SOURCE: Szymborska, Wislawa, and Joanna Trzeciak. “Wislawa Szymborska: The Enchantment of Everyday Objects.” Publishers Weekly 244, no. 14 (7 April 1997): 68-9.

In the following interview, Szymborska discusses her personal history, her writing career, translations of her works, and authors she admires.

“I'm drowning in papers,” exclaims Wislawa Szymborska, pointing to piles of mail in the study of her fifth-floor, three-room walk-up in Kraków. Since receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in December, this reluctant literary celebrity, previously little known to readers outside of Europe, has found that her sparsely furnished apartment is growing uncomfortably small, and she is preparing to move to a larger flat in this nondescript residential neighborhood.

“People confuse the Nobel Prize with a beauty pageant,” she quips, recounting a conversation she overheard between two women in the fruit market. “‘Did you see the Nobel Prize winner?’ says one. ‘Not much to look at, is she’ says...