I Just Happen to Be Here — Picking Up the Fragments of Alice Milani’s Si dà il caso che io sia qui
They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
The windows have not been opened. The sheets have not been lifted. The floor has not been stepped on. The chair has not been settled into. Everything is still asleep, and inspiration suddenly breaks into Wisława Szymborska’s mind.
As soon as we open Si dà il caso che io sia qui, we encounter the meeting between inspiration and Szymborska. Or rather, we might call it an intimate and intense confrontation. The poet asks inspiration to stay: “You must tell me more about yourself.” Interesting, the poet says. But when it comes to turning this inspiration into a poem, she complains: “No, don’t be ridiculous.” Her tone is so certain, like her hand pushing open a window, as a piercing white light rushes toward her.
The poet’s directness is sharp. It allows no shadow.
Yet the poet’s inspiration is stubborn too. It does not give up arguing, until the poet pleads, “Don’t torture me. Don’t insist, because it’s useless.” As the poet puts on her dress, she warns inspiration that even if she writes it down, she will “tear it up and throw it in the trash.” The poet puts on her shoes, as if kicking inspiration away with one foot. Inspiration sighs and disappears.
This graphic biography of Szymborska begins with “the struggle between the poet and inspiration,” vividly capturing the creator’s inner confrontation beneath the quiet gestures of everyday life. This delicate opening also reveals the creative intention of the Italian artist Alice Milani: rather than concretely depicting outward appearances, she wants to bring forth the space and movement of the human heart, to break through the biographical form built from sequences of events, and to gaze at a moment of existence that cannot be confined by time.
Fate draws them close,
pushes them apart,
stifles a laugh,
bars their path,
then leaps aside.
Alice Milani’s logic of composition, narration, and montage—where does she ask our gaze to stay? What does she make us feel, only to drive it away the next moment?—is like the “fate” that opens and blocks the path, deciding how Szymborska takes shape in our hearts. More precisely, what we see is in fact the Szymborska held in Alice Milani’s own heart.
The Szymborska in her heart moves slowly through the lightness of daily life, then suddenly, with a snap, falls into a major turn of fate. It is like the opening scene, where Szymborska kicks inspiration away with one foot and steps with the other into her wedding day at the House of Literature. Her husband Adam wants to give his newspaper job to Szymborska, who is bent over her desk; on the next page, the same Szymborska bent over her desk says, “Adam and I divorced.” Late at night, Szymborska and her second husband laugh and chat while playing cards. She says, “The laws governing the universe have nothing to do with the poet’s work. But of course, one must try… I think I have saved one small fragment of the world.” On the next page, Szymborska stands at her husband’s grave, unable to save them from parting in death.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.
The dramatic accent of uncertainty suddenly resounds, instantly pouring full and flowing feeling into the plainness of everyday life. The beginning of one encounter is, after all, only the sequel to a previous story, and every sequel will turn into a new plot. What I remember most is the cloud, “free of any memory’s burden,” floating easily above the facts, bringing Szymborska her lover; and another cloud, “moving from the west,” arriving to take him away. Alice Milani’s narrative aesthetics correspond beautifully to Szymborska’s poetic style: through simple, ordinary, and minute experiences, she lays out the abundance, barrenness, absurdity, and suffering of modern human life.
The Italian title of Si dà il caso che io sia qui means “I just happen to be here.” This is Szymborska’s modest phrase. However much she saw through the workings of things, however many fragments she saved, she smiles and says: nothing much, I just happen to be here. Just as she said in her 1996 Nobel Lecture: “Poets, if they’re genuine, must also keep repeating ‘I don’t know.’ Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate…”
There is never a moment when Szymborska does not observe closely the changing trajectories of existence, and never a moment when she is not cautious about her own position of naming. Alice Milani’s shifting lines and her alternating arrangements of simplicity and complexity in color correspond to Szymborska’s still-forming state of being: constantly saying “I don’t know,” unwilling to settle too easily. And so, when the end of the graphic novel asks our gaze to move from Szymborska’s face toward a palace glowing in the night, and to silently recite her lines—“My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first. Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home…”—Szymborska’s figure suddenly becomes clear. For the first time, we sense her the way one senses movement and breath in the dark.
＊ The poem running through this essay is Wisława Szymborska’s “Love at First Sight.”
Originally published in OKAPI Reading Life Journal.