The Collected Prose: 1948-1998

“One of the finest and most original writers…and one of the greatest Polish writers of [the 20th] century. [Herbert] is a figure comparable to, say, T. S. Eliot or W. H. Auden.”

—Edward Hirsch, The New Yorker

Polish essayist, poet, and spiritual leader of his nation’s anti-Communist movement, the late Zbigniew Herbert is a literary giant whose writings are revered throughout Europe and the world. A companion volume to the author’s Collected Poems (Ecco 2007), Collected Prose is the only English language edition of the award-winning writer’s prose works collected in a single, beautiful, accessible volume—including in their entirety his  renowned Labyrinth on the Sea, Still Life with a Bridle, King of the Ants, and Barbarian in the Garden.

Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert easily stands beside Nobel Prize laureates Milosz and Szymborska as part of a remarkable literary tradition. Though Herbert is very much an Eastern European writer, the urgency, vitality, and relevance of his work extend far beyond the borders of his particular region and his particular time. His fascination with other subjects—from painting to all things Dutch—enriched the scope and depth of his poetry, and made for compelling explorations in his essays and short prose pieces.

The first collected English edition of his prose work, this outstanding volume consists of four books—Labryinth on the Sea, Still Life with a Bridle, King of the Ants, and Barbarian in the Garden. Brilliant and erudite, dazzling and witty, these essays survey the geography of humanity, its achievements and its foibles. From Western civilization's past, as witnessed through the Greek and Roman landscape, to musings on the artistic that celebrate the author's discriminating eye, poetic sensibility, and gift for irony, humor, and the absurd; from a sage retelling of myths and tales that became twentieth-century philosophical parables of human behavior to thoughts on art, culture, and history inspired by journeys in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Collected Prose is a rich compendium that celebrates the mastery and wisdom of a remarkable artist.

“In a just world Mr. Herbert would have received the Nobel Prize long ago.” - Stephen Dobyns, The New York Times Book Review

“Zbigniew Herbert is a poet for this place; above all, for this time.” - Joseph Brodsky

“[Herbert] is a poet with all the strengths of an Antaeus. . . . [He] shoulders the whole sky and scope of human dignity and responsibility.” - Seamus Heaney

“If the ket to contemporary Polish poetry is the collective experience of the last decades, Herbert is perhaps the most skillful in expressing it.” - Czeslaw Milosz

“[Herbert’s] poems, even in English, seem to me finer than anything currently being written by any English or American poet.” - A. Alvarez, The New York Review of Books