The majority Wistawa Szymborska's poems attain a similar foundation based on the aspects of logicallity and time. However, is there anything else that she utilizes that has been condoned in our classes? Feel free to discuss literary devices in her works or anything else that appeals to you in this thread.
Utopia
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds. {excerpt from UTOPIA}
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-bio.html
Interesting, just been reading a bit of Wislawa and she really is a fascinating and captivating poet, despite translation or maybe because the translators so far have been very good. She uses alot more the objectivity and logic: perhaps her key skill is in writing the evocotive. There is something going on relative to a WWII experience that has made great impact on her point of view. My theory.
CLOUDS
I’d have to be really quick
to describe clouds -
a split second’s enough
for them to start being something else.
Their trademark:
they don’t repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.
Unburdened by memory of any kind,
they float easily over the facts.
What on earth could they bear witness to?
They scatter whenever something happens.
Compared to clouds,
life rests on solid ground,
practically permanent, almost eternal.
{excerpt from CLOUDS}
Utopia
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously. ... {excerpt}
I absolutely agree with you on your deduction that her experiences with WWII have lead her to express her emotions in a logical and realistic sense (since war is known to slap reality into one's line of perspective). However, I find it interesting that her works have little reference to autobiographical elements even she grew up under such tragic times. I believe that by referring to events and objects that are commonly known, she can bring forth both reality and logicallity in the thoughts that she is trying to convey. For instance, in Wistawa Szymborska (which is a wonderful book with over 200 of her poems, in which all of these poems have been translated into English), there is one poem that stands out quite clearly in my mind to support my previous claim. This poem can be found on page 234 of this book, and it is called "The Real World." In this poem, each of the stanzas are a contrast between dreams and then reality, which I find this order to be quite fitting since she mentions that reality can capture one's mind after one were to wake up from one's dream: "The one on whom the real world depends is still unknown, and the products of his insomnia are available to anyone who wakes up" (Szymborska 26-30). This seems to be quite logical and true in our everyday lives for dreams are truly a means of escape from reality in which boundaries and restraints are non-existent.
In addition, I also love how she further demonstrates the contrast between dreams and reality by personifying reality to demonstrate its sturdiness and its omnipotent stance. She states that "[t]he world world lays the corpse in front of us. The real world doesn't blink an eye" (40-42). Therefore, reality seems to lack the emotions that define other beings, showing that it is ruthless (parallel to what war introduces). I believe that it's lack of emotions is important for it shows that reality is consistent in its existence whereas dreams aren't for "dreams are hazy and ambiguous, and can generally be explained in many different ways" (7-10). This lack of emotion also makes reality seem logical for it seems to base it's decisions on facts, not emotions since it does not seem to have any emotions.
I absolutely love her perspective on reality and dreams for they seems quite logical to me as illustrated in "The Real World."
----"Reality means reality: that's a tougher nut to crack" (11-12).
There is another aspect that I would like to bring up about her poems. I finished reading her poem "Certainty" on page 136 of Wislawa Syzmborska. Yet, I was extremely perplexed by her certainty that Shakespeare was the man whose face was painted because she had a completely different outlook on certainty when concerning Atlantis. This outlook on Atlantis is seen on page 17. In the poem "Atlantis," Szymborksa describes Atlantis as being something that possibly could have existed, or could have not existed. Nobody seems to quite know. Yet, I recall it being mentioned in Plato's "dialogues" of Timaeus and Critias. I was extremely perplexed as to why she claimed Shakepeare was real and Atlantis was not.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that she is a bit distrustful of written accounts and thus since Shakespeare's work is concrete along with his portrait,etc., it is certain that he exists in the form that many believe him to have existed. However, Atlantis on the other hand does not have any other supporting evidence except for those written accounts.
If this is true, then I believe that she bases her concept of reality and certainty not on historical documents, yet she does so on concrete pieces of evidence such as a portrait that are existent today. This could perhaps coincide with her outlook on war document for she states that they always approximate (never certain).
What do you think?
To hp 4ever!: Thanks for an incisive and clear examination of Wistawa (also called Wislowa) Szymborska's poetry and its influences. An excellent examination and essay. q1
The Joy Of Writing
.....They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.
Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?
The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand. {excerpt}
Tortures
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.
{excerpt}
Thank you so much for your compliment! (although I find it highly undeserved since there are many in my class that could provide the same insight on her magnificent poems). However, I would like to discuss the poem “Clouds” for it one that both of us have read. Did you find anything interesting about the poem?
To hp 4ever!: You will take note of my usual disclaimer that my analysis or attempt at same is not a pontifical statement. On the other hand, because of my ethnic backround and extreme interest in Szymborska's poetry, I do feel I have some understanding of her intent, primary and secondary. One obvious beauty of her poems is they can be taken on a simple level and enjoyed greatly without grasping for the greater mystery. In the poem "Clouds", the more subtle meanings are to this reader not that inacessible. Since copyright rules prevent me from posting the entire piece, let me assume you have a full text. In her first stanza, Wislawa or Wistawa mentions the brevity of any clouds shape and implies a poet must be with ready pen for apt description; this in my opinion just primes the reader for the irony of metaphor to come. After all it is not just clouds that "don't repeat a single shape, shade, pose, arrangement." Throughout this poem, my vision is of her relatives imprisoned in a concentration camp where clouds might have been the highlight of the daily scene. Unfortunately it is the bulk of humanity who must seem, then and to a lesser extent now, "Unburdened by a memory of any kind" and who "float easily over the facts." In this poem the metaphoric irony just gets deeper. When she says "Compared to clouds, life rests on solid ground, practically permanent, almost eternal." this points to an absolute opposite feeling relative to the humans, who in this apocalyptic situation are eternal only if one adds a religious factor. You can extrapolate all the other ironies like "a stone seems like a brother" or "They don't have to be seen while sailing on." When the ultimate negative metaphor is alligned with the poem, it gets a little spooky from my point of view. Szymborska amazes with regularity in her work and suprizes by her ability to speak in poems of many unthinkable, unspeakable things. q1
A LARGE NUMBER
Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is the way it's always been:
bad with large numbers.
It is still moved by particularity.
It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam,
disclosing only random faces,
while the rest go blindly by,
unthought of, unpitied.
Not even a Dante could have stopped that.
So what do you do when you're not,
even with all the muses on your side?
Non omnis moriar—a premature worry.
Yet am I fully alive, and is that enough?
It never has been, and even less so now.
I select by rejecting, for there's no other way,
but what I reject, is more numerous,
more dense, more intrusive than ever.
At the cost of untold losses—a poem, a sigh.
I reply with a whisper to a thunderous calling. ...
{excerpt}
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak
Wislawa Szymborska
Some People Like Poetry
Wislawa Szymborska
Some people--
that is not everybody
Not even the majority but the minority.
Not counting the schools where one must,
and the poets themselves,
there will be perhaps two in a thousand.
Like--
but we also like chicken noodle soup,
we like compliments and the color blue,
we like our old scarves,
we like to have our own way,
we like to pet dogs.
Poetry--
but what is poetry.
More than one flimsy answer
has been given to that question.
And I don't know, and don't know, and I
cling to it as to a life line.
translated by Walter Whipple
".....Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination." Wistawa Szymborska, Nobel Lecture, 1966
Wistawa Szymborska, IN PRAISE OF DREAMS In my dreams I paint like Vermeer van Delft. I speak fluent Greek and not just with the living. I drive a car that does what I want it to. I am gifted and write mighty epics. I hear voices as clearly as any venerable saint. My brilliance as a pianist would stun you. I fly the way we ought to, i.e., on my own. Falling from the roof, I tumble gently to the grass. I've got no problem breathing under water. I can't complain: I've been able to locate Atlantis. {excerpt}
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