In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
Category Archive: 1923
You know, I’m worried about Szymborska. I wish she would stop smoking.
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing.
People seem to forget that one reason they are now thinking differently is Freud’s legacy itself.
The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it’s impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.
Socialism as such from its very origins is a workers’ system, and when there occur deviations, it is workers that react first.
A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.
I do not have to look for credentials for my Polishness and for my patriotism. I’m a Pole. The chronicles of my family go back – as far back as the 13th century.
In the past I have declined to comment on my own work: because, it seems to me, a poem is what it is; because a poem is itself a definition, and to try to redefine it is to be apt to falsify it; and because the author is the person least able to consider his work objectively.