The fourth Polish author honored with the Nobel Prize in literature (1996) after Henryk Sienkiewicz in 1905, Wladyslaw Reymont in 1924, and Czeslaw Milosz in 1980-Wislawa Szymborska is also the second Polish poet awarded the prize in a mere sixteen years. Along with Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rózewicz, and Miron Bialoszewski, Szymborska has been one of the dominating figures in the rich and lively arena of Polish poetry of the second half of the twentieth century. She is both a successor and a leading representative of a strong literary tradition.

Wislawa Szymborska was born on 2 July 1923 in the small town of Kórnik (actually Bnin, which later merged with Kórnik to form a joint township bearing the latter's name) near the city of Pozna, the industrial and cultural center of the western part of Poland. She was one of two daughters of Wincenty Szymborski and Anna...