Elégie na odchádzanie (stopy elegického žánru v tvorbe Zbigniewa Herberta)
Elegies for departure (traces of the elegiac genre in the work of Zbigniew Herbert)

Author(s): Jaroslava Smejkalová
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949)
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Zbigniew Herbert; world war; elegy; irony; pathos;
Summary/Abstract: An elegy as a lyrical genre has remained in various genre modifications from ancient times to the present day. In Polish literature, there were renaissance poets who followed in the tradition of Roman elegy. Among them, there is Jan Kochanowski, whose work is in this respect considered the canon of mourning poetry. Post-war Polish poets return to the elegy. Thus they follow in Jan Kochanowski’s tradition, and on the base of some individual creative methods, they also transform this genre into the genre form that meets the criteria of modern poetry. The article is dedicated to Zbigniew Herbert’s poems of the elegiac mood. Elegiac tones in the verse of this Polish poet are evident since the beginning of his work, and their intensity increases up to the last author’s collections in which the tones gain an intimate autobiographical character of bidding farewell to all the beauty and things of this world.

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