Wislawa Szymborska Has Died

Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska has passed away. She was 88 years old.

Here’s more from her Nobel biography: “Szymborska was born in Kórnik in Western Poland on 2 July 1923. Since 1931 she has been living in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her début in March 1945 with a poem “Szukam slowa” (I am Looking for a Word) in the daily Dziennik Polski. During 1953-1981 she worked as poetry editor and columnist in the Kraków literary weekly Zycie Literackie.”

She ended a poem about Charles Darwin by celebrating the “indispensable silver lining” of novels, a fond way to remember literary life of the great poet.

Here’s the cheerful conclusion of “Consolation”

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,

general merriment and celebration,

and the dog Fido,

gone astray in the first chapter,

turns up barking gladly

in the last.

(via Poetry Foundation)

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