The Onion and The Stone

Ryan Lutz

            The poems Conversation with a Stone and The Onion written by Wistlawa Szymborska deals with aspects of nature and inanimate objects, while bringing about a comparison between the human form and that of nature.   By setting up the dichotomy between the animate and the inanimate along with the use of semiotics, Szymborska draws her assessment between humans and the inanimate objects we associate with.  

The form in these two poems, however, is quite different.  In Conversations with a Stone the stanzas jump from five lines then to twelve lines and back down to one line, in no apparent order.  In addition the poem seems to have no rhyme scheme at all.  In The Onion, however, the stanzas are very organized, each one having eight lines. The poem as a whole though, lacks a rhyme scheme.  Why the lack of rhyme though? Some reasons for this may be that in Conversations with a Stone and The Onion the author is trying to defamiliarize us with the form or lack thereof, in order to make us focus on the underlying content of the poem.  In doing so she draws our attention to each and every word in the poem.  For example, in The Onion she makes up several of her own words, which makes us pay closer attention to the poem and all of its language devices.  This helps us realize just how awkward the wording in her poems appears at time when compared to other poets who exercise a rhyme scheme. The words she makes up are awkward, and yet they work well in the setting they are in. But a similarity in the form of both these poems is how she talks about a relatively simple object and uses it to comment on much larger themes. 

            In Conversations with a Stone Szymborska begins to highlight the contrast between humans and nature, beginning with the tension of knowing and not knowing between the stone and the speaker.  “I am made of stone, says the stone ‘and therefore must keep a straight face. Go away.” (Ln20-21).  The rigidness and density of a stone makes it a stone. This is why the stone in the poem is unmoving and acting dense when the speaker attempts to know it. Which makes it harder for the human to truly know the stone.  The stone itself, however, is portrayed as something that contains immense inner beauty from the speaker’s point of view as well as the stone. As described by the exchange between the stone and the speaker in the fifth and sixth stanza. “I hear you have great empty halls inside of you, unseen, their beauty in vain” said the speaker, “Great and empty true enough, says the stone, but there isn’t any room. Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste of your poor senses.”  These lines back up the argument that human’s relationship with nature is one that is mysterious and is difficult, if impossible to ever truly know.  Due to the poor tasteless senses we possess, understanding nature is beyond us and understanding our curiosity is beyond the stone.  Some additional information to back up the idea that nature as a whole is referred to in this poem, is the fact that the stone switches from saying ‘I’ to ‘we’ in the second stanza.  Instead of just referring to me, the stone, could be saying we as in all of nature. But even then, the speaker continually says “let me come in” showing growing irritation as the poem continues.  The stone never offers up a way for the speaker to understand its true nature, and the stone only leaves the speaker with the seed of understanding.  Which prevents the speaker from understanding the stone itself.

            Additionally, to back up the idea that humans are unable to satisfy our curiosity with nature is the section in the ninth stanza where the stone involves other objects of nature. “Just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same. Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said” (Ln 62-64).  By including the water, the leaf and the stone, Szymborska covers plants and water, both integral parts of nature. Even before that, the stone tells the speaker that he lacks the sense of taking part, and how even if he was all-seeing he would still not understand without taking part.  “No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you know good without a sense of taking part” (Ln 50-52). This is because understanding nature proves difficult for humans, but it is even harder for them to ‘concocer’ it.  Which means to intimately know in Spanish. When one thinks of a stone, adjectives like strong, immovable, and unbreakable come to mind.  All these adjectives can be seen in this poem when looking at the stone and its unyielding stance on not letting the speaker in.  But what does this stone symbolize? In a certain lens it could symbolize that nature itself can’t be understood, so therefore it is irrational for the speaker to even begin to want to understand the stone.  Finally the poem ends with the lines:

            I knock at the stone’s front door.

“It’s only me, let me come in.”   

“I don’t have a door,” says the stone.

This passage continues to emphasize the struggle between the speaker’s curiosity and desire about nature and the stone’s continual rejection of that desire.  The speaker and the reader for that matter assumed throughout the poem that the stone had a door.  And when that last line is read it brings up the question of whether or not the stone ever had a door. Is it simply a tactic to brush off humans from understanding it? Or was the speaker’s vision so skewed that he saw a door when there wasn’t one?

            The Onion is also by Wistlawa Szymborska.  One thing that is seen in this poem is the dichotomy between humans and the onion itself.  Initially when we get a first look at the descriptions of humans in this poem it is quite negative and possible satirical.  Szymborska artfully juxtaposes human flaws with the perfection of the onion. Which makes it quite clear that humans are far from perfect when compared to such simple objects in nature.

            “Our skin is just a coverup

            For the land where none dare go,

            An internal inferno

            The anathema of anatomy.” (Ln 9-12).

These lines solidify the assumption that humans have negative connotations in the poem.  When Szymborska says for the land that none dare go she is referring to the human soul and all the evil that humans are capable of.  This also comments on the fact that humans lack self-awareness of our true insides, because if it is a place that no one ever goes to, how is one to be aware of it? The following line “an internal inferno” brings up images of fire and hell, continuing the diminution of humanity’s soul. By continuing to say that what’s underneath our skin is the detestation of nature we realize that the most negative aspect of humanity are being highlighted at the beginning of the poem.

           

            This is in stark contrast to the onion in this poem, while human’s insides are aflame and undesirable; the onion is portrayed as a simple yet perfect object.  It is sitting there at peace like a babushka doll.  When the onion is described in the poem it appears as a part of a whole, with one layer being exactly like the other. “Inside it, there’s a smaller one/ of undiminished worth” (Ln 19-20).  When we see layers in a human each one is darker than the next, at least in the context of this poem.  When we look at the layers of an onion, they are all the same.  The onion is just purely an onion, it is simple. This is why it has such perfections, because of its simplicity. After all it is hard for something to have faults when it only consists of a few things.  It is continually portrayed as perfect even near the end of the poem. “The onion drapes itself in its own aureoles of glory” (Ln 31-32). This gives the onion not only the connotation of being perfect, but somewhat divine as well.  An aureole refers to a circle of light or brightness, which calls to mind the image of a halo, supporting the notion of the onion appearing as perfect.  This is one example of how the onion in poem is showing us the shortcomings of humans when compared to nature. Humans are complex beings; there is nothing we can do about it. Because we are so complex, it leads to all of the negative aspects listed in this poem; it’s beyond our control though.  Our faults are what make us negative, but they are also what make us so intricate. So there is some room for sympathy towards the human in this poem.

“We hold, veins, nerves and fat,

 Secretions’ secret sections.

Not for us such idiotic

Onionoid perfections” (Ln 33-36).

These ending lines show her sympathy towards the human condition. Yes we are flawed, but that is because we are so intricately complex and unique.  The onion is perfect because of how utterly simple it is.  And that simple level of simplicity is idiotic.  However, there is a certain amount of envy that such an object like the onion can be perfect, while humans are reduced to flawed beings lacking self-awareness.

            These two poems appear to be very different on the initial read, after close reading, one can see that there is indeed a connection between the two. However, when we amalgamate Conversations with a Stone and The Onion one can see that they both comment on the relationship between nature and humanity.  The stone highlighted how humans have this never ending curiosity of nature that cannot be satisfied, while the onion divulges the complexity of our being to the idiotic perfections of an onion.  Our relationship with nature is acknowledged as a very complex thing in both poems.  And ultimately when you integrate them you can see that humans will always be left in wonder about it.