When Wislawa Szymborska won the world's top literary prize in 1996, her friends called it the "Nobel disaster". This was not just because she had spent an uncomfortable night before the award ceremony in the bath: the bathroom was the only part of her quarters in a grand Stockholm hotel in which she could manage to turn on the light. Nor was it the "torture" she felt in having to make a speech-one of only three she had given in her life. The real disaster was the trauma of fame and fortune. It was years before she could publish another poem. Her fans' delight in her Nobel prize was mixed with disappointment that it had rendered her mute.
展开▼
