Love at First Sight

In “Love at First Sight,” the speaker muses on the tensions between serendipity and fate in a couple’s romantic life. They question the concept of “love at first sight” and ask the reader to consider the fateful possibilities of everyday encounters. Szymborska uses poetic devices like irony, point of view, and personification to set a gently humorous setting for the poem.

The first stanza introduces the poem’s primary theme: the two lovers’ understanding of the origins of their relationship. The speaker describes their firm conviction that “a sudden passion joined them” (Line 1). While the lovers are certain that their romance began the first moment they saw each other, the speaker believes this is just a “beautiful” (Line 3) fantasy. Certainty in any aspect of life, they suggest, is misplaced. The external forces of Chance and Destiny—and most people’s inability to note the significance of every moment—make “uncertainty” (Line 4) more beautiful than blind confidence.

In Stanza 2, the speaker ironically wonders what “the streets, staircases, hallways” (Line 7) would have to say to the lovers, shifting narrative priority to the everyday places where the lovers could have “passed by each other a million times” (Line 8). This light-heartedly emphasizes the lovers’ faulty belief system: An inanimate flight of stairs might know more than they do. The speaker’s focus on these ordinary spaces also reminds the reader of the possibilities to be found in daily life. The ironic tone of the speaker’s questioning reveals another important implication: The speaker believes it to be fully possible that the lovers have met before, though there is no way to know for sure.

In Stanza 3, the speaker steps into the poem in the first-person voice (Line 9). They want to directly ask the lovers if they remember meeting at any point before they fell in love. The speaker catalogues awkward social scenarios, as if to jog the lovers’ memories: running into a stranger in a revolving door (Line 12) or apologizing for bumping into someone in a crowd (Line 13). The speaker finishes the stanza by ironically answering their own question: “No, [the lovers] don’t remember” (Line 16). In each successive stanza, the speaker further disassembles the lovers’ beliefs by pointing out the increasing likelihood that they have met before. Szymborska’s use of poetic irony here is precise: It encourages the reader to pause and reflect on the deeper meaning in the poem.

Szymborska introduces an important new figure in Stanza 4: the personification of Chance (Line 18). Again, the lovers’ ignorance is emphasized. They would “be amazed to hear” that Chance has been toying with them “for years” (Lines 17-99). But at the same time, Chance’s presence somewhat removes the blame from the lovers. Perhaps Chance truly did not allow them to meet before or, if they did, Chance made the circumstances in that moment less than ideal.

Chance is personified as childish and fickle, “toying” (Line 18) with the lovers because it is not ready to mature into another personified force, “Destiny” (Lines 20-25). The lovers seem to have less and less agency over their own lives; they have no control over Chance. The speaker describes how Chance pushed and pulled the two apart, unwilling to initiate their fateful encounter. The reader has a new interpretive lens for the lovers’ potential earlier meetings: If Chance allowed the pair to previously stumble into each other, it also ensured the timing was not right.

In Stanza 6, the mysterious workings of the universe become even less scrutable. There were omens, the speaker suggests, “signs and signals” (Line 26) that the lovers could not “read […] yet” (Line 27). The speaker returns some agency to the lovers here: If they were versed in reading the coded messages of fate, they would have understood the events leading up to their relationship. These “signs and signals” are described as a leaf passing from one lover’s shoulder to the other (Lines 28-31), a dropped item (Line 32), or a misplaced childhood ball (Lines 33-34).

While these “signs and signals” might seem to guarantee that the lovers were destined to be joined, they are not very useful omens as the lovers could never understand them. In most religious systems, omens are dramatic moments which are tough to miss, but in Szymborska’s poetic universe, they might be as unassuming as a falling leaf or a shared doorknob. In the most esoteric example, the speaker suggests that the lovers might have even dreamed the “same dream, / grown hazy by morning” (Lines 39-40). The poetic irony is at its heaviest here: The lovers could not reasonably be expected to discover their shared dreams.

In the final stanza of “Love at First Sight,” the speaker broadens the lens from the specific experience of the lovers and applies the poem’s lessons to the overarching human experience:

Every beginning

is only a sequel, after all,

and the book of events

is always open halfway through. (Lines 41-44)

From the speaker’s point of view, first encounters sparking “sudden passion” (Line 2) are often, in reality, just another step in a long line in events dictated by Chance and Destiny. Every human connection is a continuation, or “sequel” (Line 42), to stories previously started. There are no solid beginnings or endings. Instead, each person’s “book of events” is “always open halfway through” (Lines 43-44). The only way a person can assert some agency over the course of their life, the speaker suggests, is to read the “signs and signals” (Line 26); that is, to pay closer attention to everyday things in life.