From Adam Zagajewski’s Introduction to The Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert:
"Every great poet lives between two worlds. One of these is the real, tangible world of history, private for some and public for others. The other world is a dense layer of dreams, imagination, fantasms. . .
These two territories conduct complex negotiations, the result of which are poems. Poets strive for the first world, the real one, conscientiously trying to reach it, to reach the place where the minds of many people meet, but their efforts are hindered by the second world, just as the dreams and hallucinations of certain sick people prevent them from understanding and experiencing events in their waking hours. Except that in great poets these hindrances are rather a symptom of mental health, since the world is by nature dual, and poets pay tribute with their own duality to the true structure of reality, which is composed of day and night, sober intelligence and fleeting fantasies, desire and gratification.
There is no poetry without this duality, though the second, substitute world is different for each outstanding creative artist."
When I read this yesterday it seemed to be speaking to Elizabeth's poem, which derives its power (for me) from its surrealism. The actions unfolding are dignified as signs (because the context is a poem, because of the underlying repetitive structure of the words and sounds) yet the meaning of these signs is baffling. The poem insinuates with its matter-of-fact tone that we should be able to figure out its meaning, but remains elusive, giving the eerie sensation that it is the reader that is strange and out of place; the world of the poem is solid; the two worlds that Zagajewski describes are inverted.
PS: Have any of you read Herbert's poems? This book is blowing me away . . .
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2 comments:
I love that (I know, I know, it seems like I love everything, but I'm really not that agreeable of a person!) Can you post or send a link to some Zbigniew Herbert's poems? I've read him before but maybe just in an anthology somewhere.
i also have only encountered a couple of herbert's poems in anthologies.
this quote is strangely close to my own thoughts on two-worldedness. this from my notebook from november 11th, 2007:
disorientation results from walking the wire back and forth between the real world and the symbolic world instead of letting them rest in each other or seeing the words "real" and "symbolic" as 2 filters we place on one light - which is too bright for us to see directly.
i had been thinking a lot about the tension that i feel between the worlds and my split allegiances to them because i met someone for whom, i believe, the two worlds are effortlessly one. it seemed to be a cultural difference - he is a puppeteer from mexico, and his community supports and values what he does. in trying to pinpoint what about him made me so goddamn jealous, i wrote the bit above about my own disorientation.
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