The Anabases of Saint-John Perse and Zbigniew Herbert

This article deals with the motif of “anabasis” in the poetry of Saint-John Perse and the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert. The former, a poet and diplomat, gave this title to a poem written in the early 1920s, before he stepped onto the stage of international politics of the interwar period. It, in a way, anticipates his professional and existential choices. Herbert’s “Anabasis” appeared in 1983 in his collection of poems entitled Raport z oblężonego miasta [Report from a Besieged City]. Although two generations and vastly different geopolitical points of origin separate the authors of these poems, both writers left their “small homelands” (Guadeloupe, Lwów), to become witnesses to history filled with socio-political events in the face of which they could not remain neutral. Saint-John Perse began his own poetic “anabasis” in 1940, as an “exile” having escaped to the USA. Zbigniew Herbert published his “Anabasis” in a time when communist Poland would, once again (following the institution of Martial Law in 1981), would confirm his “internal exile.” Personal contexts aside, the “anabases” of Perse and Herbert represent a search for the “right word” which anticipates the script of existence or which is a meditation on exile, expressing through modern poetic means the desire to recover, or constantly (re)construct, their imaginative and spiritual homelands.

This article deals with the motif of “anabasis” in the poetry of Saint-John Perse and the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert. The former, a poet and diplomat, gave this title to a poem written in the early 1920s, before he stepped onto the stage of international politics of the interwar period. It, in a way, anticipates his professional and existential choices. Herbert’s “Anabasis” appeared in 1983 in his collection of poems entitled Raport z oblężonego miasta [Report from a Besieged City]. Although two generations and vastly different geopolitical points of origin separate the authors of these poems, both writers left their “small homelands” (Guadeloupe, Lwów), to become witnesses to history filled with socio-political events in the face of which they could not remain neutral. Saint-John Perse began his own poetic “anabasis” in 1940, as an “exile” having escaped to the USA. Zbigniew Herbert published his “Anabasis” in a time when communist Poland would, once again (following the institution of Martial Law in 1981), would confirm his “internal exile.” Personal contexts aside, the “anabases” of Perse and Herbert represent a search for the “right word” which anticipates the script of existence or which is a meditation on exile, expressing through modern poetic means the desire to recover, or constantly (re)construct, their imaginative and spiritual homelands.