Wislawa Szymborska RIP

3rd February 2012

Tributes flowed in from across the country for Nobel Prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska who died aged 88.

Michal Rusinek, her personal secretary, said she had died in her sleep in her Krakow home after suffering from lung cancer.

Szymborska, for long acclaimed as the country’s greatest living writer, shot to world prominence when she won the Nobel literature prize in 1996. The award committee’s citation described her as the “Mozart of poetry” who mixed language with the “fury of Beethoven”.

In reaction to her passing President Bronislaw Komorowski described her as Poland’s “guardian spirit”.

“In her poems we could find brilliant advice which made the world easier to understand,” added the president.

Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister, said on his Twitter page that her death was an “irreplaceable loss for Poland”.

Both President Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk are set to attend Szymborska’s funeral, which is scheduled for February 9.

While powerful men sang her praise, many Poles were quick to sign books of condolence for a woman famed for her mastery of language yet, at the same time, her ability to retain a modesty and sense of humour that made her shirk fame and the trappings of celebrity.

The Nobel Prize committee’s recognition of her linguistic artistry helped put Polish culture on the world map, and Szymborska became a symbol of national pride.

Because of this, and perhaps despite the fact that very few of her works were translated into English, knowledge of her prowess of a poet spread. Woody Allen, the famed American actor and film director, said, “She was able to capture the most poignant moments of life and its sadness, and yet remain optimistic.”

Born near Poznan in 1923, Szymborska began writing poetry just after the Second World War, but by the time she scooped the Nobel prize she had had just 200 poems published. She attributed the limited number down to her own self-criticism. “There is a rubbish bin in my room. A poem is written in the evening then read again in the morning. It does not always survive,” she once stated.