Wisława Szymborska and the Importance of the Unimportant

Abstract

Academy to bestow the world's most prestigious literary award on Czeslaw Milosz in 19801 and on Wislawa Szymborska in 1996 is tribute to the exceptional vitality and prominence of contemporary Polish poetry. More than anyone else, it is Czeslaw Milosz who gave Polish poetry its international visibility, both as a poet and translator and its enthusiastic promoter in America. It is Milosz' s seminal anthology Postwar Polish Poetry, first published in 1965, that contained together with twenty other poetsthe first English translations of Szymborska's verse. But Milosz's significance is even deeper, and lies in the impact he has had on the shape of postwar Polish poetry. More than any other twentiethcentury poet, Milosz has created a model and a yardstick against which younger poets have to measure themselves. Wislawa Szymborska is the one who has done so with the greatest success. To most readers outside Poland, Szymborska's Nobel Prize came as a surprise. Long recognized in her native country as a leading voice in contemporary poetry, Szymborska has not achieved the same popularity in the English-speaking world enjoyed by other poets of her generation such as Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rozewicz, and Miron Bialoszewski. Not a political poet (though some of her early poems were written according to the precepts of socialist realism), Szymborska drew little attention at a time when Western interest in Eastern Europe had a largely political motivation. She defied the mold used to describe literature behind the iron curtain. However, a number of English translations of her poetry had appeared: Mitosz's anthology was followed in 1981 by the translations of Magnus Kryfiski and Robert Maguire, published as Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems;2 Adam Czerniawski brought out People on a Bridge3 in England in 1990; and in 1995 there appeared the comprehensive collection View with a Grain of Sand, a set of award-winning translations by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. It is only with this most recent publication that Szymborska's poetry came fully into the view of the English-speaking audience. In contrast, Szymborska's reputation in Poland has been steadily growing ever since her third volume, Wolanie do Yeti (Calling Out to Yeti), appeared in 1957. The publication of each successive volumeSol (Salt; 1962), Sto pociech (No End of Fun; 1967), Wszelki wypadek (Could Have; 1972), Wielka liczba (A Large Number; 1976), Ludzie na moscie (1986; Eng. People on a Bridge), and Koniec i poczqtek (The End and the Beginning; 1993) has been an important poetic event, winning the author an ever-widening audience. Szymborska's ability to speak in simple language has made her poetry accessible and attractive to an unusually broad spectrum of readers.