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.
Poet and essayist; Nobel laureate in Literature, 1996
Poland · 1923–2012
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.
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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
All sorts of torturers, dictators, fanatics, and demagogues struggling for power by way of a few loudly shouted slogans also enjoy their jobs, and they too perform their duties with inventive fervor. Well, yes, but they “know.” They know, and whatever they know is enough for them once and for all. They don’t want to find out about anything else, since that might diminish their arguments’ force. And any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
Recorded Swedish Academy, Stockholm, 7 December 1996, The Nobel Foundation (nobelprize.org), 7 December 1996 source
But my answer is this: inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners – and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”
Recorded Swedish Academy, Stockholm, 7 December 1996, The Nobel Foundation (nobelprize.org), 7 December 1996 source
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