Abstract
This article proposes a postcolonial reading of antiquity motifs from Zbigniew Herbert’s poems. References to ancient history, mythology, and biblical allusions are interpreted as allegories of the political culture in the Polish People’s Republic. While Herbert depicts communism as an attempt at colonization, in his poems the focus lies mainly on the internal effects for the colonized mind. The article rounds off with connecting Herbert’s attitude with defensive nationalism and proposing recent right-wing tendencies in the Polish appropriation of postcolonial theory as a heuristic model for understanding Herbert’s civil position during communism.
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