This undergraduate thesis analyses the opera of Wisława Szymborska and Tadeusz Różewicz, two Polish poets active in the second half of the twentieth century. It focuses on their self-reflective poems, through which the poets discuss their own poetics and writing processes, the role of literature and the image of a poet in the contemporary world. Różewicz is defined chiefly by his traumatic experience of the second world war, which caused him to resort to silence and to perpetually seek new poetic forms that would be able to describe the new post-war reality. Szymborska’s poetry is less defined by collective experience; rather it speaks of her own poetic vision, founded in perpetual doubt and sense of wonder at the world, full of everyday miracles. The two poets thus differ quite a lot in tone, but they share the sentiment that poetry is an ideal medium for reflections about themselves, the world, and of course – poetry.
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