Still Life with a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas - Paperback

In "Still Life with a Bridle," poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artisitic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland. These sixteen essays reveal Hervert's discriminating artistic eye and poetic sensibility, one that revels in irony, humor, and a satirist's appreciation of the absurd. An inveterate museum-goer, he focuses on the art of the Dutch masters, using it as a stepping-off point for a thoroughly individual and entertaining examination of the foibles, genius, and character of the Dutch people as a whole. The result is an unorthodox and revealing glimpse into the past that gives us a keener understanding not only of a distant people, but of ourselves as well.

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In Still Life with a Bridle, poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert takes an intriguing look at the cultural, artisitic, and aesthetic legacy of 17th-century Holland. These sixteen essays reveal Hervert's discriminating artistic eye and poetic sensibility, one that revels in irony, humor, and a satirist's appreciation of the absurd. An inveterate museum-goer, he focuses on the art of the Dutch masters, using it as a stepping-off point for a thoroughly individual and entertaining examination of the foibles, genius, and character of the Dutch people as a whole. The result is an unorthodox and revealing glimpse into the past that gives us a keener understanding not only of a distant people, but of ourselves as well.