Józef Maria Ruszar

In Herbert’s essays and poems we find not only a wide range of economic problems, but also a real passion with which the author describes the economic fundaments of all civilizations. In the apocrypha The Portrait in Black Flames and poem “Hakeldama,” Herbert creates a great metaphor of the Final Judgment as the Great  Book of accounts. This is nothing unusual, as the poet held a master’s degree in economics from the School of Economics in Krakow, currently the Krakow University of Economics.

In Herbert’s essays and poems we find not only a wide range of economic problems, but also a real passion with which the author describes the economic basics of all civilisations. In the apocrypha The Portrait in Black Frames and poem Hakeldama Herbert builds a great metaphor of The Last Judgement as the Great Books of accounts. Nothing unusual. The poet and essayist held a master’s degree in economics (he graduated from the School of Economics in Krakow – currently the University of Economics).

The text is an interpretation of the poem serce podchodzi do gardła [heart rises to throat] from the volume Wyjście [Exit], pointing out the elements of Różewicz’s self-lustration after 2004. Whereas the poet previously used to explain his involvement in communism with objective necessity (so-called building of poetry after Auschwitz), 15 years after Poland’s independence, Różewicz justifies his involvement through a manipulated post-war biography and a Biblical vision of a personal and national disaster. Regardless of the view of the legitimacy of such reasoning, the poem bears evidence to full understanding that the year of 1989 has changed the criteria for evaluation of attitudes, and these, in turn, shed a new light on the issue of the poet’s forced desertion from a Home Army unit in November 1944 and participation in the “civil disgrace”. The article also attempts to pay attention to the tragedy of that decision and its psychological, political and military conditioning. Indirectly, it also evidences the necessity to write a new history of the post-war literature from the perspective of the regained independence.

Zbigniew Herbert (one of the greatest poets in the twentieth century) graduated from the Trade School (now the Cracow University of Economics). The fact can be seen in his work. In Herbert’s essays we find not only a wide range of economic problems, but the real passion with which the author describes the economic base of any civilization. Essayist takes care of micro-and macroeconomics. From the economic point of view, one of the most interesting essays is dedicated to sketch the phenomenon of the speculative bubble in 17th century Holland (“Tulips smell bitter volume”). This paper is a fragment of the work in print: Józef Maria Ruszar, The Worn Profile of Roman Coins: Economy as a Literary Subject in the Works of Zbigniew Herbert (Wytarty profil rzymskich monet. Ekonomia jako temat literacki w twórczości Zbigniewa Herberta), JMR Transatlantyk, “Biblioteka Pana Cogito”, Kraków 2016.

For Bobkowski, maintaining individual freedom grounded in material independence and achieved by one’s own work was an essential existential question. The financial freedom and independence were a declaration, a life motto and an economic programme all at once. As a result, the writer’s idea came down to changing the  status of a political émigré into an economic one who simultaneously stands on the side of freedom for his Country.