Still Life with a Bridle : Essays and Apocryphas

In Still Life with a Bridle, poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artisitic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland. These sixteen essays reveal Hervert's discriminating artistic eye and poetic sensibility, one that revels in irony, humor, and a satirist's appreciation of the absurd. An inveterate museum-goer, he focuses on the art of the Dutch masters, using it as a stepping-off point for a thoroughly individual and entertaining examination of the foibles, genius, and character of the Dutch people as a whole. The result is an unorthodox and revealing glimpse into the past that gives us a keener understanding not only of a distant people, but of ourselves as well.

Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) was a spiritual leader of the anticommunist movement in Poland. His work has been translated into almost every European language; he has won numerous prizes, most recently the Jerusalem Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His books include Selected Poems, Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, Mr. Cogito, Still Life with a Bridle, and the new prose collection The King of the Ants, all available from The Ecco Press.