Wisława Szymborska

Hidalgo Socorro

Hidalgo Socorro - Wisława Szymborska

Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist and translator.  She received the Nobel Prize on Literature in 1996.  Symborska was born on July 2, 1923 in Prowent, Poland, and grew up in the city of Krakow.  After the war, she studied Polish literature and then changed to Sociology.  She published her first poem in March 1945, “Szukam słowa” (“Looking for a word”) in a daily newspaper.

Symborska married only once, to the poet Adam Włodek, who she divorced in 1954.  She used literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction and understatement to talk about philosophical themes and obsessions.  Symborska died on February 1st, 2012 at the age of 88.

For more information, Hidalgo Socorro recommends you to visit: Wisława Szymborska

Some Like Poetry

Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. “All. How many?
It’s a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?” Write: I don’t know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in the line.

We stand in the meadow where it became flesh,
and the meadow is silent as a false witness.
Sunny. Green. Nearby, a forest
with wood for chewing and water under the bark-
every day a full ration of the view
until you go blind. Overhead, a bird-
the shadow of its life-giving wings
brushed their lips. Their jaws opened.
Teeth clacked against teeth.
At night, the sickle moon shone in the sky
and reaped wheat for their bread.
Hands came floating from blackened icons,
empty cups in their fingers.
On a spit of barbed wire,
a man was turning.
They sang with their mouths full of earth.
“A lovely song of how war strikes straight
at the heart.” Write: how silent.
“Yes.”

 

Herta Müller

Hidalgo Socorro

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature winner was born in Romania in 1953. She is novelist, poet and essayist. She experienced the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu and her work shows the effect of violence, cruelty and terror that she suffered.

Herta Müller was born in Nichtidorf, a German village in Romania, made her bilingual, so she speaks Romaine and writes in German and much of her work is told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania. According to critics, the work of Müller is realistic and at the same time full of poetry. She always writes about things she has known, seen or heard. She is never lost in useless metaphors; her work describes the reality in a poetical way.

She always shows an ethic position in her work: life is good and death is bad.  Her parents were separated because of political reasons and she grew up lonely and in silence. Each book of hers is a rebellion against silence, a protest against the forgetfulness.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2009/; http://prodavinci.com/

Hidalgo Socorro – The Captain’s Verses

By Hidalgo Socorro

Pablo Neruda is considered one of the most important poets in Latin American and the world.

The Chilean poet received the Nobel Prize in 1971. The Captain’s Verses contains pure love poetry dedicated to his wife Matilde Urrutia.

The verses were published anonymously in 1952 for personal reasons that later he explained in 1963 saying “to reveal its source was to strip bare the intimacy of its birth”. By the time he wrote the verses he was Mrs. Urrutia lover.

The verses describe love, desire, fury and life. They are simple and full of passion. Everybody should read them.