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SOURCE: "Szymborska? It Means 'Famous'," in Washington Post, October 4, 1996, pp. F1, F3.
[Below, Streitfield introduces the Nobel Prize winner to English-speaking readers.]
Vihs-WAH-vah sheem-BOHR-skah.
Pronouncing the name of the 1996 Nobel laureate in literature is the hardest part. Once that's done, Wislawa Szymborska's poetry slips down like melted snow. From "Writing a Résumé":
Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.
Landscapes are replaced by addresses,
shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.
Of all your loves, mention only the marriage;
of all your children, only those who were born.
To praise the Polish poet, the Swedish Academy resorted to musical comparisons. It called her a "Mozart of poetry" and said she combined elegance of language with "the fury of Beethoven."
The 73-year-old Szymborska tackles the most difficult subjects—hatred, love, the persistence of memory, the charms of life as well as its ravages—in the simplest language. Her poems...
This section contains 1,169 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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