Wislawa+Szymborska


 * By: Sadie Daniels**



Wislawa Szymborska was born in Kornik, western Poland on July 2, 1923. She studied Polish Literature and sociology at the Jagiellonian University. She also worked as a poetry editor and columnist. She has many collections of poetry published and they are translated in all different kinds of languages. She is also a essayist and a translator who has actually gotten a Nobel Peace Prize for her works. Best known has the " Mozart of Poetry" in Poland. []
 * Biography**

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?
 * True Love**

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 – it’s 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. [|Wislawa Szymborska] []

In the poem, "True Love", by Wislawa Szymborska she has a questioning tone throughout the poem. Questioning true love on what it is and if it even exists or is needed to exist? The speaker of the poem seems to have not experienced love and thinks it isn’t necessary. They find it annoying when people act as if there in love, finding it illogical that only certain people seem to have true love and why should those people have it and not others? Basically she had not experienced love therefore she’s convinced there’s no such thing and it’s just an allusion. She starts off the poem seeming miserable and negative. At the same time it makes you reflect on your own feeling on love. You might be arguing back with the speaker or you might even be on her side agreeing. However by the end you realize she has a mocking tone, almost sarcastic, explaining how it couldn’t populate the Earth in a million years, yet we all know that there’s billions of people in one country, let alone the world. Szymborska basically says, let people doubt the existence of love, it’ll be easier for them to live and die. Basically saying in one sentence that love is what makes life worth living. You don’t want to die when you have true love because you want to experience it with that person for as long as possible. It makes you want to live and work hard for your life and people who don’t experience love typically find it easier to move on and die. They have nothing in life to hold onto. In all of that, I get the message that material things in the end, aren’t going to make you happy, but having a significant other to spend your life with is what is really important. Even psychology knows that humans need love. It’s a part of what makes you human. We as a species need love and communication and affection to even development correctly. If you really think about it, it’s like the speaker of the poem is pretending to be a person who doesn’t have love and never did. The speaker is quite depressing and negative and I can’t imagine they have many friends. They give you a serious image of what they believe a person who hasn’t experienced love would be like, and by the end she is mocking. You should let the people be ignorant and negative all they want; it’s easier yeah, but is it worth it? The poem really gives you the aspect of how people have different points of view on true love. Some are very bitter towards love and believe it to be just a word that people think they feel. The speaker even has spite towards people who act as if they’re in love questioning why they can’t hide it. It’s as if their mind is completely closed off to the idea and even if they have proof right before their eyes they won’t want to look at it. Then you have the people who mock those who think that way. They know it’s real probably because they’ve experienced it themselves, in the end saying to those who don’t believe, that they should believe what they want it’ll be easier for them to throw it all away.



It’s good you came—she says. You heard a plane crashed on Thursday? Well so they came to see me about it. The story is he was on the passenger list. So what, he might have changed his mind. They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart. Then they showed me I don’t know who. All black, burned except one hand. A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring. I got furious, that can’t be him. He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that. The stores are bursting with those shirts. The watch is just a regular old watch. And our names on that ring, they’re only the most ordinary names. It’s good you came. Sit here beside me. He really was supposed to get back Thursday. But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year. I’ll put the kettle on for tea. I’ll wash my hair, then what, try to wake up from all this. It’s good you came, since it was cold there, and him just in some rubber sleeping bag, him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man. I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea, since our names are completely ordinary— [|Wislawa Szymborska] []
 * Identification**

In the poem, "Identification", by Wislawa Szymborska, is set up like a poem but has the feel of a story. The poem with the tone of extreme denial, starts off with a woman that seems to have someone come over, to tell her that her that perhaps her significant other was in a plane that crashed. His name being on the passenger list, she immediately explains that he could have changed his mind. Even with a picture of the burned man with his shirt, wrist watch and ring with their names on it she claims they have ordinary names. That the shirt and watch could have been anybody's because a ton of stores have them. She starts to feel this anger and insists he wouldn't do that to her, he wouldn't leave her. He didn't come the Thursday he was supposed to but she says there's many more Thursday's left and she keep the kettle of tea on, ready for him to come home. Yet, she takes a shower and tries to "wake up from this", and seems to start going crazy. She only buries herself deeper in denial as she says how she'll "put the Thursday on, wash the tea" as she refuses to let herself accept the truth. Obviously the speaker of this poem can't grasp the concept of her husband really being gone. Her anger is proof in itself that she knows the truth deep down. But to repress the fact, she drives herself insane. It's pretty sad actually, some people can't live without their significant other. It shows how powerful, and destructive love can be. It has a psychological appeal to it and it shows just how attached a person can get to another. An attachment is an emotional tie that can obviously be powerful enough to distress a person enough to insanity when left without them. It's almost like she wasn't herself without him and that's why "Identification" was the title. Ironic, but the speaker quickly broke down when it came to the unfortunate reality that husband could be dead. Not even questioning the fact but going strait to denial is as proof tat she knew the truth. Sometimes people will want to escape the horrible truth so bad they'll go to any length to repress it. The speaker is losing an uphill battle, an obvious battle she can't win. This poem is some insight into the lengths people will go through to try and hide from the truth, some people eat, some people do drugs, and others go crazy. The speaker explains she was given pills to not go crazy, but obviously they weren't working. They tried to prevent her, and even that didn't help. She let her mind get too far gone in denial and as a result she starts to lose her mind. I guess in retrospect you could say the moral of the poem is don't hide from the truth because in the end it'll only tear you down.

September 11 They jumped from the burning floors— one, two, a few more, higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life, and now keeps them above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete, with a particular face and blood well hidden.

There's enough time for hair to come loose, for keys and coins to fall from pockets.

They're still within the air's reach, within the compass of places that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them— describe this flight and not add a last line.

Translated By: Clare Cavanagh And Stanislaw Baranczak [|Wislawa Szymborska] []

The poem, September 11, by Wislawa Syzmborska expresses an aspect of the tragic day 9/11 when the unfortunate people in the burning twin towers were jumping out. She interprets emotional techniques when she describes how they jumped out using colorful diction to help explain the tragedy and how they're memories forever live on in the pictures. She also uses figurative language throughout the poem to add importance and sincerity to what she's talking about and uses psychological appeals and really gets you thinking back on your own feelings of that day. Syzmborska relates to this very sad and depressing thing and brings light to it by expressing how " The photograph halted them in life", it was like they weren't gone because they'll forever be remembered in the photos and bring insight on how real and horrible that day really was. I find it interesting that Syzmborska chose to write about this certain aspect on that day and highlight it because it kind of represents that day. A brutal attack on the twin towers, people trying to escape and become desperate enough to jump out of the buildings. Pure dread is what everyone feels about this topic, but she is successful in interpreting her feelings in this poem without having a melancholy tone which is what you would expect from a depressing topic such as this one. The figurative language used in the poem help make the situation more thoughtful. " there still within airs reach, within the compass of places", is a line in the poem that really stand out to me I interpret it as Syzborska trying to say that the pictures show how everyone remembers it, like time had stopped when in reality it all happened so quickly. Despite reality, they'll forever be kept in time in those pictures, and subconsciously we wish they could. We wish that the pictures could really have captures them in time, preventing them from what is to come. Instead of focusing on the negative and what there ending was, she focused on how their forever going to be immortalized in time through the pictures and will always have significance on every person who see's them. It proves to us that the day of 9/11 was real and people lost their life and it brings out a tone of dedication to the day of 9/11 and those people. Even though everybody knows what the pictures lead to, Syzborska focuses on we can find more meaning within the pictures and although its sad, she seems to write in more of a desperation tone, a desperation that they really were frozen in time instead of the alternative and out from that she seems to give her own way of respect to the people who were lost that day. By ending the poem with "I can do only two things for them- describe this flight and not add a last line".

A few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times. No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps.

Day after day, year after year may pass without it.

Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks, like moving furniture, or lifting luggage, or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out whenever meat needs chopping or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations it participates in one, if even that, since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain, it slips off-duty.

It’s picky: it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds, our hustling for a dubious advantage and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow aren’t two different feelings for it. It attends us only when the two are joined.

We can count on it when we’re sure of nothing and curious about everything.

Among the material objects it favors clocks with pendulums and mirrors, which keep on working even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from or when it’s taking off again, though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it but apparently it needs us for some reason too. [] In the poem," A Few Words on the Soul" by Wislawa Szymborska she tends to explain in quite a lot words about how she feels on the soul. She uses many techniques while expressing the soul and basically peoples internal relationships with themselves and how the soul is like a companion that goes and comes as it pleases and usually is absent when you seem to need it the most. In ways the soul is picky because it doesn't like to be with you in crowds and doesn't know joy in happiness as separate and is only present when the two feelings are present. Szymborska uses a personification approach and talks about the soul like it's a person. Someone who doesn't show themselves in situations of hardship its like it wants you to experience it yourself but when your broken and left open or when " were sure of nothing and serious about everything", we can rely on it. I feel like in a way she's trying to say that our soul is more noticeably present when were by ourselves and that's when our true character comes out because you don't have anyone to influence you" since it prefers silence". Maybe the reason it doesn't like to show itself around other is because people don't tend to like putting there selves out there and I believe a soul is a part of you that should be shielded because if you expose it your liable to get hurt. The way Szymborska decides to talk about the soul in a poem adds to the affect of it being something whimsical and its not just a statement on the soul but its something that is expressed in a way that adds more attention and more emphasis on what she's trying to say. Like most of Szymborska poem's there's a strong psychological lens and it really causes the reader to reflect on themselves and gives us insight on ourselves and our "soul" I really liked how the tone was so matter of fact, like she was sure what she was talking about and in turn that makes the reader believe that what she's saying is fact which backs up her point of view on the soul and I believe anyone who reads this can relate it to themselves in some way and can have their thought process opened to more interpersonal things. By putting this in a poetic format and the way she organizes what she's saying lets the reader have a better understanding and even makes it easier to read. She always has a good conclusion to her poems which wraps up basically all that she was trying to express about the soul which is " we need it and it needs us too" because without one the other couldn't exist and therefore the soul can be viewed as a separate thing from you but at the same time it's a part of you.