The Ghost of Shakespeare in the Poetry of Szymborska
The Ghost of Shakespeare in the Poetry of Szymborska

Author(s): Anna Frajlich
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Cultural history, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Studies of Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Shakespearean themes; Polish poetry; Wisława Szymborska; Jan Kott; Tadeusz Różewicz
Summary/Abstract: Shakespearean themes in Polish poetry offer a huge critical potential. Interestingly, following their disappointment with the aesthetic of socialist realism, poets turned almost en masse to the images of Shakespeare and Bruegel. References to Shakespeare became a sort of code for discussing the topic of tyranny in the face of a still oppressive censorship system. What interests me in particular is the inter-textual relation between Szymborska’s poems and Jan Kott’s essays on Shakespeare, since they both underwent the change of heart experienced by many writers who had been seduced by Communist ideology during the Stalinist era after World War II, and later experienced the need to cleanse themselves. Beginning in 1956, many writers in Poland, and in the Communist bloc as a whole, sought an opportunity to free themselves from the confines of ideology, to break away from the monoculture of the Stalinist years. Those writers included Jan Kott, Tadeusz Różewicz, and Wisława Szymborska, to name only a few from a much longer list. I examine Wisława Szymborska‘s poems dealing with this issue, and review the existing literature on the topic.

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