Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), Nobel laureate in literature in 1996, is the great poet of the deceptively simple. Her vocabulary is everyday; her syntax is precise and quietly subversive. Because her work is still in copyright, this page quotes only a short opening fragment for educational commentary, with full attribution, and leans on analysis rather than reproduction. The lesson she teaches a grammar learner is profound: in Polish you can achieve enormous depth using simple words in marked arrangements, because free word order and aspect carry the meaning.
The text: the opening of "Kot w pustym mieszkaniu"
From Wisława Szymborska, Kot w pustym mieszkaniu ("Cat in an Empty Flat"), in the collection Koniec i początek (1993). The poem is written from a cat's point of view after the death of its owner.
Umrzeć — tego nie robi się kotu.
To die — that is not something you do to a cat.
Bo co ma począć kot w pustym mieszkaniu.
For what is a cat to do in an empty flat.
Wdrapywać się na ściany.
Clamber up the walls.
Ocierać się między meblami.
Rub itself among the furniture.
These four lines contain almost no "difficult" words — umrzeć (to die), kot (cat), ściany (walls), meble (furniture). Yet the grammar is doing intricate work, and that is the point worth annotating.
Plain diction over complex syntax
The opening word is an infinitive standing alone: Umrzeć ("to die"), set off by a dash. Polish lets an infinitive function as a topic — a thing held up for inspection — and the dash isolates it as the subject of the cat's silent indictment. The following clause, tego nie robi się kotu, is an impersonal się construction ("one does not do that to a cat / that is not done to a cat") with kotu in the dative ("to a cat"). The genius is the register clash: nie robi się tego komuś is the syntax of an everyday social reproach — the sort of thing you say about rudeness, "you just don't do that to people" — applied with deadpan seriousness to death itself. The grammar is colloquial; the subject is the most serious there is. That collision is the poem's irony.
This deliberate friction between low diction and high subject is the heart of her irony; the mechanics are described on humour and irony through register clash and the literary and poetic register.
The rhetorical question
Line two, Bo co ma począć kot w pustym mieszkaniu, is a rhetorical question with no question mark — Szymborska often drops the mark so the question subsides into a flat, defeated statement. Co ma począć…? ("what is it to do…?") uses mieć + infinitive in its modal sense of obligation or expectation ("what is one supposed to do"). The verb począć ("to begin / to undertake") is itself slightly elevated and old-fashioned beside the plain vocabulary around it — another quiet register touch. The question is not asking for information; it dramatises helplessness. Polish rhetorical questions are surveyed on tag and rhetorical questions.
Co ma począć kot, którego świat nagle zniknął?
What is a cat to do whose world has suddenly vanished?
Aspect as meaning
The verbs in lines three and four — wdrapywać się, ocierać — are both imperfective infinitives, and the choice is meaningful. The imperfective evokes repeated, ongoing, purposeless motion: not "to clamber up a wall" once and be done (which would be the perfective wdrapać się), but to keep clambering, over and over, in aimless distress. The cat's grief is rendered as endless, uncompleted activity — exactly what the imperfective expresses. Had Szymborska used perfectives, the actions would read as finished tasks; the imperfectives keep them open, restless, unresolved. This is aspect doing emotional work, and it is invisible to a reader who treats the two forms as interchangeable. The foundation is on the meaning of the imperfective and aspect overview.
Słychać tylko, jak ktoś wdrapuje się i schodzi, wdrapuje się i schodzi.
One can hear only someone clambering up and coming down, clambering up and coming down. (imperfective = endless repetition)
Free word order as a poetic instrument
Polish word order is grammatically free, which means poets use position itself to carry emphasis and rhythm. Fronting Umrzeć to the very first slot makes death the topic before we even reach a finite verb. Elsewhere Szymborska routinely places the most charged word last, in the focus position, or front-loads a contrast. Consider how meaning shifts with order alone:
Nikt go nie wołał.
Nobody called it. (neutral statement of fact)
Jego nikt nie wołał.
HIM nobody called. (the cat — fronted, contrastive: it was him in particular)
Both are grammatical; the second foregrounds jego by moving it to the front, a stylistic choice English can only render with stress or a cleft. This freedom is the resource Szymborska mines line by line; see stylistic word order.
Szymborska's most anthologised opening, the title line of Nic dwa razy ("Nothing twice", set to music and known to every Polish schoolchild), works the same way: a flat aphoristic syntax — Nic dwa razy się nie zdarza ("nothing happens twice") — whose plainness is precisely what makes the thought land. We name it here rather than reproduce it, in keeping with copyright.
Common Mistakes
These are interpretive and grammatical errors learners make with poetic Polish.
❌ Reading 'tego nie robi się kotu' as 'the cat does not do that'.
Misparse — się here is impersonal ('one does not do that'), and kotu is dative ('TO a cat'), not the subject.
✅ 'tego nie robi się kotu' = 'that is not done to a cat / you just don't do that to a cat'.
Impersonal się + dative kotu.
❌ Treating wdrapywać się and wdrapać się as interchangeable.
They are not — imperfective = endless repetition (the poem's point), perfective = a single completed climb.
✅ wdrapywać się (imperfective) renders aimless, ongoing motion; wdrapać się (perfective) would be one finished climb.
Aspect carries the emotional meaning.
❌ Assuming 'Bo co ma począć kot' must have a question mark to be a question.
Incorrect — Polish (and Szymborska) often write a rhetorical question with no mark, as a flattened statement.
✅ 'Bo co ma począć kot w pustym mieszkaniu.' is a rhetorical question deliberately punctuated as a statement.
The dropped mark is a stylistic choice.
❌ Hearing 'Jego nikt nie wołał' as ungrammatical because of the order.
Incorrect — the order is fully grammatical; fronting jego is a contrastive/emphatic choice.
✅ 'Jego nikt nie wołał' = 'HIM nobody called' — emphatic fronting enabled by free word order.
Case marks the roles, so order is free for emphasis.
Key Takeaways
- Szymborska reaches depth with ordinary vocabulary placed in marked syntax; the simplicity is engineered, not accidental.
- Her irony comes from register clash — colloquial grammar (impersonal nie robi się, the unmarked rhetorical question) aimed at the largest subjects.
- Aspect is meaning: imperfective infinitives (wdrapywać się, ocierać) render endless, unresolved motion that perfectives could not.
- Free word order lets her foreground a word by position alone — front for topic, end for focus — a resource English lacks.
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