“Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves … in our clamorous times it’s much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they’re attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.”
– Wislawa Szymborsk
Wislawa Szymborska was born in Kornik in Western Poland on 2 July 1923. Since 1931 she has been living in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her debut in March 1945 with a poem “Szukam slowa” (I am Looking for a Word) in the daily “Dziennik Polski”.
During 1953-1981 she worked as poetry editor and columnist in the Kraków literary weekly “Zycie Literackie” where the series of her essays “Lektury nadobowiazkowe” appeared (the series has been renewed lately in the addition to “Gazeta Wyborcza”-“Gazeta o Ksiazkach”). The collection “Lektury nadobowiazkowe” was published in the form of a book four times.
Szymborska has published 16 collections of poetry: Dlatego zyjemy (1952), Pytania zadawane sobie (1954), Wolanie do Yeti (1957), Sól (1962), Wiersze wybrane (1964), Poezje wybrane (1967), Sto pociech (1967), Poezje (1970), Wszelki wypadek (1972), , Tarsjusz i inne wiersze (1976), Wielka liczba (1976), Poezje wybrane II (1983), Ludzie na moscie (1986). Koniec i poczatek (1993, 1996), Widok z ziarnkiem piasku. 102 wiersze (1996) . Wislawa Szymborska has also translated French poetry.
Her poems have been translated (and published in book form) in English, German, Swedish, Italian, Danish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian and other languages. They have also been published in many foreign anthologies of Polish poetry.
Wislawa Szymborska is the Goethe Prize winner (1991) and Herder Prize winner (1995). She has a degree of Honorary Doctor of Letters of Poznan University (1995). In 1996 she received the Polish PEN Club prize.
Web Source: Les Prix Nobel
Wislawa Szymborska Poems
- A Few Words On The Soul
- Hunger Camp At Jaslo
- On Death, Without Exaggeration
- Possibilities
- Some Like Poetry
- The Joy Of Writing
- The Three Oddest Words
- Three Oddest Words
- Under One Small Star
- Utopia