On 3 November, the book Dusty Keepsakes, a biography on Wisława Szymborska(1923-2012), recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, was presented in the Saló de Graus at UIC Barcelona. Anna Bikonta, co-author of the work alongside Joana Szczesna, explained the difficulties they faced in completing the task. On hand at the event were the Consul General of the Republic of Poland, Marek Ciesielczuk, and Iwona Malecka, from the Catalan-Polish Association. Dr Judith Urbano, dean of the Faculty of Humanities, introduced the presentation, which began with a reading of two of Szymborska's poems, one by Professor Xavier Ecribano and the other by Gaston Gilabert.
According to Anna Bikonta, Szymborska dedicated her time almost exclusively to writing poetry. "Yet altogether, her poems fit into a book that is not exceedingly large." The poet felt that the one tool all good poets should use was the bin. She also had a clear opinion about how biographies should be written, believing they should deal with deeper issues and not so much with official matters. As a result, for Anna Bikonta and Joana Szczesna, this was no easy task.
Szymborska debuted as a poet after the war. She believed in the promise of Communism, though left the party in 1966, an act which required great courage considering the fear in which people lived of possible reprisals against such actions at the time.
She was an austere woman and provident in the number of copies of her work she printed, as she felt that her poems should only be for people who were truly interested. After receiving the Nobel Prize, she moved into a small, two-bedroom flat. According to Bikonta, "this award caused an imbalance in her personal life. She behaved as if she had never received it. In other words, she hardly ever gave interviews or talked to the press. She spoke about self-restraint as a very important characteristic of people." Interestingly enough, somebody once asked her who she would most like to meet, and she named Václav Havel, a Czech writer and politician; Jane Goodall, primatologist and anthropologist; and film director Woody Allen. They managed to bring Goodall and Allen together, but she never showed up.
The event included a screening of roughly thirty never-before-seen photographs of collages by Szymborska. They are made from clippings she would cut from fashion magazines that she would ask her friends to bring back from their travels abroad, and to whom she would send at Christmas.
