Still Life with a Bridle

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.