SOURCE: Bojanowska, Edyta M. “Wislawa Szymborska: Naturalist and Humanist.” Slavic and East European Journal 41, no. 2 (summer 1997): 199-223.

In the following essay, Bojanowska studies Szymborska's interpretation of mankind's importance and placement in nature, drawing particular emphasis to Szymborska's focus on man's inevitable attempts to assert themselves as the masters of nature's hierarchy.

Wisława Szymborska (b. 1923), the author of nine slim volumes of poetry that span nearly half a century, is a foremost figure in contemporary Polish poetry. Her recognition was slow in the coming. Unlike such established giants of post-war Polish poetry as Czesław Miłosz or Zbigniew Herbert, until 1996 Szymborska had not earned a single book-length scholarly study either in Poland or abroad. Only recent years have brought a surge of interest.¹ While Polish articles represent an important step toward a scholarly analysis of Szymborska's poetry—and I will acknowledge their insights—they too often aim...