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
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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.
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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.
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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.
I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring--this is one of the harshest human miseries.
But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.
Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.