Nobel prize winning poetess Wisława Szymborska has been awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state distinction. 

The announcement was made by the Presidential Chancellery in Warsaw and confirmed by Szymborska’s press secretary, who said, however, that the poetess did not wish to make any comment.

She will receive the order from President Bronislaw Komorowski at a ceremony at the Royal Castle of Wawel in Krakow on 17 January.

Eighty seven year-old Szymborska was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality”.

Since her debut in 1945, she has published no more than 350 poems, most of which are compact and employ such devices as paradox, irony and understatement. 

Modest and extremely shy, she rarely gives interviews. Having heard the news of the Nobel Prize, she said her biggest worry was that she would have to be a public person. She has lived in Krakow since 1931.

Her poems have been translated into many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese. (mk)