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
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.