Nothing Twice
- Wislawa Szymborska
Nothing
can ever happen twice.
In
consequence, the sorry fact is
that we
arrive here improvised
and leave
without the chance to practice.
Even
if there is no one dumber,
if you're
the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't
repeat the class in summer:
this
course is only offered once.
No
day copies yesterday,
no two nights
will teach what bliss is
in precisely
the same way,
with
precisely the same kisses.
One
day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions
your name by accident:
I
feel as if a rose were flung
into the
room, all hue and scent.
The
next day, though you're here with me,
I
can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is
it a flower or a rock?
Why
do we treat the fleeting day
with so
much needless fear and sorrow?
It's
in its nature not to stay:
Today
is always gone tomorrow.
With
smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek
accord beneath our star,
although
we're different (we concur)
just as
two drops of water are.
----Wislawa Szymborska
Translated
by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak
I
first encountered this poem in graduate school when I was studying Eastern
European poets, specifically Polish poets. Wislawa
Szymborska stood out among her male counterparts. Her talent was unmistakable,
but the hopefulness and playfulness in her language was what differentiated her
from other poets from
"Nothing
can ever happen twice." The poem begins with this statement, a statement
so strong that we can do little more accept it as fact. Deja
vu aside, Szymborska is spot on with her initial point and she follows it with
this related analysis: "In consequence, the sorry fact is / that we arrive
here improvised / and leave without the chance to practice." The tone, at
this point, is matter-of-fact and a little disappointed by the merciless nature
of life. I'm reminded of a line I've referenced a few times in this blog, even
once earlier this month: If only I knew now what I knew back then…It is a great
philosophical dilemma—are we meant to only possess essential knowledge after
the moment it could have been most useful to us? Who knows, and more
importantly is that even the question we should be asking? Without a lively and
adventurous spirit we'll lack those experiences anyways, which is why Szymborska
takes a different, more humorous approach to drive home the same point as
before in the second stanza. "Even if there is no one dumber, / if you're
the planet's biggest dunce, / you can't repeat the class in summer: / this
course is only offered once." I love how seamless the rhyme scheme and
tone weave together to infuse humor into the poem.
You can't help but laugh when you read those lines and picture yourself wearing
the dunce cap.
The
poem begins a shift from the conceptual to the concrete in the third stanza
with the mention of specific kisses. Sure, "No day copies yesterday"
is a valid and valuable line, but for the line and idea behind it to have the
greatest impact an individualized emotion connection needs to be established.
By inserting the word "precisely" in front of kisses, Szymborska
dares you to flip through your catalogue of kisses and pull out some of those fun, sensual, surprising, and even embarrassing ones.
These are the moments that have made you who you are today,
because no two were "precisely" alike you begin to see the parallel
that she is attempting to convey about days. If the kiss isn't enough,
Szymborska presents the example of an "idle tongue" that
"mentions your name by accident." Invoking a lost love, the poet is further
casting out her nets to yank in the readers by their hearts. The mere
accidental mention of her love's name fills her with the beauty of a rose,
"all hue and scent." Even when the love is present with her in the
next stanza, the poet moves from the wondrous rose to the tireless, painful
ticking of the clock. It's a jarring shift, but highly effective in reminding
us that time is unrelenting and carries on with the same "precision"
that we earlier saw attached to the far more attractive feature of kisses.
In
the final two stanzas Szymborska returns to the style and tone that made the
beginning of the poem so strong. She supplies a rhetorical question about fear
of time, which fits nicely on the heels of the shift of the previous stanza.
Szymborska also provides a quasi rhetorical answer: "It's in its nature
not to stay: / Today is always gone tomorrow."
Yes, that is true, but a large part of me feels I knew that already, in fact I
feel like Szymborska told me that already. At this point in the poem, I need a
stronger ending; thank goodness there is one stanza left! Up to this point most
of the poem has focused on the nature of time and our reaction to it, showing
how no two days are the same so we must live them fully. This is a great
message, but to reiterate this again would steer the poem into a predictable
zone that the poem wouldn't be able to recover from. Instead of cruising,
Szymborska opts for the bumpy path and this change-of-direction works like a
charm. We are the ones on display in the final stanza, our nature is examined
and the ultimate similarity is revealed: just as each day, each moment is
different than the next, we, too, possess this same level of uniqueness. I am
unlike any other human being who has ever existed, who currently exists, and
who will ever exist. When you take this individuality and combine it with the
same individuality of days in our lives then you see the pristine opportunities
we have before us in pretty much every moment we are alive. It's a shame we
waste so many of these moments with the stupid fallacy of operating under what
others think of us.
http://matthewkaberline.blogspot.com/2010/04/nothing-twice-wislawa-szymborska.html