Lot's Wife

“Lot’s Wife” by Wisława Szymborska (1975)

Polish poet, essayist, and translator Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) infused her poems with a simplicity that, like “Lot’s Wife,” is deceptive. Her acute examination of humanity resulted in her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In her own version of Lot's wife’s story, Szymborska gives voice to Lot’s wife by using the first-person perspective of a woman fleeing destruction. Confusion abounds: There’s dust everywhere, rodents and insects scurry away from the fires, and Lot’s wife’s mind is also in turmoil as she recalls her hometown. She honestly doesn’t know which way she faces, and she imagines her disorientation looks like “dancing” (Line 41). In other words, her looking back seems like a flippant act of defiance. Like Hecht, Szymborska suggests that there’s far more to Lot’s wife’s action of looking back than traditional narratives suggest.

“The End and the Beginning” by Wisława Szymborska (1993)

Published in Szymborska’s collection of the same name, the poem functions like Hecht’s and Szymborska’s “Lot’s Wife” in depicting atrocities, memory, and human morality in a deceptively simple manner. People return to their routines after a devastating war, while some idle about. The poem shows how violence and trauma follow people regardless of a major event ending.