In 1945, Wisława enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow to study Polish literature. Later she shifted to sociology. However, she had to leave her studies in 1948 without earning her degree due to financial constraints.
Career
Gallery of Wisława Szymborska
Gallery of Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska as a young poet.
Gallery of Wisława Szymborska
Szymborska playful in mid-career.
Gallery of Wisława Szymborska
Gallery of Wisława Szymborska
Photograph by Joanna Helander.
Gallery of Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska displays her Nobel Prize for Literature.
Achievements
Membership
Awards
Nobel Prize in Literature
1996
Wislawa Szymborska with her Nobel Prize medal in 1996. Photo by Soren Andersson.
Order of the White Eagle
2011
Wisława Szymborska and President Bronisław Komorowski at the Order of the White Eagle award ceremony in January 2011.
Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska puffs out a cloud of cigarette smoke, sitting among other guests at the Nobel banquet at the Town Hall of Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10, 1996.
Wislawa Szymborska smiles during her first radio interview taped at the Writers' House in Zakopane, a southern Polish holiday resort, shortly after she was named winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature.
In 1945, Wisława enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow to study Polish literature. Later she shifted to sociology. However, she had to leave her studies in 1948 without earning her degree due to financial constraints.
(The seventy poems in this bilingual edition are among the...)
The seventy poems in this bilingual edition are among the largest and most representative offering of Wislawa Szymborska's work in English, with particular emphasis on the period since 1967. They illustrate virtually all her major themes and most of her important techniques.
(From one of Europe’s most prominent and celebrated poets,...)
From one of Europe’s most prominent and celebrated poets, a collection remarkable for its graceful lyricism. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, Szymborska documents life’s improbability as well as its transient beauty to capture the wonder of existence.
(This volume samples the full range of Wislawa Szymborska'...)
This volume samples the full range of Wislawa Szymborska's major themes: the ironies of love, the wonders of nature's beauty, and the illusory character of art.
(Nobel laureate Symborska takes on current events and anci...)
Nobel laureate Symborska takes on current events and ancient conundrums in this elegant, terse collection. It contains only 26 poems, and the Polish originals fill half the pages.
(An exciting collection of poems by Wislawa Szymborska. Th...)
An exciting collection of poems by Wislawa Szymborska. These twenty-seven poems, as rendered by prize-winning translators Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, are among her greatest ever.
(This book is a complete collection of poetry by the Nobel...)
This book is a complete collection of poetry by the Nobel Prize-winning poet, including 164 poems in all, as well as the full text of her Nobel acceptance speech of December 7, 1996, in Stockholm.
Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, writer and translator, whose intelligent and empathic explorations of philosophical, moral, and ethical issues won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Her work has been translated into English and many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Persian and Chinese.
Background
Wisława Szymborska was born on July 2, 1923 in Prowent, now a part of Kórnik town in western Poland. She was the second child of her parents, Wincenty Szymborska, and Anna (née Rottermund) Szymborski.
At the time of her birth, her mother was working as a steward under Count Władysław Zamoyski, who owned a large property including the town of Kórnik. When the count died in 1924, the family moved to Torun. For some reason, the family again made a move and in 1931, settled at Kraków, one of the oldest cities in Poland.
Education
Wislawa Szymborska started writing poetry at the age of five while studying in an elementary school in Torun. Wisława was enrolled at a convent school in Kraków, but could not finish her studies there. As the Second World War set in, Germany occupied Poland and in 1940, the Polish citizens were barred from attending public schools. Wisława continued her studies in an underground school. When the war ended in 1945, Wisława enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow to study Polish literature. Later she shifted to sociology. However, she had to leave her studies in 1948 without earning her degree due to financial constraints.
In 1995, she was bestowed with Honorary Doctor of Letters degree of Poznan University.
In 1943, Wisława Szymborska took up a job under a railroad company. This helped her to evade deportation to Germany as forced labor. This was also the period when she got the job of creating illustrations for an English language textbook and began to write stories and poems.
Wisława Szymborska began her literary career while studying at the Jagiellonian University. In March 1945, she made her debut in a Kraków newspaper called Dziennik Polski with her poem "Szukam słowa" ("I Seek the Word"). Soon, many other poems began to appear in different local newspapers and periodicals.
After leaving her studies in 1948, she took up the job of the secretary in a bi-weekly educational magazine. At the same time, she also worked as the illustrator for the magazine and continued to write poetry.
In 1949, she completed her first collection of poems. Unfortunately, the book did not pass censorship as the poems did not reflect the communist ideology of postwar Poland. Therefore, she began to work in that line.
Like most intellectuals of that era, young Szymborska’s early works reflected socialist philosophy followed by Poland at that time. Her debut collection "Dlatego żyjemy" ("That is what we are living for"), published in 1952, contains many poems that echoed her political belief.
In 1953, she joined a weekly magazine called Życie Literackie (Literary Life) as an editorial staff. Her next collection "Pytania zadawane sobie" ("Questions Put to Myself"), published in 1954, echoed the same socialist sentiment.
However, she soon got disillusioned with communist ideology and her third collection "Wołanie do Yeti" ("Calling Out to Yeti"), published in 1957, bears testimony to such shifts. Poems in this collection show her deep concern for humanity.
It was "Sol" ("Salt"), published in 1962, which established her as a mature poet. Since then, she wrote numerous poems. In total, she had 21 books to her credit. Her last book "Błysk rewolwru" ("The Glimmer of a Revolver") was published posthumously in 2013.
Indeed, Szymborska was not just a famous poet. Over the years, she also gained considerable reputation for her book reviews and translations of French poetry. From 1968, she ran her own book review column called "Lektury Nadobowizkowe". Later she published many of these essays as a book.
Her association with Życie Literackie ended in 1981 and for the next two years she was the editor of NaGlos (OutLoud), a Kraków-based monthly periodical. At the same time, she intensified her oppositional activities.
This was also the time when she began to contribute to the dissident periodical called Arka. However, she used a pseudonym "Stańczykówna". Besides, she also made regular contribution to the Kultura, a leading Polish-émigré literary-political magazine, published from Paris.
Szymborska died peacefully of lung cancer in her sleep on February 1, 2012 at her home in Kraków, Poland. She was then 88 years old and was working on a new poetry, though was unable to arrange her final poems for publication in the way she would have wanted. Her last poetry was published later in 2012.
Wisława Szymborska was awarded 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality".
Other than the Nobel Prize, Szymborska received many other prizes including the Polish Ministry of Culture Prize in 1963, Goethe Prize in 1991, Herder Prize in 1995 and Polish PEN Club prize in 1996, among others.
In 2011, Szymborska received Order Orła Białego or the Order of the White Eagle. It is the highest honor bestowed to any individual by the Government of Poland.
Today Szymborska’s poems have been included in school syllabus. Now she is also an internationally known poet and her work has been translated into different European languages like English, French and German as well as into Asian languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.
Like most intellectuals of that era, young Szymborska’s early works reflected socialist philosophy followed by Poland at that time. Her debut collection "Dlatego żyjemy" ("That is what we are living for"), published in 1952, contains many poems that echoed her political belief.
She also became a member of Polish United Workers’ Party. Her next collection "Pytania zadawane sobie" ("Questions Put to Myself"), published in 1954, echoed the same socialist sentiment.
However, she soon got disillusioned with communist ideology and her third collection "Wołanie do Yeti" ("Calling Out to Yeti"), published in 1957, bears testimony to such shifts. Poems in this collection show her deep concern for humanity and in one poem, she compared Soviet leader Stalin to an abominable snowman. Ultimately, she severed all ties with Polish United Workers’ Party in 1966. She began to establish contacts with dissidents.
As early as 1957, she befriended Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor of the influential Paris-based émigré journal Kultura, to which she also contributed. In 1964, she opposed a Communist-backed protest to The Times against independent intellectuals, demanding freedom of speech instead.
However, in the 1980s, she intensified her oppositional activities, contributing to the samizdat periodical Arka under the pseudonym "Stańczykówna", as well as to the Paris-based Kultura. In the early 1990s, with her poem published in Gazeta Wyborcza, she supported the vote of no-confidence in the first non-Communist government.
Views
Quotations:
"I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems."
"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination... Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know."
"Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die."
"At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn't possible to save mankind."
"I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. "
"They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway."
"Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life."
"Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still."
"All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look."
"It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself."
"Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared."
"You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects."
"In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed."
Membership
Wislawa Szymborska was a member of Polish Writers’ Association from 1952 to 1983. Then she became a member of general board during 1978-1983.
Polish Writers’ Association
,
Poland
1952 - 1983
Personality
Szymborska liked being photographed with amusing road signs.
Szymborska was also the victim of her love for kitsch. So much so that her friends had decided to give her kitschy gifts only, or flowers which she didn’t appreciate. If she received any flowers during any public event, she would for the most part offer them to stupefied taxi drivers.
Connections
Wisława Szymborska married poet Adam Włodek in 1948. Their little house at 22 Krupnicza Street in Kraków became a hub for the writers. However, the couple split up in 1954; but remained close friends till death. They did not have children.
Michal Rusinek was personal secretary to poet Wisława Szymborska and currently manages her Foundation. The author works at the Department of Polish language at the Jagellonian University in Kraków, where he teaches literary theory and rhetoric. On certain days, he becomes a translator from English, on others he writes books for children and adults, or creates poetry or song lyrics – to date, he has written and translated around 100 books. Rusinek is also a celebrated columnist, writing articles on books and language.
