Love at First Sight

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form, Meter, and Tone

“Love at First Sight” is written in free verse, meaning the poem has no consistent rhyme or meter. It contains 44 lines and eight stanzas.

As in her other poetic works, Szymborska uses simple, concise language. The everyday register of her vocabulary and her casual manner make the poem accessible to readers of all levels. While her message is not to be taken lightly, her use of poetic irony also keeps it from being too serious—or even preachy. Szymborska does not scold; she gently teases. Her topics are serious, but she does not resign her verse to a serious form and meter. Her tone is conversational—the lines ebb and flow as if the thoughts are occurring to the speaker as they go. “Love at First Sight” is suffused with a subtle, tasteful sense of fun.

Irony and Humor

In literary terms, irony is when the reality of a thing is not as it seems. It is the tension between how things appear and how they actually are. Here, the lovers’ belief that they fell in love at first sight is ironic because they may have met many times before.

Szymborska also uses humor to highlight the irony of the couple’s misunderstanding. The speaker slyly questions what inanimate objects—“the streets, staircases, [and] hallways” (Line 7)—would have to say about the lovers’ misguided beliefs. Some of the signs and signals of their future love are playful too, like “a leaf [fluttering] / from one shoulder to another” (Lines 30-31).

On a deeper level, the entire conceit of “Love at First Sight” is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Even as the speaker criticizes the lovers for not realizing the reality of their situation, they admit that at the time, the lovers lacked the necessary tools to interpret Chance’s signs. This discrepancy meta-textually undermines the reader’s certainty in the speaker. Is the speaker really as omniscient as they seem? The overall message of this irony is clear: Even the most self-assured speakers can be mistaken or deficient in their perception of events.

Point of View

Szymborska’s speaker in “Love at First Sight” is a seemingly omniscient (or all-knowing) one. Because the speaker is at least somewhat aware of the lovers’ past, present, and future, they can authoritatively speak on the forces guiding the lovers’ lives.

By inhabiting this perspective, Szymborska explores the roles Chance (and eventually, Destiny) played in bringing together the lovers. She can imagine, too, many potential opportunities for the lovers to have met in the past. While ignorance stifles the lovers’ understanding of their world, Szymborska’s speaker is not encumbered by this limited way of thinking.

Personification

In “Love at First Sight,” Szymborska uses personification—applying human traits to non-human things—in the figures of Chance and its evolutionary form Destiny. Chance is characterized as a capricious child. It “toy[s]” (Line 19) with the lovers for years because it refuses to grow up and become Destiny (Lines 20-21). This mischievous being—not unlike Cupid, the playful cherub of love—moves the lovers together and apart on a whim, taking away their agency.

Chance’s presence is insidious; the lovers have no idea this outside force is so heavily intervening in their lives. While the lovers feel “a sudden passion joined them” (Line 2), the decision was never theirs. According to the speaker, Chance simply decided to evolve into Destiny at that moment (Line 21). This lends a somewhat darker undertone to the otherwise light-hearted nature of the poem. People cannot dictate the outcome of their lives—they can only learn to read the hints Chance and Destiny provide. But while the reader can never be confident that they are the author of their own “book of events” (Line 43), they can take comfort in continuity of the narrative: Their life’s story is always only “halfway through” (Line 44).