Sunday, March 30, 2008

Leonard Kress on Zbigniew Herbert

I got a note from Polish-American poet Leonard Kress about a recent posting he did about Herbert at his blog, Myshkin2. The article is a response to an article titled "The Testament of Mr. Cogito" by Alissa Valles, Herbert's translator, that appeared in the Boston Review.
.
Leonard's posting is at his site: http://myshkin2.typepad.com/ and the article by Allisa Valles is at http://bostonreview.net/BR32.6/valles.php
.
(The photo above was taken by Anna Beata Bohdziewicz for the cover of The Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert. If you want to see many, many more of her incredible photos, you can find them at a spectacular Polish site: http://fototapeta.art.pl/2002/abb.php)

3 comments:

john guzlowski said...

I received this comment from Hungarian poet and translator George Gomori:

Dear John,

Thanks for sending through the Herbert picture and the truly great Bohdziewicz photos.

Did you know that Biblioteka Narodowa in Warsaw opened a new Herbert section- three librarians are cataloguing his letters and other personalia in the Krasinski Palace. I visited them last December, donating to them Herbert's letters written to me, already published in Twórczosc 2006/4.

For the sake of your Polish-American readers let me add that back in 1998 I published a collection of Herbert verse in my own Hungarian translation: "Az izlés hatalma" (Potega gustu), Orpheus,Budapest.

My English poet-friend, Clive Wilmer and myself also translated a couple of his poems into English, one or two of them were printed, but we dont want to compete with the Carpenters who have been doing this job very well for many years.

Best wishes,

George Gomori

myshkin2 said...

Thanks for the link, John. Also for those amazing Bohdziewicz photographs!

John Guzlowski said...

Bohdziewicz is amazing!