Love at First Sight

While Chance is first introduced in the fourth stanza, the second and third stanzas offer various scenarios in which this powerful force may have prevented the lovers from forming a real connection—even if the opportunity arose. Its motivations are characterized as fickle (“Chance […] toy[ed] with them / now for years,” Lines 18-19). In Szymborska’s poetic universe, Chance has the absolute power to choose when the lovers fall for one another. It symbolizes a lack of agency for the lovers and, paradoxically, endless possibility. There were countless moments in which they might have met each other, but Chance did not allow their love to flourish.

Chance waited to bring together the pair, the speaker clarifies, because it was “not quite ready yet / to become their Destiny” (Line 20-21). Literary works often frame Chance and Destiny as distinct or even opposing forces: Sometimes unpredictable fortune (Chance) disrupts one’s preordained fate (Destiny). Szymborska takes a radically different approach. She frames Chance and Destiny as the same thing at different stages of development (Lines 17-21). In this schema, Chance is not a perpetual villain: Once it matures, it, too, fulfills its “destiny” to unite the lovers.