Sensitivity to the World of Objects and Temptation to Describe

Zbigniew Herbert and Francis Ponge

Abstract

The article attempts to consider the philosophical foundations of the literary works of two authors: Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998) and Francis Ponge (1899–1988). In the literature devoted to the author of the String of Light, the theme of similarity of his work to the works of the French poet has been present for a long time. Critics listed a number of Herbert’s works that could be compared with the works from Ponge’s The Nature of Things, published in 1942. It has been already shown what they have in common in terms of the literary descriptions of things and phenomena. The main subject of this study are non-literary texts regarding Herbert’s and Ponge’s views on poetry. The article is the result of an interdisciplinary comparative study, using knowledge in the field of literary studies, philosophy and philology. The author examines the hypothesis that the poets’ proposition to describe the objects is based on the attitude toward the world and the type of sensitivity that are common to both Herbert and Ponge. They both wrote against the rationalist tradition in philosophy. They opposed the abandonment of the concrete and the emotional layer of experience in favor of concepts and systems. Their concepts of reality and cognition were influenced by Epicure and Lucretius. It was probably through them that the poets could have assimilated certain ideas that Maurice MerleauPonty developed into the framework of a comprehensive project in his phenomenological reflection. Their approach to description reveals the conviction of the French philosopher that “all knowledge substantiates in horizons that are opened through perception”. Their sensitivity to the objects of the outside world reflects the living body’s perception of the world. Herbert and Ponge go beyond the perspective of an objective order of thought, prior to expression. Thus, they do not reduce reality to thinking about the world.