Born: July 2, 1923, Bnin (now part of Kornik), Poland
Early days. Wislawa Szymborska was born in Bnin (now part of Kornik), Poland on July 23, 1923. In 1931 her family moved to Krakow. During World War II she attended underground high school in Nazi occupied Poland (high school education for Poles was prohibited by the Germans). In a wartime writing she stated, that "Hitler gives the Germans something to be enthusiastic about and offer up their lives for that, for those Germans, Hitler is great. Don't you understand that the power of a movement depends on the human beings it produces?"
Higher education. From 1945 to 1948, Szymborska studied Polish literature and sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
Literary debut. As a poet Szymborska made her debut with the poem “Szukam slowa" (I am Looking for a Word) which was published in the newspaper Dziennik Polski in 1945. Three years later she finished her fist collection of poems, but the book was not published. The communists in power tightened their cultural policy and Szymborska's work was considered too complex and bourgeois.
First collection of poems. She returned to work, made it more political and her first collection DLATEGO ZYJEMY, appeared in 1952. Szymborska has also published collections of literary columns, several of which first appeared in Zycie Literackie.
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.
Writes Sally Boss in “Afterthoughts on Wislawa Szymborska”(Sarmatian Revue):
“Not even Mayakovsky was a more insistent propagandist for the Soviet cause. Szymborska's poetry of that period [1950s] was mendacious, but it was also powerful. Then as now, she showed her mettle by simply writing well, supporting the wrong cause to be sure, but doing so with an enviable facility of a masterful writer. Her handling of language was and is superior. She is a major talent.”
Later she has expressed her pessimism about the future of mankind in poems that are written in misleading casual manner or in ironic tone. While skepticism has marked her 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.
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)
From 1953 to 1981 she worked on the Krakow literary magazine Zycie Literackie as poetry editor and columnist.
Marriages. Szymborska has been married twice. Since the early 1990s she has been a widow and lived in Krakow. After the Nobel award she retreated to Zakopane to escape reporters and well-wishers and to write her acceptance speech. Before and after the Nobel Prize Szymborska have avoided literary gatherings, but her personal example and devotion to poetry has inspired young women all over the world to choose career in literature. CHWILA (2002), published when Szymborska was 79, contained 23 poems.
Szymborska has published 16 collections of poetry: Dlatego 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) . Wislawa Szymborska has also translated French poetry.
Translations. Her poems have been translated (and published in book form) in English, German, Swedish, Italian, Danish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian and other languages. They have also been published in many foreign anthologies of Polish poetry.
Honors nd awards. Wislawa Szymborska is the Goethe Prize winner (1991) and Herder Prize winner (1995). She has a degree of Honorary Doctor of Letters of Poznan University (1995). In 1996 she received the Polish PEN Club prize.
From Les Prix Nobel 1996.
Nobel Prize in Literature for "poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."
A major part of this biography has been copied with small changes– with author’s permission - from Petri Liukkonen:
Liukkonen
English translations of some of his works:
Constance J. Ostrowski
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