Foreword by Czeslaw Milosz 

One 

Poetry that speaks to the enduring and irreversible coordinates of human fate-love, striving, fear of pain, hope, the fleeting nature of things, and death-leads us to believe that the poet is one of us, and shares in that fate. "We," the subject of such poetry, is determined neither by nation nor by class. But it would not be quite right to claim that its theme is therefore an eternal human nature, for as our consciousness changes, we humans try to confront ultimate things in new and different ways. In Szymborska's poetry the "we" denotes all of us living on this planet now, joined by a common consciousness, a "post-consciousness," post-Copernican, post-Newtonian, post-Darwinian, post-two-World-Wars, post-and-inventions-of-the-twentieth-century. It is a serious and bold enterprise to venture a diagnosis, that is, to try to say who we are, what we believe in, and what we think.

Two

Szymborska's "I" is an ascetic "I," cleansed not only of the desire to confess, but of any individuating features, and yet it is linked to the "I" of all others who share in the human condition and thus deserve pity and compassion. Although one of her poems bears the title "In Praise of My Sister," the sister appears only as someone who "doesn't write poetry." The poem "Laughter" tells of a conversation with a girl, the poet herself from many years ago, but there is nothing singular in this: it could be a meeting between any two people. Moreover the "he" in "Laughter" goes unnamed; we know nothing about him. Another poem "Clothing," which describes a visit to the doctor's office, begins: "You undress, we undress, you undress"-the use of these three forms of the verb "undress" embodies the essence of Szymborska's poetry: "the singular you," "the plural you," and "the collective we" merge into one. And to cite yet another example, doesn't the poem "A Report from the Hospital" bring us news of what happens to each of "you," to all of "us"?

Three

The consciousness that Szymborska probes is "ours" because we hold it in common, the result of our schooling, the glossy magazines we've read, television, and visits to museums. Now, there may be a villager somewhere in southern India who would not recognize himself in these poems because the frequent references to our past-Homer, Troy, Rome, Lot's wife, the Flood, Mary Stuart, and so forth-would be foreign to him. But in general, on a planet growing ever smaller, increasingly we dine on the same cultural dishes. 

Four

Our cultural consiousness is shaped early on in life: We learn from grownups that the Sun does not, in fact, revolve around the Earth, that the Earth is but a speck within an unfathomable whirl of galaxies, that scientists seek to discover the origin of life on earth, that Homo sapiens resulted from a long evolutionary process, and that our closest relative is the monkey. The foundation of Szymborska's worldview seems to be biology lessons learned at school-many of her poems find their origins in evolutionary theory itself. Yet she never makes the reductionist turn. On the contrary, to her, man is astonishing, precisely because even though his genealogy is so modest and he is bound up in a fragile body, he nonetheless stands up to nature and creates his own world of art, values, discoveries, and adventures. Man is astonishing because he has "a hand miraculously feathered by a fountain pen" (in "Thomas Mann"), because he summons up the courage to write-the "Revenge of a mortal hand" (in "The Joy of Writing"). The cult of the giant achievements of the human spirit, of the masterpieces of the past preserved in museums or passed on in writing, is counted among the basic ingredients of twentieth century consciousness. Szymborska cultivates this, mindful that whatever remains is all the more precious for having been torn away from an ever watchful death. Particular to our century is a coming to grips with the fragility of our bodily existence, as treated in one of Szymborska's most moving poems, "Torture":

Nothing has changed.
The body is painful, 

because the soul is: 

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.
 

Five 

Thus Polish poetry finally has worked its way to existential meditation, leaving behind pure lyric and embarking on discourse, which had always been thought prosaic. At the end of the nineteenth century Adam Asnyk (1838-1897) philosophized in verse in a way that today seems rather unconvincing. During the Polish

Modernist era, Kazimierz Tetmajer (1865-1940) wrote a meditative poem, titled "End of the Century." The poetry of the "Scamander" movement, which flourished in the interwar years, was not distinguished by its intellectual content. A great deal had to happen before the necessary tools could be forged to allow a poet like Szymborska to respond to the clearly perceived need for intelligent discourse on life's cheerless dance. Varied shades of irony and humor became the modern and indispensable seasoning. Szymborska brings joy because she is so sharp, because she derives pleasure out of juggling the props of our common heritage (when she writes about Rubens' women and the Baroque, for example), and because she has such a good sense of the comic. And she takes a conscious risk, performing her magic tricks along the fine line between poem and essay.

She would not have been faithful to the true colors of her times had she preserved their brighter shades. To be frank, hers is a very grim poetry. Because her work is part of world literature, we can hold this diagnosis up to that of others in different languages. A comparison with the despairing vision of Samuel Beckett and Philip Larkin suggests itself. Yet, in contrast to them Szymborska offers a world where one can breathe. Thanks to a thorough relinnquishing of subjectivity, "I" and its particular form of personal depression fall by the wayside. They are replaced by a playfulness that gives us, in spite of everything else, a feeling for the enormous diversity and splendor of human existence.

-translated by Joanna 'Trzeciak

The Turn of the Century

It was supposed to be better than the rest, our twentieth century.
But it won't have time to prove it.
Its years are numbered,
its step unsteady,
its breath short. 

Already too much has happened
that was not supposed to happen,
and what was to come
has yet to come. 

Spring was to be on its way,
and happiness, among other things.
Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys.
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie. 

Certain misfortunes
were never to happen again
such as war and hunger and so forth. 

The defenselessness of the defenseless
was going to be respected.
Same for trust and the like. 

Whoever wanted to enjoy the world
faces an impossible task.
Stupidity is not funny.
Wisdom is not cheerful. 

Hope
is no longer the same young girl
et cetera. Alas. 

God was at last to believe in man:
good and strong.
But good and strong
are still two different people. 

How to live-someone asked me in a letter,
someone I had wanted
to ask the same thing. 

A Thank-You Note

I owe a lot
to those I do not love.

Relief in accepting
others care for them more.

Joy that I am not
wolf to their sheep. 

Peace be with them
for with them I am free –
love neither gives
nor knows how to take these things.

I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,
I understand
what love never could.
I forgive
what love never would.

Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks. 

Our trips always turn out well:
concerts are enjoyed,
cathedrals toured,
landscapes in focus.

And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are the rivers and mountains
found on any map.

The credit's theirs
if I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a real, ever-shifting horizon.

They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I owe them nothing,"
love would have said on
 this open topic.

Wistawa Szymborka

Một cái note “Cám ơn bạn”

Tôi nợ nhiều
ở những người tôi không yêu 

Thở phào khi nghĩ
Nhờ mình không yêu họ
Cho nên những người khác lại lo nhiều cho họ hơn!

Vui, vì mình đâu có phải là
sói đối với đàn cừu của họ 

Bình an cho họ
Bởi vì đối với họ thì tôi hoàn toàn vô tư, tự do, tự tại
-tình yêu chẳng cho,
mà cũng chẳng biết làm sao mà nhận những chuyện đó 

Tôi không đợi chờ họ
từ cửa sổ cho tới cửa lớn
thật kiên nhẫn
như mặt trời từ từ, chậm chạp nhích nhích
tôi ngộ ra, tình yêu
chẳng bao giờ có thể.
Tôi tha thứ cho tình yêu
chẳng bao giờ sẽ. 

Giữa cuộc hẹn và tờ thư
chẳng vĩnh cửu nào đi qua
chỉ vài ngày, hay tuần lễ.
Chuyến đi của chúng ta hóa ra là thật là tuyệt hảo
Hoà nhạc thưởng thức
Nhà thờ tham quan
Phong cảnh chú mục 

Và khi 7 con sông lớn và núi bự
trờ tới, giữa chúng ta,
chúng thì cũng là sông là núi,
có ghê gớm chi đâu
thứ núi thứ sông mà chúng ta thấy đến nhàm cả mắt
ở trên bản đồ.

Chúng thế nào thì chúng thế
một khi mà chúng ta sống trong thế giới ba chiều
trong không gian không-vãi linh hồn, không thùng rỗng kêu to
với một chân trời thiên niên vũ như cẩn
Chúng làm sao hiểu được
Chúng ôm trong những bàn tay trống trơn của chúng,
là bao nhiêu?

Tôi chẳng nợ gì chúng
Tình yêu chắc là sẽ nói như thế
Trong đề tài mở này.

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