Szymborska’s Dreams

The article is an attempt at an in-depth reading of one particular poem – Słuchawka (The Receiver) from the 2002 volume Chwila (A While) – by situating it in the context of Szymborska’s poetic and essayistic writing. This poem has a special place among other poems of Szymborska which concern dreaming, as the dream most often occurs in her poetry as a tool for diagnosing the faults of the real world or making up for them. In The Receiver, in turn, the dream opens a space of meeting with a dead person, although, contrary to earlier thematically similar poems (Negatyw (Negative), Pamięć nareszcie (Memory at Last)), the specific character of this meeting lies in the coexistence of the dead and the living. Thus read, Szymborska turns out to be a poet of transcendence, discovering a common dimension of being which joins the reality and the dream. For her, the most important task of poetry is empathy and catharsis.
 

The article is an attempt at an in-depth reading of one particular poem – Słuchawka (The Receiver) from the 2002 volume Chwila (A While) – by situating it in the context of Szymborska’s poetic and essayistic writing. This poem has a special place among other poems of Szymborska which concern dreaming, as the dream most often occurs in her poetry as a tool for diagnosing the faults of the real world or making up for them. In The Receiver, in turn, the dream opens a space of meeting with a dead person, although, contrary to earlier thematically similar poems (Negatyw (Negative), Pamięć nareszcie (Memory at Last)), the specific character of this meeting lies in the coexistence of the dead and the living. Thus read, Szymborska turns out to be a poet of transcendence, discovering a common dimension of being which joins the reality and the dream. For her, the most important task of poetry is empathy and catharsis.