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Document Details : Title: Over 'De wonderkermis' van Wisława Szymborska Author(s): DE DIJN, Herman Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 84 Issue: emeritaatsnummer Date: 2022 Pages: 309-317 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.84.5.3290723 Abstract : This article is an analysis, both literary and philosophical, of a poem by Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska 'The Wonder Fair' (with reference to a couple of other poems as well). The poem contains Szymborska’s view of reality and of real things. The wonder fair is the world as it displays its panoply of wonderful things to the delight of the attentive soul. According to the poetess, every object, fact or happening is a wonder, not some puzzle that has to be explained. Not puzzlement, but wonderment is the attitude in which being reveals itself. In her Nobel Prize speech, she said: '[…] in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s existence in this world'. Real reality is not what appears after investigation and explanation, it is what is there before all domestication and all reduction of the real. Not the philosopher, nor the scientist knows reality; platonic reality (‘wisdom’) or scientific reality (‘the naked truth’) are secondary. It is the poète (maudit by Plato) who sees reality as it originally is. In the words of Roger Scruton, it is important 'to see reality as it really seems'. In some poems, Szymborska criticizes (platonic) philosophy and its sequel science for bringing about a culture that silences reality as intrinsically and originally wonderful. Interestingly, she thereby is on the side of the criticism of western metaphysics and scientism by Heidegger and Wittgenstein. Both coined their own philosophical language capable of reflecting upon things in such a way as not to deny their wonderful nature. Both recognized the inescapability of poetry. What is primordial is not seeing but seeing as, not cognitive questioning but non-cognitive wonderment, not communication but conversation. |
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