17 pages • 34 minutes read
Wisława SzymborskaLove at First Sight
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Chance and Destiny
While Chance is first introduced in the fourth stanza, the second and third stanzas offer various scenarios in which this powerful force may have prevented the lovers from forming a real connection—even if the opportunity arose. Its motivations are characterized as fickle (“Chance […] toy[ed] with them / now for years,” Lines 18-19). In Szymborska’s poetic universe, Chance has the absolute power to choose when the lovers fall for one another. It symbolizes a lack of agency for the lovers and, paradoxically, endless possibility. There were countless moments in which they might have met each other, but Chance did not allow their love to flourish.
Chance waited to bring together the pair, the speaker clarifies, because it was “not quite ready yet / to become their Destiny” (Line 20-21). Literary works often frame Chance and Destiny as distinct or even opposing forces: Sometimes unpredictable fortune (Chance) disrupts one’s preordained fate (Destiny). Szymborska takes a radically different approach. She frames Chance and Destiny as the same thing at different stages of development (Lines 17-21). In this schema, Chance is not a perpetual villain: Once it matures, it, too, fulfills its “destiny” to unite the lovers.
Ordinary Spaces and Activities
Szymborska weaves ordinary features of daily life into “Love at First Sight” as unlikely meeting grounds: potential sites for falling in love. The speaker does not suggest the lovers may have met before in a grand ballroom or on a windswept night in the park. Instead, they catalogue simple spaces: a “revolving door” (Line 12) or a “streets, staircases, [and] hallways” (Line 7).
Ordinary (and even annoying) activities, too, have the potential to change the course of one’s life. The lovers did not first encounter each other in some unusual, dramatic scenario. Instead, they may have spoken when someone dialed a wrong number (Line 14) or dropped something on the ground (Line 32). The poet’s decision to showcase the mundane suggests many possibilities in daily life. Szymborska romanticizes the everyday as fertile ground where love has a chance to blossom (should Chance and Destiny allow).
Signs and Signals
In “Love at First Sight,” the motif of omens (or “signs and signals” (Line 26)) reinforces the concept of Destiny. “Even if they couldn’t read them yet” (Line 27), the lovers were always surrounded by indications of their future connection. While these sorts of signals confirm the fate of every individual, they are undetectable to those who do not value the little things in life.
As part of Szymborska’s program to elevate the mundane, the signs the speaker catalogues are often whimsical and modest, such as “doorknobs and doorbells […] where one touch had covered another” (Lines 36-37). The mirroring of “doorknobs” and “doorbells”— as well as the pleasing roundness of their letters and the singsong quality of their sound—lend charm and even an air of magic to Szymborska’s universe.
Some of the signs, though, are less fanciful than others. The final sign, “the same dream / grown hazy by morning” (Lines 39-40), calls to more dramatic omens of the religious and literary past. The ancient Greeks, for example, believed oneirology (or the study and interpretation of dreams) could provide important insight into the future.
But whether the omens are small and charming or metaphysical and abstract, they go completely unnoticed by the inattentive passerby in life. Only the omniscient speaker can discern them, though this power is, perhaps, accessible to others too. The speaker is careful to point out that the lovers “couldn’t read them yet” (Line 27), implying that it is always possible for the lovers (and the reader) to learn this skill.
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By Wisława Szymborska
