“The joke, for me, is the best recommendation of seriousness.” The poetry humour and Wisława Szymborska’s play with word and image

Abstract

In Wisława Szymborska’s creative works the poetic humour links with philosophical investigations on the important problems, such as the place of people in the surrounding world. The poet exposures discrepancy between images in human consciousness and their realisation in reality. The both cathegories – humour and wisdom – create the complementary arrangment and belong to the domain of irony, self-irony and scepticism. Szymborska’s poetic humour has cognitive value. It verifies admitted truths.

After the Nobel Prize (1996) the literaty „amusement switch” took place, because Szymborska published the humorous verses in periodicals – later collected in separate book Rymowanki dla dużych dzieci (Little Rhymes to the Adult Children, 2003). Here the aspects of social games and the creation of the new literary genres are very important. The poet continues the tradition of absurdity in poetry, modyfies the schemes of West and Polish limerick and developes the small „neo-genres”, such as „moskaliki” („Moscow little verses”), „lepieje” („better-do-something verses”), „altruitki” („altruistic verses”) and „podsłuchańce” („overheared pieces”) in the separate cycles. Also pay attension to Szymborska’s collages (forms linking pictures and words), in which the poet goes back to plays of the surrealistic artists. In this very short poems we have to admire poetic invention and cleverness of literary concepts.