Born: Bnin, Poland, 2 July 1923. Education: Educated at a private school of the Ursulan Sisters, Krakow, 1935-39; Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 1945-48. Family: Married Adam Wlodek in 1948 (divorced in 1954); companion of Kornel Filipowicz from the 1970s (died in 1990). Career: Assistant editor in publishing houses 1948-53; editor of the poetry section in Krakow-based Zycie Literackie, 1953-68, and member of its Editorial Board until 1976. Awards: Goethe prize, 1991; Herder prize, 1995; Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Poznan, 1995; Polish PEN Club prize, 1996; Nobel prize for Literature, 1996.
Publications
Poetry
Dlatego iyjemy. 1952.
Pytania zadawane sobie. 1954.
Wolanie do Yeti. 1957.
Sol. 1962.
Sto pociech. 1967.
Wszelki wypadek. 1972.
Poezje. 1977.
Wielka liczba. 1977.
Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems, translated by Magnus J.Krynski and Robert A. Maguire. 1981.
Ludzie na moscie. 1986; as People on a Bridge: Poems, translated by Adam Czerniawski, 1990.
Koniec i poczqtek. 1993.
Widok z ziarnkiem piasku. 1996; as View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh, 1995.
Nothing Twice: Selected Poems, edited and translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh. 1997.
Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh. 1998.
Wiersze wybrane. 2000.
Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak. 2001.
Prose
Lektury nadobowiqzkowe. 1973.
Lektury nadobowiqzkowe, cz.2. 1981.
Nonrequired Reading: prose pieces, translated by Clare Cavanagh. 2002.
Other
Zycie na poczekaniu: Lekcja Literatury z Jerzym Kwiatkowskim i Marianem Stalq. 1996.
Critical Studies:
Swiat ze wszystkich stron swiata: O Wislawie Szymborskiej by Stanislaw Balbus, 1996; Szymborska: Szkice by Edward Balcerzan and others, 1996; Tak lekko bylo nic o tym nie wiedziec. . . : Szymborska i swiat by Malgorzata Baranowska, 1996; ”Wislawa Szymborska: Rapturous Skeptic” by Edward Hirsh, in Responsive Reading by Edward Hirsh, 1999; ”Mozartian Joy: The Poetry of Wislawa Szymborska,” in The Mature Laurel: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry edited by Adam Czerniawski, 1991.
Wislawa Szymborska is Poland’s foremost contemporary woman poet. In 1996, at the age of 73, she was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature. The fact that some of her poems, such as ”Nothing Twice” (1957) and ”Cat in an Empty Apartment” (1993), have achieved almost a cult status illustrates the high esteem in which her poetry is held among Polish readers. Szymborska’s entire published oeuvre consists of about 200 poems, which in itself makes the high recognition she has received remarkable. Another remarkable feature about her popularity in Poland is the fact that Szymborska does not perform any of the roles traditionally associated in Polish literature with poets; she is neither a bard nor a teacher, she is not a blessed or a chosen one, she does not regard herself as superior to her readers, and does not assume that she knows and understands more than they do. Her poetic persona does not resemble the platonic or demonic lover or, at the other extreme, of the patriotic mother—roles typically reserved for women writers by the same tradition. Although it would be easy to argue that being a woman plays a central role in her poetry, Szymborska is not, strictly speaking, a feminist; her concerns are not with women’s issues specifically but with human beings in general, who for her do not divide primarily along gender lines. Nevertheless, her poetry does elevate the private and domestic spheres of life that are traditionally associated with women to the level of truly important topics.
The first two volumes of Szymborska’s poems, written according to Socialist Realist precepts, Dlatego zyjemy [That What We Live For] and Pytania zadawane sobie [Questions Put To Myself], have not yet been widely accepted by critics and some have even declared her third volume, Wolanie do Yeti [Calling Out To Yeti] to be her real literary debut. Citing her lack of political, social, and literary maturity as an explanation of the weaknesses of her early poems, they overlook the fact that the world of politics and social responsibilities is not what makes Szymborska’s poetry interesting or original. Despite her attempts to stay close to contemporary events, such poems as ”Vietnam” or ”Written in a Hotel” (in Stoprociech [No End of Fun]) are not among her best poetic achievements. It is only in her 1993 volume Koniec i poczatek [The End and The Beginning] that Szymborska found her own poetic approach to social, ideological, and political themes by viewing them from the perspective of small, domestic issues.
Szymborska’s poetic work focuses on common, everyday happenings and things. She is (as Malgorzata Baranowska observed) a master of rediscovering everyday reality and expanding its treatment in poetry. Central to her poetry are humanity and the human being, seen from a variety of often unusual perspectives. The narrator of Szymborska’s poems speaks in a quiet tone and asks questions instead of providing answers or proffering advice. But it is not so much her poetic voice as the perspective she brings that sets her poetry apart from the work of other poets. One of her favorite devices is to view human affairs from a nonhuman perspective to reveal, ironically, what people are really like. As she writes in ”No End of Fun”:
With that ring in his nose, with that toga, that sweater,
He’s no end of fun, for all you say.
Poor little beggar.
A human, if ever we saw one.
The skeptical, ironic, and questioning tone disappears, however, when Szymborska writes about women, such as the mothers in ”Born” and ”Pieta,” or the teenage girl she once was in ”Laughter” or ”A Moment in Troy.” Interestingly, when describing herself as ”one first person sing., temporarily / declined in human form,” Szymborska’s poetic persona seems to remember and comprise all previous biological stages of existence, as when she confesses in ”A Speech at the Lost-And-Found”:
I’m not even sure exactly where I left my claws,
Who got my fur coat, who’s living in my shell.
As a woman, however, she is also a cultural construct-not only visiting Troy, understanding Lot’s wife, or being a Cassandra-but aware of the role of art in the perception of female body. In ”Rubens’ Women,” referring to the absence in his paintings, of ”skinny sisters” who have been ”exiled by style,” she writes:
The thirteenth century would have given them golden haloes.
The twentieth, silver screens.
The seventeenth, alas, holds nothing for the unvoluptuous.
Her poems, with their penchant for paradox, are devoted not only to what is, but also to what isn’t, to what happened and to what did not happen. ”My nonarrival in the city of N. / took place on the dot,” she writes in the beginning of ”The Railroad Station,” only to add later: ”The railroad station in the city of N. / passed its exam / in objective existence.” However, the mere fact of existence is less important for Szymborska than the presence of human attributes, especially feelings. That is why in her poem ”Museum” the idea of struggle is a synonym for the life of both humans and objects, and why the poem ”Wrong Number” ends with the observation ”He lives, so he errs.” Years later, mourning the man she loved in her ”Parting with a View,” Szymborska wrote:
There is one thing I won’t agree to:
my own return.
The privilege of presence—
I give it up.
Szymborska does not struggle against reality, does not attempt to mould it to her own purposes by the use of cultural or poetic cliches, and does not wax sentimental. ”True Love,” as she put it ”couldn’t populate the planet in a million years.” In the ”Family Album” she notes that ”No one in this family has ever died of love.” This acceptance of reality leads Szymborska to eschew the patriotic role of poetry. In ”The End and the Beginning” she writes:
Those who knew what all this was about must make way for those who know little. And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.
Instead of fulfilling traditional roles, her poetry is an appreciation of the miracle of everyday things. She highlights what we all take for granted by using and contrasting different perspectives, by deconstructing cultural images and comparing them with a commonsensical point of view, by using—as in ”Hitler’s First Photograph,”—a cliche and a point in time that, though perfectly normal and justified, collide with readers’ knowledge of Hitler’s role in history. Perspectives that seem to surprise readers in her poems are in fact often points of view we all share but seldom put in words. Szymborska’s poetry, in which words are not meant to create new meanings but to follow thoughts and points of view with care, makes a consistent statement that everyday, unimportant, non-heroic reality, which belonged to women through ages and cultures, is not only fascinating and refreshing but also fully deserving of poetic recognition.
