, murdered by a young woman. His naked body lies in a bathtub, his head wrapped in a towel, the unmoving pen of the defender of human rights in his dead hand. It is the most magnificent icon of revolution.

  After Robespierre’s downfall his friend David is arrested and briefly imprisoned.

  Napoleon appears, greeted with enthusiasm by David—who becomes the Emperor’s painter. He paints a portrait of him on horseback at the moment of crossing the Saint Bernard Pass (in fact the god of war crossed the pass on an ox) and the famous coronation, a huge painting with dozens of life-sized figures, so large you could ride a horse around in it.

  Napoleon’s downfall. David has to leave France, he is after all a regicide (he voted for the decapitation of Louis XVI). He settles in Brussels in an aura of fame, surrounded by pupils. He paints portraits and mythological scenes promising a new era. He dies the most celebrated painter in Europe, in a blaze of success. He is eighty years old.

  What to say of this artist, who has been called the Raphael of the sansculottes? He displayed no Roman hardiness in life and often changed his convictions. But he remained true to his art.

  Must an artist be a hero, or is it sufficient that he paint heroes?

  1990

  ALTICHIERO

  THE WHOLE BUSINESS borders on a scandal. With the exception of a few specialists, virtually no one knows Altichiero’s name, and it is difficult really to say what is the reason for the neglect.

  It may be because the corpus of his works is small, because he worked as if in the shadow of Giotto’s powerful personality. Whatever the causes, we must finally break the conspiracy of silence.

  Not much is known about Altichiero’s life, and his main body of work is in one place in Padua, in the basilica of San Antonio and the nearby oratorium of San Giorgio. He worked with the painter Avanzo1 and it is hard to distinguish what is his from what came from Avanzo’s brush.

  In the terrible Basilica of San Antonio in Padua, which is like a holy circus, the one chapel that inclines a visitor to contemplation is decorated with frescoes by Altichiero representing the Crucifixion.

  How the master managed to create serious, exalted, outstanding work amid the surrounding funfair of color will remain his secret. An Altichiero fresco is original through and through. Its power resides not merely in the composition or the artistic means employed but chiefly in its spiritual force, unequaled among other artists of the trecento.

  The cross in the center, around it the figures of horses and a crowd
of onlookers. It is a crowd entirely indifferent to the event, like an ordinary village gathering—a woman tugging a child by the arm, on the left, soldiers casting lots for Christ’s garments. It is reminiscent of Brueghel, who came so much later, and his method of portraying important events against the backdrop of an indifferent human landscape.

  The frescoes in the San Giorgio oratorium languished in a state of utter decay for centuries (in Napoleon’s time it was used as a stables). They are a great cycle of knightly stories from the life of Saint George, and they also contain scenes of the martyrdom of Saint Clare and Saint Catherine. Giotto stems entirely from the Franciscan spirit, not only because he is the illustrator of the legend of St. Francis, but also in his essence—the somewhat sweet, feminine spirit of the Poveretto. Altichiero on the other hand comes from the spirit of Dante—stern, knightly, metaphysical.

  It often happens that a great discovery in the sphere of art history is the work of writers, not historians. That was the case with the discovery of the superb Dutchman Vermeer, which was made by a French journalist and writer in the nineteenth century.

  I have tried my strength so that Altichiero might finally be granted his proper place among the most excellent of artists. And belated fame.

  1990

  FOR THE ROAD

  1. WHAT DO we give a boy going off to school for the first time, a boy with a face spotted with freckles, still wavering between the warm family den and the icy, alien breath of the world? The boy tries to escape into a dream, struggles through the thicket of childhood along white paths of delight and anxiety to the Realm of Gentle Giants, but his mother’s long, powerful fingers extract him from the cocoon and strap on his little boots with his white knee-socks and blue uniform—a visible sign that from now on he will serve. On his back, rattling mysteriously as if a family of mice lived in it, is a real oilcloth school-bag.

  They stand in the open doorway and with a somewhat ceremonial gesture the mother puts into the boy’s coat pocket a paternal handkerchief smelling of starch and the steam iron, so that he may cover his face with it, for nobody from now on must see his fear when he is overcome with despair.

  2. What do we give a girl going off to her first ball, to the great ceremony of initiation into a three-fourths rhythm, to a lottery whose stake is life, to that hall festooned with colored lights, full of the wailing of violins, the laughter of the xylophone and the hearty assent of the drum and bass?

  Mother gives the girl a batiste handkerchief with a monogram, a white scrap of thick cloth made of silk and mist, asking her never to part with it.

  So the girl holds the batiste handkerchief like a spray of elderblossom when she dances, presses it to her burning cheeks; at times it trembles in her extended hand like a call for help.

  When she steps out on the terrace with her most faithful dancing partner, to take in a little moonlight, she touches the hankie to her lips to whisper away that terrible word her sweaty boy isn’t ready to hear, unprepared as he is for chains, quite happy with what fate is doing with him right now.

  In a corner of the hall filled with the noise of lights, sparkling with hope, three black witches are throwing dice for the girl’s batiste handkerchief, and her head.

  3. What do we give that young man—a hunter with thick stubble on his face who has come by his home for a moment buttoned up tight in his uniform? He moves clunkily, with a jangling noise.

  Well, he has got involved in an adventure intended as a jolly morning shooting party, a contest of youthful bravery, a jump onto a horse, a jump across a stream in pursuit of the indescribable, precious taste of victory. It was only supposed to last a few days, but in the meantime—Mother looks at his stranger’s eyes withdrawing to the back of his head. She is silent. The rifle in the corner inhibits conversation.

  So she wraps an image of the Mother of mothers—an oval pocket-sized relief made of mother-of-pearl—in a starched and clean peasant handkerchief; an item full of good intention and insufferable color. She puts the little viaticum in the pocket of his uniform. Maybe he’ll keep it safe. And if he doesn’t, it will help them to identify him and carry him back home in a pine box on a wagon.

  1997

  THOMAS

  WE DON’T KNOW whether Thomas got it from the Greeks—which is profoundly doubtful—or whether his doubt was an inborn character trait. Skepticism is a certain cast of mind.

  When the Master appeared for the second time among the Apostles at supper, Thomas demanded an autopsy. The marks on the hands were from his point of view only a secondary proof; he directed his full attention to the wound in the side.

  The scar was relatively fresh. The wound inflicted with a sharp instrument between the seventh and eighth rib was three fingers wide. Its regular shape was reminiscent of a mouth, a silent mouth, and had beyond all doubt been inflicted by an expert with a sure, dry stab, removing the spear blade by the same path immediately after the blow was dealt, without causing additional tearing of the skin or effusion.

  Thomas approached the wound cautiously with his long indicator finger, as if entering a lion’s den. With his fingertip he examines its depth, the vault and shape of the walls. It resembled, as we have said, a mouth open in a cry. The whole time Thomas’ face was tense, full of a cold ecstasy. His wrinkled brow was like an evenly ploughed field. He was master of the empirical.

  Caravaggio drenched the scene in golden light and bronze shadow thick as a bear’s fir, but in fact it was all done as if in the middle of a laboratory, in garish light flayed of all skin, like tin white with the addition of ethereal blues and yellows.

  When Thomas was dying, his lips were moving constantly and his pupils thought he was praying and confessing his sins, especially the greatest of sins, lack of faith.

  When one of the pupils bent over him, he heard that Thomas, called Didimos, was counting.

  1997

  EVIL1

  1. MY FIRST encounter with evil.

  By all means.

  It is 1926, in Rymanów2. Summertime: in the early morning I went out by myself (escaping from the house) heading for the garden of Dr. Tarnawski. On the way back, on the path (a bright ocher), the black fur of a mole. I realize the mole is dead, though I don’t really realize what that means, dead.

  Dead, and thus evil. So much for the first encounter, which was based on an image, and thus on seeing, which is not subject to intellectual measures—induction and deduction. 2. So I went on living without any metaphysical conflict over the fact that both evil and good exist in the world, battling each other; to me it wasn’t a scandal or a paradox, a painful absurdity, or something that attacks the very essence of God, His omnipotence. 3. Philosophy is not only a theory of everything, but also and above all a practical indication of how to live. Now one may live, albeit not very comfortably, with a shallow consciousness. On the condition that it is not a solution but a Cartesian method of building temporality.

  Evil always appeared to me as embodied evil, always with a human face.

  The practicality of that point of view:

  a) It is easy to recognize,

  b) It is easy to point out and consequently to choose what is good and reject what is evil. Moral life is a set of practical problems, not theoretical ones,

  c) Whoever grumbles about the difficulty of choosing, simulates and plays up an intellectual malaise while in fact he lacks character, the ability to make a choice according to one’s moral being. That being is, as it were, given by nature, it connects us to the structure of the universe and in particular the world of human beings and animals.

  This much in brief, but by God and the truth, there is no need to go on about it or write fat tomes; one must exercise good will, for that way we spare ourselves and our neighbors much suffering.

  1998

  A WORD FOR THE POETRY EVENING AT THE NATIONAL THEATER, MAY 25, 19981

  I

  POLISH POETRY, ABOUT WHICH I’d like to say a few words here, was born in kingly chambers with the marks of stre
ngth, simplicity, and dignity. Its birth means the arrival into the world of Jan Kochanowski, who was outstanding from the start, not as the result of a complex play of influences, cultural meanings, but spontaneously, distinctly, once and for all and irrevocably.

  The poet writes in Roman stone, in a very clear and serene hand, and there are in him all the sounds of this earth: the first words spoken to his mother: “This is your son. You see, he’s quiet, he doesn’t scream or complain like the others. He will be bound to us by a secret pact of fidelity.”

  O white-winged sea-swimmer,

  Child of high Ida,

  Beechen boat

  II

  FRANCISZEK KARPISKI, MY COUNTRYMAN in the most literal sense, is unjustly counted among the poetae minores. Our summer house on the outskirts of Lvov was two kilometers from Hołoskow (please note the gutteral H in the name), the birthplace of Karpiski2, who was educated at the Jesuit Academy in Lvov, later Jan Kazimierz University. Now, it is my profound conviction that Franciszek Karpiski was a great poet—please note down the irrevocable word.

  The stuff of his word is a whisper of dew falling at dawn

  the delicate speech of a stream

  the speech of rain falling on the branches of trees

  the piercing speech of midday