Perhaps the greatest dissident Polish poet of the second half of the 20th century, Zbigniew Herbert attributed his resistance to the Communists not to bravery, or political conviction, but to his sense of taste. As this marvellous collection shows, Herbert’s commitment to what is great and good in human culture is both absolute and exacting. For Herbert, culture is a matter of utmost seriousness. Of one of his main preoccupations, the Dutch painters of the 17th century, he wrote: ‘The old masters – all of them without exception – could repeat after Racine, “We work to please the public.” Which means they believed in the purposefulness of their work and the possibility of interhuman communication. They affirmed visible reality with an inspired scrupulousness and childish seriousness, as if the order of the world and the revolution of the stars, the permanence of the firmament, depended on it. Let such naiveté be praised.’

Ecco | Hardback 708 pp. |ISBN: 9780060723828