The Ghost of Shakespeare in Szymborska

Dr. Anna Frajlich

Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 7:30PM Kane Hall, Walker Ames Room, Kane
Hall

Wisława Szymborska is a winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
for “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and
biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.” For
Anna Frajlich, a poet herself, Szymborska’s poetry is an opportunity to
return to the Polish issues especially the disappointment with communism
and the ideology which seduced some Poles immediately after World War
II. It is interesting that references to Shakespeare became a sort of a
code for discussing the problem of tyranny in the face of a rigid
censorship. In her talk, Dr. Frajlich will examine how Shakespearian
motives served as a metaphor and as a disguise in dealing with the
topics of communism, and the guilt related to communism, in the writings
of Wisława Szymborska.

Anna Frajlich (aka Anna Frajlich-Zając) has lived in New York since
1970, after emigrating from Poland in 1969 with the Jewish “exodus”. She
received her MA from Warsaw University in the Polish literature, and
defended her Ph.D. dissertation in the Slavic Department of the New York
University. Dr.Frajlich is a Sr. Lecturer at the Department of Slavic
Languages at Columbia University, where she teaches Polish language and
literature. Her poetry, reviews, articles and essays have been published
in various journals in Poland, the United States, and Europe. She is the
author of 12 books of poetry, two of them bilingual Polish-English and
Polish-French. The newest edition of her bilingual selection received
very positive reviews (Between Dawn and the Wind; Austin, 2006).

Lecture is free and open to the public

Sonsor: University of Washington Polish Studies Endowment Committee