Grammatical Excursion of “Atlantis”
In her work, Szymborska is attempting to capture the confusion around the multitude of hypotheses about the disappearance of Atlantis. She mimics a feeling of confusion by breaking up complete clauses and using conjunctions to join simple sentence patterns. In the first stanza she says, “They were or they weren't./On an island or not.” Rearranged, this sentence would create a few different clauses: “They were on an island or they weren’t on an island.” Both of these clauses are sentence pattern I, but the rearrangement of both clauses separated by a line break and a period begins the atmosphere of confusion Szymborska is trying to create.
Stanza three creates a pattern of sentence pattern VI, V, VII, and an incomplete V. The final two lines: “They were meant to stand forever./We suppose” could either say “We suppose they were meant to stand forever” which would be a complete sentence V or “They were meant to stand forever” which is both passive voice and sentence pattern VII. The possibility that the final two lines can create either a complete rearranged sentence pattern V or an incomplete V and a complete VII relates to Atlantis as a theory. Szymborska is hypothesizing that there is an answer to the myth of Atlantis, but that since she doesn’t know it, she has to include several options at once. This pattern is repeated elsewhere in the poem when she says, “Someone summoned something./ Nothing was called.” Again, the first line is sentence pattern VII. Similarly, the subject, while grammatically specified is intentionally unspecific. The last line in the stanza is sentence pattern VII again, because it is passive voice with an absent subject. Szymborska is continuing to create the possibility of an unknown actor, which she is accounting for without specifying who knows the true fate of Atlantis.
The lack of concrete subjects, the breaking of simple clauses and the rearrangement of others creates the atmosphere of confusion that Szymborska herself likely feels when discussing all the possible fates of the lost city of Atlantis.