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Post by pieter on Aug 18, 2007 17:01:10 GMT -7
NRC Handelsblad Boeken (Books) Friday, August 17 2007, page 17/18
Poet in a absurd world
Next week for the first time in years a collection of poems will emerge in the Netherlands of the Nobel price winner Wislawa Szymborska (84). In the book there will be 17 new poems of the Polish poet. The translation is seen as a literary event - the in Holland beloved Szymborska publishes only seldom these days. Szymborska leads a secluded life in an appartment in Krakow. Since she won the higest price of the literary world, she avoids the press. "I am tired of everything that has happened after the Nobelprice, all that people who count on me for anything." Until 1996 Szymborska was relatively unknown outside Poland, after the Nobelprice she broke through with her mild ironic poetry. "Amazement is the headtheme of poetry", she says today in an interview with this newspaper. "The absurd world is the material of the poet, which he has to represent, which he never manages to do that completely." Szymborska is critical about the politics in her country: "We are worried about the chauvinism, the racism, the xenophobia."
'Amazement is my mission' A rare conversation with Nobelpricewinner Wislawa Szymborska
by Margot Dijkgraaf (NRC Handelsblad)
Cognac or vodka? Wislawa Szymborska askes this at the beginning of our conversation, " Here, try this, these are the tastiest cokies of Krakow. Soon her new collection of poems Dubbel Punt (Double point) will emerge in Dutch translation, an eventbecause the Nobelprice winner pulishes little. "All interviews I have given have been failures", continues the slim old lady (84) cheerful, "it's always about yourself and about what you do. You know, I don't want to talk about that." I do know that! All friends and acquaintences who speak in her biography Prullaria, dromen en vrienden (Knickknacks, dreams and friends) say the same: Szymborska does not like public appearancesand the interviews she gave since 1996 can be counted on the fingers of two hands. And stil we sit now, the four of us, in her small appartment in the centre of Krakow. A few blue armchairs, good filled mahagony wooden bookcases with here and there an gold-plate angel, silver plate ballet shoes, a black, hairy ape or a small traffic sign (Loerley 1 km). On the toilet a white plaster under arm, on the fingers rings in the form of ladybirds. The 84 year old Wislawa Szymborska loves kitsch and curiosa. She wants to speak Polish. Yes, she does has translated french literature, ever, Baudelaire and Musset and such, but today she does not speak the language anymore. No, English and German neither. Thus her Dutch publisher Ad van Rijsewijk acts as translator, well at home in the Polish literature and her good friend poet Ewa Lipska, from whom these days there will emerge also a collection of poems in Dutch, gets the role of sounding board. First a safe question.
Your passion is the making of collages. Apes, little angels, ballerina's, Neanderthal's, you use everything. Some of them are included as illustrations in the biography. Do you stil make them?
She jumps up elegantly, lights a sigaret, her voice raises an octave. "Oh, yes, all the time. Once I have started I make a lot of them, the one after the other. Than my whole room is full of little papers and shred. It is already very long my passionate hobby, I get from people people send all kind of materials, postcards, magazines and such. I always choose that images where there is a human or dog on it, not only architecture. There must be life in it."
Is that for you a counter ballance against the seriousness of the life of a poet?
"I only write poems sporadically, so I can't say that I become incredibly tired of that. I am tired though about everything what has happened after the Nobelprice, all that people that came to me for anything and something. Thye ask me the strangest things. If there is a meeting of horse-breeders they invite me, but I have nothing with horse-breeding. Lately I was called by someone who wanted me to show the city. But I live already whole my life in Krakow! From this sort of things I rest when I am making my collages. One of the reasons that I took my secretary is that during our first conversation, when I was being phoned constantly, he cut my telephone wire.
The making of collages is also a form of creativity.
Don't exagerate! It's just rest! In a psychiatric institution they will never ask the patients to write a poem as a sort of therapy, they always let the people work with their hands. That is relaxing. A painter can talk with his model when he works, when you write you can't do that. Than you are alone, you have to focus yourself on your own thoughts.
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Post by pieter on Aug 18, 2007 17:36:49 GMT -7
(Continuation of the Szymborska interview)
Her new collection of poems is called Dubbel Punt (Double point). Seventeen new poems in the translation of Karol Lesman, accessable, clear, playful, ironic, serious and often with a twinkle-blow, like her earlier poetry. We recognise her preference for daily details and occurrances, often seen from a cosmic perspective, the narrative, contemplative tone, change between differant language registers and especially amazement.
One of the most moving poems in the book is "the old professor", a poem about getting older and transitoriness. An old man is asked about the time of the past, his friends, his health. "They prohibit me coffee, vodka, sigarets,/ the carry about of heavy memories or objects,/ I have to act as if I do not hear it,/ he answered. [...] If there is beautiful weather in the evening, I watch the sky./I keep amazing myself".
Szymborska:"Yes, that poem is about myself. The amazement, suprise, you may not lose that. With all desillusion they have to keep standing. The amazement is the most important mission of the poet. I am at the moment also bussy with a poem about suprise, it is the headtheme of poetry. Ocourse there are also other theme's. Whome they are? The search of the inner truth. Allthough you never know what that exactly is. We must also be expressed in your poems, are the feelings which you have for others.
Does each of your poems comes from a deep emotion?
"Yes, an emotion which is only of mine. I freeze that feeling, I put it away, I put it in a upricht freezer. After a while I open it again. I never can write emediately about things which touch me mutch.
The poems of Szymborska appeal to a large audience. She avoids big words, does not speak about abstract wide views. Everything is like it is. Nothing is common, also the unusual isn't. She declares no theories, did not stood at the cradle of new movements in poetry, does not participate in discussions about Modern Polish poetry.
She formulates open, seemingly naive questions, which are for her the only real questions. In the first poem in her book, Afwezigheid (Absence), she states a what if question. "It did not matter much,/ or my mother was married/ with mister Zbigniew B. from Zdunska Wola./ And would they have had a daughter - I would not have been her". She imagines that both her parents would had married with somebody else, and would have had daugthers which would had been in the same class in school. Szymborska: "On such questions there are no answers. Our whole life is based on coincidence. A lot of things in our life we can't place, many tangle we can't distangle. The world is stil unknowable. We have to keep making efforts to know her, understand her. We only live once and we have to face the consequence of that.
I have to stop translating now, because Margot Dijkgraafs essay is to long, and the literary interview is to complicated to translate from Dutch to English as a whole. It takes to much time! (I try to continue translating tomorrow)
Pieter
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Post by bescheid on Aug 18, 2007 19:17:00 GMT -7
Pieter What a wonderful write up presentation of {Wislawa Szymborska}! I was so entranced with your beginning, that I was invited by my senses, to continue to the last sentance.... Wislawa Szymborska, is one of a very few poets I would care to meet in person. For she is wonderful in her perception of the world around her.She speaks of her deep emotion buried in her work. With this, she emits then a deep sense of {Truth-Reality of Understanding}, and yet, a sensitivity that is so rare. For she has learnt long in past, she must first gain an understanding of her self, before she will then gain an understanding of others. I was struck by some comments she professed. One was of her poem {The Old Professor} the other was her description as she speaks of the science used in by {Psychiatric Institutions} and so true, they never {ask a patient to write} for the therapy is in the using of their hands..for this is so fundamental in concept. ---Below is Wislawa Szymborska--- nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-bio.html---Following is of her life--- www.kirjasto.sci.fi/szymbor.htm---Her poetry translated in to English www.pan.net/trzeciak/Charles
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Post by pieter on Aug 19, 2007 10:02:45 GMT -7
NRC Handelsblad Boeken (Books) Friday, August 17 2007, page 17/18
(Continuation of the Szymborska interview by Margot Dijkgraaf) Part III
Can you only be a poet in a world ful of absurdism?
" Oh yes, absolutely. That absurd world is his material, which he has to represent, although he ofcourse never manages to do so completely. In my case a poem sometimes from irritation or anger, but mainly from amazement about the fact that we live on this earth, that is the main thing.
Ewa Lipska tells that since a while there is an effervescing meeting place, called, "The New Province", where poets and artists from all ages meet eachother. It are very joyful evenings, where everybody performs. Szymborska loves to go there and is the shining central figure there. Lipska sees that evenings as the resistance of the Krakow artist against the idiotic Poland in which they have to work and live. "The absurdity of the Polish politics which is going to far", we worry about the chauvinism, the racism, the xenophobia here. We hope that it ends soon. Further I don't want to spend another word on that subject!
The title of your new collection, "Double Point", derives from the last poem, 'Actually every poem could be called "The Moment."' "The Moment" is also the title of an earlier poem of yours, an idyllic scene in the beautiful nature. It seems like you philophosize further about this poem, or gives it another filling-in.
"Everything in life is a follow up of everything." My poems indeed are not disconnected.
This poem, the last of the collection, does not end with a point (dot) but with a double point (dot). What is the meaning of that?
Szymborska, a master in avoiding questions, fills the cognac glasses again, lights another of the many sigarets, touches her, large, amber stone ring which hangs on a golden necklace around her neck and gives her favorite answer: "I don't know." But directs at a continuation, an answer, to a future? "It is an open end." she says, "when I wrote that double point (dot), I had the feeling that I would write nothing anymore." But it seems to be that poets can't be consistent. Like that. I am not going to tell you more about my poetry. Do you want coffee?
Szymborska hardly reads literature and the poetry she does read is that of her friends. For a long time she wrote about poetry for well known magazines, accompanied a lot of debutants and wrote about 40 years serials about books, under the title Undemanded literature. They were no reviews, more starting points for contemplations about various subjects. She is interested in everything: encyclopedia, herbaria, dictionairies, manuals, books about nature. Szymborska: "I have spend my entire life in the company of poets. Not because I wanted to live with them, but because I searched for people with whom I had things in common. In the time of dictatorship you searched for people with whom you could talk. But I also always been friends with chemists, geographers and physicists. I have also wrote about that always. I seldom wrote about literature. That is the field of the reader and the critic. I was always more curious about books about antropology, biology and history."
In 1948 she married with the poet and critic Adam Wlodek and she moved to a writersbuilding in the Ulica Krupnicza. That place was visited by foreign writers. She remembers the visit of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, at the end of the fiftees. "He stood there with that raised finger," says Szymborska, "and said that we should keep our hands off Rusia. Russia was our only hope, he declared. I had to laugh about that, he did not even knew where Poland lay, let alone that he knew what was going on here. What I find about his statement: the hell, that are the others? Terrible ofcourse, the hell that is yourself! I had read nothing from Beauvoir, we found her then an independant abd courageous woman. She was more than "the wife of". Later Graham Green also came by. That was a senseble man, I have warm memories about him. The three Polish speaking speak further in an up-beat tempo, stir up memories, gossip about, laugh. Szymborska goes to the kitchen and comes back with little porcelain cups filled with hot water, and hands me over a spoon with Nescafé. "By the way I have a good acqiantance in Amsterdam", she says giggling, " I have visited him a number of times. "You will know him too: Vermeer! I admire him. Why? You can't explain what art does to you. That milk that flows there so beautifully for about 300 years now from that small milkcan, that light, the way he paints colors. In the Hermitage inn St. Petersburg she cried in front of Rembrandt's "The return of the lost son", so moved as she was. It was the first time in her life that she cried about a piece of art.
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Post by ludikundera on Aug 19, 2007 10:47:41 GMT -7
I think the best way to describe Szymborska is to use the lyrics from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody:
"Because I’m easy come, easy go, Little high, little low Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me."
But, of course, we could also just use the definition for the word hack:
"a professional who renounces or surrenders individual independence, integrity, belief, etc., in return for money or other reward in the performance of a task normally thought of as involving a strong personal commitment."
And now, some poems!
Wstępującemu do Partii
Pytania brzmią ostro, ale tak właśnie trzeba, bo wybrałeś życie komunisty i przyszłość czeka twoich zwycięstw.
Jeśli jak kamień w wodzie będzie twe czuwanie, gdy oczy zamiast widzieć będą tylko patrzeć, gdy wrząca miłość w chłodne zamieni się sprzyjanie, jeśli stopa przywyknie do drogi najgładszej.
Partia. Należeć do niej, z nią działać, z nią marzyć z nią w planach nieulękłych, z nią w trosce bezsennej - wierz mi, to najpiękniejsze, co się może zdarzyć, w czasie naszej młodości - gwiazdy dwuramiennej.
Młodzieży budującej Nową Hutę
Kto dom zbudował, w którym mieszkam? Kto kładł swą pracę na fundament? “w murarz, zdun i szklarz, i cieśla minięci są przez ludzką pamięć.
Klasa z pamięcią złą - umiera. Wierniejszą pamięć wybieramy: sama jak książka się otwiera w miejscach najczęściej czytywanych. Dziś dla was, przy was, od was, młodzi, miasta zaczyna się życiorys. Pamięć imiona wasze co dzień Notuje słowem zdobnym w podziw, notuje normy waszej poryw i włącza w piękny plan obliczeń. Bo to jest pamięć robotnicza służąca klasie robotniczej.
Ten dzień (o śmierci Józefa Stalina)
Jaki rozkaz przekazuje nam na sztandarach rewolucji profil czwarty? - Pod sztandarem rewolucji wzmacniać warty! Wzmocnić warty u wszystkich bram!
Oto Partia - ludzkości wzrok. Oto Partia: siła ludów i sumienie. Nic nie pójdzie z jego życia w zapomnienie. Jego Partia rozgarnia mrok.
Niewzruszony drukarski znak drżenia ręki mej piszącej nie przekaże, nie wykrzywi go ból, łza nie zmaże. A to słusznie. A to nawet lepiej tak.
Na powitanie budowy socjalistycznego miasta
Z asfaltu i woli wytrwałej będzie szerokość ulic. Z cegieł i dumnej odwagi będzie wysokość budynków. Z żelazai świadomości powstaną przęsła mostów. Z nadziei będzie drzew zieleń Z radości - świeża biel tynku.
Miasto socjalistyczne - miasto dobrego losu. Bez przedmieść i bez zaułków. W przyjaźni z każdym człowiekiem. Najmłodsze z miast, które mamy. Najstarsze z miast, które będą. Najmłodsze na jutro bliskie. Najstarsze na jutro dalekie.
Lenin
Że w bój poprowadził krzywdzonych, że trwałość zwycięstwu nadał, dla nadchodzących epok stawiając mocny fundament - grób, w którym leżał ten nowego człowieczeństwa Adam, wieńczony będzie kwiatami z nieznanych dziś jeszcze planet.
I na deser, wiersz o rewolucji bolszewickiej:
Gdy się wdarli na te schody marmurowe, kołowały światła złoceń jak w lichtarzach, dygotały ściany płowe, stropy płowe i warczało echo kroków w korytarzach. Stary świecie oto przyszła noc zapłaty. Gdzie się kryjesz przed wyklętym, który powstał (...) Więc zapadaj się jak w topiel w głąb zwierciadła jazdo moru, jazdo głodu, pańska jazdo z każdą chwilą podobniejsza do widziadła Kawalerio kapitału, na dno, na dno.
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Post by pieter on Aug 19, 2007 12:07:09 GMT -7
ludikundera,
What a peasent like, disrespectful, rude comment! I just don't like you. I demand that you take back your sexist remark out of respect of our women fellow forum members and descent male members.
Pieter
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Post by hollister on Aug 19, 2007 12:21:39 GMT -7
Gee, Pieter don't hold back - tell us how you really feel!
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Post by pieter on Aug 19, 2007 14:25:21 GMT -7
Holly I hate sexism and rudeness towards women! I have experianced it in my country and other countries and don't like it and don't accept it! I agree with what you said in the other topic! Thanks!
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Aug 19, 2007 14:29:56 GMT -7
Jaga has deleted his remark, but I know he has made the remark, Holly is my witness!
Pieter
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Post by ludikundera on Aug 19, 2007 17:53:41 GMT -7
I take it that no one here has seen the movie Anchorman, starring Will Ferrell. Let me quote to you the exact line in this PG-13 rated comedy that I was making reference to: Neither this comment nor my own were offensive to women or men. The forum moderators had every right to take the comment down, however. They can do what they please; it's their forum. But I don't apologize. And, just for you Pieter, I'll make sure to backhand my girlfriend across the face extra hard the next time she doesn't fetch my beer in good time. Anyway, I didn't mean to make a stir. I only meant to offer an opinion on Szymborska.
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Post by kaima on Aug 19, 2007 21:43:02 GMT -7
Ludi,
I can understand your position a bit. 30 years ago I quit my occasional joke about beating women when a friend of mine turned to me and simply said 'my husband beats me.'
I nominate you as our Resident Redneck.
With luck your girlfriend will come to her senses and break the beer bottle over your head.
Kai
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Post by ludikundera on Aug 20, 2007 0:01:47 GMT -7
I'm pretty sure if a girl ever broke a beer bottle across my head, I'd fall in love with her! That's my kind of gal.
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Post by hollister on Aug 20, 2007 6:36:05 GMT -7
Sorry, ludikurdera, just because your comment was based on a line from movie (what ever the rating is) does not make it okay. IF you had said, "As Joe Blow said in this movie, ........ " then we would have understood your context better - but you chose not to do so - leaving the reader to think that it was YOUR comment directed towards a singular woman.
I am a woman - and I found the comment not only offensive but as a threat of violence towards ONE specific person who is limited in her ability to defend herself (being in her 80s). I am not some prissy woman - I grew up in a very rough and tumble household that was dominated by men and male attitudes - so I can take it. You say you only wanted to offer an opinion - however, you did not do so - you attacked her work - if you had gone on in your post to say why you feel she is a "Hack" and the lyrics from the Queen song are applicable - that would have been another matter. I, for one would have been interested such a divergent viewpoint and explaination.
Then to post the poems in Polish - on a forum that is mainly in English - without some explaiantion of why you thought these poems were reflective of your point - also supports my contention that you only meant to attack - not to offer an opinion about her work. There is a difference between Wislawa Szymborska as a private individual and Wislawa Szymborska the public poet. We were discussing her in her public role. Your words aimed at the private individual and that is what crossed the line for me.
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Post by pieter on Aug 20, 2007 7:54:27 GMT -7
I completely and 200% agree with Hollisters last comment!
You are absolutely right Hollister. Very well written and courageous of you!
You've got the point well!
Pieter
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Post by ludikundera on Aug 20, 2007 12:49:47 GMT -7
I guess I stupidly assumed that most people on a forum called Polish Culture Forum would be able to read Polish.
Although I hardly think I'm qualified to translate poetry, the general gist of the poems, and my point, delivered via an "attack" on Szymborska, is that before she won her prizes as an "important" poet, she licked communism's boots to get ahead. When it was easiest to get noticed by writing odes to Lenin, she wrote odes to Lenin; then, once she had a reputation based on these hack works, and the climate had changed, she stopped writing odes to Lenin and started writing whatever she wrote to win the Nobel prize. Her first moves outside of the PZPN came only in 1956, three years after Stalin died and the "thaw" began; and she didn't resign from the party until 1966. She was and is a political opportunist of a poet.
For example, one of the poems I posted is a pro-Stalin piece she wrote after Stalin died (in 1953). By 1957, she published her Wołanie do Yeti collection, in which she suddenly thought Stalin a monster. Change of heart? No, change of climate.
If you think all poets played this political hop-scotch, just take a look at Zbigniew Herbert. He didn't. Herbert is famous because he's good; Szymbroska because she wrote the right things at the right times.
As for women and violence and Szymborska being 80 and unable to defend herself: I believe in equality. I will never meet her, but, if I did, I'd like to launch a few hard-covers at her frail, little bones. Just like I would at a man. You're right, though: I actually wouldn't do that. She's 80, nature will run its course, and she'll die soon enough. You see, I wouldn't want to deprive her of the suffering of old age.
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