Quotes by Zbigniew Herbert

About Zbigniew Herbert:

Zbigniew Herbert is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s (a volume titled String of light was issued in 1956), soon after he voluntarily ceased submitting most of his works to official Polish government publications. He resumed publication in the 1980s, initially in the underground press.
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You can be a good painter if you study Cézanne's vision. Whoever dares to copy Van Gogh falls inevitably into the hell of imitators. For this painter didn't care about masterpieces, or even good paintings... but about what is beyond all painting, al...

Zbigniew Herbert

I do not turn to history to draw from it an easy lesson of hope, but to confront my experience with that of others, to acquire something I might call universal compassion, and also a sense of responsibility, responsibility for the state of my conscie...

Zbigniew Herbert

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art of the word made me yawn. I also understood that I...

Zbigniew Herbert

so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentleman separated once and for all and said this in the subject this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and tast...

Zbigniew Herbert

Author Bio

  • NameZbigniew Herbert
  • DescriptionPolish writer
  • BornOctober 29, 1924
  • DiedJuly 28, 1998
  • CountryPoland
  • ProfessionPoet; Writer
  • AwardsAustrian State Prize For European Literature; Herder Prize; Order Of The White Eagle; Vilenica Prize