A conversation with Michał Rusinek about the world of Wisława Szymborska
10.12.2025
What does it mean to get to know Wisława Szymborska's world up close? Participants in a meeting with Michał Rusinek, the Nobel Prize winner's secretary and current president of the Wisława Szymborska Foundation, sought answers to this question. The literary scholar, translator, essayist, and lecturer at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow shared his memories of his years of collaboration with the poet and his reflections on her work.
The meeting took place on December 5, in the framework of the Festival of European Literature 2025 in Tirana, thanks to the cooperation between the Embassy of the Republic of Poland and the European Union Delegation in Albania.
During the conversation, moderated by Albanian poet Belfjore Qose, Michał Rusinek humorously recounted Wisława Szymborska's life and artistic choices, her poetry sensitive to the small details of everyday life but touching on universal themes, and the phenomenon of her extraordinary popularity even in culturally distant countries. The audience gathered at the Tulla Culture Center in Tirana reacted enthusiastically and engaged in dialogue with the Polish guest of the Festival.
The meeting once again confirmed that Szymborska's poetry, although rooted in individual experiences, moves and continues to inspire successive generations of readers.