Szymborska Nobel Prize Laureate Wislawa

¶ … Szymborska

Nobel prize laureate Wislawa Szymborska comments on the compelling mythos of romantic love in her poem "True Love." A free-verse poem, "True Love" satirizes the saccharine romance popularized on film and television. The poet uses rhetorical questions liberally throughout the poem as if engaging the reader in a dialogue, allowing us to probe our own feelings about "true love" and romance. Szymborska's "True Love" is sublimely sarcastic and ironically sentimental. While the narrator disparages "true love," she also upholds its validity through the richness of the sardonic descriptions used in the poem. She comments on the "practicality" of love, which is inherently impractical and intangible. Using rich sarcasm and irony, Szymborska therefore encapsulates the pain of loneliness, the longing for true love.

In a manner characteristic of the phrase "thou dost protest too much," Polish poet Szymborska criticizes romance to the point where readers can taste the pain of her loss. She complains about the happy couples holding hands in a manner not unlike the embittered recipient of an unwanted break-up. In the third stanza, the narrator bitterly states, "Look at the happy couple / Couldn't they at least try to hide it, / Fake a little depression for their friends' sake?" (lines 14-16). Apparently the poet herself is one of the "friends." For the lovelorn, lovers are too painful to watch.

One of the core themes of Szymborska's poem is the irrationality of romance. She establishes this theme in the first stanza, referring to how "normal" love is in line 1 and how "practical" it might be in line 2. Notably, the poet indents the phrase "For nothing" in line 8 for both visual and semantic emphasis. Love, suggests the narrator, has no practical value. For one, "true love" denies the moral tenet that all persons are created equal, because inherent in romance is the belief that the beloved is somehow more special, more perfect, than anyone else. The narrator notes further that the joy experienced in the state of being in love should itself be more widely distributed: "The light descends from nowhere / Why on these two and not on others?" (lines 9-10). Such selectivity in romance is an outrage against justice, disrupting "painstakingly erected principles," and casting out morality (lines 11-13). Sarcasm oozes from these lines, for no one could possibly claim that love is immoral without joking or being completely insane. The poet's intent is not to be literal but to underscore the pain of loneliness, of being excluded from that rare "light that descends from nowhere." The rarity of true love is another main theme of Szymborska's poem. If everyone would enjoy love's fruits then the narrator might not be as perturbed. However, most people do not experience the sublime joy that lovers do.

The most sardonic stanza in "True Love" is the fourth. Szymborska thickly spreads her verse with sarcastic lines like "It's hard even to guess how far things might go / if people start to follow their example." (lines 22-23). The most ironic line of the poem is line 24, when the narrator asks, "What could religion and poetry count on?" Self-referencing her own craft, Szymborska suggests that poetry depends on pain. If everyone fell in love forever, there would be no need for religious quests or for poetic catharsis. Her craft is fueled by the fact that love is a rare gem. Loneliness and the lack of true love inspire spiritual and artistic fervor.