HERBERT, ZBIGNIEW

born Oct. 29, 1924, Lww, Pol. [now Lviv, Ukraine] died July 28, 1998, Warsaw, Pol. Polish poet and essayist. Herbert attended an underground high school during the wartime German occupation of Poland and also took secret military training courses with the Polish Home Army. After World War II he earned degrees in economics, law, and philosophy at various universities in Poland. He wrote poetry but published little during the period of Socialist Realism in Poland (1949-54). Herbert began a long association with the literary review Tworczosc ("Creation") in 1955. His first collection of poems, Struna swiatla (1956; "Chord of Light"), was followed by Hermes, pies i gwiazda (1957; "Hermes, a Dog and a Star"), Studium przedmiotu (1961; "A Study of the Object"), and such later volumes as Pan Cogito (1974; Mr. Cogito) and Raport z oblezonego miasta (1983; Report from the Besieged City). Herbert's poetry expresses an ironic moralism in free verse laden with classical and other historical allusions. In reflecting on Poland's traumatic experiences at the hands of the Nazis and Soviets during World War II and afterward, he uses a sarcastic rhetoric to question the gap between ideal morality and the nightmares of 20th-century totalitarianism. Herbert traveled to France and Italy and published the essays inspired by these visits as Barbarzynca w ogrodzie (1962; "A Barbarian in the Garden"). His poems have been translated into English (Selected Poems, 1968 and 1977) and into other languages.