Ostatnia Aleksandria. Lwów Zbigniewa Herberta

The article presents the genealogy of Zbigniew Herbert, one of the most outstanding
poets of 20th century. It describes how many of Herbert’s life and artistic
attitudes was influenced by the place of poet’s birth – the city of Lvov, for centuries
part of Polish Respublicae, today – one of the Ukraine’s metropolises, still a subject
of nostalgia of Polish emigrants. For Herbert Lvov is not only the city of childhood
and youth, but first of all a place of meeting, a crossroad of many cultures: Polish,
Ukrainian, Jewish or Armenian. According to Herbert himself, this multicultural
place shaped his own vision of Europe. On the other hand, in Polish national mythology
Lvov is described as a frontier city, which lies close to the border between
the Western civilization and Asia, even as an outpost of Europe. This dialectic of
“the crossroad” and “the wall” seems to be the source of Herbert’s definition of Europe,
the continent, which is always multicultural, but at the same time obviously
different from the culture, or civilization represented by Russia.