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Branka Babic

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Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
2/2/2012 3:45:35 PM
In my adolescence, I was dead in love with one Pole. Thanks to his influence and inspiration, I got to read one great and bright poetic genius, Polish poetess and later Nobel Award winner (in 1996) Wislawa Szymborska.


"Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life." (Wislawa Szymborska)

Wisława Szymborska Dies


On Wednesday evening Wisława Szymborska, one of the world’s greatest poets, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away, her private secretary Michał Rusinek has announced. She died peacefully in her sleep.

Wisława Szymborska was born on 2 July 1923 but her exact place of birth is unknown. Although her birth certificate records it as Bnin, according to family legend she was born in neighbouring Kórnik. The Szymborski family later moved from the Wielkopolski province to Kraków.

Szymborska’s first publication was the poem “I Am Looking For The Word” which appeared in a supplement to the daily newspaper Dziennik Polski. Her first published collection of verse was That’s Why We Are Alive (1952). According to the critics, it was not until her next collection, Calling to the Yeti, was published in 1957 that she made her real appearance on the literary scene, as only now were the characteristic features of her poetry fully in evidence, including the aphoristic nature of her writing and her use of paradox as a vehicle for rhetoric.

Her successive collections were then: Salt (1962), No End of Fun (1967), Could Have (1972), A Large Number (1976), People on the Bridge (1986), The End and the Beginning (1993), Moment (2002), Colon (2005) and Here (2008).

In their justification for awarding Szymborska the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, the members of the Swedish Academy wrote that the prize was being awarded "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality".

"Epitaph" by Wisława Szymborska

Here lies, oldfashioned as parentheses,
The authoress of verse. Eternal rest
was granted her by earth, although the corpse
had failed to join the avant-garde, of course.
The plain grave? There’s poetic justice in it,
this ditty-dirge, the owl, the meek cornflower.
Passerby, take your PC out, press “POWER”,
Think on Szymborska’s fate for half a minute.

- translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh







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Branka Babic

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
2/2/2012 11:13:34 PM

Hatred


Look, how spry she still is,
how well she holds up:
hatred, in our century.
How lithely she takes high hurdles.
How easy for her to pounce, to seize.

She is not like the other feelings.
At once older and younger than they.
She alone gives birth to causes
which rouse her to life.
If she sleeps, it's never for eternity.
Insomnia doesn't take away but gives her strength.

Religion or no religion
-- as long as she's in the running
Motherland or no-man's land
-- as long as she's in the race.
Even justice suffices at first.
After that she speeds off on her own
Hatred. Hatred.
The grimace of love's ecstasy
twists her face.

Oh, those other feelings,

so sickly and sluggish.
Since when could brotherhood
count on milling crowds?
Was compassion ever first across the finish line?
How many followers does doubt command?
Only hatred commands, for hatred knows her stuff.

Smart, able, hard working.
Need we say how many songs she has written.
How many pages of history she has numbered.
How many human carpets she has unrolled,
over how many plazas and stadiums.

Let's be honest:
Hatred can create beauty.
Marvelous are her fire-glows, in deep night.
Clouds of smoke most beautiful, in rosy dawn.
It's hard to deny ruins their pathos
and not to see bawdy humor
in the stout column lording it over them.

She is a master of contrast

between clatter and silence,

red blood and white snow.
Above all the image of a clean-shaven torturer
standing over his defiled victim
never bores her.

She is always ready for new tasks.
If she has to wait, she waits.
They say hatred is blind. Blind?
With eyes sharp as a sniper's,
she looks bravely into the future
-- she alone.

Wislawa Szymborska

(Translated from Polish by: Joanna Maria Trzeciak)


http://www1.fccj.org/gleizer/Wislawa%20Szymborska.jpg


One poem in Spanish:


Nato

Dunque è sua madre.

Questa piccola donna,

Artefice dagli occhi grigi.

La barca su cui, anni fa,

lui approdò alla riva.

E’ da lei che si è tirato fuori

nel mondo,

nella non-eternità.

genitrice dell’uomo

con cui salto attraverso il fuoco.

E’ dunque lei, l’unica

che non lo scelse

pronto, compiuto.

da sola lo tirò

dentro la pelle a me nota,

lo attaccò alle ossa

a me nascoste.

Da sola gli cercò

gli occhi grigi

con cui mi ha guardato.

Dunque è lei, la sua Alfa.

Perché mai me l’ha mostrata?

Nato.

così è nato, anche lui.

Nato come tutti.

Come me, che morirò.

Figlio d’una donna reale.

Uno giunto dalle profondità del corpo.

In viaggio verso l’Omega.

Esposto

alla propria assenza

da ogni dove,

in ogni istante.

E la sua testa

è una testa contro un muro

cedevole per ora.

E le sue mosse

sono tentativi di eludere

il verdetto universale.

Ho capito

che è già a metà cammino.

Ma questo a me non l’ha detto,

no.

By the critics, she was called "Poetic Mozart".

<<Questa è mia madre>>

mi ha detto soltanto.

(poesia tratta da: La gioia di scrivere, Adelphi 2009)



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Roger Macdivitt .

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
2/2/2012 11:25:11 PM

Branka,

Very sad news.

What a wonderful contribution to the world this person made.

Your tribute is lovely.

Roger

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Branka Babic

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
2/2/2012 11:37:17 PM
Quote:

Branka,

Very sad news.

What a wonderful contribution to the world this person made.

Your tribute is lovely.

Roger



Thanks Roger!



This poetess really has made a huge difference in nowadays world. The Nobel award committee's 1996 citation called her the "Mozart of poetry," a woman who mixed the elegance of language with "the fury of Beethoven" and tackled serious subjects with humor.


Here is her next great poem:


The Turn of the Century


It was supposed to be better than the others, our 20th century,

But it won't have time to prove it.

Its years are numbered,

its step unsteady,

its breath short.


Already too much has happened

that was not supposed to happen.

What was to come about

has not.


Spring was to be on its way,

and happiness, among other things.


Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys.

The truth was supposed to finish before the lie.

Certain misfortunes

were never to happen again

such as war and hunger and so forth.


These were to be respected:

the defenselessness of the defenseless,

trust and the like.


Whoever wanted to enjoy the world

faces an impossible task.


Stupidity is not funny.

Wisdom isn't jolly.


Hope

Is no longer the same young girl

et cetera. Alas.


God was at last to believe in man:

good and strong,

but good and strong

are still two different people.


How to live--someone asked me this in a letter,

someone I had wanted

to ask that very thing.


Again and as always,

and as seen above

there are no questions more urgent

than the naive ones.


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Myrna Ferguson

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RE: Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-prize winning Polish poet, dies at 88
2/2/2012 11:54:29 PM
Hi Branka,

So sorry to hear of Wislawa Szymborska' s passing. There is no more hatred where she is, isn't that a wonderful thought.

Her poem on Hatred is super
LOVE IS THE ANSWER
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