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     There has been much speculation in this country about the cultural politics behind the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature having gone to an “obscure” Polish woman poet, Wislawa  Szymborska. This award, a symbol of international recognition and the highest accolade from the Swedish Academy, seems to have taken not only the British public at large, but even the literary pundits, by surprise. Some of the better informed wondered why the prize had not gone to Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish poet who, since the 1960s, has enjoyed a secure international reputation. Modern Polish poetry happens to be so strong at the moment that the choice must have indeed been tantalisingly difficult. Especially as there was a third contender, too, in the person of Tadeusz Rosewicz. Yet the prize has gone to the (apparently) least known of the three. Why?

     Both Herbert and Rozewicz can be regarded as, in some sense, political poets. In saying this, I do not wish to suggest active involvement in the world of politics, but rather the way in which they have responded to the inescapable pressure of politics which shaped the reality of “the other Europe” in the years 1945-1989. They both lived through the horrors of the Second World War and were deeply scarred by that experience. It led Rozewicz to formulate his famous “anti-poetry” programme in which he re-stated Adorno’s contention that poetry after Auschwitz was no longer possible, whereas the effect on Herbert was to force him into the Romantic stance with which Polish poets have traditionally responded to the vicissitudes of their nation’s tragic history. 

     Szymborska, however – with the exception of her two earliest collections, which were merely an obligatory nod towards social-realist orthodoxy – has been, uniquely for poets of her generation, able to retain her inner freedom from the constraints and compromises exacted by politics (much as she was aware, as she states in one of her poems, that “we are children of our age/ it’s a political age”). She is also unique among Polish poets in eschewing the Romantic tradition (which, paradoxically, has been the “classic” paradigm of Polish poetry right up to our time). Already in 1968, a Polish critic observed of her that she had been practising a reflective poetry at a time when this genre seemed all but to have disappeared. Her poetry frequently attracts an epithet “philosophical”, but her philosophising is far from academic. Underpinning her entire oeuvre is a deep conviction that man is, for better or worse, a homo sapiens; therefore thinking is as natural as breathing for him. This implies looking at the world rationally, but does not exclude a sense of fun in indulging one’s curiosity in playful thought-games – a form which she has made her own as a particularly effective way in which to explore reality.

     Szymborska’s favourite device is to play a game of “ambushing” reality, by stealthily springing at it from behind.  Her favourite gambit – which she employs with some fondness, by means of Baroque-style “conceits” – is to confound at every step the expectations of the reader. She is grateful not to be in love: “I owe so much/ to those I don’t love” (‘Thank-you note’); happy and relieved that her sister is not bent on writing poetry: “When my sister asks me over for lunch/ I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems./ Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives” (‘In praise of my sister’); always willing to entertain the possibilities hidden in what has not happened “beyond the reach of our presence/ in the paradise lost/ of probability” (‘The Railway Station’).

     This delight in juggling with the multiple “scenarios” of events leads Szymborska, almost inevitably, to adopt a subversively sceptical stance towards reality. It is then but a small step to viewing the world with that subtle and sophisticated sense of irony which is such a fundamental feature of her outlook on life. There is no better example of this than the highly acclaimed poem ‘Pornography’, quoted here in Adam Czerniawski’s translation:

There is no debauchery worse than thought [...]
Wild and dissolute pursuit of naked facts,
Lustful petting of sensitive subjects [...]

In what shocking positions
with what licentious simplicity
mind can impregnate mind…

Szymborska’s mind-games are informed by her lively interest in the world of scientific ideas.  A surprising number of her poems are set in museums. While studying the skeletons of dinosaurs, she shares in a child-like sense of wonder and awe at the mystery at the heart of evolution. In one of her most recent poems in the new Faber edition, she plays with the concept of the sheer “coincidence” of her emerging from the process of evolution as herself, whereas “I could have fluttered/ from another nest/ or crawled bescaled/ from under another tree”. She concludes: “I might have been myself minus amazement/ that is,/ someone completely different” (‘Among the Multitudes’). In fact, this quality of never-ceasing wonderment at nature’s “inventiveness/ bounty, sweep/ exactitude/ sense of order – gifts that border/ on witchcraft and wizardry” (‘Allegro ma non troppo’) is the single most important quality of Szymborska’s poetry.

     But the poet’s delight and joyful celebration of this life does not preclude an awareness of another reality, hidden from the senses, which envelops us like the sky in the celebrated poem of that title. “An aperture, nothing more/ but wide open” which is to be found “everywhere/ even in the dark beneath your skin”. It renders the “division into the sky and earth” ultimately meaningless. The poet, in an uncharacteristically assertive mood, is convinced that  “It’s not the proper way/ to contemplate this wholeness”. This metaphysical perspective, so clearly discernible in Szymborska’s later poetry, is not to be equated with any particular religious stance: she has stubbornly resisted any attempts to be drafted into either the Catholic or the nationalist camps. Her characteristically sceptical, questioning and ironic approach towards even the most universal themes, is given full expression in ‘Elegiac Calculation’:

How many of those I knew
(if I really knew them),
men, women
(if the distinction still holds)
have crossed that threshold
(if it is a threshold)
passed over that bridge,
(if you can call it a bridge) –

How many after a shorter or longer life
(if they still see a difference) […]
have found themselves on the far shore
(if they found themselves at all
and if another shore exists) –

I’ve been given no assurance
as concerns their future fate
(if there is one common fate
and if it is still fate) –

The understatement of this poem, pivoting as it does on the rhetorical question which must remain unanswered, is as moving as her questioning intelligence and a sense of irony are appealing to the modern reader.

     The same note of wonderment at life pervades a poem ‘Nothing’s a gift’ from her last collection (1993). It brings to mind the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poets, with whom she shares the delight in startling the reader with a Baroque “conceit”:

Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan [...]
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life [...]

Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid [...]

I can’t remember
where, when and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.

We can call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.

Szymborska’s art, balanced between the strict discipline of her craft and seemingly effortless grace of expression, delights by its subtle interplay of intellect and imagination. It has won her a wide admiration equally amongst her fellow poets and critics, as well as the reading public in her native country. Her reputation in the English speaking countries is sure to grow, for which part of the credit must go to the excellent translations of Stanislaw Baranczak, a poet and a translator of rare talent himself.