THE POLISH poet and critic, Wislawa Szymborska - described as the Mozart of poetry - has won the 1996 Nobel Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy announced yesterday.
The academy said that Szymborska (73), who lives in Krakow, won the prestigious award for her "poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality".
The award surprised observers, who had expected a novelist to win the $1.12 million award following Seamus Heaney's win last year.
Szymborska, tracked down to a hotel for writers in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane, said she was delighted but also apprehensive at the prospect of worldwide fame.
"This is a difficult situation. I am normally a very private person and now I foresee some difficult moments," she said.
"I am very pleased for Polish literature although there are other poets like me in Poland," she said.
The academy of Swedish literary that awards the annual prize said her handful of slim volumes of poetry were very difficult to translate because of their stylistic variety.
"Since 1957 when censorship had lost its stranglehold after the thaw of the previous year - she has published a handful of slim but powerful collections of poems, a few volumes of book reviews and a number of highly esteemed translations of earlier French poetry," the academy said.
"She has been described as the Mozart of poetry, not without justice in view of her wealth of inspiration and the veritable ease with which her words seem to fall into place. But . . . there is also something of the fury of Beethoven in her creative work," the academy said.
Ms Clare Cavanagh, one of the few translators of the poet into English, said: "She turns out under this modest and witty surface to be a very great poet. She's got this very light, witty touch.
"She's a very exceptional combination. She's a great philosopher on one hand but on the other hand has mass appeal in Poland," Ms Cavanagh said at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, where she teaches.
As well as being a poet, Ms Szymborska has published book reviews and translations of French poetry.
"With her distance and commitment, Szymborska accords full support to her idea that no questions are of such significance as those that are naive," the Swedish academicians said.
Ms Szymborska is the fifth Pole or Polish born writer to win the literature prize since it was first awarded to Frenchman, Sully Prudhomme, in 1901.
Earlier this week, Szymborska won the Polish PEN club's poetry award. Polish literary critics were overjoyed at the Nobel award.