a little more szymborska

I dug around in my bookcase and found the two Szymborska volumes I own. The one on the left is in Polish and is very slim, and I bought it in Krakow in 1993 for less than a dollar. The złoty was redenomiated in 1995, but when I lived there, I think there were usually about 10,000 złoty to the dollar. 

Anyway, not very much money at all for such good poetry, even if my math and memory are both wrong.

The volume on the right is still available used through Amazon (and here is her author page), and is a good English translation. This book enjoyed a brief, fashionable stint in Starbucks after Szymborska won the Nobel Prize, and I bought it there because I wanted it, but also to rescue it, because Starbucks seemed all wrong for it. It was kind of a cultural reconnaissance mission while I stood in line for a latte. Come here, book. Come home and live with me, and I will treat you right.

I should mention that though her themes are often grim -- she is, after all, an old Pole, which means she survived idiot Nazis and idiot Soviets -- she is very, very funny.

Stanisław Barańczak, who (along with Clare Cavanagh) did the translations, is himself an award-winning Polish poet.

Here's another Szymborska poem I really like. It swims back into my head on a pretty regular basis.

We're Extremely Fortunate

We're extremely fortunate
not to know precisely
the kind of world we live in.

One would have to live a long, long time,
unquestionably longer
than the world itself.

Get to know other worlds,
if only for comparison.

Rise above the flesh,
which only really knows
how to obstruct
and make trouble.

For the sake of research,
the big picture,
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.

From that perspective,
one might as well bid farewell
to incidents and details.

The counting of weekdays
would inevitably seem to be
a senseless activity;

dropping letters in the mailbox
a whim of foolish youth;

the sign "No Walking On the Grass"
a symptom of lunacy.