Nothing Twice

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Kiss

There are two instances of “kisses” (Line 12, Line 25). Both represent love and sharing another’s company. The spaces alluded to—including summer school and more abstract “nights” (Line 10)—gives the poem a feel of youthfulness. A sense of romance and whimsy permeates the poem.

No two kisses are the same because they occur at different times. Because of this, “bliss” (Line 10) takes many forms. Each kiss—each love, each moment—offers the speaker a new definition of pleasure or joy. The speaker praises each distinctive kiss, urging the reader to recognize the richness of love, beauty, and tenderness.

The speaker states: “With smiles and kisses, we prefer / to seek accord beneath our star” (Lines 25-26). These lines again indicate happiness, joy, and love. The speaker compares the “we” (Line 27) to “two drops of water” (Line 28). Each person is unique; similarly, each kiss or love is unique. No two forms of love between people are the same, just as no two moments in life are.

Rose

The rose represents the “you” and the speaker’s longing. Scent in “Nothing Twice” induces yearning. Odors can trigger vivid memories. This is known as the Proust effect, after the French writer Marcel Proust, who wrote about how madeleine cakes trigger childhood memory and nostalgia.

In Stanza 4 the speaker longed for the absent “you,” but in Stanza 5 the “you” is present. Suddenly, the speaker isn’t interested in the person at all. Instead, they’re fixated on the clock and the passage of time. The rose suddenly becomes a burden or a “rock” (Line 20). The “you” (Line 14) is no longer a “flower” (Line 20), which represents love and longing. Now, they are a heavy weight and a slowly ticking clock. The rose has transformed from beauty to stone.

The rose is a shifting symbol, indicating the speaker’s inability to take joy in the present moment. Szymborska uses the rose to highlight the speaker’s fickleness and their inability to revel in the single, individual moment of the present.

Summer School

The speaker uses summer school to suggest how life is entirely “improvised” (Line 3) and occurs only once. One can’t repeat or re-do something to get it right. The speaker’s take on life is that each moment is unique and cannot be regained once lost. Nothing in life can be rehearsed, practiced, or redone. One is given only one chance to make each moment count. The speaker establishes the concept of life’s abruptness—“we arrived here improvised / and leave without the chance to practice” (Lines 3-4).

The speaker says, “this course is only offered once” (Line 8), indicating the preciousness of one’s time here on earth. We cannot decide when we enter the world, for how long we stay, and when we leave. The poem argues for enjoying each moment to its fullest. In the theater of life, there is no practice, only living.

Szymborska is a lover of life. She recognizes that there is always something to wonder about, explore, and discover. In her Nobel Prize winning lecture, she says:

…whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we’ve got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world – it is astonishing (Szymborska, Wisława. “The Poet and the World.” 1996. NobelPrize.org.).