A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth

In Szymborska’s “A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth,” very little action takes place, though the poem trembles with the excitement or threat of dramatic action on a literal horizon: a table edge. The poem demonstrates Szymborska’s characteristic agility in creating unexpected perspectives that allow the reader to see common situations in new and revelatory ways. The speaker possesses interior knowledge of a child’s mind while conveying advanced sophistication and wisdom. Through the scale of events and the speaker’s often playful tone, Szymborska engineers a situation in this poem that charms and terrifies at the same time.

Szymborska’s speaker effects both distance and intimacy via academic diction in a typical, domestic scene of childhood curiosity. The poem remains in the place of childlike wonder at the immense potential of unbounded reality, where inanimate objects retain the same self-determination as people, and a toddler can plan and execute extended research projects. The speaker expands the child’s scope beyond science and history: “Mr. Newton still has no say in this” (Line 23). For now, as a new being in this world, the little girl can believe all things, including herself, are capable of anything.

Szymborska proposes that we abandon many possible worlds on the way to defining our truths, whether physical or mental.