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Hatred Wislawa Szymborska Look, how constantly capable and how well maintained in our century: hatred. How lightly she regards high impediments. How easily she leaps and overtakes. She's not like other feelings. She's both older and younger than they. She herself gives birth to causes which awaken her to life. If she ever dozes, it's not an eternal sleep. Insomnia does not sap her strength, but adds to it. Religion or no religion, as long as one kneels at the starting-block. Fatherland or no fatherland, as long as one tears off at the start. She begins as fairness and equityt. Then she propels herself. Hatred. Hatred. She veils her face with a mien of romantic ecstasy. Oh, the other feelings -- decrepit and sluggish. Since when could that brotherhood count on crowds? Did ever empathy urge on toward the goal? How many clients did doubt abduct? Only she abducts who knows her own. Talented, intelligent, very industrious. Do we need to say how many songs she has written. How many pages of history she has numbered. How many carpets of people she has spread out over how many squares and stadiums! Let's not lie to ourselves: She's capable of creating beauty. Wonderful is her aura on a black night. Magnificent cloud masses at rosy dawn. It's difficult to deny her pathos of ruins and her coarse humor mightily towering above them columns. She's the mistress of contrast between clatter and silence, between red blood and white snow. And above all she never tires of the motif of the tidy hangman above the defiled victim. She's ready for new tasks at any moment. If she must wait she'll wait. She said she was blind. Blind? She has the keen eyes of a sniper and boldly looks into the future --she alone.
Wislawa Szymborska
Wislawa Szymborska was born in western Poland in 1923. As she grew older, she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her dbut in March 1945 with a poem Szukam slowa (I am Looking for a Word). During 1953-1981 she worked as poetry editor and columnist in the Krakw literary weekly Zycie Literackie where the series of her essays appeared. She has published 16 collections of poetry and has translated them into many various languages. In 1991, Wislawa Szymborska won the Goethe Prize, and in 1995 she won the Herder Prize. She also has a degree of Honorary Doctor of Letters of Poznan University.
Literary Criticism Szymborska is considered one of the most accomplished European poets of the second half of the twentieth century.. She celebrates the miraculous qualities of the ordinary things in life and seemingly insignificant events.. In her poems, she often uses oncrete images that suggest their own meaning. Also, she adds her own sense of humor to her poetry in order to show her skeptical philosophy. Her earliest writtings daelt with the socialist eaa of the Stalin times in poland, however, most of these poems remain ignored by most critics. Another Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, describes her works as, “for me, Szymborska is first of all a poet of consciousness. This means that she speaks to us, living at the same time, as one of us, reserving her private matters for herself, operating at a certain remove, but also referring to what everybody knows from one's own life.” Szymborska frequently opens poems with a seemingly innocent question, and then as the poem progresses, she uncovers a serious truths, such as in her poem Hatred. Peope have also lauded Szymborska's wit, wisdom, irony, and adept use of simple and straightforward language as opposed to confusing, very symbolic poety of others. Most of her poems are based on everyday life so everyone can relate to her. Of course, her poems must all be translated, however, critics agree that no meaning in lost during the translation, excluding a few puns that are naturally hard to translate.
poetic tools within the poem Sensory imagery: the line - between clatter and silence, between red blood and snow - provides both an audio and visual picture of what is happening. Personification: basiaclly the entire poem is a personificaion. describing hate as a person, and the person being She. Szymborska gives human characteristics to describe hate in oder to make it seem more meaningful to everyday life. sybolism: the lines - . . . how many songs she has written. how many pages of history she has numbered. how many carpets of people she has spread out over how many squares and statiums.- is a perfect example of sybolism. All of these lines contain a concrete object such as a song or book, but it actually has a deeper meaning. These objects sybolize the extend to which hate has affected our lives. Stanza: In this particular poem by Wislawa Szymborska, there are 8 stanzas. Each stanza compares hate to a different senario or personality. free verse: This poem is completely free verse. it has no sort of rhyme scheme to it, as well as most of her other poems.
