Wislawa Szymborska
Wislawa Szymborska
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent, which has since become part of Kórnik, she later resided in Kraków until the end of her life. She is described as a "Mozart of Poetry". In Poland, Szymborska's books have reached sales rivaling prominent prose authors: although she once remarked in a poem, "Some Like Poetry", that no more than two out of a thousand people care...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth2 July 1923
CountryPoland
Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.
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.
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.
Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
You know, I'm worried about Szymborska. I wish she would stop smoking.
You have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.
I don't believe I have a mission. Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.
'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun.
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.
I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.