Herbert

The Archive Effect

Abstract

The title might suggest that the Author is trying to balance the output of the works that appeared after the collected Zbigniew Herbert’s Archives that his heiresses donated to the National Library in Warsaw in the early 2000s. Meanwhile, the Author auto-supplements Zbigniew Herbert’s Archives to search for the manuscripts of the poetic works that he himself dealt with years ago – long before anybody became aware of the Archives’ existence. Thus, in addition to general remarks on the Zbigniew Herbert Archive, its resources and digital form, and the archive as an object of research, the Author – referring to a discussed motif from early Herbert’s biography – makes a description and analysis of a selected manuscript resource. These are, to begin with, the resources relating to the Pacifics series, works written between 1949 and 1950. One of them, Pacyfik III (Na Kongres Pokoju) (Pacific III [For the Peace Congress]) has made a special mark in the poet’s biography. Could the analysis of the archived materials, among them many manuscripts, yield any new aspects to the reading and understanding of Herbert’s selected poems? And perhaps to the image of the poet himself?