Poland's Wislawa Szymborska, whose poetry combines the elegance of Mozart with the fury of Beethoven, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday.
The 73-year-old poet's early socialist realist works glorified Communism, but she later became a critic of Josef Stalin, likening him to the Abominable Snow-man.Now arguably Poland's most popular poet, her work has provided inspiration for the 1994 Polish movie "Red" as well as Polish rock stars. Critics say she is both deeply political and witty and uses humor in delightful, unexpected ways.
Szymborska (pronounced vees-WAH-wah sheem-BOR-skah) is also a critic. The Nobel laureate, who appears frail and withdrawn, lives in the Polish city of Krakow.
"I am very happy, I am honored, but at the same time stunned and a little bit frightened with what awaits me," she said on Poland's Radio Zet in her first reaction to the news. "I'm afraid I will not have a quiet life for some time now, and this is what I prize the most."
Szymborska "is very reserved, some call her shy but she is a very intense person," Sture Allen, the secretary for the Swedish Academy, said in announcing the prize.
Praise poured in from her native country for the first of this year's Nobel laureates, including former president Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.
"(She is) so modest as a person and so great in spirit and in writing," Walesa said. "This is a great distinction for the whole nation."
Others concurred.
"She is Poland's best female poet since the war," said Tadeusz Nyczek, a writer and literary critic.
Stanislaw Lem, a Polish science fiction writer, told the Polish Press Agency PAP that "Wiska simply deserved it."
"To me, Szymborska impersonates the greatness of Polish poetry of the 20th century, as well as mature, moral and clever attitudes," writer Andrzej Szczypiorski told PAP.
The movie "Red," directed by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, took its inspiration from Szymborska's poem "Love at First Sight." The movie, which focuses on chance and fate, intertwines the stories of a model, a retired judge and two young lovers.
The academy's citation today quoted her 1980 poem "Nothing Twice," whose final stanza reads:
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.