"In the borderland town where I won’t return" : Lvov in the work of three poets

In my article 1 will try to present how three poets - Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski and Krzysztof Lisowski - try to "reach" Lvov by using memory. Lvov in Zbigniew Herberts Mister Cogito is thinking of returning to his home town is a place which is unfamiliar to him. Coming back to his home town is impossible, because if Mister Cogito came back to "the borderland town" after so many years, he would not find "a single thing which is ours". Probably contemporary Lvov is not a place from Mrs. Cogitos childhood, it appears to be an unknown city; also his fragmentary memories of that place are not enough to ‘bring Lvov to life’. On the other hand, memory is the only way to find the borderland town for Adam Zagajewski in Togo to Lvov. The city from the title "lives" thanks to memories. Through collective memory "Lvov, after all, exists, being quiet and pure as a peach. It is everywhere." In the poem of the third poet, Krzysztof Lisowski, Lvov is a place which a man cannot really discover, because "there was no one who could remember" the character and the colour which this town had before World War 11. Without the people who remember that place there is no way to get to know Lvov.