Potęga smaku Zbigniewa Herberta w kontekście dychotomii „pana” i „chama”

The text attempts to read the poem Potęga smaku [The Power of Taste] by Zbigniew Herbert from the “plebeian perspective”, the “perspective of cultural exclusion”, outlined by the author of the article. Although Herbert’s work does not reference directly the issues mentioned above, the imagery the poet has used when constructing the image of communists (such as “boys with potato faces”, “very ugly girls with red hands”, “a couple of concepts like flails”) unambiguously evoke a figure of a plebeian. Potęga smaku, although this was certainly not the main intent of the author, employs one of the most oppressive oppositions in the Polish culture: the dichotomy of the “gentleman” and the “boor”. This dichotomy is the more severe that the lyrical subject situates itself on the side of “gentlemanhood”, “betterness”, cultural superiority. The goal of the article is to show the mechanism through which a literary text, making use of a specific, overt antagonism (communists–opposition), simultaneously secretly strengthens a contrast which bears signs of symbolic violenc