One hundred years ago, in Lviv, the writer Zbigniew Herbert was born. He is renowned for his poetry, essays, drama, and radio plays. The Polonika Institute shared insights about places in Lviv connected to Herbert's life, as well as references to the city in his works.
Herbert's ancestors settled in Lviv approximately a hundred years before his birth. Rafał Żebrowski described the lineage of the Herberts from the arrival of Franciszek Herbert in Lviv in the early 19th century.
In one of his interviews, Herbert spoke about his ancestors: “Although my family came from England, they arrived in Poland via Austria, specifically to that part which was then called Galicia. My great-grandfather, who didn’t know a single word of Polish, was an English teacher.”
Zbigniew Herbert's father, Bolesław, was a lawyer and served as the director of the Małopolski Merchant Bank, and from 1938, he was the director of the Lviv branch of the Poznań insurance group "Westa." His mother, Maria, née Kaniak, came from Lviv's intelligentsia and likely had Polish-German roots. After finishing a teacher training seminar, she worked for some time at the National Reconstruction Administration following World War I. Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924.
“The interwar Lviv became a space where Herbert formed his aesthetic sensibility, love of literature, and patriotism, as well as an openness to multiculturalism. The streets of Lviv were filled with diversity – sounds of languages, churches, and artistic initiatives. Herbert, now an adult poet, often returned to this diversity in his poems, creating universal images of human fate, history, and culture, which were firmly rooted in his memories of Lviv,” writes the Polonika Institute.
Places Associated with Herbert's Life in Lviv
The Herbert family changed their residence several times. They lived on the following streets:
Herbert enjoyed walking in the High Castle. The Lviv described in his works became a metaphor for life and transience. Herbert said: “I try not to cultivate feelings for my city, otherwise I will evoke new nostalgias – and there are already enough of those.”
The Herberts had a family summer estate in the Bryukhovychi Forest, where they spent their summers and where “the air could be eaten with spoons.” This theme became the subject of Herbert's short story "The Beginning of a Novel" (1951), dedicated to his parents.
“Perhaps the surroundings of Stryi Park were also a place for daily walks after moving to a larger apartment. The Lychakiv Cemetery holds symbolic significance in Herbert's Lviv history, as it is the burial site of the poet's ancestors and a place where he also wished to be buried in the family tomb,” recalled Herbert's biographer Andrzej Franaszek.
From 1931 to 1937, Herbert studied at the State Male School No. 2 named after Saint Anthony on Hlovynskyi Street, 2 (now Chervonohutska Street). He then continued his education at the gymnasium named after King Casimir the Great (now the UCU building on Sventsytskoho Street, 17), which was initially transformed into a secondary school by the Soviet authorities and subsequently closed by the Germans. He completed his education in underground classes in 1944.
World War II and Leaving Lviv
World War II was a time of great trials for the Herbert family. After the Soviet army captured Lviv, Herbert's father was interrogated by the NKVD but was not arrested. However, after finishing his work as a bank liquidator, which he had previously managed, he was forced to carry corpses to the university morgue.
“In 1943-1944, Herbert worked as a lice feeder at the Lviv Research Institute for the study of typhus and viruses under Professor Weigel. The cages with lice were specially attached to his shins. This job allowed him to avoid forced deportation to Germany for labor. During the war, he also worked as a salesman in a metal goods store run by Pashenda on Kokanovskyi Street, 1 [Kosti Levitsky],” recounts Bartłomiej Gutowski.
For a mocking poem or an initiated action of sitting with his back to portraits of revolutionary leaders (depending on the version of the story), Zbigniew Herbert was transferred to secondary school No. 28, the former private women's gymnasium of the Ursuline sisters, located on St. Yatska Street, 17 (Arkhypenko).
After taking the graduation exams in 1943, the young Herbert began studying Polish philology at the underground University of Jan Kazimierz, but this lasted only two months. It was during this time he made his first poetic attempts.
The Herbert family left the city in 1944 as the front approached Lviv. For Zbigniew, this was a painful loss. His later works reflect a constant longing for Lviv and nostalgia for the lost city. Before his death, Herbert wished to be buried at Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv. Ultimately, his coffin was sprinkled with soil from the grave of General Wacław Iwaszkiewicz, symbolically fulfilling his wish.
Lviv in Zbigniew Herbert's Work
Lviv remained in Herbert's work as a lost paradise, a place that shapes his identity. “Lviv is everywhere,” wrote the poet, realizing that it truly exists only in his memory and imagination. In his poetry, Herbert returned to the city of his childhood, which became the foundation of his poetic worldview.
“In poems such as “My City,” “Mr. Cogito on Returning to His Native City,” or “In the City,” Herbert expresses his longing for Lviv as a metaphor for identity and a spiritual place. He uses archetypal images (stone, water, bread) to emphasize the emotional connection to this place, which becomes a symbol of lost paradise. At the same time, he writes about it as a ‘border city, to which I will not return,’ describing it as a semi-mythical space, an inaccessible place – ‘it is not on any map’,” writes Bartłomiej Gutowski.
The poem from the 1950s titled "Lviv" was accompanied by the dedication “to my city, where I will not die.” Lviv emerges as a forever lost place that, nevertheless, refuses to be forgotten.
The name of Lviv appears only in two works: “Calligraphy Lesson” and “High Castle.” In the latter, a symbolic ascent to the hill is described, which can be interpreted as a childhood memory and a metaphor for poetic life. Herbert contemplates death and transience, while the High Castle symbolizes the beginning of his life journey. Biographers of the writer are convinced that Lviv was the city that shaped Zbigniew Herbert and influenced his creativity.