Posts Tagged ‘Wisława Szymborska’

We’ve written about award-winning Polish poet and writer Anna Frajlich. Now she has a brand new book out with Academic Studies Press. The Ghost of Shakespeare, edited by Ronald Meyer and translated by Timothy D. Willliams, takes its name from her essay on Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska, but also considers other major Polish writers of the twentieth century – Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Miłosz, and Bruno Schulz among them. The book includes her memories of her exile from Poland in 1969, her subsequent life in New York City, and her American career as a scholar and leading Polish poet of her generation ever since.

Below, her recollection of her last memories of Szymborska, on November 22, 2011. “I would surely have forgotten the date if it were not for Skype, which keeps a precise record,” she said. She listened to the voicemail recording of the Nobel poet’s secretary Michał Rusinek, her secretary, or “First Secretary” as she called him, but Szymborska picked up the phone as she was recording a message. She continues:

The matter about which I was calling was rather absurd. The previous May we had been over to her place for dinner. For years, whenever we visited Kraków, she would invite us for dinner, always with some interesting company. It was an exceptionally merry evening; Wisława served us herself, leaving the men the task of uncorking the wine. During one such endeavor the corkscrew broke, and they were forced to somehow get the cork out without it. So when we got back to Warsaw, my husband and I bought a corkscrew, wrapped it in bubble wrap and sent it to Kraków. In the second half of November the corkscrew arrived in New York with the note “Return to Sender. Unclaimed.” That was the reason for my call. And that was our last conversation.

After a quick greeting, she said she had to go, because an ambulance was coming; I believe she called it an “R,” using the old twentieth-century term, but I can’t be sure on that point. She told me what had happened, but I’ve since forgotten. I even heard the ring of her buzzer, at which point we said our goodbyes.

Anna remembers a lifetime in letters…

In early 1996, I managed for the first time to work up the courage to write to her from New York. The Manhattan Theatre Club, knowing that she was on the short list for the Nobel Prize, proposed that I prepare an evening of Szymborska’s poetry, including narration to be read by me with the poems. A few months later, I received a moving letter, dated April 20, 1996:

Dear, Sweet Pani Anna! Thank you for this program and especially for your narration, which moved me enormously Instead of writing your own poems, you devote your energy to other people’s. But at the same time, you have demonstrated that my poems are not “other” to you, and for that reason I feel overjoyed, like the recipient of the most lavish present imaginable. I have one question, though: when did Polityka publish an accolade of “The Joy of Writing”?—I knew nothing of this and only learned about it from you.

The letter ends with a warm invitation, “because our next meeting shouldn’t be by chance, should it?”

A few months later Wisława Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize. …

We were guests in Wisława’s home for the first time three years later. It was an unforgettable evening: the other guests were fascinating, the food served by the poet herself was tasty, and we had the traditional Szymborska raffle, conversations and laughter. The guests included Dorota Terakowska, her husband Maciej Szumowski, Stanisław Balbus, Leszek Szaruga. Wisława suggested she and I switch to the informal form of address, “ty,” and told my husband she would follow suit with him the next time we met. When the next time came, she was surprised to still be on formal terms with him; she opened the cognac we’d brought, and we finalized the matter.

Even before that, I had begun to receive her magnificent, sparkling collages at Christmas time. From then on, Wisława always found time for us when we came to Kraków. She attended my readings, a fact which elicited some amazement, since she was known for rarely being seen at such events. We now would mostly meet at her place, but then go out for lunch in a restaurant. She never let anybody treat her; instead, she would treat the two of us and a few other people as well.

I tried to talk Wisława into coming to the United States, where numerous institutions were interested in hosting her. In response I received a gentle refusal: “Aniu, do you really see me doing all that traveling? I would be like a one-legged woman in the States, mute, since I don’t know the language. I would live in a state of constant stress, starting before the trip, then during and after. So even though you are there, and a few other kind souls, I’m not coming” (February 3, 2005).

“The absurd is the most essential ingredient in reality.”

Two years later: “I still haven’t even gotten around to thanking you for the French book—how do you feel about the translation? And at the same time you’ve sent me a new surprise—your students’ essays about my Grandpa … Good God, could my dear old Granddad ever have imagined that he was going to be read by American college students? And by such gifted readers to boot? Life is truly strange, but of course you know that” (April 4, 2007).

Even in these fragments, we see Wisława Szymborska precisely as she was in life—direct, down-to-earth, immensely witty, thoughtful and warm, with an undeniably strong personality. In one of the miniature letters that she mostly wrote on the back of her famous collages, she noted: “Sometimes I think the absurd is the most essential ingredient in reality” (October 24, 2003). That belief comes across in many of her poems as well.

The last time we saw her was in May. She was cheerful, elegant, serving every course herself; she placed me next to her and ordered me to do something I was passionately fond of doing, so: I talked. This time, for some reason, we didn’t take any pictures. In the drawer of my desk I have a mirror that I won in the famous Szymborska raffle that night, and on my shelf, in its sealed envelope, lies the corkscrew.

It was a magic week in Stockholm, especially for the woman of the year, Nobel prizewinning author Olga Tokarczuk! The Polish literati, and many of the literary star-watchers in the West, have been raving about her for years. Now everyone else is, too. Let’s follow her to the Nobel awards, with thanks to Bo Persson for providing Joanna Helander‘s lively photos of the occasion.

But first, let’s be with her as she met Swedish children at Stockholm’s Rinkeby Library in Stockholm. The kids had studied her writing for weeks beforehand, and were happy to chat with the writer who was generous with her time. The event was organized by the Library’s Gunilla Lundgren and her colleagues. (Photos: Joanna Helander)

Then, the Grand Hotel Stockholm for the award ceremony. First, chaps with top hats came to sweep off the carpet. Then, actor and writer Irek Grin masterminds the selfies, with filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and Michał Rusinek, the former secretary for another Nobelist, Wisława Szymborska (he now runs her foundation). Below that, Polish journalist Justyna Sobolewska beams at the camera.  Next, Tokarczuk with her husband, Grzegorz Zygadło, joined by a friend. And finally, the Queen of the Nobel ceremonies herself. (Photos, merci, Joanna Helander)

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“I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.” 

—Wisława Szymborska, born this day in 1923

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We’ve written about Berkeley poet Chana Bloch before (here), but it’s been a few years since I spoke with her at the university, so I was happy to get an update at the “Talking Writing” website. Poet and translator Bloch, who has just released a “new and selected” Swimming in the Rain this year, was a longtime professor at Oakland’s Mills College. This first question (or rather, a comment, really) caught my eye – I’m constantly chastising myself because I’m not the fastest, most prolific, most profound writer in the English-speaking world. Apparently I’m not alone. Then I was caught by her list of favored poets.

Excerpt from her Q&A with Carol Dorf:

TW: I’m a slow writer.

CB: Slow is not necessarily bad. There’s no point in wanting to be a different kind of a writer than you are, though I must admit I’ve envied poets who are quicker, more prolific. I myself rarely stay with my early drafts. I tend to go over and over a poem—revising, distilling, trying to get at the essence.

TW: Most of your poems are brief lyrics. How do your longer sequence poems function compared with those that represent a single moment?

CB: I tend to write very short poems. Most of them fit on one page. Sometimes, a group of those poems asks to be stitched together. For example, I wrote a number of poems about my experience of ovarian cancer in 1986 that were then published in various journals. At some point, I realized that, by bringing them together in a sequence I called “In the Land of the Body” (from The Past Keeps Changing, Sheep Meadow Press, 1992), I could offer differing perspectives on the experience: that of my then-husband, our children, the radiologist, the surgeon.

TW: Which poets have been especially important to you?

CB: George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, Yehuda Amichai, Tomas Tranströmer, Elizabeth Bishop, Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, Charles Simic, Gerard Manley Hopkins—not necessarily in that order.

George Herbert was an early influence. In grad school, I fell in love with his work. We made a very odd couple. I was a Jewish girl from the Bronx, and he was a seventeenth-century Anglican minister. But his poetry was about the inner life, and that drew me. There was a human depth in his poems that I found very appealing. He wrote about the self with an unsparing candor—about his irresolution, his inner contradictions. And I loved the music in his poetry.

I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation about his work, and then a book—Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible (University of California Press, 1985)—about how he transforms the biblical sources in his poetry. Seeing him take a verse from the Bible and combine it with something from his life was like watching a mind in the very process of creation.

Read the whole thing here.

Laureates are seated onstage at the Concert Hall during the ceremony. (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded this Thursday in Stockholm. While we await the announcement, our New York City-based  correspondent, roving photojournalist Zygmunt Malinowski, reports on his recent visit to the Nobel Empire in Stockholm…

During last summer’s visit to Gdańsk for the opening of European Solidarity Center (read about it here), I found a nearby harbor with ferry to Sweden. I remembered a well-known photograph of Polish poet Czesław Miłosz dressed up in a tuxedo receiving his diploma from the king of Sweden, and I wondered what traces his visit to Stockholm might have left.

Stockholm City Hall for the Nobel banquet (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

A journey without the usual hustle of airports and cramped airplanes makes a ship seem more natural way to travel. Even though the ferry was spartan in its accommodations, it felt spacious (except for the usual closet-sized sleeping cabin). In the evening at the large cafeteria with panoramic windows, time passes slowly. One can order a coffee or something stronger and gaze at the grayish Baltic Sea and the semi-circular, unending horizon, where the distant water edge never seems to get any closer.

After about 19 hours, we arrived at the port city of Ninanshamn. From there, it’s a short rail ride on a comfortable train to Stockholm. Stockholm consists of interconnected islands; its many bridges and water taxis efficiently transport passengers on its clean waterways and canals. The historic old town (Gamla Stan) with the narrow cobbled streets and shops, restaurants, and cafés, dates back to 13^th century. The neoclassical Nobel Museum, home of the Swedish Academy that nominates the literature award, is pretty much in the center of it.

Nobel ice cream at Bistro Nobel (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

I took advantage of a guided tour offered in English. As a young man, Alfred Nobel wanted to be a poet. Inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, he wrote all his poems in English. His father dissuaded him, saying that it was not a real job, so Alfred Nobel is remembered for inventing dynamite instead.

He also wrote several plays, but his family destroyed most of these papers, since they wanted him to be remembered for chemistry and inventions. He lived most of his adult life in Paris, never married, and had no children. His last will and testament gave away most of his fortune as annual prize. According to the museum, “Nobel was against inherited fortunes that he believed contributed to the laziness of humanity. The will was an ingenuous way of solving this dilemma. The inheritance, in the form of a prize, would reward those who have made themselves worthy by way of their work.”

Nobel had over 350 patents and made a fortune, but his idea of ideas was establishing the Nobel award in five categories: physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, literature, and peace (later a prize for economy was added). The peace prize is awarded in Norway. Nobel met Victor Hugo in Paris, and throughout his life corresponded with Countess Bertha Von Sutter, founder of Austrian peace movement and author of Lay Down Your Arms. The latter influenced the formation of a peace prize, which she won in 1905.

The Nobel nominating process begins in September of the previous year, when the Swedish Academy committee responsible for the literature award sends out hundreds of letters to universities, institutions, and individuals qualified to nominate Nobel laureates. By the following April, the list that’s been gathered is whittled down to about 20 candidates. In May, the selection is narrowed to five candidates. The Academy becomes familiar with the proposed authors and their work. In September, the Academy finally makes a decision and the winner is announced in October. On December 10, laureates receive their prizes. The decision process remains a secret for fifty years – only now can we learn who nominated the winner from 1965.

Would you sign my chair, please? (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

The ceremony takes place in three separate locations. The laureates are invited to the Academy for lunch, on December 9, and afterwards a rehearsal. On December 10, during a ceremony at the Concert Hall they receive an elaborate calligraphy diploma and medal from the King of Sweden, in addition to a check. Attendance is by invitation only. Limos line up to take the 1,300 guests to City Hall for the banquet, first walking through the Golden Hall down marble staircase to the spacious Blue Room. In Sweden, the event is almost a holiday; it’s followed closely on TV throughout the day.

One of the highlights while visiting the museum is having lunch and Nobel ice cream with chocolate Nobel medal at the Vienna-style ‘Bistro Nobel.’ Yes, the ice cream tastes as good as it looks, and it’s actually the same dessert that was served for many years at the Nobel Banquet. Another tradition started in recent years is signing the back seat of bistro chairs. One can turn over a chair to see which laureate signed it. Signatures started after Miłosz’s visit, but I located Mario Vargas Llosa on chair #26 and Seamus Heaney, chair #23.

So where was Miłosz? See the photo below, from the central area of the museum. Also, all Nobel winners are featured on a ceiling display (also pictured below), but it would take hours to find a specific person since they are not in any particular order. I know, I waited as Samuel Beckett, Wisława Szymborska, and Madame Curie-Sklodowska, the first woman to receive Nobel Prize and first to receive it twice, rolled past, before heading for the ice cream.

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Miłosz at last. (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

After the feast, the ball – and it takes place at the gorgeous Golden Hall. (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

Previous winner Wisława Szymborska in a rotating ceiling display at the museum. (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

The august Nobel Museum and the Swedish Academy. (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

In my end is my beginning. (Photo: Zygmunt Malinowski)

When I saw her Kraków, with poet Julia Hartwig (at right) – in May 2011

An embarrassingly long time ago, someone from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s online magazine, Culture.pl, wrote to bring my attention to a recent post about Wisława Szymborska and her “9 Secret Sides” – I’ve written about the poet here and here, but not much since. I liked this story about getting the Nobel Prize, though I’m not sure how “secret” it is. In Kraków, I spoke to the friend, Michał Rusinek, who “cut the cord,” literally, after the announcement was made, severing her endlessly ringing telephone line with a pair of scissors. Anyway, from the website:

“Szymborska was notoriously private and rarely gave interviews. It is thus not surprising that she met the sudden global recognition thrust upon her with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996 with great hesitancy, calling it the ‘Stockholm Tragedy.’  Szymborska was at a writers’ retreat in the Polish mountain town of Zakopane when the prize was announced and initially refused to take calls with the news, preferring to instead finish her lunch privately.  It was only after a number of calls – including one from her friend and colleague Czesław Miłosz – that she agreed to speak to the press.  By the end of that day, however, she’d had enough and retreated to place even more remote, where she hoped she would not be found by reporters.

“Though the majority of media coverage of the prize feature quotations from her colleagues, rather than from Szymborska herself, she was, of course, center stage at the awarding of the prize.  She admitted to Miłosz that ‘the most difficult thing will be to write a speech.  I will be writing it for a month.  I don’t know what I will be talking about, but I will talk about you.’  In the end she delivered one of the shortest Nobel Lectures to date, the beautiful The Poet and the World.“

With “love and imagination”

She didn’t mention him in the speech, actually, but it’s a good Nobel talk nevertheless (translated by the incomparable Stanisław Barańczak over here). I picked this passage out, in particular, on today’s rereading:

“I’ve mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually exists. It’s not that they’ve never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It’s just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don’t understand yourself.

“When I’m asked about this on occasion, I hedge the question, too. But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners – and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know.’

“There aren’t many such people. Most of the earth’s inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn’t pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries. And there’s no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.”

I may not be a Nobel poet – but let’s raise a glass in thanks from those of us (Humble Moi included) who get to do our jobs with love and imagination. It’s always a privilege. I never forget it. Now let me get back to my work…