The poet who called the Nobel Prize 'the Stockholm tragedy'

Wisława Szymborska spent nearly her whole life in Kraków, Poland, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Rather than grand ideologies, she wrote poems that found the wonder of existence in small everyday objects and moments.

For the deeply shy poet, the attention that poured in after the Nobel was a heavy burden, and those close to her even called that period 'the Stockholm tragedy.' In her Nobel lecture, she named 'I don't know' as the most precious phrase for a poet.