Tuesday, November 18, 2008

News at Eleven: My favourite [Zbigniew] Herbert poem,

"Photograph", strategically deploys the Biblical myth of Abraham and Isaac to illuminate the communist idea that the end justifies the means, that the immediate sacrifice is justified by the millennial outcome:

my little boy my Isaac bend your head
just a moment of pain and then you will be
anything you like - a swallow a lily of the valley.

Abraham thinks he is preserving Isaac's innocence and rewarding him with freedom.

from Telegraph: Zbigniew Herbert: The Collected Poems--review: Lies have to be beautiful

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