Event: Life is Bearable at Times...
Date: Friday 30 June 2023
Time: 19:00
Venue: Valletta Cluster Design
The Embassy of Poland together with the Inizjamed invite you to celebrate the 100th birth anniversary of the Polish poetess, Wisława Szymborska, a Nobel laureate in Literature and La Grande Dame of world poetry.
Join us on 30 June 2023 at 19:00 at the Valletta Design Cluster for the special screening of the documentary film about Szymborska Life is Bearable at Times...by Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska, followed by a discussion with Antoine Cassar, Glen Calleja, , , and .
Wisława Szymborska, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, notoriously disliked interviews and public appearances. She avoided the limelight and kept an intimate circle of friends. She chose not to confide in others and did not understand people who would put their private lives up for sale. She claimed that everything we need to know about her, she has already written in her poems. Appreciated by Woody Allen, Vaclav Havel, Jane Goodall, and Umberto Eco, Szymborska was also known as the mysterious Grande Dame of world poetry.
The director of the documentary film, Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska, confessed that it was quite a challenge to make a film about a person who has a strong aversion toward the camera. Kolenda-Zaleska tried to show the beauty of Szymborska’s poetry and her lesser-known passions, together with her love for limericks and all kinds of funny rhymes. After all, as Szymborska would have said herself, one cannot possibly be serious all the time. Contrary to her wishes, or following them, or both, Kolenda-Zaleska revealed the so-far unknown passions of this Nobel Prize Winner.
It was a wonderful coincidence that in the year in which Poland celebrates the centenary of Szymborska’s birth, Antoine Cassar, a Maltese poet and translator, beautifully translates into Maltese, Szymborska’s poetry book Moment/Waqt.
The book was published by Faraxa Publishing and has been nominated for the 2023 National Book Prize in the Translation Category.
The general public is cordially invited to the screening and the discussion.
Entrance is free.
