~JEFFREY FRANK~
POETRY
AND THE COSMOPOLITAN: ZBIGNIEW HERBERT’S
COLLECTED POEMS
In “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism”
Martha Nussbaum argues that patriotism causes moral blindness and
should be supplanted by cosmopolitanism. Nussbaum's cosmopolitanism
emphasizes rights and universal reason over loyalty to country or
attachment to local cultures. The cosmopolitan must not let her
attachments to country or local community blind her to her obligations
as a citizen of the world. As a world citizen, she must strive — often
a lonely and difficult process that leads to something like exile — to
break down the prejudices that cause her to see humans from other
countries or other communities as foreign, and hence beyond the purview
of her ethical concern. Her cosmopolitan worldview is not determined by
the country or the community that she is born into. Her worldview is
ever-expanding and ever-growing. The goal of this process is that none
of the varieties of human experience will be alien to her. Patriotism,
for Nussbaum, hinders the development of this expansive worldview.
Nussbaum's cosmopolitanism is as inspiring as it is
problematic. Reading the responses to her essay collected in For Love
Of Country? one begins to see just how contentious an issue the
cosmopolitan is. Reflecting on these responses, Jeremy Waldron writes
“it is as though the critics always know exactly what to say, and what
ancient terms of abuse to dust off and wheel out, whenever claims in
behalf of humanity are put forward in opposition to traditional
allegiances to blood, kin, and nation.” (1) This blow is meant to
glance
many of the respondents, but its real force is thrown at Robert Pinsky.
I find this disappointing. Far from wheeling out old defenses, in “Eros
Against Esperanto” Pinsky offers an alternative — though also a
potentially complementary — framework for thinking about
cosmopolitanism.
Rather than pitting patriotism against the
cosmopolitan, Pinsky suggests that the patriotic impulse is founded on
an eros of the local. Patriotism is not necessarily an infantile
passion that adults blindly hang onto for fear of facing difference.
Instead of looking at patriotism from the outside, Pinsky shows that
when one seriously thinks about what it means to live as member of a
country or a community, the meaning of patriotism changes. It is a
complex passion that is as alluring as it is terrifying; near at hand
and at the same time alien. To illustrate this point, Pinsky describes
his experience of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers are domesticated;
an American institution; the object of simple passions. And yet when
one looks closer, the Dodgers resemble the city they play in. Brooklyn
is “historic and raw, vulgar and urbane, many-tongued and
idiosyncratic, a borough of Hispanic blacks and Swedish carpenters,
provincial enough to have its own newspaper yet worldly beyond
measure.” (2) This insight into the dual-nature of the local teaches
Pinsky that patriotism, far from being a simplistic passion that leads
to blindness, is teaming with contradictory powers that are always in
process. Because of its richness and complexity, Pinsky argues that one
can do better than substituting an abstract concept of the cosmopolitan
in its place. The eros of patriotism needs to be counterbalanced by an
eros of the cosmopolitan.
Though Pinsky does not fully develop this
counterbalancing eros, he creates a framework for its development by
establishing two things. First, the cosmopolitan is an appealing
concept, capable of generating its own eros. Rather than leading to the
state of exile described by Nussbaum, cosmopolitanism may lead one to
something like membership in a new yet unapproachable Brooklyn.
Pinsky’s Brooklyn is premised on Emerson’s idea of America; a country
taken by the romance of change and enamored with — and hence also
afraid
of — the possibility of drawing a new circle around the limited horizon
of each accomplishment and each achieved idea. Second, though the
cosmopolitan gains in appeal by becoming less abstract, it also gains
complexity. A love relationship, though proximally close, always
retains the distance of difference. The relationship teaches “how
extreme an act of imagination paying attention to the other must be, in
order to succeed even a little” (p. 88).
In this essay I will read Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry
within Pinsky’s
framework so as to begin developing an eros of the cosmopolitan. Though
imposing an alien framework onto Herbert’s poetry may initially appear
disquieting, I hope to dispel this feeling at the outset by showing how
Herbert develops a similar framework for the cosmopolitan in his prose
work. Thus instead of proving an arbitrary limitation to Herbert’s
work, Pinsky’s framework will illumine cosmopolitan eros, while leading
to an appreciation of unexplored aspects of Herbert’s poetry.
1.
In the first chapter of Barbarian in the Garden,
Herbert describes his experience at the caves of Lascaux. Weaving
together historical and anthropological accounts of the cave dwellers
with reflections on the history of art and the development of Western
European culture, Herbert evokes a world utterly different from the
world that he — and by extension the reader — inhabits. And yet, even
though he “had stared into the ‘abyss’ of history” at Lascaux, he
writes, “I did not emerge from an alien world. Never before had I felt
a stronger or more reassuring conviction: I am a citizen of the earth,
an inheritor not only of the Greeks and Romans but of almost the whole
of infinity.” (3) In the remaining chapters of the book, Herbert visits
other places in Europe — Arles, Orvieto, Siena — and continues to
reflect
upon the tension between foreignness and the possibility of
inheritance. Even though the art and culture of other times and other
nations do not offer Herbert a promise of smooth integration within his
current worldview — in fact, Herbert’s often detailed depictions of war
and strife seem both lessons in history as well as metaphors for his
psyche as it confronts these different worlds — Herbert is nonetheless
compelled to seek otherness with a vague intimation that nothing will
prove utterly foreign to him. Herbert’s compulsion towards otherness is
something like the first aspect of Pinsky’s cosmopolitan framework; the
attraction that the cosmopolitan is capable of generating.
The intimation that otherness may not prove foreign
is given shape in Still Life with a
Bridle. In this work, Herbert takes
on the challenge of understanding another country. Like the second
aspect of Pinsky’s framework, this act of knowing is humbling. It is
complex, difficult, and entails an extreme act of imagination. Upon his
arrival in the Netherlands Herbert realizes the importance of
recognizing his “limitations, because clearly the ideal traveler knows
how to enter into contact with nature, with people and their history as
well as their art. Only familiarity with these three overlapping
elements can be the starting point of knowledge about a country.” (4)
Becoming even moderately more cosmopolitan is not an accomplishment
easily gained. A cosmopolitan education implies a serious risk that
cuts two ways. On one hand, when learning about other cultures one
always runs the risks of remaining a mere tourist; an American who
sees only America though she may be in Dinan. On the other, disabusing
oneself of prejudices may lead one to the wrong conclusion: Everything
is a mere prejudice, there are no grounds for moral judgments. Becoming
cosmopolitan requires that one avoid both of these risks. It implies a
faith to act on the belief that embracing the tension between
foreignness and inheritance will lead to growth and not fragmentation.
One must persist in one’s personal development even as one learns how
fragile every moral judgment is.
Hoping will not of itself lead to this growth. In an
interview Herbert said, “I turn to history not for lessons in hope, but
to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for
myself something which I should call universal compassion, but also a
sense of responsibility, a sense of responsibility for the state of
human conscience.” (5) Although this may sound grandiose, the act of
becoming responsible through compassion is only gained by submitting
oneself to the stringent though near at hand demands of coming to love
something through learning about the “overlapping elements” that form
its background. This process of attempting to claim responsibility
forms the foundation for the moral framework that undergirds many of
Herbert’s poems.
This too differentiates Herbert from Nussbaum. For
Nussbaum, a cosmopolitan education is premised on a rational decision.
One decides that it is best for one to become cosmopolitan given all
that one knows about the limitations of one’s local culture and what
one learns about rights as disclosed by reason. One most know something
with relative certainty before one acts. In Herbert’s case it is
different. A cosmopolitan education is premised on something like a
cosmopolitan epistemology. An act of knowing is premised on a strange
tautology: That Dutch painting exists is enough reason for Herbert to
undergo an education in understanding Dutch painting. It is not that
one becomes convinced that one’s local knowledge is limiting and in
need of revision in the face of universal values. Herbert’s way of
knowing is not built upon that type of foundation. Rather, he feels an
attraction; he has an intimation that Dutch painting holds a promise
for him that nonetheless resists his current understanding. Feeling
this attraction, he can’t help but give himself over to it. He becomes
responsive by taking responsibility for his limitations. In so doing he
stands in a position to listen. He waits, desiring to become an
inheritor of that which has evaded understanding. Herbert as
cosmopolitan does not lose his community; he gains responsiveness to
aspects of things that — though they evade understanding — offer
intimations of inheritance.
2.
Before approaching Herbert’s poetry, it is worth
recalling what Seamus Heaney has already written. “Admittedly, in all
that follows here, it is an English translation rather than the Polish
original that is being praised or pondered, but what convinces one of
the universal resource of Herbert’s writing is just this ability which
it possesses to lean, without toppling, well beyond the plumb of its
native language.” (6)
Despite reading this work in translation, one can
feel the urgency and strength of Herbert’s ethical standpoint. This
standpoint can be brought out quickly when placed in contrast to the
poetry of D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence writes poems that share Herbert’s
fascination with simple objects. They both give overlooked aspects in
the background of life — armchairs, wooden birds, figs and grapes — the
opportunity to address the reader. Reflecting on a peach, Lawrence
writes, “Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball?
/ It would have been if man had made it.” (7) And when thinking about a
lizard, “If men were as much men as lizards are lizards / they’d be
worth looking at” (p. 193). Many of Lawrence’s poems express a belief
in the power of the natural. In them a longing is expressed for
simplicity and the potential irrationality that comes about when one is
close to nature. Lawrence is nostalgic for a world that is not
corrupted by rationality. Having felt the destructive power of
irrationality in the form of Nazi and communist totalitarian violence,
Herbert is far from convinced that the natural leads to salvation. In
“Voice” Herbert writes, “either the world is dumb / or I am deaf // but
perhaps / we are both / doomed to our afflictions.” (8) The inability
to
rely on or speak for nature does not then make the poet mute. Instead,
it leads him to reassert his affliction; trusting the fragility of
making even in the face of a non-responsive natural world.
Just as Herbert rejects the redemptive potential of
the natural world, he also profoundly distrusts other forms of
utopianism. His poetry rejects the utopianism of mysticism as well as
the utopianism of rationality. In Study
of the Object, poems reveal the
seductive power of silence, of perfection, of godliness. “The most
beautiful is the object / which does not exist” (p. 193) threatens the
poet, urging him to renege on his responsibility as a maker and to
embrace the mystical perfection of silence. Despite being deeply
threatened by this seductive force, Herbert nonetheless re-asserts his
cultural agency, knowing that it is better “to be the creaking of a
floor than shrilly transparent perfection” (p. 214).
The movement against this form of seductive
perfection is not merely a reactionary impulse. It is also founded on a
deeply held belief that utopias “start with someone inventing an island
and a marvelous social system but they end with concentration camps.”
(9)
This belief then generates a difficult realization.
The trench where a turbid river
runs
I call the Vistula. Hard to
confess:
this is the love that we are
doomed to
this is the homeland that pierces
us (p. 224)
Unlike utopian hopes that drive one away from this humiliating though
humanizing confession of love, Herbert’s poetry remains faithful to
this love knowing that it promises nothing like the solace of
perfection. Far from offering perfection, this love flourishes in
despair, in besieged cities where “the rats dance amid debris” (p. 223)
and it is a struggle to maintain the fires that make civilization
possible. Though one may wish to found an ideal city one must confront
the fact: I live in a ruined city on the banks of the horrid Vistula.
There is no escaping this condition, and yet one must remain faithful
to the semblances of civilization that do remain, while hoping that
these pieces can still serve the builder; “faithfulness or fidelity
must do without an external authority” and hope is “hope without
guarantee — no philosophy, no ideology, no vision of social
system will
assure us paradise on earth” (FFU, p. 134). Without these types of
guarantees, Herbert is forced to rely on nothing more — though nothing
less — than the imperfect human community that he is a part of.
To understand something of the community that
Herbert was a part of: his studies were interrupted by the invasion of
the Nazis in 1939; he was fifteen. It wasn’t until after the thaw of
1956 that his first book of poetry was published. Between those years
he held menial jobs, he fought in the resistance, and he experienced
the destruction of his country. “To understand modern Polish poetry it
is necessary to understand also something of what the country went
through during the Nazi occupation: 6 million killed out of a
population of 30 million; dozens of villages destroyed and their
inhabitants massacred, in the style of Lidice and Oradour; Warsaw razed
and emptied of its million inhabitants.” (10) Given the atrocities that
he
lived through, and given the common response to these atrocities is
that “magic and gnosis / flourish as never before // fake paradises /
fake infernos / are for sale on every corner” (p. 304) it is hard to
have faith in one’s neighbors.
Though he never offers a fully developed theory of
human nature, in “Fortune Telling” he writes,
Here is the life line Look it
races like an arrow
…and nothing is more beautiful
more powerful
than this striving forward
How helpless compared to it is
the line of fidelity
like a cry in the night a river
in the desert (p. 50)
The will to continue living can overpower acts of fidelity. Instead of
remaining faithful to even a modicum of the moral, individuals fly
forward into violence hoping — even if vaguely — that this will lead to
survival. In the face of this acknowledgment Herbert persists. Although
individuals capitulate, there are still those who cry out in the night;
there are still sources of life in the desert. Because of this, he
decides to become a poet who “builds a world / not from atoms / but
from remnants” (p. 159). Unlike the utopian who needs to raze the
ground and accumulate the perfect building materials before undergoing
a project, Herbert starts with what is at hand. Though this may only be
a turbid river and a cowed people, this must be enough. And though
cemeteries are growing the number
of defenders shrinking
…the defense continues and it
will continue to the end
and if the City falls and one man
survives
he will carry the City inside him
on the paths of exile
he will be the City (p. 417)
In the face of almost certain devastation, Herbert believes that so
long as one individual survives, that individual will somehow manage to
keep the City. Having survived, Herbert takes it upon himself to become
a member of this City — a city not dissimilar to one Osip Mandelstam
imagines in his nostalgia for a world culture (11) — and takes
responsibility for its future.
3.
Herbert’s difficult realization about his homeland
leads to his assumption of responsibility for the City. This involves
the difficult task of remembrance and creation. Herbert must use the
remnants of the past to build a world that can stand in the present and
into the future. As Herbert rejects the utopian visions of futurists,
he too rejects the idea that the Golden Age occurred in the past.
Remembrance is not synonymous with conservatism. Rather, the work of
remembrance and creation should be described as remaining “true / to
uncertain clarity” (p. 354). Although the moral imperative itself is
clear, how it is to be realized remains uncertain. It is deeply
troubling to know what one should do while also knowing that one does
not know how to achieve it. Denied the buttresses of idealism,
conservatism and utopianism one is left with little support.
But the clarity — though uncertain — remains. Almost
despairing, one can still call up the resources of the past. Though
they cannot be relied upon as one relies upon a “fake paradise,” they
continue to serve as muted outposts of civilization. In “The Envoy of
Mr. Cogito” a messenger declares, “repeat humanity’s old incantations
fairy tales and legends / for that is how you will attain the good you
will not attain / repeat great words repeat them stubbornly” (p. 334).
In this message there is no guarantee — in fact there is a clear
disavowal — that the listener will ever achieve the good. Yet, the
process of repeating great words keeps the good as something
attainable. Though not actual, the good remains a possibility.
In some respect the enemy of remembrance is the
negation of uncertain clarity. Given mass destruction it makes sense to
retreat into personal responsibility, coming to a certainty that one
can at best only look out for one’s own self. But this self enclosing
is a pernicious act of forgetting that leads to compounded loss. Though
it is difficult to maintain a community with neighbors whom one can’t
place complete faith in, and though memories are difficult to trust,
“we are our brothers’ keepers // ignorance about those who are lost /
undermines the reality of the world” (p. 408). Remembrance of the lost
and repeating great words lead one out of the self’s enclosure and into
the eros of the cosmopolitan. It is from out of this love that many of
Herbert’s poems are written; it is from this love that Herbert takes
“responsibility for the state of human conscience.”
The “Prayer of the Traveler Mr. Cogito” expresses
this love in the following way:
let me understand other people
other languages other sufferings
and above all let me be humble
that is to say one who longs for the source
I thank You Lord for creating the
world beautiful and various and if this is Your
seduction I am seduced for good
and past all forgiveness (p. 348).
Despite the difficult acknowledgements that lead to this prayer,
Herbert’s Cogito is not left an exile in the way that Nussbaum’s
cosmopolitan is. Though the act of becoming cosmopolitan is humbling,
it is also erotic. Herbert’s poetry stands as a testament to the
impotence of despair and the possibility of praise that manages to
spring forth even from the remnants of cultures and languages, and that
a source of hope can be cultivated from remembrance of suffering and
loss.
Notes
1. Jeremy Waldron, “Teaching Cosmopolitan Right,” in Education and Citizenship
is Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for
Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, eds. Kevin
McDonough and
Walter Feinberg (New York: Oxford UP, 2003), p. 45, n9.
2. Robert Pinsky, “Eros Against Esperanto,” in For Love of
Country?, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002),
p. 90.
3. Zbigniew Herbert, Barbarian
in the Garden, trans.
Michael March and Jaroslaw Anders (New York: Harcourt Brace &
Company, 1986), p. 16.
4. Zbigniew Herbert, Still
Life with a Bridle, trans. John
and Bogdana Carpenter (Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1991), p. 4.
5. John Carpenter and Bogdana Carpenter, “Zbigniew
Herbert: The Poet as Conscience,” The
Slavic and East European Journal
24 (Spring, 1980): 39.
6. Seamus Heaney, The
Government of the Tongue: Selected
Prose, 1978-1987 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995),
pp.
54-55.
7. D.H. Lawrence, Selected
Poetry (New York: Penguin
Books, 1986), p. 93.
8. Zbigniew Herbert, The
Collected Poems: 1956-1998,
trans. Alissa Valles (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 2007), p. 68.
9. Stanislaw Baranczak, A
Fugitive from Utopia: The Poetry
of Zbigniew Herbert (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987), 134;
hereafter
abbreviated FFU.
10. A. Alvarez, “Noble Poet,” New York Review of Books
(July 18, 1985).
11. Joseph Brodsky, “The Child of Civilization” in Less
Than One (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1987).
© by Jeffrey Frank
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