One monkey stares and listens with mocking disdain,īut when it’s clear I don’t know what to say Two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
“This is what I see in my dreams about final exams: These include an ancient Greek sculptural fragment, and paintings by both Pieter Brueghel and Johannes Vermeer. In several other poems however, Szymborska takes a cue directly from the works of art. The speaking in different languages and at cross purposes has begun. Although they are both placed together on the ensuing lines, they clearly do not communicate in any logical way. There are two different type faces printed throughout this conversation: Italic for the first one, and ROMAN for the second. In another poem she doesn’t literally show the ‘Tower of Babel’ as it was painted by Pieter Brueghel, but she does set up a dialogue between two of its inhabitants. She alludes to the scene without illustrating it. In earlier work, Szymborska takes a more generalized view through a museum, taking note of certain historic objects: an antique plate, a necklace, gloves and shoes, swords, and even a lute. Today however, it has taken on a new and timely meaning related to the Ukraine. When this was written, the author was surely reflecting upon earlier wars and invasions in Europe, especially in her homeland of Poland. One especially is a diminutive poem, of only six lines describing a diminutive painting of a milkmaid by Vermeer. In her collected work, Wislawa Szymborska provides us with several examples of this tradition. How marvelously, at any rate, the poem helps elucidate the painting, and vice versa.” 1 To my mind, this is one of the most important functions of the ekphrastic tradition. the picture Szymborska’s words have in mind must be something very like Vermeer’s Lacemaker.
I paint like Vermeer of Delft.” And in the second one, he speculates: “. From the first poem he notes that Szymborska wrote: “In my dream. In the conclusion of his book, Vermeer in Bosnia, Lawrence Weschler writes about two of Wislawa Szymborska’s poems: “In Praise of Dreams” from 1986, and “Maybe All This” from 1993.
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