SOURCE: Baranczak, Stanislaw. “Imponderabilia.” In Fugitive from Utopia: The Poetry of Zbigniew Herbert, pp. 111-35. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.

In the following chapter from a book-length study on Herbert, Baranczak analyzes the function of irony in developing an ethical system in Herbert's poetry.

I have stressed repeatedly that to achieve a full and deep understanding of the overwhelming majority of Herbert's poems one must penetrate the workings of irony in them. This is not enough, however. In the case of this particular poet, any inquiry into the problem of irony has little effect unless it includes consideration of two additional, closely connected issues: the functions and the limits of irony. In every kind of ironic moralism, the ultimate question is: For what purpose is the irony used? If it is not irony for irony's sake, what are its functions? Or, to view the same problem from another...