High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Zbigniew Herbert ( listen) (29 October 1924 in Lwów [then Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine] 28 July 1998 in Warsaw) was an influential Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement Home Army (AK) during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. He was first published in 1950; his writing debut was a volume of verse String of light and it was published in 1956. One of Herbert's most valuable works is a cycle of writings about Pan Cogito (Mr. Cogito), a character that is very modern but still sticks to the European cultural tradition. He was a distant relative of the 17th century poet George Herbert.