Image of Wislawa Szymborska

Well-known in her native Poland, Wisława Szymborska received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” Collections of her poems that have been translated into English include People on a Bridge (1990), View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995), Miracle Fair (2001), and Monologue of a Dog (2005).

Readers of Szymborska’s poetry have often noted its wit, irony, and deceptive simplicity. Her poetry examines domestic details and occasions, playing these against the backdrop of history. In the poem “The End and the Beginning,” Szymborska writes, “After every war / someone’s got to tidy up.”

In the New York Times Book Review, Stanislaw Baranczak wrote, “The typical lyrical situation on which a Szymborska poem is founded is the confrontation between the directly stated or implied opinion on an issue and the question that raises doubt about its validity. The opinion not only reflects some widely shared belief or is representative of some widespread mind-set, but also, as a rule, has a certain doctrinaire ring to it: the philosophy behind it is usually speculative, anti-empirical, prone to hasty generalizations, collectivist, dogmatic and intolerant.”

Szymborska lived most of her life in Krakow; she studied Polish literature and society at Jagiellonian University and worked as an editor and columnist. A selection of her reviews was published in English under the title Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces (2002). She received the Polish PEN Club prize, the Goethe Prize, and the Herder Prize.

Bibliography

POETRY

  • Dlatego zyjemy (title means "That's Why We Are Alive"), [Warsaw, Poland], 1952.
  • Pytania zadawane sobie (title means "Questions Put to Myself"), [Warsaw, Poland], 1954.
  • Wolanie do Yeti (title means "Calling out to Yeti"), [Warsaw, Poland], 1957.
  • Sol (title means "Salt"), Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 1962.
  • Wiersze wybrane (collection), Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 1964, reprinted 2000.
  • Sto pociech (title means "A Hundred Joys"), Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 1967.
  • Poezje wybrane (title means "Selected Poems"), Ludowa Spoldzielnia Wydawnicza (Warsaw, Poland), 1967.
  • Poezje (title means "Poems"), Przedmowa Jerzego Kwiatkowskiego (Warsaw, Poland), 1970.
  • Wybor poezje (collection), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1970.
  • Wszelki wypadek (title means "There but for the Grace"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1972.
  • Wybor wierszy (collection), Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy (Warsaw, Poland), 1973.
  • Tarsjusz i inne wiersze (title means "Tarsius and Other Poems"), Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza (Warsaw, Poland), 1976.
  • Wielka liczba (title means "A Great Number"), Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1976.
  • Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems, translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1981.
  • Poezje wybrane (II), (title means "Selected Poems II"), Ludowa Spoldzielnia Wydawnicza (Warsaw, Poland), 1983.
  • Ludzie na moscie, Czytelnik (Warsaw, Poland), 1986, translation by Adam Czerniawski published as People on a Bridge: Poems, Forest (Boston, MA), 1990.
  • Poezje = Poems (bilingual edition), translated by Krynski and Maguire, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1989.
  • Wieczor autorski: wiersze (title means "Authors' Evening: Poems"), Anagram (Warsaw, Poland), 1992.
  • Koniec i poczatek (title means "The End and the Beginning"), Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1993.
  • View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1995.
  • Widok z ziarnkiem piasku: 102 Wiersze, Wydawnictwo Literacki (Cracow, Poland), 1996.
  • Nothing Twice: Selected Poems, selected and translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1997.
  • Hundert Gedichte, Hundert Freuden, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1997.
  • O asmierci bez przesady = de la mort sans exagerer, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1997.
  • Nulla e in regalo, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1998.
  • Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, Harcourt Brace (New York, NY), 1998.
  • Nic darowane = Keyn shum masoneh = Nothing's a gift = Nichts ist geschenkt = Me'um lo nitan be-matanah, Amerykansko-Polsko-Izraelska Fundacja Shalom (Warsaw, Poland), 1999.
  • Poczta literacka, czyli, Jak zostac (lub nie zostac) pisarzem, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 2000.
  • Miracle Fair: Selected Poems, Norton (New York, NY), 2001.
  • Nowe lektury nadobowiazkowe: 1997-2002, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 2002.
  • Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2002.
  • Chwila (title means "Moment"), Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 2002, published in bilingual edition as Chwila/Moment, translations by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, 2003.
  • Wierze, BOSZ (Olszanica, Poland), 2003.
  • Rymowanki dla duzych dzieci: z wyklejankami autorki, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 2003.

OTHER

  • Lektury nadobowiazkowe (collected book reviews; title means "Non-Compulsory Reading"), Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1973.
  • Zycie na poczekaniu: Lekcja literatury z Jerzym Kwiatowskim i Marianem Stala, Wydawnictwo Literackie (Cracow, Poland), 1996.

Contributor to anthologies, including Polish Writing Today, Penguin (New York, NY), 1967; The New Polish Poetry, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1978; and Anthologie de la poesie polonaise: 1400-1980, revised edition, Age d'homme, 1981. Also contributor, under pseudonym Stancykowna, to Arka (underground publication) and Kultura (exile magazine; published in Paris).