Szymborska, Wisława

(wēswä´vä shĭmbôr´skä), 1923–, Polish poet, b. Bnin, studied Jagiellonian Univ., Kraków (1945–48). Although highly acclaimed in her homeland, Szymborska was largely unknown in the West until she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. She wrote Dlatego zjemy [that's why we are alive] (1952) and Pytania zadawane sobie [questions put to myself] (1954) under Stalinist pressure and has since repudiated them. Szymborska turned to philosophical observation in Wołanie do Yeti [calling to the yeti] (1957), and in that work and Sól [salt] (1962) and Sto pociech [a barrel of laughs] (1967) she explored human isolation and celebrated poetic creation. Szymborska, who often emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual, has been called an ironic moralist. Her verse is deceptively simple; her language colloquial, precise, and contained; and her tone detached and dryly sardonic. Collections of her poetry in English translation include Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems (1981), View with a Grain of Sand (1995), and Poems New and Collected, 1957–1997 (1998). Szymborska is also an accomplished translator, literary critic, and essayist.