Cheka: secret police in the early years of the USSR.
Khodasevich
On its publication in Poland this poem caused a scandal: it was read as a description not of the Russian poet and émigré Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939) but of the poet Czeslaw Milosz.
Dmitri Merezhkovsky (1865–1941): Russian literary critic.
Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945): Russian poet, married to Merezhkovsky.
Mr Cogito on a Set Topic: “Friends Depart”
Wladyslaw Walczykiewicz: friend and at one time roommate of Herbert’s.
Mr Cogito’s Appointment Books
Zbigniew Zapasiewicz: a well-known Polish actor who often recited Herbert’s poetry on stage.
Rovigo
“a play by Goethe”: perhaps Clavigo.
EPILOGUE TO A STORM
Dalida
“Dalida”: Yolande Christina Gigliotti (1933–1987), Egyptian-born singer, popular in France and Poland.
“Halina Kunicka (b. 1938), Irena Santor (b. 1934)”: Polish singers.
Two Prophets. A Voice Test
Rapallo: In April 1922, Germany and Russia signed the treaty of Rapallo, in which they granted each other favorable trading status and Russia gave up its demands for war reparations.
Flowers
“For whom are these lavish gifts”: echoes a poem by the Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584), “Czego chcesz od nas, Panie, za twe hojne dary” (“What would you have from us, Lord, for your lavish gifts”), Hymn XXV 1562.
The Last Attack. To Klaus
Klaus Staemmler, a translator of Herbert’s work into German, suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
Mr Cogito. Ars Longa
Krzysztof Karasek (1937): Polish poet, translator, and essayist.
Pica Pica L.
Jan Twardowski (1916–2006): Catholic priest and poet.
Song
Zbigniew Kuźmiak, a friend of Herbert’s, was executed by the NKVD during the Soviet occupation of Lwów in 1939–1941.
Chess
In May 1997, the reigning world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, lost a six-game match against IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue.
“hallali”: fanfare played on the hunting horn to signal a kill. Used by Joseph Haydn in The Seasons (1801).
Phone Call
Thomas Merton (1915–1968): American mystic and poet who entered the Trappist order in 1941. He was profoundly influenced by Zen Buddhism. Merton died in an electrical accident in Thailand.
“naplevat”: (Russian) to hell with it; who cares? Literally, “spit.”
Thomas
Father Józef życiński (1948): archbishop and theologian.
In the City
This poem echoes a poem by Czeslaw Milosz written in 1937, “In My Homeland,” which begins: “In my homeland, to which I won’t return/there is an enormous lake in the forest.”
High Castle
Leszek Elektorowicz (1924): poet and translator from Lwów.
“High Castle”: hill near Lwów with a view of the city.
Józef and Teofil: Józef Kapuścinski (1818–1847) and Teofil Wiśniowski (1806–1847), leaders of the Galician insurrectionist movement in 1846, were condemned to death by the Austro-Hungarian authorities and hanged on July 31, 1847, in Lwów, on the hill now known as Execution Hill (Góra Stracenia); in 1894 an obelisk was erected to commemorate their deaths.
Artur
Artur Międzyrzecki (1922–1996): poet; fought with the Polish army in the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in May 1944.
Julia Hartwig (1921): poet, married to Artur Międzyrzecki.
“I won’t sing about Felek Stankiewicz now”: Reference to a well-known soldier’s song.
“the marching song about the red poppies”: “Red Poppies on Monte Cassino,” a famous Polish war hymn, written by Feliks Konarski and Alfred Schütz, soldiers of the II Polish Army Corps.
Season
“Boreas”: Greek god of the north wind.
Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883): late Polish Romantic poet. His prose work Black Flowers. White Flowers (1856) contains portraits of great contemporaries such as Adam Mickie-wicz and Frédéric Chopin not long before their deaths.
Bedlam
Jerzy Siwiec: psychiatrist and friend of Herbert’s.
Portrait of the Fin de Siècle
Supernova: stellar explosion producing a bright object made of plasma, which declines to invisibility over weeks or months. A “dwarf nova” is a cataclysmic variable star system, containing a “white dwarf” and a companion star, from which it accretes matter.
The Collected Poems Page 33