10-9-2001
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born July 2,
1923, Bnin [now in Kórnik], near Poznan, Pol.
Polish poet who
explored philosophical, moral, and ethical issues with intelligence and
empathy. In 1996 she received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Szymborska moved
to Kraków in 1931 and studied literature and sociology at the
Jagiellonian University there between 1945 and 1948. Her first published
poem, “Szukam slowa” (“I Seek the Word”), appeared in a Kraków
newspaper in March 1945. Her first volume of poetry, Dlatego zyjemy
(1952; “That's Why We Are Alive”), was an attempt to conform to
Socialist Realism, the officially approved literary style of Poland's
communist regime. In 1953 she joined the editorial staff of Zycie
Literackie (“Literary Life”), a weekly magazine of intellectual
interests, and remained there until 1981. During this period she gained
a reputation not only as a poet but also as a book reviewer and
translator of French poetry. In the 1980s she wrote for the underground
press under the pseudonym Stancykówna and for a magazine in Paris.
(Encyclopædia Britannica )
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My books:
Wisława Szymborska,
Wiersze wybrane, 375 pp., A5
K. Krynicka, Kraków, 2004, ISBN: 83-85568-67-0
Wisława Szymborska,
Chwila, 48 pp., Wydawnictwo Znac, Kraków 2002, ISBN 83-240-0227-8
Wisława
Szymborska, Monologue of a dog, 96 pp., Foreword by Billy Collins, New Poems
translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak,
Harcourt,Inc.,New York, Toronto, London, 2005, ISBN 0-15-101220-2
Wisława Szymborska, Poems new and collected, 1957 – 1997, Translated from the Polish by Stanisłav Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh, 273 pp, A Harvest Book, Harcourt,
Inc., New York , London, 1998, ISBN 0-15-601146-8
Miracle Fair,
Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska,Translated by Joanna Trzeciak, with a
foreword by Czeslaw Milosz, 160 pp, W.W. Norton & Company, Mew York, London,
2001, ISBN 0-393-32385-4
Wisława Szymborska,
Vista con granello di sabbia, Poesie 1957 – 1993, a cura di Pietro Marchesani,
Nuova Edizione (7.ª), 240 pp, Adelphi Edizioni, Biblioteca Adelphi n.º 357,
Milano, 2005, ISBN 88-459-1885-8
Wisława Szymborska,
Discorso all’ufficio oggetti smarriti, Poesie 1945-2004, a cura di Pietro
Marchesani, 190 pp, Adelphi Edizioni, Biblioteca Adelphi n.º 459, Milano, 2004,
ISBN 88-459-1879-3
Wisława
Szymborska, Due punti, a cura di Pietro Marchesani, 52 pp., Adelphi, Biblioteca
Minima n.º 9, Milano, 2006, ISBN 88-459-2107-7
Wisława
Szymborska, Grande numero, a cura di Pietro Marchesani, 104 pp., Libri
Scheiwiller, Poesia n.º 87, Milano, 2006, ISBN 88-7644-499-8
Wisława
Szymborska, Paisagem com grão de areia, tradução de Júlio Sousa Gomes,
360 pp, Relógio d’Água, Lisboa, 1998. ISBN 972-708-490-7.
Alguns
gostam de poesia, Antologia, Cwesław Miłosz e Wisława Szymborska, Selecção,
introdução e tradução de Elżbieta Milewska e Sérgio das Neves, 242 pp,
Editora
Cavalo de Ferro, Lisboa, 2004, ISBN 972-8791-29-1
Wisława
Szymborska,
Instante,
tradução de Elżbieta Milewska e Sérgio das Neves,
92 pp. Relógio D'Água, Lisboa, 2006, ISBN 972-708-874-0
A life in writing
Alone with the Greta Garbo
of verse
Wislawa
Szymborska tells James Hopkin why she doesn't know anything
Saturday
July 15, 2000
The Guardian
A diminutive old lady with quick, bird-like features and
dark, knowing eyes, Wislawa Szymborska claps her hands, and says, "Generally
speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time
that there is a comical side to everything." Her charm and sense of mischief
perhaps explain why one Italian newspaper called this Nobel prize-winning
septuagenarian "the Greta Garbo of World Poetry".
Born in 1923, Szymborska has
lived in Krakow, Southern Poland, since she was eight years old. She studied
Polish philology and sociology at the city's Jagiellonian university, and then
set about a career writing poetry, working for literary magazines, and
translating poetry from French.
Under the Communist regime in
Poland, Szymborska's first collection of poems, That's What We Live For (1952),
was socialist realism. Yet it's a testament to her integrity that only two years
later, with Questions Put to Myself, she moved towards the life of the
individual.
After Poland's terrible century,
Szymborska's poetry speaks with a beguiling simplicity about the everyday
details and emotions that recover our humanity, and she does this without
cynicism or sentiment. A first read may suggest ordinariness, but there is a
complexity at work beneath her economy, a naivity that has to be worked for, and
a wisdom she has acquired through experience. "I'm fighting against the bad poet
who is prone to using too many words," she says. In 1996, having published only
eight or nine slim volumes, she was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Now 76, Szymborska is an icon
in a country that takes great pride in its poets. She is everyone's favourite
literary grandmother. And it's easy to see why. Her poems are accessible and
often learned by heart. One of them, "Cat in an Empty Apartment", about a cat's
perspective of its departed owner, is recited across Poland by young and old
alike.
Yet Szymborska does her best to
lead the life of a recluse. "There's simply too much fuss about myself," she
explains, with characteristic modesty, and another teasing smile. "Everyone
needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she
experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but
isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation."
As with the cat poem, much of
her work is predicated on absence, while elsewhere she likes to invert scenarios,
or affirm someone for what they cannot do, for "they themselves don't realise/
how much they hold in their empty hands". Hers is a poetry of approaches rather
than reproaches.
Without being overtly political,
her aesthetic is very much a democratic one. She uses colloquial speech and as
many voices as possible, whose tone is alive and inquiring, and always
provocative. Sometimes her poetry has the insistence of urgently whispered
advice.
Like another post-war Polish
poet, Rosewicz, she doubts the efficacy of poetry while at the same time
devoting herself to it. Such refinement can be hard work. "First, it is a
struggle," says Szymborska, "because, obviously, at the very core of every poem,
there is emotion. What you have to do is fight against this emotion. If you were
to use emotions only it would be enough to say: 'I love you. Full stop. Don't
leave me. What shall I do without you? Oh my poor country! Oh my poor homeland!'
"
She laughs, and her laughter is
like the irony in her poems: warm and non-malicious. "Sometimes I write quickly,
sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for
readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!"
The words she retains talk of
love and loss, and of migrations, internal and external. There is wit and
insight, and the reader is constantly nudged to respond. "In every possible
answer," says Szymborska, "there should be another question". Opposing dogma,
she uses big words and themes only to break them down into countless pieces. "I'll
remind you in infinite detail," she promises in "Archeology", "Of what you
expected from life besides death."
Her poems also convey a quiet
dignity, an equanimity, gained by living through the worst excesses of the last
century. After all, she says, ruefully, "Sadness is a beautiful category."
Szymborska's quest for
simplicity explains why this delightful poet loathes to play the poet's role.
She just can't understand why people still want to interview her. "For the last
few years my favourite phrase has been 'I don't know'. I've reached the age of
self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know
something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world."
But surely the Nobel Prize is a
recognition of her wisdom? Even here she has a story to counter such a claim. "It
all happened because of a friend in the States. It's all because of his sofa.
Just before getting his Nobel Prize Czeslaw Milosz [1980] sat on this sofa, then
Seamus Heaney [1995] sat on it and he won the prize, and then it happened that I
sat on it, and then I got the prize! It's a magic sofa!" She laughs, throws back
her head, and then leans forward again, assuming a mock-serious expression. "Unfortunately,
he has since had it repaired, so no chance of a Nobel for you!"
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Szymborska was not particularly well known in the West when she
won the Nobel Prize in1996. There was also some surprise in her native
Poland
that she’d won the award ahead of Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rózewicz.
But her reputation has grown steadily since. Her work translates well
and what come across is that Central / East European note of taking on
the whole culture in a low key way. Szymborska is the wry, unillusioned
moralist, taking the long view of humankind. At times she is a little
like Hans Magnus Enzensberger, at times like Holub. In her Noble Address,
a typically idiosyncratic piece, she commended the poetry of
Ecclesiastes, and if, like him, she sees vanity everywhere, the
starkness is constantly enlivened by flashes of humour and gestures of
identification with the domesticating rituals of life at its least
grand. |
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Speaking to the Twenty-first Century
by Anne Stevenson
Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Joanna
Trzeciak
W W Norton,US $24.95
ISBN 0 393 04939 6
ISSUE 92-1
-- Spring 2002
Wislawa Szymborska – a poet
I never heard of before 1996, whose name I still don’t know how to pronounce and
whose Poems, New and Collected (Harcourt Brace / Faber, 1998) I leafed
through some time ago with the sort of diluted enthusiasm one gives to poetry in
translation: “She must be good, they gave her the Nobel Prize”. Isn’t that what
most English readers said? Her American admirers have been more resolute, and
now thanks to Joanna Trzeciak and W W Norton & Company, we can enjoy a selection
of Szymborska’s work that reads (pretty much of the time) as a translation from
which the poetry has NOT been left out – though when I compared the two
translations there did not seem to be that much to choose between them. The poet
herself, however, assisted in the production of Miracle Fair, and that
certainly adds to its attractions. It was a splendid idea – Trzeciak’s or
Szymborska’s – to group the poems thematically rather than chronologically. Each
group is introduced by a teasingly cryptic phrase, illustrated by an equivalent
collage or image created by the poet. The effect is stunning, and it is enhanced
by a Foreword by Czeslaw Milosz that draws attention to the qualities that make
Szymborska’s work so exceptional.
As Milosz points out, here
is poetry that “speaks to the enduring and irreversible coordinates of human
fate” and relates to the plight of human beings everywhere without regard to
gender, race, class, nationality or ethnic guilt. Szymborska views human beings
as one species among many, addressing us as contemporaries with whom she shares
the extraordinary gift of consciousness: “we”, as distinct from other forms of
life – animals, birds, plants – on one hand, and from the elements of life –
water, air, stones, clouds – on the other. Such a viewpoint is rare in today’s
poetry, especially when found in conjunction with empathy, intelligence, wit,
and, again to quote Milosz, a “post-Copernican, post-Newtonian, post- Darwinian,
post-two-World Wars, post-crimes-and-inventions-of-the-twentieth-century”
attitude that affects everything she writes. I wondered while I was getting lost
among all those “posts” what Szymborska herself thought of them. We certainly
seem to be living in a post period of history, and if this poet’s work were
merely the sum of its posts it would have nothing original to say. Fortunately,
Szymborska left the posts behind her long ago. She is one of very few poets
living today who was never afraid of the twentieth-century; that is probably why
she speaks so intimately and well to the twenty-first.
Miracle Fair
begins with a selection of love poems that turns, almost unnoticeably, into a
group of elegies. It is clear that the translator made every effort to preserve
the elegant word play of the Polish. In ‘Commemoration’, for example, lovers
looking up from their bed of hazels are blessed by a swallow – a “calligrapher,
/ timeless second hand, / early ornithogothic, / a crossed eye in the sky”. How
cleverly the invented word “ornithogothic” combines an architectural term with
the structure of the bird. The poet’s play of mind preserves grief, like love,
at a distance, so that, fifty years later, after her partner’s death, she writes
wryly of a cat in his empty apartment and of herself as an inhabitant of a
photographic negative: “Not begrudging him questions to any answer / if they
concern life, / that is, the storm before the calm”.
If Szymborska had lived
through peaceful times in a happier country, her love poems alone would have
made her lovable, but, as the title of the second group of poems declares, “too
much… happened that was not supposed to happen”. Poems about Jews packed into
freight cars, about starvation camps, torture, hunger, hatred and war’s
“reality” are what people look for in a twentieth century Polish poet, and
Szymborska, on these subjects, does not disappoint. For many readers this
section will lie at the heart of the book; it is certainly very strong, all the
more so for the unusual angle of vision in some of the poems, and their
understated despair. The title ‘Still’, for instance, refers to the trains still
travelling across Europe with their cargoes of souls. The names of the victims are
still suffering, still praying for escape. Readers reminded of Sylvia Plath’s
holocaust poems will note the same use of words to imitate the sound of wheels
beating on the tracks:
That’s so that’s so, go the
wheels.
These woods have no clearing.
That’s so that’s so.
A cargo of cries disappearing.
That’s so that’s so.
Awakened in deep night on hearing
that’s so that’s so,
the clatter of silence on silence.
These poems must have been
difficult to translate, the more so because they deal with horrific happenings
in language which neither dramatises events or underplays them. Great skill and
care must have gone into their making in the Polish, and the American translator
has done her best. Yet – it seems curmudgeonly to say so – I am not happy with
rhymes such as “clearing” “disappearing” and “hearing” in the stanza quoted
above – if only because the line “These woods have no clearing” would never pass
as English outside the frame of a translation. I quailed, too, at “The spoils of
war is our knowledge of the world – ” (my italics) from a rhymed lyric
called “We knew the world backwards and forwards”. As a rule of thumb, it seems
wiser not to try to transfer close rhymes from one language to another.
Certainly poems like ‘Torture’, ‘The End and the Beginning’ and ‘Hatred’ – among
the most affecting in the book – read more naturally for being translated into
the simplest English:
Nothing has changed.
Except for the courses of rivers,
the contours of forests, seashores, deserts, and icebergs.
Among these landscapes the poor soul winds,
vanishes, returns, approaches, recedes.
A stranger to itself, evasive,
at one moment sure, the next unsure of its existence,
while the body is and is and is and has no place to go. (‘Torture’)
Szymborska’s delicate way of
setting human nature against a background of nature’s nature (as it were) is
particularly impressive in the three middle sections of the book. Compare the
tough thinking behind a poem like ‘Conversation with a Rock’ with, say, the
soft-headedness of Annie Dillard’s famous anthropocentric essay, ‘Teaching a
Stone to Speak’. Where Dillard, full of Gaia theory, wants to humanise the
planet, Szymborska knocks “at the door of the rock” only to be roughly excluded.
“But I come out of curiosity”, cries the poet, “I’ve heard there are vast, empty
rooms inside you… I’ll offer nothing but words”. “You will not be coming in”,
says the rock. “You lack a sense of partaking”. The pattern of begging and
rejection continues for ten stanzas before the poet knocks for the last time: “I
knock at the door of the rock. / ‘It’s me, let me in’. / ‘I don’t have a door’,
says the rock”. And that’s the end of it.
And yet, Szymborska’s view
of humanity’s helpless subjection to the workings of evolution is in no way
reductive. No note of bitterness, no melodramatic claim to absurdity taints her
humanism. Nature, for this poet, is the process that has thrown the human
species on top “for now”; what will happen in the next million years is
anybody’s guess. “The unthinkable is thinkable”, yes, but not controllable. It
is enough to love the (for us) beautiful truth that the earth exists and that
life continues with its wars of survival and processes of feeding, living,
reproducing and dying. The trick is to see it happening with human eyes, feel it
with human hearts, know it through human brains, yet never to expect nature to
do us favours. If we can manage that, says Szymborska – in nearly every poem,
once you read them carefully – we can live in the “Miracle Fair” of the
“commonplace” whatever our fate or luck. And there is always an alternative;
humans, alone among the species, can live in their imaginations. “The admirable
number pi: / three point one four one. Every further digit is also just a
start / (five nine two, for it never ends”. In ‘Pi’, opening her
imagination to eternity, Szymborska suggests that even the universe is no match
for the mind of man: “O how short, all but mouse-like, is the comet’s tail!”
For Szymborska, of course,
poetry, not mathematics, serves as the natural vehicle of imagination. The final
section of Miracle Fair is called “O Muse”, and the illustration that
introduces it depicts a lighted candle floating on a vast and shoreless sea.
Here are several poems about paintings (Rubens’s women described as “Herculasses”),
some about writers (Thomas Mann becomes a mammal whose hand is “miraculously
feathered by a fountain pen”) and two about poetry readings. But Szymborska’s
three final words are, as one might expect, ambiguous: “Some Like Poetry”. “Some
– ” – a word much favoured by this poet who never asks for all. “Like –” well,
“one also likes chicken-noodle soup”. “Poetry –”
but what sort of thing is
poetry?
Many a shaky answer has been given to this question.
But I do not know and I do not know and hold on to it
as to a saving bannister.
Letters of the Dead
by Wislawa Szymborska
ISSUE 91-3
Autumn 2001
from Wszelki Wypadek (Could Have), 1972
We read the letters of the dead like puzzled gods –
gods nevertheless, because we know what happened later.
We know what money wasn’t repaid,
the widows who rushed to remarry.
Poor, unseeing dead,
deceived, fallible, toiling in solemn foolery.
We see the signs made behind their backs,
catch the rustle of ripped-up wills.
They sit there before us, ridiculous
as things perched on buttered bread,
or fling themselves after whisked-away hats.
Their bad taste – Napoleon, steam and electricity,
deadly remedies for curable diseases,
the foolish apocalypse of
St. John,
the false paradise on earth of Jean-Jacques . . .
Silently, we observe their pawns on the board
– but shifted three squares on.
Everything they foresaw has happened quite differently,
or a little differently – which is the same thing.
The most fervent stare trustingly into our eyes;
by their reckoning, they’ll see perfection there.
Translated by Vuyelwa Carlin.
Poland's Blithe
Spirit
On discovering Wislawa
Szymborska -- and the "little insurrections of sense and sanity" at the heart of
the Nobel laureate's poetry
by David Barber
Sun., January 09, 2005 Tevet 28, 5765
Pen Ultimate
Passerby, your
Thinkpad prepare
By Michael
Handelzalts
Wed., December 15, 2004 Tevet 3, 5765
Nobel poet charms in Polish
By Michael
Handelzalts
IL MANIFESTO
4-9-2004
Wislawa Szymborska,
Discorso all’Ufficio oggetti smarriti, Adelphi 2004
Andrea Molesini
Read
these articles,
here
ANOTHER PAGE ON THIS AUTHOR
IN THIS SITE,
HERE
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Możliwości
Wolę kino.
Wolę koty.
Wolę dęby nad Wartą.
Wolę Dickensa od Dostojewskiego.
Wolę siebie lubiącą ludzi
niż siebie kochającą ludzkość.
Wolę mieć w pogotowiu igłę z nitką.
Wolę kolor zielony.
Wolę nie twierdzić,
że rozum jest wszystkiemu winien.
Wolę wyjątki.
Wolę wychodzić wcześniej.
Wolę rozmawiać z lekarzami o czymś innym.
Wolę stare ilustracje w prążki.
Wolę śmieszność pisania wierszy
od śmieszności ich niepisania.
Wolę w miłości rocznice nieokrągłe,
do obchodzenia na co dzień.
Wolę moralistów,
którzy nie obiecują mi nic.
Wolę dobroć przebiegłą od łatwowiernej za bardzo.
Wolę ziemię w cywilu.
Wolę kraje podbite niż podbijające.
Wolę mieć zastrzeżenia.
Wolę piekło chaosu od piekła porządku.
Wolę bajki Grimma od pierwszych stron gazet.
Wolę liście bez kwiatów niż kwiaty bez liści.
Wolę psy z ogonem nie przyciętym.
Wolę oczy jasne, ponieważ mam ciemne.
Wolę szuflady.
Wolę wiele rzeczy, których tu nie wymieniłam,
od wielu również tu nie wymienionych.
Wolę zera luzem
niż ustawione w kolejce do cyfry.
Wolę czas owadzi od gwiezdnego.
Wolę odpukać.
Wolę nie pytać jak długo jeszcze i kiedy.
Wolę brać pod uwagę nawet tę możliwość,
że byt ma swoją rację. |
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Possibilidades
Prefiro cinema.
Prefiro os gatos.
Prefiro os carvalhos nas margens do Warta.
Prefiro Dickens a Dostoievski.
Prefiro-me gostando dos homens em vez de estar amando a
humanidade.
Prefiro ter uma agulha preparada com a linha.
Prefiro a cor verde.
Prefiro não afirmar que a razão é culpada de tudo.
Prefiro as excepções.
Prefiro sair mais cedo.
Prefiro conversar com os médicos sobre outra coisa.
Prefiro as velhas ilustrações listradas.
Prefiro o ridículo de escrever poemas ao ridículo de não
os escrever.
No amor prefiro os aniversários não redondos para serem
comemorados cada dia.
Prefiro os moralistas, que não me prometem nada.
Prefiro a bondade esperta à bondade ingênua demais.
Prefiro a terra à paisana.
Prefiro os países conquistados aos países conquistadores.
Prefiro ter objecções.
Prefiro o inferno do caos ao inferno da ordem.
Prefiro os contos de fada de Grimm às manchetes de
jornais.
Prefiro as folhas sem flores às flores sem folhas.
Prefiro os cães com o rabo não cortado.
Prefiro os olhos claros porque os tenho escuros.
Prefiro as gavetas.
Prefiro muitas coisas que aqui não disse, a outras tantas
não mencionadas aqui.
Prefiro os zeros à solta a tê-los numa fila junto ao
algarismo.
Prefiro o tempo dos insectos ao tempo das estrelas.
Prefiro isolar.
Prefiro não perguntar quanto tempo ainda e quando.
Prefiro levar em consideração até a possibilidade do ser
ter a sua razão.
(Tradução de Aleksandar Jovanovic e Henryk Siewierski)
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Rozmowa z kamieniem
Pukam do
drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Chcę wejść do twego wnętrza,
rozejrzeć się dokoła,
nabrać ciebie jak tchu.
- Odejdź -
mówi kamień. -
Jestem szczelnie zamknięty.
Nawet rozbite na części
będziemy szczelnie zamknięte.
Nawet starte na piasek
nie wpuścimy nikogo.
Pukam do
drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Przychodzę z ciekawości czystej.
Życie jest dla niej jedyną okazją.
Zamierzam przejść się po twoim pałacu,
a potem jeszcze zwiedzić liść i krople wody.
Niewiele czasu na to wszystko mam.
Moja śmiertelność powinna Cię wzruszyć.
- Jestem z
kamienia - mówi kamień -
i z konieczności muszę zachować powagę.
Odejdź stąd.
Nie mam mięśni śmiechu.
Pukam do
drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Słyszałam że są w tobie wielkie puste sale,
nie oglądane, piękne nadaremnie,
głuche, bez echa czyichkolwiek kroków.
Przyznaj, że sam niedużo o tym wiesz.
- Wielkie i
puste sale - mówi kamień -
ale w nich miejsca nie ma.
Piękne, być może, ale poza gustem
twoich ubogich zmysłów.
Możesz mnie poznać, nie zaznasz mnie nigdy.
Całą powierzchnią zwracam się ku tobie,
a całym wnętrzem leżę odwrócony.
Pukam do
drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Nie szukam w tobie przytułku na wieczność.
Nie jestem nieszczęśliwa.
Nie jestem bezdomna.
Mój świat jest wart powrotu.
Wejdę i wyjdę z pustymi rękami.
A na dowód, że byłam prawdziwie obecna,
nie przedstawię niczego prócz słów,
którym nikt nie da wiary.
- Nie
wejdziesz - mówi kamień. -
Brak ci zmysłu udziału.
Nawet wzrok wyostrzony aż do wszechwidzenia
nie przyda ci się na nic bez zmysłu udziału.
Nie wejdziesz, masz zaledwie zamysł tego zmysłu,
ledwie jego zawiązek, wyobraźnię.
Pukam do
drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Nie mogę czekać dwóch tysięcy wieków
na wejście pod twój dach.
- Jeżeli mi
nie wierzysz - mówi kamień -
zwróć się do liścia, powie to, co ja.
Do kropli wody, powie to, co liść.
Na koniec spytaj włosa z własnej głowy.
Śmiech mnie rozpiera, śmiech, olbrzymi śmiech,
którym śmiać się nie umiem.
Pukam do
drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie
- Nie mam drzwi - mówi kamień.
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CONVERSA
COM A PEDRA
Bato à porta da pedra.
- Sou eu, deixa-me entrar.
Quero penetrar no teu interior,
olhar ao redor,
prender-te como a respiração.
- Sai - diz a pedra.
Sou hermeticamente fechada.
Mesmo quebradas em pedaços
vamos ficar hermeticamente fechadas.
Mesmo trituradas em grãos
não vamos deixar ninguém entrar.
Bato à porta da pedra.
- Sou eu, deixa-me entrar.
Venho por curiosidade pura.
A vida é a única ocasião para ela.
Pretendo passear pelo teu palácio,
e depois visitar a folha e a gota d’água.
Não tenho muito tempo para tanto.
Minha mortalidade deveria te comover.
- Sou de pedra - diz a pedra -
e sou obrigada a manter a seriedade.
Sai daqui.
Não tenho os músculos do riso.
Bato à porta da pedra.
- Sou eu, deixa-me entrar.
Ouvi dizer que em ti há grandes salas vazias,
nunca vistas, inutilmente lindas,
surdas, sem eco de passos de quem quer que seja.
Reconhece, tu mesma não sabes muito sobre isto.
- Salas grandes e vazias - diz a pedra -
mas nelas lugar não há.
Lindas, talvez, mas além do gosto
de teus pobres sentidos.
Podes me conhecer, mas me provar nunca.
Com toda a minha superfície me volto para ti,
mas com todo o meu interior te dou as costas.
Bato à porta da pedra.
- Sou eu, deixa-me entrar.
Não busco em ti um refúgio para a eternidade.
Não sou infeliz.
Não estou desabrigada.
Meu mundo é digno de retorno.
Vou entrar e sair com as mãos vazias.
E como prova de que realmente estive presente,
não vou mostrar nada além de palavras
às quais ninguém dará fé.
- Não vais entrar - diz a pedra -
Falta a ti o sentido da participação.
Nenhum sentido substitui o sentido da participação.
Mesmo a visão elevada até à clarividência
não serve para nada sem o sentido da participação.
Não vais entrar, tens apenas uma noção deste sentido,
apenas o seu germe, sua imagem.
Bato à porta da pedra.
- Sou eu, deixa-me entrar.
Não posso esperar dois mil séculos
para entrar debaixo do teu teto.
Se não crês em mim - diz a pedra -
Dirige-te à folha, ela te dirá o mesmo que eu,
e à gota d’água, que te dirá o mesmo que a folha.
Por fim pergunta aos fios de teu próprio cabelo.
Um riso se alarga em mim, um riso, um riso enorme,
que eu não sei rir.
Bato à porta da pedra.
- Sou eu, deixa-me entrar.
- Não tenho porta - diz a pedra.
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Terrorysta, on patrzy
Bomba wybuchnie w barze trzynasta dwadzieścia.
Teraz mamy dopiero trzynastą szesnaście.
Niektórzy zdążą jeszcze wejść.
Niektórzy wyjść.
Terrorysta już przeszedł na drugą stronę ulicy.
Ta odległość go chroni od wszelkiego złego
no i widok jak w kinie:
Kobieta w żółtej kurtce, ona wchodzi.
Mężczyzna w ciemnych okularach, on wychodzi.
Chłopaki w dżinsach, oni rozmawiają.
Trzynasta siedemnaście i cztery sekundy.
Ten niższy to ma szczęście i wsiada na skuter,
a ten wyższy to wchodzi.
Trzynasta siedemnaście i czterdzieści sekund.
Dziewczyna, ona idzie z zieloną wstążką we włosach.
Tylko że ten autobus nagle ją zasłania.
Trzynasta osiemnaście.
Już nie ma dziewczyny.
Czy była taka głupia i weszła, czy nie,
to się zobaczy, jak będą wynosić.
Trzynasta dziewiętnaście.
Nikt jakoś nie wchodzi.
Za to jeszcze wychodzi jeden gruby łysy.
Ale tak, jakby szukał czegoś po kieszeniach i
o trzynastej dwadzieścia bez dziesięciu sekund
wraca po te swoje marne rękawiczki.
Jest trzynasta dwadzieścia.
Czas, jak on się wlecze.
Już chyba teraz.
Jeszcze nie teraz.
Tak, teraz.
Bomba, ona wybucha.
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O terrorista… olha
A bomba vai
explodir no bar às treze e vinte.
São neste momento
treze e dezasseis.
Alguns conseguem
ainda entrar,
alguns sair.
O terrorista
passou já para o outro lado da rua.
A esta distância
ficará livre de perigo
e, quanto a vista,
é como no cinema:
Uma mulher de
casaco amarelo… entra.
Um homem de óculos
escuros… sai.
Rapazes de jeans…
conversam.
Treze horas,
dezasseis minutos e quatro segundos.
Aquele baixinho
tem sorte e senta-se na vespa,
mais um tipo alto
que entra.
Treze horas
dezassete minutos e quarenta segundos.
Passa uma moça de
fita verde nos cabelos.
Só que o autocarro
oculta-a.
Treze e dezoito.
A rapariga
desapareceu.
Se foi bastante
estúpida para entrar ou não,
isso se saberá
pelas notícias.
Treze e dezanove.
Parece que ninguém
entra.
Há porém um careca
gordo que sai.
Mas olha, parece
que procura algo nos bolsos,
faltam treze
segundos para as treze e vinte,
e ele volta a
entrar em busca das luvas que perdeu.
São treze e vinte.
Como o tempo voa.
Deve ser agora.
Ainda não.
Sim, é agora.
A bomba… explode.
Tradução de Júlio
Sousa Gomes, em Wisława Szymborska, Paisagem com grão de areia,
Relógio d’Água, Lisboa, 1998. ISBN 972-708-490-7.
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Obóz głodowy pod Jasłem
Napisz to. Napisz.
Zwykłym atramentem na zwykłym papierze:
nie dano im jeść, wszyscy pomarli z głodu.
Wszyscy. Ilu? To duża laka. Ile trawy
przypadło na jednego?
Napisz: nie wiem.
Historia zaokrągla szkielety do zera.
Tysiąc i jeden to wciąż jeszcze tysiąc.
Ten jeden, jakby go wcale nie było:
płód urojony, kołyska próżna,
elementarz otwarty dla nikogo,
powietrze, które śmieję się,
krzyczy i rośnie,
schody dla pustki zbiegającej
do ogrodu, miejsce niczyje w szeregu.
Jesteśmy na tej łące,
gdzie stało się ciałem.
A ona milczy jak kupiony świadek.
W słońcu. Zielona. Tam opodal las
do żucia drewna, do picia spod kory -
porcja widoku całodzienna,
póki się nie oślepnie. W górze ptak,
który po ustach przesuwał się
cieniem pożywnych skrzydeł.
Otwierały się szczeki, uderzał żab o żab.
Nocą na niebie błyskał sierp
i żal na śnione chleby.
Nadlatywały ręce z poczerniałych ikon,
z pustymi kielichami w palcach.
Na różnie kolczastego drutu
chwiał się człowiek.
Śpiewano z ziemią w ustach.
Śliczna pieśń
o tym, że wojna trafia prosto w serce.
Napisz, jaka tu cisza.
Tak.
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Hunger Camp at Jaslo
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It’s a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?" Write: I don’t know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in the line.
We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
"A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart." Write: how silent.
"Yes."
(Translated
by Grazyna Drabik and Austin Flint. ) |
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Tortury
Nic
się nie zmieniło.
Ciało jest bolesne,
jeść musi i oddychać powietrzem,
i spać, ma cienką skórę,
a tuż pod nią krew,
ma spory zasób zębów i paznokci,
kości jego łamliwe, stawy rozciągliwe.
W torturach jest to wszystko
brane pod uwagę.
Nic się nie zmieniło.
Ciało drży, jak drżało
przed założeniem Rzymu
i po jego założeniu,
w dwudziestym wieku przed
i po Chrystusie, tortury są,
jak były, zmalała tylko ziemia
i cokolwiek się dzieje,
to tak jak za ścianą.
Nic się nie zmieniło.
Przybyło tylko ludzi,
obok starych przewinień zjawiły się nowe,
rzeczywiste, wmówione, chwilowe i żadne,
ale krzyk, jakim ciało za nie odpowiada,
był, jest i będzie krzykiem niewinności,
podług odwiecznej skali i rejestru.
Nic się nie zmieniło.
Chyba tylko maniery, ceremonie, tańce.
Ruch rąk osłaniających głowę
pozostał jednak ten sam.
Ciało się wije, szarpie i wyrywa,
ścięte z nóg pada, podkurcza kolana,
sinieje, puchnie, ślini się i broczy.
Nic się nie zmieniło.
Poza biegiem rzek,
linia lasów, wybrzeży,
pustyń i lodowców.
Wśród tych pejzaży duszyczka się snuje,
znika, powraca, zbliża się, oddala,
sama dla siebie obca, nieuchwytna,
raz pewna, raz niepewna swojego istnienia,
podczas gdy ciało jest i jest i jest
i nie ma się gdzie podziać.
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Tortures
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.
Nothing has changed. It's
just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.
Nothing has changed. Maybe
just the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
it turns blue, swells, salivates and bleeds.
Nothing has changed.
Except for the course of boundaries,
the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its
own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has no place of its own.
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Niektorzy lubią poezje
Niektórzy -
czyli nie wszyscy.
Nawet nie większość
wszystkich ale mniejszość.
Nie licząc szkół, gdzie się musi,
i samych poetów,
będzie tych osób
chyba dwie na tysiąc.
Lubią -
ale lubi się także
rosół z makaronem,
lubi się komplementy
i kolor niebieski,
lubi się stary szalik,
lubi się stawiać na swoim,
lubi się głaskać psa.
Poezje -
tylko co to takiego poezja.
Niejedna chwiejna odpowiedz
na to pytanie już padła.
A ja nie wiem i nie wiem
i trzymam się tego
jak zbawiennej poręczy.
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Some Like Poetry
Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.
Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.
Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.
(Translated
by Regina Grol)
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Trzy słowa najdziwniejsze"
Kiedy wymawiam słowo
Przyszłość,
pierwsza sylaba odchodzi już do przeszłości.
Kiedy wymawiam słowo Cisza,
niszczę ją.
Kiedy wymawiam słowo Nic,
stwarzam coś, co nie mieści się w żadnym niebycie.
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When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.
(Transl. by
S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)
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Radość pisania
Dokąd
biegnie ta napisana sarna przez napisany las?
Czy z napisanej wody pić,
która jej pyszczek odbije jak kalka?
Dlaczego łeb podnosi, czy coś słyszy?
Na pożyczonych z prawdy czterech nóżkach wsparta
spod moich palców uchem strzyże.
Cisza - ten wyraz tez szeleści po papierze i rozgarnia
spowodowane słowem "las" gałęzie.
Nad
białą kartką czają się do skoku
litery, które mogą ułożyć się źle,
zdania osaczające,
przed którymi nie będzie ratunku.
Jest w
kropli atramentu spory zapas
myśliwych z przymrużonym okiem,
gotowych zbiec po stromym piórze w dół,
otoczyć sarnę, złożyć się do strzału.
Zapominają, że tu nie jest życie.
Inne, czarno na białym, panują tu prawa.
Okamgnienie trwać będzie tak długo, jak zechce,
pozwoli się podzielić na małe wieczności
pełne wstrzymanych w locie kul.
Na zawsze, jeśli każę, nic się tu nie stanie.
Bez mojej woli nawet liść nie spadnie
ani źdźbło się nie ugnie pod kropką kopytka.
Jest
więc taki świat,
nad którym los sprawuje niezależny?
Czas, który wiąże łańcuchami znaków?
Istnienie na mój rozkaz nieustanne?
Radość
pisania.
Możność utrwalania.
Zemsta ręki śmiertelnej.
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Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."
Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.
Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.
They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.
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.
(Transl. by
S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh)
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more poems
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