Mr. Cogito Tells of the Temptation of Spinoza (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Zbigniew Herbert
- First Published: 1974
- Type of Work: Dramatic monologue
- Genres: Poetry, Dramatic monologue
- Subjects: Philosophy or philosophers, God, Seventeenth century, Faustian bargains, Netherlands or Dutch people, Temptation
The Poem
At sixty-five lines, “Mr. Cogito Tells of the Temptation of Spinoza” is one of the longest of the forty poems of Pan Cogito (Mr. Cogito). The sense of fullness and completion that such length implies is, however, offset by Zbigniew Herbert’s division of the sixty-five lines into twenty-seven stanzas, some just a single line long (and none more than six). All the lines are short, and several are just one word long (“think,” “calm,” “Great”). At once whole and fragmentary, “Mr. Cogito Tells of the Temptation of Spinoza,” with its...
[The entire page is 1485 words long]
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