Domysły na temat wyroczni. Jorgos Seferis i Zbigniew Herbert w drodze do Delf
Conjectures on the oracle. Jorgos Seferis and Zbigniew Herbert on their way to Delphi

Author(s): Jerzy Borowczyk
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, 19th Century, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Herbert; Jorgos Seferis; Delphi; pilgrimage; role at poetry
Summary/Abstract: This paper concerns Jorgos Seferis’s essay 'Delphi' (1961) and two of Zbigniew Herbert’s accounts of his stay at the site of the famous oracle – an excerpt from the essay 'An Attempt to Describe the Greek Landscape and The Greek Diary' (both written in the 1960s). Both artists’ expeditions to Delphi are treated as pilgrimages to one of the key places for understanding the history and spirituality of ancient Greece. The texts analysed emphasise the role of the contrast between the artistry of the descriptive parts and their authors’ mental struggle with the phenomenon of the Delphic oracle, with its meaning for ancient and modern audiences. Both Seferis and Herbert emphasise the uniqueness of the topography of the visited place, which interacts with the mystery of the soothsayers of the successive Pythias. The essays of the Greek and Polish poets were read in a research context (the works of M. Kalinowska on Herbert’s Greek travels and the monographic portrayals of Seferis’ creative and life path in the works of R. Beaton and M. Bzinkowski). Still another point of view was provided by Hellenistic themes from the essays and notes of the Italian writer and thinker Nicola Chiaromonte. These made it possible to look at selected sketches and poems by Herbert and Seferis as a profound meditation on the role of the poet and poetry in a world dominated by the cruel laws of history.

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