Wislawa Szymborska

By Julia Figacz

Childhood

• Wislawa Szymborska was born in a town near Poznan in 1923. When she was eight, she moved with her parents to the southern city of Kraków. World War II raged around her during her secondary school…

Carieer and Nobel Award (1)

• Polish poet and translator, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, at the age of seventy-three. Szymborska is one of the few woman poets who have received the prize. Her early works were born more or less within the straitjacket of the Socialist Realism.

Carieer and Nobel Award (2)

• . Later she has expressed her pessimism about the future of mankind. While skepticism has marked Szymborska's views of the human condition, its has not stopped her from believing in the power of words and the joy arising from imagination. Szymborska often uses ordinary speech and proverbs but gives them a fresh and arresting meaning.

One of her poem• 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.(from 'The Joy of Writing,', 1967)

Her books:• Szymborska has published 16

collections of poetry: Dlat ego zyjemy (1952), Pytania zadawane sobie (1954), Wolanie do Yeti (1957), Sól (1962), Wiersze wybrane (1964), Poezje wybrane (1967), Sto pociech (1967), Poezje (1970), Wszelki wypadek (1972), Wybór wierszy (1973), Tarsjusz i inne wiersze (1976), Wielka liczba (1976), Poezje wybrane II (1983), Ludzie na moscie (1986). Koniec i poczatek (1993, 1996), Widok z ziarnkiem piasku. 102 wiersze (1996) .

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