Born: July 2, 1923, Bnin [now part of Kórnik], Poland
Wislawa Szymborska is a Polish poeters, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature, “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality”. She is admired for her direct and concise lyric poetry that addresses universal themes, including love, hope, governmental power, and the nature of truth.
Born in a small town near Poznan, Szymborska moved to Kraków in 1931. From 1945 to 1948 she studied sociology and Polish literature at Jagellonian University in Kraków. She reviewed books for Zycie Literackie (Literary Life), a Polish literary magazine, from 1953 to 1981.
Szymborska’s first poems, which focus on the effects of World War II (1939-1945) on the Polish people, were published in a Kraków newspaper in 1945. Her first collections of poems, Dlatego zyjemy (That’s Why We’re Alive, 1952) and Pytania zadawane sobie (Questions for Oneself, 1954), reflect Communist values, adhering to the cultural policies of the government that had come to power after the war. After the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, Polish culture began to allow greater creative freedom. Szymborska repudiated her Communist poetry in her next publication, Wolanie do Yeti (Calling Out to Yeti, 1957), in which she compares Stalin to the Abominable Snowman. Subsequent volumes, which include Sól (Salt, 1962), Sto pociech (A Barrel of Laughs, 1967), Poezje (Poems, 1970), and Tarsjusz i inne wiersze (Tarsius and Other Poems, 1976), show Szymborska’s ability to address a range of topics, from philosophical inquiries to observations of everyday life. They also established her as one of her country’s most popular poets, although she remained largely unknown outside Poland until she won the Nobel Prize.
Szymborska’s later publications include Ludzie na moscie (1985; translated as People on a Bridge, 1990), Wieczór autorski (Author’s Evening, 1992), and Koniec i poczatek (The End and the Beginning, 1993). English-language collections of Szymborska’s poetry include Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems (1981), View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995), and Poems New and Collected: 1957-1997 (1998).
