The Reemergence of a Modern Master

it answers me

yes -- yes

no -- no

Alissa Valles's translations seem quite commendable, if at times antiseptic in comparison to previous versions, such as those by Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, which this volume also includes. Her stringency, however, is more fitting than the turgidity of Adam Zagajewski's preface, which revels in precisely the sort of vagueness (Herbert "studied classical authors" and "loved the past"), cliché and watery overstatement ("the unfathomable secret of a great artist") that Herbert so assiduously refused. Zagajewski is a fine poet in his own right and should have done better.

Herbert's most memorable poems enchant us by the candor and clear-sightedness with which they face failings and disappointed desires. They console by refusing to fawn or flatter. The "Elegy of Fortinbras" ridicules Hamlet but nonetheless longs for his starry-eyed idealism:

. . . This night is born

a star named Hamlet We shall never meet

what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell

we live on archipelagos

and that water these words what can they do

what can they do prince