Rediscover Siena through the eyes of a writer. To celebrate the centenary of the birth of the Polish poet, essayist and playwright Zbigniew Herbert, the initiative organized in collaboration with the Municipality, the Polish Institute of Rome, together with the Adama Mickiewicza Institute of Warsaw was presented at the Santa Maria. ‘In the footsteps of Mr. Herbert’ is a project that consists of seven stands, three are located in Orvieto and four in Siena, positioned in key locations in the city: Palazzo Pubblico, National Art Gallery, Santa Maria and Fortezza. Each station features a short biographical text and a quote from the book ‘A Barbarian in the Garden’, which can be listened to in a longer version via a QR code in the recordings available in both languages on the streaming platform.
“This ideal walk – explain the curators – offers the opportunity to visit Siena by adopting the point of view of a traveling poet who, thanks to his vast knowledge and his literary ability, was able to discover the subtleties of the history, of the works of art and architecture of this city, without forgetting to comment on the daily life of its inhabitants”. Herbert visited the fundamental places of European culture and through his books he talks about his way of being a traveller, perhaps distant from the canons of contemporary travel, often limited to tight deadlines. “Living in the twentieth century – wrote Herbert – we carry the previous centuries within us.” His trip to Italy contributed to making this concept clearer, this type of attitude and predisposition to discovery, which the writer used as the main inspiration both for his trip, during which he visited Siena, now more than sixty ‘years ago, and for his subsequent account of that journey, recomposed in two essays entitled ‘The Duomo’ and ‘Siena’ which are part of the collection ‘A barbarian in the garden’, from which the quotations reported in the positions chosen for this project. The book was published in English in 1962 and an Italian translation edited by Andrea Ceccarelli for Adelphi will soon be released. Also in 2008 the Santa Maria hosted a series of literary conferences dedicated to the figure of Herbert, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death.
Riccardo Bruni
