From Pole to Pole
PAUL BAILEY
How to Start Writing (and When to Stop)
By Wisława Szymborska Translated and edited by Clare Cavanagh New Directions £13.19
From 1968 until 1981, the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996, worked as a kind of agony aunt for the magazine Literary Life, which was based in Kraków.
She took turns with a colleague to give advice and practical criticism to the many readers who wrote in with requests for advice and criticism. The majority sent examples of their writing – often only a few pages; occasionally an entire novel or collection of short stories or poems – to be considered with a view to publication.
Szymborska’s anonymous contributions to the column Literary Mailbox, collected in this valuable little book, are notable for the common sense – some might call it worldly wisdom – they display. She has no patience with such matters as poetic inspiration and sentimental versifying. When A B from Bialogard writes in, ‘I sigh to be a poet,’ Szymborska replies, ‘We groan to be editors at such moments.’
How to Start Writing (and When to Stop), sub-titled Advice for Authors, is all of a piece with the resonant poetry Wisława Szymborska produced in the second half of a long life that encompassed both Nazism and communism. She knew – and continues to know in her enduring work – whereof she wrote.
The tone is light-hearted, but never flippant. There is no doubting her seriousness, as she reminds novices of the virtues of hard work and selfdiscipline. ‘Let’s take the wings off and try writing on foot, shall we?’ she urges the ‘inspired’ Grazyna from Starachowice. To Ewa from Bytom, she observes, ‘Being “poetical” is the reigning sin of novice poets. They fear simple sentences; they make things difficult for themselves and others.’
She is briskly dismissive of poor Amaba, from an unnamed location: ‘These poems should remain in your desk drawer. The moon has bejewelled the heavens already. Madonnas have ridden carousels before. Poems have previously been woven into garlands. You’ve done your homework. And it shows.’
But she can be helpful, too. She and her colleagues like the literary personality revealed in the pages submitted by M K of Lublin, detecting a dormant talent behind the routine plot of an otherwise moderately interesting short story: ‘We’re glad to have made your acquaintance. Please send us more stories.’
The recipient of this encouraging message would have had no idea that it was coming from the celebrated poet who had often experienced difficulties getting her finest, deeply ironic poetry published, thanks to the ever-present censor. She had made innumerable false starts and frequently despaired of ever attaining her own high standards. Even after she had achieved international recognition, she told interviewers that she always kept a waste-paper basket close at hand.
Szymborska was sceptical about the usefulness of creative-writing courses in schools and universities and refused invitations to teach them. (‘No course, however scrupulously attended, creates talent. At best, it fosters a talent that already exists.’)
To someone with the identity A Seeker from Kudowa she answers, employing the customary ‘we’, ‘No, we don’t have any guides for writing novels.
We hear such things appear in the United States, but we make bold to question their worth for one simple
reason: wouldn’t any author who possessed a fail-proof recipe for literary success rather profit from it himself than write guidebooks for a living?’
The truth is that How to Start Writing is better than any guidebook, in that it illuminates by means of gentle mockery and its refusal to raise invalid hopes and expectations. The very best advice she gives, in my opinion, is when she stresses the importance of reading well. ‘People speak of incompetent writers, but never of incompetent readers,’ she reminds a correspondent whose attempts to find a publisher haven’t been successful.
She consoles P D Z with the suggestion that he or she might become a reader of the highest calibre – disinterested and free from the envy that writers often feel when they read each other’s books. ‘A splendid fate awaits you,’ she assures the person from Chorzow.
I liked these examples of Szymborska’s approach to the art she was devoted to.
First: ‘Even boredom must be described with passion. This is an iron law of literature that no -ism can supplant.’ And then: ‘Talent isn’t limited to “inspiration”. All of us get inspired at times, but only the truly talented spend long hours over a piece of paper struggling to improve the muse’s dictates. Those who are unwilling to take on such labours have no place in poetry.’
Elsewhere, she’s in skittish mood. To
Welur, from Chelm, who asks if her enclosed prose ‘betrays talent’, she replies, ‘It does.’ To Mr G Kr from Warsaw, she says, ‘You need a new pen. The one you’ve got keeps making mistakes. It might be foreign.’
An unstoppable writer is advised to decelerate, chew the end of his pencil and stare out of the window for at least an hour.
This delightful collection of literary home truths is delightfully illustrated by Wisława Szymborska.