Monologue of a Dog Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Monolog psa zaplątanego w dzieje

  Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History

  Chwila

  Moment

  W zatrzęsieniu

  Among the Multitudes

  Chmury

  Clouds

  Negatyw

  Negative

  Słuchawka

  Receiver

  Trzy słowa najdziwniejsze

  The Three Oddest Words

  Milczenie roślin

  The Silence of Plants

  Platon, czyli dlaczego

  Plato, or Why

  Mała dziewczynka ściąga obrus

  A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth

  Ze wspomnień

  A Memory

  Kałuża

  Puddles

  Pierwsza miłość

  First Love

  Trochę o duszy

  A Few Words on the Soul

  Wczesna godzina

  Early Hour

  W parku

  In the Park

  Przyczynek do statystyki

  A Contribution to Statistics

  Jacyś ludzie

  Some People

  Fotografia z 11 września

  Photograph from September 11

  Bagaż powrotny

  Return Baggage

  Bal

  The Ball

  Notatka

  A Note

  Spis

  List

  Wszystko

  Everything

  Uprzejmość niewidomych

  The Courtesy of the Blind

  ABC

  ABC

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © by Wisława Szymborska, 2002

  Translation, copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.

  Foreword © 2006 by Billy Collins

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Szymborska, Wisława.

  [Poems. English & Polish. Selections]

  Monologue of a dog: new poems/Wisława Szymborska; translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak,

  p. cm.

  Polish original with English translation.

  1. Szymborska, Wisława—Translations into English. I. Cavanagh, Clare. II. Barańczak, Stanisław, 1946– III. Title.

  PG7178.Z9A222 2005

  895.8 '5173—dc22 2005016084

  ISBN-13: 978-0-15-101220-6 ISBN-10: 0-15-101220-2

  eISBN 978-0-547-54224-9

  v1.0215

  Foreword

  Just about any commentary on Wisława Szymborska must include, and might as well begin with, the fact that in 1996 she unexpectedly won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of seventy-three. For almost five decades—her first book appeared in 1952—she had been regarded in her native Poland as a prominent and popular poet; yet on the day of the announcement her books were difficult to find even at that bibliophile extravaganza known as the Frankfurt Book Fair. The sheer power of the Nobel would elevate Szymborska, much to her apparent embarrassment and surprise, from a respected place on the literary scene of her own country to center stage in the theater of world poetry, where she would follow in the footsteps of such Nobel-winning compatriots as Isaac Bashevis Singer and Czeslaw Milosz.

  The Nobel launched Szymborska to the heights of literary celebrity, and, strange as it is to say, the dreadful events of 9/11 had the unforeseeable effect of bringing her work to the attention of a wide audience of stunned Americans, now hungry for poems that were responsive to the horror story of history. American poetry had generally taken Time as its predominant theme, rather than History, which someone once characterized as the violent misuse of Time. Poetry’s most ancient theme, carpe diem, arises from the fact that our earthly time is limited; the cyclical brutality of man arises from specific historical events. That Americans turned to “foreign” poetry for solace in those nervous days of psychic recuperation was a sign that America—its virginity suddenly lost—lacked a tradition of poetry that adequately addressed such realities as the horrors of war, the shock of military attack, and the atrocities of dictatorial regimes. It should have come as no surprise, then, that the poems most commonly recited at 9/11 memorial services were written by poets with names like Milosz, Zagajewski, Herbert, Neruda, Różewicz, and Szymborska.

  Born in 1923, Szymborska grew up amid the disruption of Hiker’s invasion of Poland and later experienced its repressive Communist regime, which in 1948 forbade the publication of her first book on the grounds that it was too obscure for the masses. Later, in such signature poems as “The Terrorist, He’s Watching,” “The End and the Beginning,” and “Some People,” Szymborska established herself as a poet whose social conscience spurs her to reckon with the dark side of history. But her touch in these matters is always lightened by irony and distance. She is no Wilfred Owen bringing the gore of war to our faces; nor is she a Siegfried Sassoon quick to draw a moral from the swirl of events. Instead, Szymborska floats above scenes of destruction and injustice, drawing our attention to them but reminding us by her steady tone of the power of language and imagination, the poles of hope in her moral universe.

  Whether politically vocal or not, Szymborska’s poems continue to find their way to an increasingly large readership. It is difficult, however, to put a quick finger on what accounts for the distinctiveness and the popularity of her poetry. The typical Szymborska poem, if such a thing exists, is a freeverse meditation couched in colloquial language. It begins with a stray fact or a mundane observation, then ascends to a heightened level of speculation. The shifts from zone to zone are engineered so smoothly that they often take place beyond the conscious awareness of the reader. She herself has said that attempts to estimate poetry or place a value on it often elude explanation: “. . . the fact that with one writer the words fall together into units that are alive and enduring and with another they do not is decided in a realm that’s not easily comprehensible to anyone. I suspect that this is a realm upon which the vicissitudes of life and the intensity of experience no longer have any influence.” Her comment points to the in sufficiency of literary criticism and espouses a preternatural dimension for art.

  One appealing aspect of Szymborska’s work is the tendency of her poems to be driven by a thought, a premise, a statistic, or a bit of reasoning that usually acts as a starting point and provides a way into the poem’s more lyrical achievements. In “A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth,” a child’s curiosity about the physical world around her is seen as a replication of Newton’s investigation of gravity. “A Few Words on the Soul” advances the notion that the soul, instead of being an in-dwelling possession, is a visitor who comes and goes. Easily bored, it may leave us when we are lost in everyday tasks like chopping meat, but it will return when we fall into doubt or when we experience joy and sorrow simultaneously. “Early Hour” is composed, impossibly, while the poet is still asleep. “The Ball“ is an ingenious revision of the standard carpe diem insistence that we should live our lives more fully because our clocks are ticking. Here, time is replaced by space. The exhortation to live vigorously is bas
ed not on the limits of mortal time, but on the lack of scientific evidence for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. If we are indeed the only thinking and feeling creatures in the cosmos, runs the poem’s compelling argument, shouldn’t we commit ourselves wholly to life, shouldn’t we fully enjoy the upcoming “district fireman’s ball”?

  This sudden zooming from the huge to the local—and back outward to the vast—is one of Szymborska’s delightful, often breathtaking maneuvers. In “Moment,” a spot of time is apprehended with such intensity that geological history in all its vastness disappears. The moment “reigns“ with haiku-like power, “As if there’d never been any Cambrians, Silurians . . . As if plains hadn’t pushed their way here . . . As if seas had seethed only elsewhere,” not here where it’s “nine thirty local time.” In “Among the Multitudes,” she indulges in the most existential wonder of all, marveling over the fact that she is she, and not another creature. This same premise is at the heart of an earlier poem, “Astonishment,” in which she asks with childlike curiosity “Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days,” “Why this specific self, not in a nest, but a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin? Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?” And in “A Large Number,” the thought of her own individuality compared with the “Four billion people on this earth” is truly astonishing. Her poems strip us of our presumptuousness, our taking for granted the miracle of our existence, and the defense systems we use to keep death from getting in the way of our plans.

  Szymborska, then, is a conceptual poet, and her work shows us the world from odd perspectives. Her poems include a trip to outer space, an examination of an imaginary medieval illumination, what a suicide’s room looks like, and what a severed head experiences after its beheading. Her most thrilling poems ask the reader to see things from strange angles. This often involves an inversion of the usual, the habitual. Again, she is fond of the long view—the theologian’s ad aeternitatem—from which earthly life is seen anew from afar. Her tendency to place the world in larger contexts can result in the dizzying realization that we are not at the center of it all, which is, of course, the scientific lesson of thinkers from Copernicus to Darwin. In one Szymborska poem, the world is seen from the point of view of a one-year-old child; in another, the earth is examined from the perspective of a cloud.

  Szymborska is fond of dropping a negative into the usual order of things, with mischievous results. In one poem, she expresses her indebtedness to everyone she does not love, because they allow her to be comfortable, to see things calmly for what they are. In another poem, she thanks her sister for not writing poems: “When my sister invites me over for lunch, / I know she doesn’t want to read me her poems. / Her soups are delicious without ulterior motives.”

  Szymborska also makes daring imagistic jumps look easy. In various poems, a telephone sinks roots into the ground; flowers are our fellow companions on earth; puddles swallow children; and life is strangely seen as a precondition for . . . well, being alive. Such are some of the products of that essential poet’s inclination, what Symzborska calls her “yen for comparison.” And in a poem in this volume that deals directly with 9/11, she attempts the impossible: that is, to write a poem that has no last line.

  Most impressive is how Szymborska’s poetry manages to be plainspoken and mysterious at the same time. There is no trace of gratuitous obscurity here, where the poet uses language to hide from the reader. Szymborska knows when to be clear and when to be mysterious. She knows which cards to turn over and which ones to leave facedown. Her simple, relaxed language dares to let us know exactly what she is thinking, and because her imagination is so lively and far-reaching—acrobatic, really—we are led, almost unaware, into the intriguing and untranslatable realms that lie just beyond the boundaries of speech. Her poem “Stage Fright” announces that “Prose can hold anything including poetry, / but in poetry there’s only room for poetry.” And that is all there is in this volume—the real thing, nothing but.

  —Billy Collins

  April 2005

  Monolog psa zaplątanego w dzieje

  Są psy i psy. Ja byłem psem wybranym.

  Miałem dobre papiery i w żyłach krew wilczą.

  Mieszkałem na wyżynie wdychając wonie widoków

  na łąki w słońcu, na świerki po deszczu

  i grudy ziemi spod śniegu.

  Miałem porządny dom i ludzi na usługi

  byłem żywiony, myty, szczotkowany,

  wyprowadzany na piękne spacery.

  Jednak z szacunkiem, bez poufałości.

  Każdy dobrze pamiętał, czyim jestem psem.

  Byle parszywy kundel potrafi mieć pana.

  Ale uwaga—wara od porównań.

  Mój pan był panem jedynym w swoim rodzaju.

  Miał okazale stado chodzące za nim krok w krok

  i zapatrzone w niego z lękliwym podziwem.

  Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History

  There are dogs and dogs. I was among the chosen.

  I had good papers and wolf’s blood in my veins.

  I lived upon the heights inhaling the odors of views:

  meadows in sunlight, spruces after rain,

  and clumps of earth beneath the snow.

  I had a decent home and people on call,

  I was fed, washed, groomed,

  and taken for lovely strolls.

  Respectfully, though, and comme il faut.

  They all knew full well whose dog I was.

  Any lousy mutt can have a master.

  Take care, though—beware comparisons.

  My master was a breed apart.

  He had a splendid herd that trailed his every step

  and fixed its eyes on him in fearful awe.

  Dla mnie były uśmieszki

  z kiepsko skrywaną zazdrością.

  Bo tylko ja miałem prawo

  witać go w lotnych podskokach,

  tylko ja—żegnać zębami ciągnąc

  za spodnie.

  Tylko mnie wolno było

  z głową, na jego kolanach

  dostępować głaskania i tarmoszenia za uszy.

  Tylko ja mogłem udawać przy nim, że śpię,

  a wtedy on się schylał i szeptał coś do mnie.

  Na innych gniewał się często i głośno.

  Warczał na nich, ujadał

  biegał od ściany do ściany.

  Myślę, że lubił tylko mnie

  i więcej nigdy, nikogo.

  Miałem też obowiązki: czekanie, ufanie.

  Bo zjawiał się na krótko i na długo znikał.

  Co go zatrzymywało tam, w dolinach, nie wiem.

  Odgadywałem jednak, że to pilne sprawy,

  co najmniej takie pilne

  jak dla mnie walka z kotami

  i wszystkim, co się niepotrzebnie rusza.

  For me they always had smiles,

  with envy poorly hidden.

  Since only I had the right

  to greet him with nimble leaps,

  only I could say good-bye by worrying his trousers with

  my teeth.

  Only I was permitted

  to receive scratching and stroking

  with my head laid in his lap.

  Only I could feign sleep

  while he bent over me to whisper something.

  He raged at others often, loudly.

  He snarled, barked,

  raced from wall to wall.

  I suspect he liked only me

  and nobody else, ever.

  I also had responsibilities: waiting, trusting.

  Since he would turn up briefly and then vanish.

  What kept him down there in the lowlands, I don’t know.

  I guessed, though, it must be pressing business,

  at least as pressing

  as my battle with the cats

  and everything that moves for no good reason.

  Jest los i los. Mój raptem się odmienił.

  Nastała któraś wiosna,

 
; a jego przy mnie nie było.

  Rozpętała się w domu dziwna bieganina.

  Skrzynie, walizki, kufry wpychano na samochody.

  Koła z piskiem zjeżdżały w dół

  i milkły za zakrętem.

  Na tarasie płonęły jakieś graty, szmaty,

  żółte bluzy, opaski z czarnymi znakami

  i dużo, bardzo dużo przedartych kartonów,

  z których powypadały chorągiewki.

  Snułem się w tym zamęcie

  bardziej zdumiony niż zły.

  Czułem na sierści niemiłe spojrzenia.

  Jakbym był psem bezpańskim,

  natrętnym przybłędą,