Wislawa Szymborska was born July 2, 1923 at Bnin, a village near Poznan, Poland.
In 1931 he moved with his family in Krakow, a city which was always linked: we have studied, worked there and has resided there since then until today.
E 'as one of Europe's most representative poetic voices of the second half of the twentieth century. Its popularity is unparalleled in his country, has evolved with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.
"THE POET AND THE WORLD"
of Wislawa Szymborska
of Wislawa Szymborska
In a speech, it seems, the first sentence is always the hardest. So I've already behind me ... But I feel that the following sentences will be difficult, the third, sixth, tenth, to the last, because I have to talk about poetry. On this subject I have spoken rarely, almost never. It is always accompanied by the conviction not to do so in the best way. That is why my speech will not be too long. Every imperfection is easier to bear if it is in small doses.
The poet today is skeptical and suspicious even - perhaps especially - against himself. Reluctant to declare in public that being a poet - almost a bit ashamed of it '. But in our time noisy it is much easier to admit your faults, if you show up well, and its quality much more difficult, because they are more hidden, and ourselves we are not convinced to the end ...
in questionnaires or in casual conversation, when the poet must necessarily define their jobs, he shows a kind of "literary" or appoints the other work he has done. The news of having to do with a poet is welcomed by employees or passengers who are with him on the bus with a slight uneasiness and disbelief, I suppose that even a philosopher inspire an equal embarrassment. He is still in a better situation, because for the most part have the opportunity to embellish their craft with some scientific title, Professor of Philosophy - sounds much more serious.
But there are no professors of poetry. If so, it would mean that it is in an occupation requiring specialized studies, exams regularly enriched with elaborate theoretical literature and references, and finally received diplomas with solemnity. And this in turn would mean that to become a poet are not enough sheets of paper, filled with even more sublime ways - but it is necessary, first and foremost, some certificate with a stamp. Let us remember that precisely on this basis was sentenced to confinement the Russian poet, and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky. It was considered a "parasite" because it had an official certificate authorizing it to be a poet ...
Years ago I had the honor and joy to meet him in person. I noticed that he alone among the poets I knew, liked to say of himself "poet", he pronounced the word without inner resistance, even with a certain freedom provocative. I think that this was due to the brutal humiliations he suffered in his youth. In countries
happy, where human dignity is not violated so easily, of course, poets seeking publication, read and understood, but not do much, or at least very little, to stand out among other human beings every day. But until not long ago in the early decades of this century, the poets liked to dress to impress with a bizarre and eccentric behavior. But it was always a show for the public. Came the moment when the poet closed the door behind her, got rid of all those cloaks, trimmings and other accessories poetic, and remained silent, waiting for himself, before a sheet of paper still unwritten. Because, in truth, only that counts.
And 'is significant that produce a continuous film on the life of many great scientists and great artists. Directors of some ambition means so likely represent the creative process that has led to important scientific discoveries or the birth of famous works of art. E 'can show some success with the work of certain scientists laboratories, varied instrumentation, mechanisms activated succeed for a while' to capture the attention of the audience. There are also a very dramatic moment in which we do not know if the experiment repeated for the thousandth time, with only a slight change will finally give the expected result. They can be spectacular film about the painter - you can recreate all the phases of the birth of a picture, the initial treatment until the last brush stroke. The films about composers are filled with music - from the start that the artist feels in itself, until the complete score of the work. All this is still naive and did not say anything about the strange state of mind popularly known as "inspiration", but at least there's that look and to listen.
Things are much worse for poets. Their work is not at all photogenic. A person sitting at a table or lying on the couch with his eyes fixed motionless on the wall or ceiling, occasionally writes seven verses, one quarter of an hour after they remove one, and spends another hour in which nothing happens. .. What viewer would be able to withstand such a spectacle?
I mentioned inspiration. Asked what it is, if any, contemporary poets give evasive answers. Not because I have never felt the benefit of this inner impulse. The reason is another. It is not easy to explain to someone something that we ourselves do not understand.
too sometimes, when faced with this question, avoiding the substance of the thing. But answer this: inspiration is not an exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, there has been and always will be a group of individuals visited by inspiration. There are those who consciously choose to work and play with passion and imagination. There are doctors such, there are such teachers, gardeners, there are still such and a hundred other professions. Their work can be a never-ending adventure, if you know only see in it new challenges. Despite the difficulties and defeats, their curiosity is not affected. For every problem solved for them comes a flood of new questions. The inspiration, whatever it is, comes from a never-I do not know. "
of people so there are not many. The majority of the inhabitants of this earth works to procure a living, because it must work. Are not they choose to work with passion, are the circumstances of life they choose for them. A job is not loved, a job that bored, however, appreciated only because not all accessible, is one of the greatest human disasters. And no indicator that the next few centuries in this area will bring some happy change.
I can say, therefore, that it is true that I remove the monopoly of inspiration to poets, however, places them in the small group of elected by lot.
They can then cast doubt on those who listen to me. So even murderers, dictators, fanatics, demagogues struggling for power with the aid of a slogan, shouted provided strong, love their work and also play with zealous imagination. Okay, they "know". They know, and what they know is enough for him once and for all. They feel no curiosity for anything else, because this might weaken the strength of their arguments. And all knowledge from which they derive new questions, quickly becomes dead, it loses the temperature to support life. In extreme cases, as well teaches ancient history and contemporary, may even be a mortal danger to society.
why I appreciate so two small little words: "I do not know." Small, but winged. Words that extend our lives in lands that are in ourselves and in the territories in which our tiny Earth is suspended. If Isaac Newton had not said "I do not know," the apples in the garden could have been dropped in front of him and hail him as, at best, would have stooped to pick up, eating it with gusto. If my compatriot Marie Sklodowska Curie had not said "no I know "would certainly become a chemistry teacher in a boarding school for young ladies of good family, and would spend his life doing this activity, however, honest. But he repeated "I do not know" and it is these words led her, and twice in Stockholm, where they are awarded the Nobel Prize people and eternally restless soul searching.
The poet, while the poet must continually repeat to himself "I do not know." With all his work tries to give an answer, but as soon as he finished writing already invaded the doubt and begins to realize that these are an interim response and totally inadequate. So try again and then another, until literary historians do not bind together evidence of his dissatisfaction with himself, calling it "artistic" ...
Sometimes I dream of impossible situations. In my recklessness I imagine, for example, have the opportunity to converse with the Ecclesiastes, the author of a very deep lament on the vanity of all human action. I bow deeply in front of him, because it is - at least for me-I could one of the most important. And then took his hand. "Nothing new under the sun" you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself are born new under the sun. And you are the author of the poem is also new under the sun, why not before you wrote it no. And new under the sun are all your readers, because those who lived before you, after all, could not read it. The cypress tree in whose shade you were sitting here since the world is not growing. He gave some other beginning cypress, like yours, but not quite the same. And also I want to ask, or Ecclesiastes, write what you mean, now, new under the sun. Something to contemplate even your thoughts, or are you not trying to deny anyone? In your poem before you saw the joy-what if the passengers? Perhaps, then, is that it will talk about your new poem in the sun? You have already notes, the initial sketches? I do not think you will say: "I wrote all, I have nothing to add. " No poet in the world can say, let alone a big like you.
The world, whatever we think, frightened by its vastness and our impotence in the face of it, embittered by its indifference to individual suffering (of humans, animals, plants and perhaps, for he who gives us the certainty that the plants are exempt from suffering?), no matter what we think of her dead space radiation of the stars, stars around which planets have already begun to discover (already dead? More deaths?), no matter what we think of this measureless theater to which yes we have a ticket, but with a ridiculously validity short, limited by two dates categorical, yet we thought anything of this world - it is amazing.
But the definition of "astonishing" lies a sort of logical trap. After all, we are surprised that deviates from some standard known and generally accepted, by some obvious we're used to. Well, obviously such a world does not exist. Our astonishment is for himself and not the result of no comparison with anything.
right, in common speech, that does not reflect on every word, we all use the terms "normal world," normal life normal course of things ... However, in the language of poetry, in which every word has a weight, there is nothing ordinary and normal. No stone and no cloud over it. No day and no night that follows. Above all, there is nothing anyone in this world.
Apparently poets will always have a lot to do.
December 7, 1996
