Zbigniew Herbert, “Five Men”

Zbigniew Herbert, photo: A. Jałosiński/Forum

When I sent this first poem out, I put the poem at the end.  Readers wrote me to say it would be much more helpful to have the poem at the beginning.  So that is what I did.  I have moved the poem to the beginning, since it makes sense for you to read the poem before you listen to me talk about it. 

  I notice with much interest that of the five poets I mention in the first paragraph, I ended up writing about four of them, even if I waited for five years before I addressed Baudelaire (and Seamus Heaney, an essay of whose I cite in approaching Herbert).  I have not yet written about Melville who is also cited in what follows.

  A few years after sending this out as the first poem, I returned to Herbert.  As I say in what follows, he is one of my favorite poets of the later twentieth century.  In his ‘elemental’ approach to the questions which face us in our modernity, he addresses issues we would do well to pay attention to.  So three years after writing this, I wrote about another poem of his, “The Envoi of Mr. Cogito.”

Five MenZbigniew Herbert
 

1.

They take them out in the morning
to the stone courtyard
and put them against the wall

five men
two of them very young
the others middle-aged

nothing more
can be said about them

 2.

when the platoon
level their guns
everything suddenly appears
in the garish light
of obviousness

the yellow wall
the cold blue
the black wire on the wall
instead of a horizon

 that is the moment
when the five senses rebel
they would gladly escape
like rats from a sinking ship

before the bullet reaches its destination
the eye will perceive the flight of the projectile
the ear record the steely rustle

the nostrils will be filled with biting smoke
a petal of blood will brush the palate
the touch will shrink and then slacken

now they lie on the ground
covered up to their eyes with shadow
the platoon walks away
their buttonstraps
and steel helmets
are more alive
then those lying beside the wall

 3.

I did not learn this today
I knew it before yesterday

 so why have I been writing
unimportant poems on flowers

 what did the five talk of
the night before the execution

 of prophetic dreams
of an escapade in a brothel
of automobile parts
of a sea voyage
of how when he had spades
he ought not to have opened
of how vodka is best
after wine you get a headache
of girls
of fruits
of life

 thus one can use in poetry
names of Greek shepherds
one can attempt to catch the color of morning sky
write of love
and also
once again
in dead earnest
offer to the betrayed world
a rose

         [trans. from the Polish by Czesław Miłoz & Peter Dale Scott]

It has been both exciting and nerve-wracking to think about which poem to begin with.  I’ve considered poems by William Carlos Williams, Charles Baudelaire, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Eugenio Montale . . . .

  I have chosen a poem by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert because it seems to follow so naturally from what I wrote in my introductory message: Why should we read poems? 

  Without trying to appear too literary, let me suggest that poets function a lot like I do, and you too: they hear the echoes of the voices of others in their heads.  I walk around hearing lines and passages of poetry from time to time, lines which surface unbidden from the recesses of mind and memory.  For a lot of people who do not read ‘poetry’ much, lines emerge similarly, only from the domain of poetry we call ‘songs.’  Reggae lovers live in a world of Bob Marley lyrics; Dead-heads or Phish-heads hear Jerry Garcia or Trey Anastasio; and still others hear Sinatra, Broadway shows, Elvis Presley or church hymns. 

  In the poem I want to introduce you to, Zbigniew Herbert’s “Five Men,” I think he might have had a deservedly well-known poem by Berthold Brecht rattling around in the lower levels of his consciousness.  Brecht’s poem, “An die Nachgeborenen,” (“To those born later”) was written in the late 1930’s as fascism was rampant in Germany and Brecht was living in exile.  Here is how it begins:

Truly, I live in dark times!
The guileless word is folly.  A smooth forehead
Suggests insensitivity.  The man who laughs
Has simply not yet had
The terrible news.

What kind of times are they, when
A talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?
That man there calmly crossing the street
Is already perhaps beyond the reach of his friends
Who are in need?     

          [trans. from the German by John Willett and Ralph Manheim]

Brecht tells us he lives in a world where laughter seems to spring out of woeful ignorance, and to “talk about trees is almost a crime/ Because it implies silence about so many horrors.”  Seldom has the case for political engagement and the need to push the esthetic appeal of poetry aside been made more strongly than Brecht makes it in this poem, which goes on for another sixty lines.  His is an extremely powerful, even unforgettable, statement.

  Zbigniew Herbert published “Five Men” in 1957 in his second book. 

  Herbert was part of the underground resistance in Poland during the Nazi occupation of his nation.  After the war, he faced censorship and economic discrimination when the Communist regime was installed as rulers of Poland.  So he was no stranger to the “dark times” that Brecht writes of. 

  Before we enter the poem, let me say one or two things which may help orient you toward Herbert.   First, he may be the poet of the past half century who most radically tests the myths and certainties which so often we take for granted, the ‘truths’ of everyday life.  The Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney wrote a wonderful essay in which he called attention to Herbert’s “A Knocker,” which Heaney sees as a key to the Polish poet’s work.  In “The Knocker” the speaker says he will let others write of images and metaphors: for himself, he merely pursues what rings true, knocking on a piece of wood

                  the moralist’s dry poem

         yes-ye

no-no

What makes us believe in Herbert’s sincerity in this quest for the simple truth of things is the stark simplicity of his language, which is conjoined with a poetics that depends on the force of logic and the rational more than on emotional connotations.   We are used to poems which move us by the appeal of emotion and sentiment, and not to poems which approach us with simplicity and logical precision.

  I am probably making Herbert sound dry and uninteresting.  He is, quite to the contrary, rich and to me of surpassing interest.  I often think he may be the most important poet of the second half of the twentieth century.  (He died in 1998.)

  Enough already. On to “Five Men,” which is written in three parts.

  Part one is factual, severely descriptive.  There are five men.  They are marched into a courtyard.  If we read the facts, that they are “against the wall:” we know they are about to be shot by a firing squad.  Two are young, three are middle-aged.  “Nothing more can be said about them.”  (That final line, true in one sense, is undermined by the poem’s continuation, so that we come to see it as deeply, deeply, ironic.  There is a truth beyond fact in this poem, even if it begins in a strictly factual way.)

1.

They take them out in the morning
to the stone courtyard
and put them against the wall

five men
two of them very young
the others middle-aged

nothing more
can be said about them

(The translation is by Herbert’s friend, the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, one of two Poles to win the Nobel Prize in the past thirty years.)

Part two begins with a similar facticity, with the firing squad preparing to fire.  We will, however, move beyond the merely factual before the stanza is over.  Still, at first, everything is ‘obvious,’ though we notice that the “stone courtyard’ of the first stanza is now elaborated on, colored yellow against a blue background, with a wire running across it.  

2.

when the platoon
level their guns
everything suddenly appears
in the garish light
of obviousness

 the yellow wall
the cold blue
the black wire on the wall
instead of a horizon

But fact alone does not explain consciousness, as the following stanza reveals by showing consciousness at its most intense precisely at this moment it recognizes it is about to cease.  Although Herbert continues with the language of factual observation – “the eye,” “the nostrils” – the use of the future tense tells us he is imagining what will happen as the fateful shot is fired.  All five senses in these men will be alert: eye, ear, smell, taste, touch. 

before the bullet reaches its destination
the eye will perceive the flight of the projectile
the ear record the steely rustle

the nostrils will be filled with biting smoke
a petal of blood will brush the palate
the touch will shrink and then slacken

We too, in a moment of identification with those about to die, see the bullet rushing forward, hear the “steely rustle,” smell the acrid smoke of gunpowder, taste – the one metaphor in the passage – “a petal of blood” and feel the body losing sensation.

now they lie on the ground
covered up to their eyes with shadow
the platoon walks away
their buttonstraps
and steel helmets
are more alive
then those lying beside the wall

It is over.  Death has dominion.  There seems no more to say.  The dead are objects now less alive than the objects worn by those who walk away, which at least have movement even if it is not their own. 

  But the poem is not over. 

  The speaker of the poem knows well that death is final.  Observing a firing squad, and the cruelty of men to one another and the horrors of war is not something he has just learned. 

I did not learn this today
I knew it before yesterday

I love that second line, “I knew it before yesterday.”  It suggests cascades of knowing: ‘I’ve not just learned it, I knew it before, I knew it long before, I may have always known it, since death and violence are so intimately connected to the human existence we are born into.’ 

  Then, and here is where Herbert seems to be taking up Brecht’s line, “a talk about trees is almost a crime,” Herbert – the questioner of what we take for granted – asks:

so why have I been writing
unimportant poems on flowers

The contrast could not be more stark.  We have just observed men shot by a firing squad, men who end up as lifeless objects “lying beside the wall.”  Why, in a world where we see such things, in a world where such things happen, write a poem about flowers?

  Herbert follows that question with another question.  Not an esthetic question, not a political question, but a question of simple fact. 

what did the five talk of
the night before the execution

And he answers that question in terms that are so real to me that they are utterly convincing.  Five men, two young, three middle-aged, know they are going to be shot the following morning.  One says, as Herbert points out, ‘I had such a strange dream.’ Another talks about how he got laid, another about how he once could have won a huge pot if only he had played his cards differently.  Another talks about a trip he made, another says he prefers vodka to wine because it gives less of a hangover. 

  This is the kind of conversation we have all been part of, many times.  Is there any reason to think that under threat of death we would talk differently?  Of course not: we are all, as the existentialists among others remind us, always under the sentence of death.  Life could end at any moment, and will in actuality end before we do so much of what we wish or intend, and yet we talk about sex and cards and what to drink, we talk

of girls
of fruits
of life

The “thus” which opens the final stanza is, in strong terms, logical, syllogistic, the only rational answer to the question Herbert had posed about how he or any other poet can write “unimportant poems about flowers.”

  If a man who is about to die can talk about “how when he had spades/ he ought not to have opened” and another man in the same situation can say “vodka is best/ after wine you get a headache,” then we can all talk about these things, too, when we face death.  Or the savage destructiveness of war, or the unfeeling cruelty of our fellow human beings.  Or what Brecht called “dark times.”

  The Greeks, whom Herbert is not alone in admiring, understood this.  Living in a time long before the rise of a sentimentality which suffuses contemporary existence, accustomed to violence and vengeful gods and the struggle for existence: the Greeks not only wrote epics of war and survival, they invented pastorals, in which shepherds spoke of love and flowers. 

thus one can use in poetry
names of Greek shepherds
one can attempt to catch the color of morning sky
write of love
and also
once again
in dead earnest
offer to the betrayed world
a rose

To see the world as it is, including not only firing squads but what Homer called ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ and love and conversations about brothels and card games, is the calling of the poet.  Herbert is, like the Greeks, radically unsentimental.  (How I wish I could presume on your patience here and write about the first of his poems I fell in love with, “Why the Classics,” which you can find on-line at http://www.uvm.edu/~sgutman/Herbert.html .)  He can write about flowers because that is what men and women do, what they talk about, what fills their consciousness even as they are under a sentence of death.

  The human realm of the twentieth century betrayed us, betrayed our ‘being in the world,’ to misappropriate a phrase from Heidegger.  It brought us firing squads, war, dictatorship, cruelty.  But we can offer back, in the face of that betrayal, another human realm: human companionship (all that talk about vodka and voyages and brothels), a recognition of the wonders of everyday life, a celebration of the mind which flowers even in the face of death.  Of the mind whose flowers are, among other things, poem