English, asked by sunithasonu149, 4 months ago

summary of the poem
few words on the soul

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Answered by HOyaNa123
3

Answer:

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A Few Words On The Soul – Wislawa Szymborska

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We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop,

for keeps.

Day after day,

year after year

may pass without it.

Sometimes

it will settle for awhile

only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment

that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand

in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture,

or lifting luggage,

or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out

whenever meat needs chopping

or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations

it participates in one,

if even that,

since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,

it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:

it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage

and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow

aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us

only when the two are joined.

We can count on it

when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

Among the material objects

it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working

even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from

or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it

but apparently

it needs us

for some reason too.

by Wislawa Szymborska

translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

I was struck by this poem by the Polish Nobel prize winner Wislawa Szymborska, who has been describer as a “Mozart of Poetry”. My mum has a bundel of her poems translated in Dutch, and I remember even as a teenager being struck by her simple but powerful images and metaphors which she introduces so matter of factly. I was interested to read that her reputation rests on a relatively small body of work, fewer than 350 poems. When asked why she had published so few poems, she said: “I have a trash can in my home”…

This particular one feels poignant to me, and filled with her usual depth under what may seem a simple surface. For instance, why does she mention ‘chopping meat and filling forms’ as moments our soul steps out? From the way I know her, nothing is accidental or could just as well be replaced by, shall we say, ‘washing up and writing a letter’. So worth pondering on the details, I feel.

I don’t exactly know where I stand on the question of what is a soul, and do we even have one. But I sense what she means by her description, especially the bit where she says our soul attends us when we’re ‘sure of nothing and curious about everything’, and those particular and special moments when joy and sorrow are joined. And I like the idea that our soul is waiting to join us, waiting for us to stumble on those moments where that is possible. And who knows, with practice it might just be possible to have more of those moments…

Answered by SID007X
2

Explanation:

sorry can't understand that

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