Zbigniew Herbert’s attitude towards psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article analyses Zbigniew Herbert’s attitude towards psychoanalysis. The legacy of the Polish poet is prevalent among literary scholars. However, until now – as far as I know – no work has been written that would analyse Herbert’s work in the context of psychoanalysis. This sketch attempts to fill this gap, but not in the sense of interpreting individual works. It aims to answer the question: why researchers ignore psychoanalytical threads and do not use psychoanalytical tools. The poet’s attitude towards psychoanalysis was ambivalent. On the one hand, in public statements, Herbert emphasised his reluctance to Freud and psychoanalysis. On the other hand, a lot strongly indicates that he was not indifferent to this intellectual tradition, which, moreover, agrees with the main principle of Herbert’s poetic practice, escribed by the poet in one of the interviews: „The principle of your own opinions questionability. It is the principle of internal dialogue and dialectical tension between preached reason and reason that negates it”.