wislawa szymborska

In "The Poet and the World," the 1996 Nobel Lecture, Szymborska uses the declarative "I don't know" to distinguish the source of inspiration that visits artists and poets from the altogether different kind of inspiration for which despots are famous.

Read the speech in its entirety here.

(Available in print in the 1997 issue of Artes, An International Reader of Literature, Art, and Music, published in the U.S and Sweden.)