It is Wislawa Szymborska's custom to dress up the serious in the costume of comedy. Even her Nobel Lecture began with an ars poetica disguised as a joke. Well, that one's behind me. And whenever I have said anything, I've always had the sneaking suspicion that I'm not very good at it. This is why my lecture will be rather short.
Imperfection is easier to tolerate in small doses.
When she does write about topics that appear to be personal, it is only as a jumping-off point for a meditation on the human condition. Her poems are founded on the assumption that hers is a universal voice. It is a serious and bold enterprise to venture a diagnosis, that is, to try to say who we are, what we believe in, and what we think. But this is not to say that Szymborska is a poet of abstractions. One of the most distinctive features of her poetry is the way in which she builds from the particular a route to the universal.