The poems of Wislawa Szymborska

so I was interested to learn that one of Szymborska's poems "Nothing Twice" was turned into a Polish rock song back in 1995.

Here is the poem:Nothing Twice
by Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak


Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to say
Today is always gone tomorrow

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

--------------
And thanks to some help :) , I think this is the video to the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWlM9v10wjE

I'd love to hear from anyone who knows more about this.
I just think it is so cool that this award winning poet inspired a rock song.
The more I read Szymborska the more amazing I find her poetry to be.

Wow that's cool!
I like this poem... although it's so hard for me to truly understand.
The speaker is not only saying that there are no second chances and that you should treasure each moment for its uniqueness, but she is criticizing us.

"Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to say
Today is always gone tomorrow

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are. "

We waste precious moments looking into the future, daydreaming, that we lose today, this very moment. Needless fear and sorrow: "what if I could have done better? I wish I had done this. Will the test be hard? Should I skip this meeting to avoid running into my ex-boyfriend." It's all this apprehension that's clouding and congesting our view of our lives and the world around us.

She's also saying that we're much too.. complacent. Yeah, we say "i'm special, I'm different," and we even have phases in our lives where we try to stand out and be different, seeking attention and all that jazz (haha jazz :) ) But it's in our nature to conform. To create little groups that one can turn to, seek protection in, when times are difficult. We're not really unique. We don't live under our own star. Our rules that govern our lives are the same as our neighbor's rules. We have different exteriors and different views of life, but our essense is the same. We have the same hopes and desires. To be happy--whatever that means. To find someone to love and hope like h-e-doublehockeystick that person loves us back.

That sense of unity can be found in the first stanza and the last two stanzas--she uses "we," creating an aura of "we're in this together." She also uses "you" YOU may be a dunce. and she uses "I" I feel as if a rose were flung. It's like a river and it's tributaries. The river branches off only to rejoin at the end. We all are born and we all die. The stuff in between however, is what makes us unique.

And one more thing I noticed--She says to not waste time and to "carpe diem." And I realize that's not a verb...
"The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock? "

In this stanza, she's admitting that she too "can't help" but be apprehensive. She's wishing the rose were with her. She's not enjoying "you" because she's too caught up in the rose. And the next day, when "you" are not with her, she'll be missing "you."

BTW here's the song in Polish... probably
Nic dwa razy sie nie zdarza
I dlatego z tej przyczyny
Zrodziliœmy sie bez wprawy
I pomrzemy bez rutyny

Choæbyœmy uczniami byli
Najtepszymi w szkole œwiata
Nie bedziemy repetowaæ
¯adnej zimy ani lata

¯aden dzieñ sie nie powtórzy
Nie ma dwóch podobnych nocy
Dwóch tych samych poca³unków
Dwóch tych samych spojrzeñ w oczy nie, nie, nie, nie

Wczoraj kiedy twoje imie
Ktoœ wymówi³ przy mnie g³oœno
Tak mi by³o jakby ró¿a
Przez otwarte wpad³a okno

Uœmiechnieci, wpó³objeci
Próbujemy szukaæ zgody
Choæ ró¿nimy sie od siebie
Jak dwie krople czystej wody

¯aden dzieñ sie nie powtórzy
Nie ma dwóch podobnych nocy
Dwóch tych samych poca³unków
Dwóch tych samych spojrzeñ w oczy nie, nie, nie, nie

Nic dwa razy sie nie zdarza
I dlatego z tej przyczyny
Zrodziliœmy sie bez wprawy
I pomrzemy bez rutyny

¯aden dzieñ sie nie powtórzy
Nie ma dwóch podobnych nocy
Dwóch tych samych poca³unków
Dwóch tych samych spojrzeñ w oczy nie, nie, nie, nie

(English Translation. A thanks to Google.)
It is two times does not happen
And so for this reason
Zrodziliœmy without practice
And we die with no routine

Choæbyœmy students were
Najtepszymi school world
There will repetowaæ
¯ any winter or year

¯ any day will not be repeated
There are no two similar nights
Two of the same poca ³ unków
Two of those eyes in your eyes no, no, no, no

Yesterday, when your name
Ktoœ the pronunciation with me g oœno
So I was like on a different
For the WPAD open a window

Uœmiechnieci, subject to the PSF
Try szukaæ consent
Though different from one another nimy
As two drops of pure water

¯ any day will not be repeated
There are no two similar nights
Two of the same poca ³ unków
Two of those eyes in your eyes no, no, no, no

It is two times does not happen
And so for this reason
Zrodziliœmy without practice
And we die with no routine

¯ any day will not be repeated
There are no two similar nights
Two of the same poca ³ unków
Two of those eyes in your eyes no, no, no, no

Carpe Diem!
That's the first thing that came to my mind when I read this. I agree with you completely. She does say to treasure each moment of everyday and to not get caught up in all the "needless fears and sorrow".

I think that Szymborska is also saying that we should not dwell on the past and what happened yesterday. Whenever we make a big mistake, like bomb a test, we end up regretting putting down those answers or not studying hard enough for it. All these regrets are useless because what's done is done. Like Szymborska says "Nothing can ever happen twice". You can't go back in time and retake the test. There is no redo button. So why dwell on it day after day? Don't waste your time dwelling on what happened yesterday. Enjoy today!

"No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses."

Everyday is a brand new start. Enjoy it and try to make something meaningful out of it :)

I personally really like szymborska even thought i have a hard time understand what she s getting at some times.

for the most part, her poems appear insightful, deep, sad yet uplifting in a way.

example: joy of writting


btw. she seems to keep the reoccuring underlying idea that life is short and we should live it up

she s great, isnt she?

I really like her poems too; they appeal to a wide range of emotions, whether it's happy and upbeat or bitter and sarcastic. And I agree that they can be really difficult to figure out, but I think she's doing that to challenge us :)
I think she also conveys the message of the small things in life and how astonishing the world is because of these simple everyday things. It makes me appreciate everything around me, and it has gotten me to look at things from different perspectives. Who knew poetry could do so much? haha :)

In Praise Of Feeling Bad About Yourself

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

I am really glad that my first poem reading assignment was to read some of Symborska's poems. Usually, the only poems I ever hear are thou, art, this, thee, oh beloved sparrow, hark, and other words that make me confused.:crash:
However, now I am checking out poetry from the library. This poem is one of my favorites because it is pretty straightforward and when I read it I got that excited feeling I get when I analyze something and it comes out clearly to me. :idea:
This poem seems to tell me that animals are animals because they live to survive. They feel no remorse about lives they take or the things that they do because they either aren't capable of it or don't see any reason to. Symborska seems to be saying that humans have the capability to feel, to care, and to love. This capacity shouldn't be wasted because it is a beautiful thing. Our conscience, or emotions, our insecurities are all beautiful parts of us that show our humanity. For without it we are less than animals.:thumbs_up
So looking at the title, I suppose she is saying that feeling bad about yourself is a sign that you have morals, a conscience, reason. These are good things and she congratulates the reader for maintaining these qualities.All in all. I love this poem.:)

Wow girl! That's a cool poem :)

I didn't get the last stanza at first, but I think I get it... it relates to the title, just like you said. If we, as humans, have a clear conscience, that means that something isn't right. We aren't anything close to perfect, and there's no reason for us not to feel guilty every once in a while (or a lot more often than that...)
Animals and plants and fungi and bacteria and viruses don't feel guilty because they are only doing what they were made to do (or if you don't believe in that stuff, they're following Nemo's advice to "just keep swimming!" Haha I love that fish! :) )

The rhyme scheme of this poem is... weird. And yet, it works with the tone, the message, the flow. The rhyming connects the ideas when the poem is read aloud.
Also, I think it's cool that she (or the translators, maybe) capitalized "Number One"
It's like she's saying "hey you! even though you feel crummy right now, you're number one in my book because you have the guts (or the conscience, in this case) to repent."
:)

sumyono, you did an awesome job of analyzing this poem!

as always, szymborska approves love and everything it stands for, along with the fact that we are humans.
she embraces our nature but criticizes it too

favorite line:
"Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every way they're light."

"The End and the Beginning"

This poem about war made me think about our war right now. It really made me think of the aftermath and how easy it is for some of the people who were not involved in it just go on with their lives. Szymborska sounds really sarcastic in this poem with the "Things won't pick themselves up, after all" (line 3-4) and the whole 'someone has to do this or that...'. There is also repetition of this "someone has to" which emphasizes a sense of pressure. Over time, we forget about wars and all of its origins and people. We study it in history, but it's usually like 'oh this country did this' or 'we said this & so we did this'. But after we study that for oh lets say two weeks, we just move on to something else. We'll eventually forget everything.

This poem also contains a lot of imagery. We can see a person shoving rubble, moving carts with corpses, trudging through sludge, lugging the post, etc. Szymborska is using words to provide images for us to understand the aftermath of a war. I feel like I'm there watching all these people cleaning up the pain and sufferings. It's like they're erasing the past to forget the terrible memories. When szymborska says "Someone has to lie there in the grass that covers up the causes and effects with a cornstalk in his teeth, gawking at clouds", I see patches of green grass that's covering up the past. Everything is new and rebuilt again like the bridges & railroad stations.


This ties in with the title "The End and the Beginning". Ususally we'd see the beginning first & then the end, but this is talking about the end of a war, and the beginning of a new life. We see all the past erased to make room for new memories. I see her criticizing some of us who just forgets something as huge as wars and just move on with our lives. That someone who is lying there on the grass gazing at the sky is looking forward or looking upward and higher. The past is literally beneath them. I think this whole poem is Szymborska's way of criticizing the people for forgetting the impacts of wars and everything that happened.

"Reality Demands"

This poem reminds of "the End and the Beginning". Truthfully, whenever something bad has happened, the people around us just tells us "Life goes on". And life does go on, but that doesn't mean we should forget the past. In this poem, there are a lot of allusions to countries or cities. I'm not really sure where all of these places are, but I do know Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. They were both involved in WWII. I think these allusions are in here to remind us of the wars. After some time, these places have been redone to cover up all the aftermaths of war. But no matter what they do to rebuild everything, the history is still there. The one name of the place can bring back the war. Pearl Harbor is not just a place, it's a historical site where something tragic happened during WWII on Dec 7, 1941. The name of it can bring back the past. Szymborska says "There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely". THe impact of war has created such a huge effect that the smallest thing can bring back the memories. Nothing is hidden quite nicely because there is no way to hide something that has had so much impact. The one simple names of these cities can bring back so much. I guess my overall analysis of this poem is saying that reality demands that life goes on, but that doesn't mean we should forget the past.

This poem has the same theme as that of "The End and the Beginning": People forget war, and the reasons for it. Unlike what sillygoose said, I think that the speaker is not saying that we will remember the battles or their reasons. One thing I find amusing is that you said you had no idea what the other battles/places/cites were, but then later on you make the point that we will never forget the WW2 battles. Are you sure? You don't know where the other battles were fought or why they were. I know that Cannae was a battle between Rome and Carthage and that the Romans were slaughtered by the tens of thousands in it, and I think Actium was another battle fought by Rome. Not many people know those battles (or the other ones) or why they were fought.

We don't know every single battle that was fought or the lessons that people learned from them. The speaker even says, "Perhaps all fields are battlefields" (third to last stanza). Where people may have once cowered behind a bush, we use it as a bathroom (lines 44-5). I think that Szymborska did a great job of proving her point by naming all these cities/battles that no one knows about, and then naming very well know battles/cities from WW1 and WW2. This make some readers think, "I will never forget these battles and the lessons learned from them!" But the question is, is true? Will, 100 years from now or maybe 3000 years from now, anyone remember any battle mentioned in this poem? And if no one knows of the battle, how can they have learned from others' mistakes? Sure we can remember the past for awhile, but reality demands that life goes on, and our memories go along with it.


The speaker says, "What moral can flow from this? Probabily none.
Only the blood flows, drying quickly" (lines 46-7). She is saying no morals flow from battle, only blood, which drys quick and is forgotten over time.
I think that Szymborska wrote this poem because WW1 was very distructive, but only about 20 years later, a second world war broke out that was deadlier. Szymborska is mad that everyone in power forgot the lessons learned from WW1 so quickly and started another, even more distructive war, in which Szymborska was probabily personally affected in some way.

Theme: Try to remember past as best you can, but one day most will forget, then someday no one will remember.

Tone: Lighthearted because everything is back to normal.

"The End and The Beginning"

Okay so i totally agree with Pontifex's comment, which also relates to "The End and The Beginning" . I thought Szymborska was questioning the purpose of war, while pointing out how pointless the concept of war is. Obviously, war has been a part of most civilizations at one point or another, so the question is "why?".. why has war become an answer when trying to solve a problem? do you guys think humans are naturally inclined to kill each other in a somewhat organized matter?
Something interesting about war that i got from this poem was that so many people are affected by war even though they may not have been apart of the feud. If someone lives in a country that is at war, they themselves may not agree with it at all, but they are left the responsibility of cleaning up the mess. This poem repeats the word "someone" over and over again, emphasizing this point. The story behind the person cleaning up the mess is unknown. They may not have even participated in any of the war activities, but they are the ones left to fix what others who started it (probably dead now) have left in destruction.
Symborska is questioning whether if it is actually worth it; are the lives, tears, and blood worth something that winds up as another statistic for those aware of it and as nothing at all for the ignorant?

"Reality Demands"

Okay, so i think that this poem can be seem as optimistic or pessimistic:

Optimistic viewpont: After such hardships like war, thinks can get back to normal in the end. Where there used to be blood, "the grass is green" (35). War can completely change a person's lifestyle. One day a person can be happy going to a movie or playing football, and the next day they may be risking their life to defend their country. With war comes destruction, stress, family worries, tears, and blood. People may think their life can never get back to normal. However, if the grass can get green again and people can live like they did before, this is positive. It gives sense of hope to people that may be in war right now. It makes you feel like 'one day, things can get back to normal, we won't think about the horrible deaths and depressing things anymore.' It can be better to forget the bad that came in order to move on and function properly.
However, there is the other interpretation of this poem
If in the end, things are exactly the same, what is the point of war in the first place? There will people living after the war in the same way as they live before. The efforts of people will be forgotten, and the war will lose more and more interest and more and more time passes by. You may feel close to a war when you have people you love die in it, but after you are gone, more people will be born and more generations will pass. Those who will not have had to suffer will not appreciate the war to such a degree. When a war is being considered, the long term positive effects need to measured to decide if it will be worth it in the long run.

"Vietnam"

This poem to me is showing how war can make people closer. When lives are at stake, the amount of materials one has accumulated over the years will mean nothing. The poem states "How old are you.. Whose side are you on?" (7). The number that represents your age may have no purpose anymore when you don't need it to drive or smoke or drink or see an r rated movie. The "side" you are on may make no difference. Your opinions may not matter if you are at the point of desperation with no one to help you. All that you have in the end are the people you care about like your children, or friends. You may not appreciate them before war, but when they have the possibility of getting killed or dying, you realize that they are more important than everything you held onto your life.