Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who was moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He never earned enough money from his paintings. His most famous painting “The Girl with a Pearl Earring” is considered as his masterpiece.
Background Information about the Poet
Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Her work has been translated into English and many other languages.
Vermeer' - Wislawa Szymborska
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.
Analysis of the Poem and the Painting
Wislawa Szymborska, has described the painting using simple words. She didn’t need fancy words to describe the milkmaid “pouring milk day after day from the pitcher to the bowl”. She simply wrote what she saw. Probably like how an ordinary person would describe the painting, without sophisticated words. Besides of the poem, the painting is plain and simple. The woman in the painting is so inspiring that Wislawa Szymborska connected the peace of the woman to the world peace. She thought that the world would stay in peace as long as the milkmaid was peaceful. Obviously, she didn’t really mean that the end of the world depended on the milkmaid in the painting. The milkmaid represents the people, and the people’s peace. People are the only ones who are capable of bringing the end of the world. As long as people live in peace, "the World hasn’t earned the world’s end".