Born July 2, 1923, Bnin (now a district of Kórnik), Poland) is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She is the 1996 laureate of the Noble Literature Prize and several other notable awards. In Poland, her books reach sales rivaling prominent prose authors[citation needed]—although she once remarked in a poem entitled "Some like poetry" [Niektorzy lubią poezje] that no more than two out of a thousand people care for the art.
Szymborska frequently employs literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions. Szymborska's compact poems often conjure large existential puzzles, touching on issues of ethical import, and reflecting on the condition of people both as individuals and as members of human society. Szymborska's style is succint and marked by introspection and wit.
Szymborska's reputation rests on a relatively small body of work: she has not published more than 250 poems. As a person, she is often described as modest to the point of shyness. Long cherished by her Polish literary contemporaries (including Czesław Miłosz), Szymborska became better known internationally after her 1996 Nobel Prize. Szymborska's work has been translated into many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.
-Life-
In 1931, Szymborska's family moved to Kraków. She has been linked with this city, where she studied, worked, and still resides, ever since.
When World War II broke out in 1939, she continued her education in underground lessons. From 1943, she worked as a railroad employee and managed to avoid being deported to Germany as a forced labourer. It was during this time that her career as an artist began with illustrations for an English-language textbook. She also began writing stories and occasionally poems.
From 1945 Szymborska studied first Polish language and literature, before switching to sociology, at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where she soon became involved in the local writing scene, and met and was influenced by Czesław Miłosz. In March 1945, she published her first poem Szukam słowa ("I seek the word") in the daily paper Dziennik Polski; her poems continued to be published in various newspapers and periodicals for a number of years. In 1948 she quit her studies without a degree, due to her poor financial circumstances; the same year, she married the poet Adam Włodek, whom she divorced in 1954. At that time, she was working as a secretary for an educational biweekly magazine as well as illustrating books.
Her first book was to be published in 1949, but did not pass censorship as it "did not meet socialist requirements." However, like many other intellectuals in post-war Poland, Szymborska remained loyal to the PRL official ideology early in her career, signing political petitions and praising Stalin, Lenin and the realities of socialism; such as in her debut collection Dlatego żyjemy ("That is what we are living for"), containing poems entitled Lenin or Młodzieży budującej Nową Hutę ("For the Youth that builds Nowa Huta"), about the construction of a Stalinist industrial town near Kraków. She also became a member of the ruling Polish United Workers' Party.
However, like most Polish intellectuals initially close to the official party line, she grew gradually estranged from the ideology and renounced her earlier political work. Although she did not leave the party until 1966, she began to establish contacts with dissidents. As early as 1957, she befriended Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor of the influential Paris-based emigré journal Kultura, to which she also contributed.
In 1953, she joined the staff of the literary review magazine Życie Literackie ("Literary Life"), where she continued to work until 1981 and from 1968 ran her own book review column entitled Lektury Nadobowiązkowe ("Non-compulsory Reading"); many of these essays were later published in book form. From 1981 to 1983, she was an editor of the Kraków-based monthly Pismo. During the 1980s, she intensified her oppositional activities, contributing to the samizdat periodical Arka under the pseudonym "Stanczykówna", as well as to Kultura in Paris.
Szymborska translated French literature into Polish, in particular Baroque poetry and Agrippa d'Aubigné.
In Germany, Szymborska is often associated with her translator Karl Dedecius, who did much to popularize her works there.
-Prizes and Awards-
1. The City of Cracow Prize for Literature, 1954
2. The Polish Ministry of Culture Prize, 1963
3. The Goethe Prize, 1991
4. The Herder Prize, 1995
5. Honorary Doctor of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, 1995
6. The Polish PEN Club prize, 1996
7. Nobel Prize for Literature, 1996
-Major Works-
1. Dlatego żyjemy (That's Why We Are Alive) (1952)
2. Pytania zadawane sobie (Questioning Yourself) (1954)
3. Wołanie do Yeti (Calling Out to Yeti) (1957)
4. Sól (Salt) (1962)
5. 101 wierszy (101 Poems) (1966)
6. Sto pociech (No End of Fun) (1967)
7. Poezje wybrane (Selected Poetry) (1967)
8. Wszelki wypadek (Could Have) (1972)
9. Wielka liczba (A Large Number) (1976)
10. Ludzie na moście (People on the Bridge) (1986)
11. Poezje: Poems (bilingual Polish-English edition) (1989)
12. Lektury nadobowiązkowe (Non-required Reading) (1992)
13. Koniec i początek (The End and the Beginning) (1993)
14. Widok z ziarnkiem piasku (View with a Grain of Sand) (1996)
15. Sto wierszy - sto pociech (100 Poems - 100 Happinesses) (1997)
16. Chwila (Moment) (2002)
17. Rymowanki dla dużych dzieci (Rhymes for Big Kids) (2003)
18. Dwukropek (Colon) (2005)
--Poetry Corner--
True Love
True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?
Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.
Look at the happy couple.
Couldn't they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends' sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!
It's hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who'd want to stay within bounds?
True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.
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.
Winner of the Noble Peace Prize for Literature.
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