Admiration and Contention

Herbert and Roman Stoicism

Abstract

The primary goal of this article is to get to the specifics of Zbigniew Herbert’s work. The poet had formal philosophical education and cannot be treated merely as a writer raising existential issues. The consequence of his studies in philosophy with the most eminent Polish philosophers of the time (Roman Ingarden, Henryk Elzenberg) was that he took up important philosophical questions rather than used the answers that philosophers of the past had given. This is an important feature of his poetry and distinguishes Herbert from those writers who subscribed to the worldview of their era (which is most often the case). Failure to distinguish between these two stances has led to one-sided readings of his poem To Marcus Aurelius. The interpretations of the last sixty years quoted in the article (by Kazimierz Wyka, Karl Dedecius, Jacek Brzozowski, Julian Kornhauser, Adam Workowski, Piotr Michałowski, and Piotr Urbański) lead to the conclusion that we are dealing with a kind of “contemporary”, or modified, “stoicism”. Later scholars (Przemysław Czapliński, Piotr Śliwiński, Andrzej Franaszek) interpreted the work (and the poet’s attitude) as existential. A comparison of the poem with the work of Marcus Aurelius, and above all, an analysis of the differences between the ancient (specifically Stoic) and modern understanding of such concepts as “nature”, “fate”, “self” (identity), or “suffering”, allowed us to show the internal intellectualemotional tension in Herbert’s poem (and other poems by the poet referring to Stoicism), and above all, the general idea of philosophizing poetry. The poet himself believed that it resembles primary reflection, such as that of the early Ionian thinkers. This is not about philosophizing on the basis of an elaborate conceptual apparatus, but about philosophical intuition and “philosophical experience”, an intellectual and emotional tension, in which – thanks to poetic talent – beauty is born. The dialog in To Marcus Aurelius is precisely a record of such poetic agitation.