Niepojęty przypadek: Szymborska i Lem

In the article, I review the life events of Wisława Szymborska and Stanislaw Lem – who were close in age – that brought their fates together after the war. I aim to highlight the similarities in their perspectives on certain fundamental issues. Sometimes, these convergences seem to lead to intertextual connections between the otherwise very different works by the two writers. I pay special attention to the similarities between the concepts expressed by Lem in Summa technologiae and some of Szymborska’s “ontological” poems, with particular reference to the themes of “chance,” “individual identity,” “evolution,” the shared suspicion of metaphysics, their generally nonanthropocentric vision, and the importance of rationalism and irony as keys to reading the world.