Transcript Famous Poles

English Unlimited
Discover the World Anew Project 2010/2011
Famous Poles
Presentation by Polish
Participants
Sopot 2011
Wisława Szymborska
2010/2011
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The Life
• Wisława Szymborska was born on 2 July 1923 in Prowent,
now part of Kornik in Poland. Her family moved to Krakow in
1931 when she has lived and worked ever since. She loves
Krakow.
• During the World War II she continued her education in
underground lessons. From 1943 she worked as a railroad
employee and managed to avoid being deported to
Germany as a forced labourer. Next, she took up studies of
Polish language and literature. She met and was
influenced by Czeslaw Milosz. In 1948 she married a poet
Adam Wlodek whom she divorced in 1954. Next she lived
with Kornel Filipowicz till his death in 1990.
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The Poetry
• In her poetry, Wisława Szymborska frequently employs
literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction and
understatement. Her poems are compacted and they touch
the condition of people both as individuals and as members
of human society. She has not published more than 250
poems to date. She is often described as a modest to the
point
of
shyness.
Her poetry has been set to music by Zbigniew Preisner.
• Szymborska became better known internationally after she
was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996. Szymborska's work
has been translated into many European languages as well
as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.
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PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN
She must be willing to please.
To change so that nothing should change.
It's easy, impossible, hard, worth trying.
Her eyes are if need be now deep blue, now gray, dark, playful, filled for no reason with
tears.
She sleeps with him like some chance acquaintance, like his one and only.
She will bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive yet giving he best advice.
Weak yet lifting the weightiest burdens.
Has no head on her shoulders but will have.
Reads Jaspers and ladies' magazines.
Doesn't know what this screw is for and will built a bridge.
Young, as usual young, as always still young.
Holds in her hands a sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for a journey long and distant,
a meat - cleaver, poultice, and a shot of vodka.
Where is she running so, isn't she tired?
Not at all, just a bit, very much, doesn't matter.
Either she loves him or has made up her mind to.
For better, for worse, and for heaven's sake.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
:)
Presentation prepared by:
the group from Sopot, Poland
Photographs: Internet
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