SOURCE: "Szymborska? It Means 'Famous'," in Washington Post, October 4, 1996, pp. F1, F3.

[Below, Streitfield introduces the Nobel Prize winner to English-speaking readers.]

Vihs-WAH-vah sheem-BOHR-skah.

Pronouncing the name of the 1996 Nobel laureate in literature is the hardest part. Once that's done, Wislawa Szymborska's poetry slips down like melted snow. From "Writing a Résumé":

    Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.
    Landscapes are replaced by addresses,
    shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.
 
    Of all your loves, mention only the marriage;
    of all your children, only those who were born.

To praise the Polish poet, the Swedish Academy resorted to musical comparisons. It called her a "Mozart of poetry" and said she combined elegance of language with "the fury of Beethoven."

The 73-year-old Szymborska tackles the most difficult subjects—hatred, love, the persistence of memory, the charms of life as well as its ravages—in the simplest language. Her poems...