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. A being who has “been in this world over a year” (Line 1) and who still hasn’t “taken in hand” (Line 3) all the world’s reality can envision more interesting scenarios than a jaded adult committed to the rules of physics. The poem’s speaker allows the reader to borrow childhood ingenuity, returning to a state of mind that finds the behavior of “creamer, spoons, bowl” (Line 15) to be “fascinating” (Line 17). Raising questions like “will they roam across the ceiling?” (Line 20) invites the reader to unlatch their own expectations of physical reality, returning to a mind that can be surprised and delighted again by behavior that adults no longer even note as remarkable. If we can wonder what might happen, instead of expecting what experience requires us to believe will happen as the table objects slide until “trembling on the brink” (Line 19), we might bring that sense of inquiry to other pieces of our world.

Ironic juxtaposition in the poem also invites the reader to question assumptions about reality. The tension between the speaker’s worldly sophistication and the little girl’s pre-speech innocence raises questions about point of view and maintains curiosity about the speaker’s identity and intention. Line 1 describes a “she” who has “been in this world for over a year,” establishing, along with the poem’s title, a one-year-old little girl as the focus of events. However, the speaker manifests internal knowledge of the child’s plans and judgment; in Line 4, the speaker knows the “subject of today’s investigation,” the plans of a child who might barely speak in sentences and doesn’t have the vocabulary of research. In Line 17, the speaker declares “it’s fascinating” to wonder how the objects of the table will behave, expressing sophistication in diction but maintaining the pure mind of a child who does not yet understand cause and effect. The speaker’s voice might represent a coy adult playing an imaginative game, narrating a child’s behavior with wry adult wit, or it could portray the observations of an omniscient, godlike spirit. The ironic tension between the knowing voice and unknowing action knits the poem together around the theme of experimentation and inquiry.

Szymborska’s speaker also creates a middle terrain between other opposites: interior and exterior; the physical life and the imaginative; rules and opposition; education and experience. The scene takes place indoors among objects that “don’t all want to go” (Line 9), or which cannot be moved, based on the child’s experience: the bookshelf, the walls, the table (Lines 9-10). By Line 22, the speaker imagines the child wondering whether the objects from the table might “hop onto the windowsill and from there to a tree” (Line 22); this moves the entire collection past the edge of the table and over another threshold (the windowsill), leaving domestic safety to enter the natural world.

The physical world dominates the poem with the motions, actual and potential, acting on subjects; though the walls prove “unyielding” (Line 10) to the child, the tablecloth becomes an accomplice in Line 13, demonstrating “a willingness to travel.” With its help, the child moves the “glasses, plates, / creamer, spoons, bowl” (Lines 14-15). This energy gives the child evidence, not only of physics but of her own existence. She learns that she can make a physical impact on her surroundings. Meanwhile, the speaker frames her innocent interactions in the language of academic inquiry, reminding the reader of the corresponding imaginative life beginning in the child as well, the intuition and intelligence that will allow her to categorize and process the experiences she accumulates. The bookshelf in Line 9, the speaker’s invoking of Isaac Newton in Line 23, and the idea of the “experiment” as expressed in Line 25 all point to the intellectual, imaginative life that corresponds to the physical.

Both the speaker and the child test boundaries in the poem, showing an awareness of various systems of rules but, on occasion, rejecting their authority. The child explores her command of “this world” (Lines 1 and 2), the speaker hinting at the possibility of others, also available for scrutiny. In this world, nothing yet presents limits to the child; while “not everything’s been examined” in Line 2, by Line 26, the speaker tells us “it will,” meaning the investigation will be completed. The “unyielding walls” (Line 10) and “stubborn table” (Line 11) can be coaxed or “taken in hand” (Line 3), brought under the child’s will if it’s strong enough. The speaker even questions the rules of nature, claiming “Mr. Newton still has no say in this” (Line 23); the “still” meaning that in the trajectory of this little girl’s development, Isaac Newton and his physical principles do not yet exist. She can still hope the spoons might “roam across the ceiling” (Line 20) rather than clattering to the ground, while Newton might only “look down from the heavens and wave his hands” (Line 24) as if attempting a magic trick.

The swing between extremes creates the energy and sense of possibility in Szymborska’s poem. Disasters will always come and go, but the humor and beauty found in people, objects, situations, and in word play itself bring us back like gravity to our hearts, even if we don’t believe. Szymborska portrays disbelief as our natural state, questioning authority as a creative act, and imagination as without bounds. Alternately, the speaker describes the tyranny of an unyielding force unaware of its destructive potential, leaving witnesses only to marvel and survive. Humanity infuses even the inanimate when we can look at our surroundings with excitement and love; however, investing our love in our surroundings heightens our stake in the world and potential for suffering. This paradox defines Szymborska’s work.