| ashu |
Posted
on 26-Apr-01 05:02 AM
I am not a poet.
And as a reader, I am happy to note the profusion of poems
on this Web site.
Over the years, I have silently
enjoyed reading poems of all kinds, even when I have
failed to understand most of them.
One person whose poems I'v been reading for some years
and and who is very inspiring is Wislawa Szymborska, the
Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1996.
Her Nobel lecture is simply brilliant.
Enjoy,
oohi
ashu
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WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Nobel Lecture
1996
The Poet and the World
They say the first sentence in any speech is always
the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway. But I
have a feeling that the sentences to come - the third,
the sixth, the tenth, and so on, up to the final line
- will be just as hard, since I'm supposed to talk
about poetry. I've said very little on the subject,
next to nothing, in fact. And whenever I have said
anything, I've always had the sneaking suspicion that
I'm not very good at it. This is why my lecture will
be rather short. All imperfection is easier to
tolerate if served up in small doses.
Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even,
or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly
confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they
were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous
times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at
least if they're attractively packaged, than to
recognize your own merits, since these are hidden
deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself
... When filling in questionnaires or chatting with
strangers, that is, when they can't avoid revealing
their profession, poets prefer to use the general term
"writer" or replace "poet" with the name of whatever
job they do in addition to writing. Bureaucrats and
bus passengers respond with a touch of incredulity and
alarm when they find out that they're dealing with a
poet. I suppose philosophers may meet with a similar
reaction. Still, they're in a better position, since
as often as not they can embellish their calling with
some kind of scholarly title. Professor of philosophy
- now that sounds much more respectable.
But there are no professors of poetry. This would
mean, after all, that poetry is an occupation
requiring specialized study, regular examinations,
theoretical articles with bibliographies and footnotes
attached, and finally, ceremoniously conferred
diplomas. And this would mean, in turn, that it's not
enough to cover pages with even the most exquisite
poems in order to become a poet. The crucial element
is some slip of paper bearing an official stamp. Let
us recall that the pride of Russian poetry, the future
Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky was once sentenced to
internal exile precisely on such grounds. They called
him "a parasite," because he lacked official
certification granting him the right to be a poet ...
Several years ago, I had the honor and pleasure of
meeting Brodsky in person. And I noticed that, of all
the poets I've known, he was the only one who enjoyed
calling himself a poet. He pronounced the word without
inhibitions. Just the opposite - he spoke it with
defiant freedom. It seems to me that this must have
been because he recalled the brutal humiliations he
had experienced in his youth.
In more fortunate countries, where human dignity isn't
assaulted so readily, poets yearn, of course, to be
published, read, and understood, but they do little,
if anything, to set themselves above the common herd
and the daily grind. And yet it wasn't so long ago, in
this century's first decades, that poets strove to
shock us with their extravagant dress and eccentric
behavior. But all this was merely for the sake of
public display. The moment always came when poets had
to close the doors behind them, strip off their
mantles, fripperies, and other poetic paraphernalia,
and confront - silently, patiently awaiting their own
selves - the still white sheet of paper. For this is
finally what really counts.
It's not accidental that film biographies of great
scientists and artists are produced in droves. The
more ambitious directors seek to reproduce
convincingly the creative process that led to
important scientific discoveries or the emergence of a
masterpiece. And one can depict certain kinds of
scientific labor with some success. Laboratories,
sundry instruments, elaborate machinery brought to
life: such scenes may hold the audience's interest for
a while. And those moments of uncertainty - will the
experiment, conducted for the thousandth time with
some tiny modification, finally yield the desired
result? - can be quite dramatic. Films about painters
can be spectacular, as they go about recreating every
stage of a famous painting's evolution, from the first
penciled line to the final brushstroke. Music swells
in films about composers: the first bars of the melody
that rings in the musician's ears finally emerge as a
mature work in symphonic form. Of course this is all
quite naive and doesn't explain the strange mental
state popularly known as inspiration, but at least
there's something to look at and listen to.
But poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly
unphotogenic. Someone sits at a table or lies on a
sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling.
Once in a while this person writes down seven lines
only to cross out one of them fifteen minutes later,
and then another hour passes, during which nothing
happens ... Who could stand to watch this kind of
thing?
I've mentioned inspiration. Contemporary poets answer
evasively when asked what it is, and if it actually
exists. It's not that they've never known the blessing
of this inner impulse. It's just not easy to explain
something to someone else that you don't understand
yourself.
When I'm asked about this on occasion, I hedge the
question too. But my answer is this: inspiration is
not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists
generally. There is, has been, and will always be a
certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's
made up of all those who've consciously chosen their
calling and do their job with love and imagination. It
may include doctors, teachers, gardeners - and I could
list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes
one continuous adventure as long as they manage to
keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties
and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of
new questions emerges from every problem they solve.
Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous
"I don't know."
There aren't many such people. Most of the earth's
inhabitants work to get by. They work because they
have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out
of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the
choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work
valued only because others haven't got even that much,
however loveless and boring - this is one of the
harshest human miseries. And there's no sign that
coming centuries will produce any changes for the
better as far as this goes.
And so, though I may deny poets their monopoly on
inspiration, I still place them in a select group of
Fortune's darlings.
At this point, though, certain doubts may arise in my
audience. All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics,
and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few
loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they
too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well,
yes, but they "know." They know, and whatever they
know is enough for them once and for all. They don't
want to find out about anything else, since that might
diminish their arguments' force. And any knowledge
that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out:
it fails to maintain the temperature required for
sustaining life. In the most extreme cases, cases well
known from ancient and modern history, it even poses a
lethal threat to society.
This is why I value that little phrase "I don't know"
so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings.
It expands our lives to include the spaces within us
as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny
Earth hangs suspended. If Isaac Newton had never said
to himself "I don't know," the apples in his little
orchard might have dropped to the ground like
hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick
them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot
Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself "I don't
know", she probably would have wound up teaching
chemistry at some private high school for young ladies
from good families, and would have ended her days
performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job.
But she kept on saying "I don't know," and these words
led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where
restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded
with the Nobel Prize.
Poets, if they're genuine, must also keep repeating "I
don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this
statement, but as soon as the final period hits the
page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize
that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's
absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on
trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of
their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a
giant paperclip by literary historians and called
their "oeuvre" ...
I sometimes dream of situations that can't possibly
come true. I audaciously imagine, for example, that I
get a chance to chat with the Ecclesiastes, the author
of that moving lament on the vanity of all human
endeavors. I would bow very deeply before him, because
he is, after all, one of the greatest poets, for me at
least.
That done, I would grab his hand. "'There's
nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote,
Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the
sun. And the poem you created is also new under the
sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all
your readers are also new under the sun, since those
who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that
cypress that you're sitting under hasn't been growing
since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of
another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the
same. And Ecclesiastes, I'd also like to ask you what
new thing under the sun you're planning to work on
now? A further supplement to the thoughts you've
already expressed? Or maybe you're tempted to
contradict some of them now? In your earlier work you
mentioned joy - so what if it's fleeting? So maybe
your new-under-the-sun poem will be about joy? Have
you taken notes yet, do you have drafts? I doubt
you'll say, 'I've written everything down, I've got
nothing left to add.' There's no poet in the world who
can say this, least of all a great poet like
yourself."
The world - whatever we might think when terrified by
its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by
its indifference to individual suffering, of people,
animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so
sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think
of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars
surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover,
planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know;
whatever we might think of this measureless theater to
which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose
lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two
arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this
world - it is astonishing.
But "astonishing" is an epithet concealing a logical
trap. We're astonished, after all, by things that
deviate from some well-known and universally
acknowledged norm, from an obviousness we've grown
accustomed to. Now the point is, there is no such
obvious world. Our astonishment exists per se and
isn't based on comparison with something else.
Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to
consider every word, we all use phrases like "the
ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course
of events" ... But in the language of poetry, where
every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not
a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a
single day and not a single night after it. And above
all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in
this world.
It looks like poets will always have their work cut
out for them.
Translated from Polish: Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare
Cavanagh
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