is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonish-
ment exists per se, and it isn’t based on a compar-
ison with something else.
Granted, in daily speech, where we don’t
stop to consider every word, we all use phrases
such as ‘‘the ordinary world,’’ ‘‘ordinary life,’’
‘‘the ordinary course of events.’’ But in the lan-
guage 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.
It looks like poets will always have their
work cut out for them.
Source:Wislawa Szymborska, ‘‘I Don’t Know: The 1996
Nobel Lecture,’’ inWorld Literature Today, Vol. 71, No.
1, Winter 1997, pp. 5–7.
Joanna Trezeciak
In the following interview with Trezeciak, Szym-
borska reflects on her life, career, and influences.
‘‘I’m drowning in papers,’’ exclaims Wislawa
Szymborska, pointing to piles of mail in the study
of her fifth-floor, three-room walk-up in Krako ́w.
Since receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in
December, this reluctant literary celebrity, previ-
ously little known to readers outside of Europe,
has found that her sparsely furnished apartment
is growing uncomfortably small, and she is pre-
paring to move to a larger flat in this nondescript
residential neighborhood.
‘‘People confuse the Nobel Prize with a
beauty pageant,’’ she quips, recounting a con-
versation she overheard between two women in
the fruit market. ‘‘‘Did you see the Nobel Prize
winner?’ says one. ‘Not much to look at, is she’
says the other.’’ Szymborska laughs.
In the aftermath of the Nobel announce-
ment, which found the poet tucked away in Asto-
ria, a writers’ retreat in the southern mountain
town of Zakopane, her life has changed consid-
erably. For a poet accustomed to pen, paper,
telephone and typewriter, life in the limelight
has brought with it a whirlwind of moderniza-
tion, as her capable young staff—a lawyer and
secretary—manages the steady flow of faxes,
voice mail, e-mail and the suddenly complicated
contractual issues that confront a poet who has
suddenly vaulted to international attention.
As the second Polish writer, after Czeslaw
Milosz, to take the prize in the last 20 years,
Szymborska has brought renewed attention to
the poetry of her native land. In a rare interview
with this writer, who has been translating
her poetry since 1988, Szymborska lets on that
she found the weeks leading up to the Nobel
ceremony an anxious time. Never one to com-
ment much on her work, averse to travel and
reluctant to appear on television, she surprised
even herself in Stockholm: accidentally reversing
the ceremony’s elaborate bowing sequence, she
enlivened the proceedings with characteristic
aplomb, getting on royally with Sweden’s King
Carl XVI Gustav, and by some accounts, estab-
lishing a record for the longest ovation ever at a
Nobel address.
In its award citation, the Swedish Academy
noted the ‘‘veritable ease with which [Szymbor-
ska’s] words seem to fall into place.’’ But it is that
seeming ease in treating uneasy issues that has
caught the attention of American poet and critic
Edward Hirsch, who lauds Szymborska’s gift
for investigating ‘‘large unanswerable questions
with terrific delicacy.’’ Czeslaw Milosz calls
Szymborska’s triumph a confirmation of the
place of ‘‘the Polish school of poetry.’’ Szymbor-
ska, with characteristic modesty, would agree.
‘‘Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum.
There is a spirit of Polish poetry,’’ she says. An
elegant dresser, tall and slender, with a graceful
carriage, Szymborska has a kind face and eyes
that smile when she does. She seems much
younger than her 73 years.An Abundance of Translations
Interest in Szymborska in the United States was
pioneered by translators Magnus Krynski and
Robert Maguire with their en facecollection
titledSounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems
by Wislawa Szymborska (Princeton University
Press, 1981) Philologically faithful and insight-
fully annotated, it is an invaluable companionUNDER HER PEN, SIMPLE LANGUAGE
BECOMES STRIKING. EVER THE GENTLE SUBVERSIVE,
SHE STUBBORNLY REFUSES TO SEE ANYTHING IN THE
WORLD AS ORDINARY.’’Some People Like Poetry