Wislawa Szymborska - Research Paper Example

She has lived and worked there since this last move. As a youth Szymborska was interested in literature from a young age and is reported to have spent long hours alone reading and writing. She lived through World War II and continued her passion for literature through private lessons during the war. She would follow this interest throughout school and later decide to study literature in college. Still, Szymborska found slight hardship during World War II, yet found work as a railroad employee as a means of avoiding deportation to a German work camp (‘Nobel Prize’).

During this period her creative interests began to flourish as she began writing stories and developing illustrations (Zagajewski). In 1945 Szymborska would enter Jagellonian University and study literature and sociology. She was regarded as an outstanding student and actively participated in the school’s academic culture. For instance, she became a part of the Krakow literary scene and met and was influenced by prominent Polish writer Czeslaw Mislosz. She would leave the University in 1948 because of financial circumstances.

This year she met and married Adam Wlodek, also a poet (‘Poets’). The marriage was short lived and they would divorce in 1954. During this period worked predominantly as a secretary for an educational biweekly and also work as an illustrator. She would continue her pursuit of literature, as she secured a position at Zycle Literackie (Literary Life). She would hold onto this position for the following thirty years, finally leaving the magazine in 1981 (‘Poets’). During the 1950s one of her most notable public life actions was her participation in the defamation of Catholic priests from Krakow.

These priests had been sentenced to death by the Stalinist controlled communist regime. These individuals had been charged without merit; still they never were executed, as Stalin would die before they were put to death. Szymborska is also noted to have openly supported Stalin and Lenin both in her essays and in her artistic work (Zagajewski). Szymborska’s writing career would begin upon her graduation from Jagellonian University when she published her first poem ‘Szukam slowa,’ translated as ‘I am Looking for a Word’.

Szymborska had written a book in 1949, yet was unable to publish her work because it did not pass the stringent Socialist regulations of the era (Zagajewski). The poem was published in the daily paper Dziennik Polski. As an editor at Zycle Literackie she would frequently publish both fictional and essay works. Notably, she had an essay column named Lektury nadobowlazkowe that was published regularly. While this column ended when Szymborska left the magazine in 1981, it has since been continued in the Gazeta Wyborcza, and her collection of essays has been published a number of times.

Her first published collection of literature was ‘Dlatego zyjemy’, translated as ‘This is what we are living for’. The text praised both Stalin and Lenin. One considers names of some of the poems in this text, such as ‘Lenin.’ In addition, the work contained strong thematic support of the Stalinist regime as it glorifies the development of Stalinist town in Krakow. Towards the late 1950s Szymborska would gradually begin to disassociate herself from the Stalinist doctrines that she had supported throughout the earlier part of her life.

Still she remained in the Polish United Workers’ Party until 1966 (‘Poets’). During the 1960s she increasingly became opposed to the socialist agenda and actively supported measures against the Communist Party. This changing allegiance was and continues to be reflected in her poetry. Szymborska’