Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska by Wisława Szymborska
Published 1998 · 35,332 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Poetry
How hard is Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska to read?
Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska scores 53 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 42 out of 100
- Szymborska writes in plain, conversational language and then adds playful coinages such as 'bulldogryphons' in 'Clochard', along with mythological and scientific names. The vocabulary is far easier than the Waste Land's, closer to the clear but allusive prose of The Great Gatsby.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Lines are short and sentences direct, and she often fragments them for effect, as in 'Elegiac Calculation' with its parenthetical hedges. The syntax makes few demands, near The Remains of the Day in clarity.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- Every poem starts from a concrete image, an onion, a beetle, a cat, a photograph, and then reaches toward ideas about time, death and existence. The abstraction is considerable but always grounded, in the manner of The Great Gatsby's specific scenes carrying large social ideas.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- The poems are compact, and many compress a historical, mythological or scientific reference into a few lines, as in 'Census' or 'Voices'. They are less encyclopedic than Moby-Dick and denser than a plain-prose novel.
- Narrative indirection: 58 out of 100
- Szymborska often speaks through personas or ironic distance, as in 'Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem' and 'Lot's Wife'. The reader must infer the stance, though the poems usually give enough cues; it resembles the reading-against that The Great Gatsby asks for, only lighter.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- Clouds, stones, onions and the stage work as recurring figures, and mythological figures such as Cassandra, Lot's wife and Atlantis carry meaning. The symbols are clear, nearer The Remains of the Day's restraint than Moby-Dick's saturation.
- Ironic distance: 72 out of 100
- Irony is the book's main instrument, in 'The Terrorist, He's Watching' and 'Hatred', which praises hatred for its talent. The gap between what is said and what is meant is wide, comparable to Eugene Onegin's knowing commentary.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- Poems often end on an open question or a quiet turn, as in 'Conversation with a Stone' and 'The Silence of Plants'. The questions about existence are never answered, though individual poems feel complete, much like the closed plot and open meaning of The Great Gatsby.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- The book is a chronological collection of poems from seven volumes, each poem self-contained, with some formal play such as rhymed ballads, list poems and prose poems. The structure is simple compared with the fragmentary design of Flights.
How Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska is regarded
Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska holds a literary regard score of 77 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Prizes
- Nobel Prize in Literature 1996, awarded to Wisława Szymborska