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Wisława Szymborska has not joined FLAPSS and has not endorsed it. This page is a reference record assembled from published interviews and public remarks. Every answer below is a direct quotation with the source and date shown next to it.

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Wisława Szymborska

Poet and essayist; Nobel laureate in Literature, 1996

Poland · 1923–2012

Arts and letters

About

Polish poet whose collections include Salt, A Large Number and The End and the Beginning. She worked for many years as an editor and columnist at the Kraków journal Życie Literackie, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996.

reference

3 answers

Question What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? Craft & work read 51 other answers →

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?

Recorded Swedish Academy, Stockholm, 7 December 1996, The Nobel Foundation (nobelprize.org), 7 December 1996 source ↗

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