Wisława Szymborska: Evening

“Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves.”

Wisława Szymborska

The Poet and the World (1996)
Context: Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.

“Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.”

Wisława Szymborska

"Conversation with a Stone".
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)
Context: No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be,
only its seed, imagination.

Sense , Parting

“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.”

Wisława Szymborska

“If there are angels
they must, I hope,
find this convincing,
this merriment dangling from terror,
not even crying Save me Save me
since all of this takes place in silence.”

Wisława Szymborska

"Slapstick"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The End and the Beginning (1993)

Hope , Angels , Silence , Cry

“My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be.
They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.”

Wisława Szymborska

"A Large Number"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)

Dreams , Solitude

“The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.”

Wisława Szymborska

The Poet and the World (1996)

Pain , People , World , Feeling