Nota Bene
Christopher Hull
Our Man Down in Havana:
The Story behind Graham
Greene’s Cold War Spy Novel
New York. Pegasus Books. 2019.
338 pages.Our Man Down in Havana pulls out some
threads from the complex story behind the
writing of the famous satirical novel Our
Man in Havana (1958), which was later
made into a 1959 film. The idea of writingJerzy Turowicz, and Leopold Tyrmand, an
exception to the rule being the close friend,
six-years younger Zdzisław Najder, whom
Franaszek nevertheless describes as playing
the role of “a benign uncle,” and a special
place is allotted to his acknowledged master
and first English translator, Czesław Miłosz.
Franaszek is right to devote much space
to the discussion of Herbert’s rather compli-
cated, tortuous relationship with the Nobel
Prize–winning Miłosz. Both were born out-
side present-day Poland: Miłosz in Lithu-
ania and Herbert in Lwów (present-day Lviv
in Ukraine) but had very different experi-
ences in World War II and after. Franaszek
refutes the self-enhanced legend that the
young Herbert played an active part in the
nationalist Home Army while also indicat-
ing Miłosz’s ambiguous view of the Warsaw
Uprising in 1944, which decimated an entire
generation of young Poles. Their quarrel
in California took place in 1968, a difficult
year in Herbert’s life—a year earlier he had
his first attack of emphysema, which led to
his frequent hospitalization in the following
years, and he also had a serious drinking
problem.
It was in this context, with the wors-
ening political situation in Poland, that
the two poets clashed over a drink when
Miłosz’s Polish-Lithuanian skepticism was
pitted against Herbert’s chivalrous-Roman-
tic vision of Polishness. Though toward
the end of Herbert’s life a phone call from
Miłosz led to a reconciliation, it is worth
quoting what the older poet said about
Herbert, duly repeated by Franaszek: “How
he hated me. But also loved. This often hap-
pens—this combination.” Fairness toward
strong competitors is rarely characteristic of
great poets.
The last chapters of this biography make
sad reading. The change of regime in Poland
in 1990 coincided with a minor mental
breakdown for Herbert: he quarreled with
almost all his friends, including his loyal
and often generous translators. Later he
tried to make up for his behavior, but the
scars remained, and in the last four years of
his life the ailing Herbert condemned him-
self to loneliness in his small Warsaw flat.
He also wrote some remorseful religious
poems during this period, but he will prob-
ably be most remembered for his earlier
work, particularly for the poems of the Mr.
Cogito cycle.
Andrzej Franaszek’s biography of Her-
bert is illustrated by numerous photos and
complemented by a year-by-year “Calendar
Timeline of Zbigniew Herbert’s Life,” which
this reviewer found particularly useful when
occasionally lost in the minutiae of a life
full of travel, love, literary success, political
controversy, and personal suffering.
George Gömöri
SSEES-UCL, LondonThe Whole Kahani
May We Borrow Your Country
Linen PressThis collection of short stories and
poetry written by the women of the
Whole Kahani brings together several
evocative tales of dislocation and dis-
placement from the perspectives of
novelists, poets, and screenwriters of
South Asian origin. A thoroughly lively
and contemporary collection, the stories
in May We Borrow Your Country paint
vivid pictures of multilayered relation-
ships with deeply human sympathy and
skillfully executed dry humor.Serhiy Zhadan
What We Live For, What We Die For
Trans. Virlana Tkacz & Wanda Phipps
Yale University PressThis collection of Ukrainian writer
Serhiy Zhadan’s poems will likely
cement his reputation as the unflinch-
ing witness to the turbulent social and
political travails of his nation. With an
acerbic tone that will seem familiar to
admirers of Franz Wright or Charles
Bukowski, Zhadan’s no-nonsense vers-
es are sure to strike more than a few
nerves as readers move through this
collection that draws together nearly
two decades of his work.WORLDLIT.ORG 109