Jak patrzeć w dwa okna? Niebo Wisławy Szymborskiej a szkolne interpretacje

Abstract

The basic feature of human condition is uncertainty. The necessary limits and certainties, always yearned for, are only illusory forms of escape from this existential discomfort. Our contemporariness reveals this illusionary or utopian nature of various certainties with special emphasis. At the same time, it makes us realize that we are doomed for disharmonious, contradictory consciousness, for the internal co-existence of mutually exclusive perspectives, strategies of activity, concepts, yearnings, desires and dreams. This is the theme of Szymborska’s poem The Sky, and it is also the “theme” of the dispute on pursuing a stable paradigm of school text interpretations. In the article, a suggestion is made that the argument about the dominant feature, the choice of one of the mutually exclusive interpretive strategies, should be replaced with the consensus about the paradox of coexisting contradictory strategies, because they – perhaps – form a more sensible perspective for the didactic activities than selection of only one, indisputable alternative.