Poezja zaimków : O "Przesłaniu Pana Cogito" Zbigniewa Herberta

Abstract

This short sketch, departing from questions about personal pronouns, shows the paradoxical, self-contradictory logic o f Mr Cogito’s envoy (“go where the others have gone, to the dark end”, that is “go to nowhere”). Mr Cogito, as cogito, has no other envoy than the postulate of repeating old folktales and parables, and this is something that he, as cogito (with its Enlightenment tradition of fighting with prejudices), should not really recommend. The author’s reflections are set against the background of those “folktales and parables”, that is Gilgamesh Epic, The Iliad (Hector), and the Chanson de Roland. The poem, so much abused by the discourse of ideology, reveals here its irony.