Asceticism of loss – asceticism of hope. On Zbigniew Herbert’s drawings

Abstract

Zbigniew Herbert’s oeuvre, apart from literature, includes a number of sketchbooks, in which the poet-traveler noted down important aspects of places and works of art. What fascinated him the most was drawing, in which Herbert used characteristic, synthetic form. The fascination with letters, their forms, and further – inscriptions, is manifested here in examining the line as the most direct notation. That sphere of the poet’s work was an open dialogue with the themes of poems, completing them as it were. Both in poetry and in visual arts Herbert was interested above all in the correspondence of thoughts, in a dialogue without time limits, as thoughts and feelings are not hermetic; one cannot close them in temporal forms, they are usually dialogical. The drawings use the line which simultaneously names, synthesizes, experiences emotions, asks questions, contemplates, playing the role of a sui generis ekphrasis of nature and things.