Witold Gombrowicz



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Witold Gombrowicz (Poland, 1904)

"Ferdydurke" (1937) is a satirical and allegorical tale. It has mostly to do with Polish society of the time, and with the literary establishment. Gombrowicz makes fun of his dogmatic critics, of the erudite academics who determine which is the appropriate style, of the convetions of classical learning. The logic of the protagonist is totally insane: no psychoanalyst could explain it. But then his situation is no less insane: an adult forced to behave like a boy. There is Kafka in his situation, but utter madness in how he deals with the situation.
(Note: the English translation changes the names of the characters, for mysterious reasons, and so Jozio becomes a ridiculous Johnnie, Kopyrda becomes Kopeida, Zuta becomes Zutka, Filidor becomes Philifor, Siphon becomes Syphon, Filibert becomes Philimor, Valek becomes Bert, uncle Konstanty becomes Edward, cousin Zygmunt becomes Alfred, cousin Zosia becomes Isabel, etc).

The story is narrated by the protagonist himself, Jozio, who has just turned thirty but is still in search of a mission in life. His numerous aunts have in vain encouraged him to take up a profession. He has written a book titled "Memoirs from a Time of Immaturity" (note: which is also the title of Gombrowicz's first book), but the book has been a failure. He tries in vain to assert his real self, which is still halfway between immaturity and maturity. One day the schoolmaster Pimko shows up. One of the aunts has died. Pimko realizes that Jozio is still too ignorant to write something erudite about the aunt, and decides that Jozio needs to go back to school. Luckily, Piorkowski, who runs a school, is looking for new pupils.
Pimko delivers Jozio to the school but inadvertently starts trouble because he calls the children "innocent". Some of them, led by Mientus, resent it. They write a obscene word on a tree that Pimko cannot see but that Jozio sees. Nonetheless Pimko insists that they are innocent soul. One child, Pylaszczkiewicz, aka Siphon, begins to agree. Quickly the children divide in two groups, the ones who claim to be non-innocent boys, Mentius' group, and the ones who claim to be pure adolescents, Siphon's group. Only one child remains indifferent to the discussion, Kopeida. Later the literature professor, nicknamed Droopy, is shocked to hear the students, led by Kotecki, rebel against a national poet whom they find simply boring. Jozio observes Kopeida, the only one who seems to take no side, neither boy nor adolescent.
The row between Mentius and Siphon escalates. Jozio asks Kopeida to help him stop the fighting but Kopeida instead jumps from the window and disappears. Mentius challenges Siphon to a duel of grimaces, with Bobek and Hopek seconds, and Jozio as the referee. Kotecki shocks another teacher, the Latin teacher, telling him that Latin doesn't do any good to the children. Siphon, however, pleases the teacher by reciting a passage in Latin. The ridiculous duel takes place, with Mentius and Siphon making faces at each other, but then, when Siphon appears to win, it turns into a physical fight, with Mentius and his seconds Bobek and Hopek attacking Siphon and his seconds Gabek and Pyzo.
At this point the novel stops and the author takes a long detour to announce to the reader a tale which he calls "a constructive retrogression": "Philifor Honeycombed with Childishness" (aka "The Child Runs Deep in Philifor"). The author addresses the reader directly ("you"), both defending his aesthetic principles and criticizing the (presumed) aesthetic principles of the reader. But it'a delirious and somewhat grotesque essay. The "you" is not a random reader but a reader who has artistic ambitions to become a classic. Gombrowicz feels that the reader is accusing him of immaturity, and istead accuses the reader (the world of Polish culture?), rejecting his right to aesthetic judgment.
Then comes the actual tale of Philifor, an allegorical tale. Philifor is a master of synthesis, according to which a person is a whole. Momsen, known as Anti-Philifor, is a master of analysis according to which a body is just a collection of disparate parts. The synthesist always attempts to find a higher unity (a symbol of maturity?), whereas the analyst breaks wholes into their parts (a symbol of immaturity?) Both from the Indian continent. Philifor travels with his wife. Anti-Philifor travels with an Italian lover, Flora Gente. They fear and at the same time look for each other. Eventually they meet. The narrator is one of the doctors of law who witnesses the episode, and immediately sets out to take notes. Anti-Philifor uses his dialectic analytical skills to cause Philifor's wife to slowly lose one part of her body after the other. Philifor, desperate to save her, comes up with the idea that slapping the face of Anti-Philifor will revive her. However, Anti-Philifor has guessed and has painted roses on his cheeks, which make the slap ineffective. Philifor then comes up with the idea of provoking Anti-Philifor into slapping him, which will also do: a slap is a slap. Philifor succeeds in saving his wife's life. They proceed to a duel but instead of shooting each other, they start shooting the respective companions, removing one by one all the body parts of the ladies until they fall dead. Anti-Philifor has won the duel. But both the thinkers go mad, wandering around the world and throwing things at anything. They both behave the same way and talk the same way. When asked about their famous duel, they simply say that everything is honeycombed with childishness.
At the end of the fight, Mentius performs a psycho-physical violation of Siphon that destroys Siphon's psyche. Pimko finds Jozio a room in the house of Mrs Youthful, who has a 16-year-old daughter, Zutka. Jozio detects a scheme in Pimko's action: Pimko wants Jozio to fall in love so that he will lose any motivation to be an adult. Zutka is notoriously a "modern" girl, and Pimko introduces Jozio as a 16-year-old who is, on the contrary, a traditional boy. Jozio cannot find the guts to object that he is neither. Pimko is shocked to find out that Zutka has never heard of the poet Norwid. Alone with Zutka, Jozio determines to clarify that he is not a traditional boy but he cannot find the courage, and she first thinks he's just crazy and then ever gets afraid of him. Jozio admits to himself that he has fallen in love. Mentius comes to visit and tries to rape the maid of the house. Nonetheless, he is truly obsessed with stable-boys. Mentius is affected by chronic grimaces, the consequence of his awful duel. Mentius tells Jozio that Kopeida, the most modern of the schoolboys, is also in love with Zutka. Schools is now boring, as Jozio spends all the time daydreaming of Zutka. Siphon dies of the psycho-physical wounds inflicted by Mentius. His death does not heal Mentius, who remains afflicted by the grimaces. Everybody starts avoiding him, even his friends Bobek and Hopek. Meanwhile, Pimko becomes a frequent visitor of Mrs Youthful's house and spends a lot of time lecturing Zutka on Norwid, a fact that makes Jozio jealous. One day over dinner Mrs Youthful and her husband, the engineer Victor, ask Zutka about the boy she is dating, presumably Kopeida, and the parents add that they are totally in favor of her losing her virginity and even becoming a single mother. They call themselves "architects of a new social order" and chat like the enlightened intellectuals that they are, when suddenly Jozio calls Mrs Youthful "mom". The engineer bursts out laughing and his laughter somehow galvanizes Jozio, who, to prove his modernity, starts mixing the fruit salad with all sorts of non-fruit food. An alarmed Mrs Youthful warns Zutka that it's only a pose and tells her not to eat it. Jozio enjoys what he considers a victory. Perhaps the parents are afraid that he will introduce anarchy in Zutka's lifestyle like he has done in the fruit salad.
Jozio decides to spy on Zutka. He notices a bearded beggar outside the house and pays him to hold a twig in his mouth, somehow thinking that this will help him Zutka. He then dances around after reading how Wells (the writer) danced in front of Chaplin, and enters her room. Noticing a flower in a shoe, he catches a fly, mutilates it, and puts it in the shoe next to the flower, another sort of exorcism. He then opens her drawers and finds piles of letters. The letters have been written by students, politicians, scientists, doctors, etc... all of them reduced to boys by the infatuation. Jozio is puzzled that these boys never mention the sexiest part of her body: thighs. For some reason he expects all these people to talk about thighs, and none of them does, although Jozio suspects that their words are codes for "thigh". He translate one love poem written by a boy for Zutka as a sequence of "thighs". All the letter writers ended the letters begging for secrecy. Jozio recognizes two letters: one from Pimko and one from Kopeida. He writes one letter to each of them inviting them to a secret nocturnal rendezvous (same day, same time) and signs them "Zutka".
Jozio keeps spying the family. He sees Mrs Youthful reading Bertrand Russell, her husband reading cabaret songs and laughing, and Zutka taking a cold shower. Finally at night Kopeida climbs to the window. Zutka lets him in and they start making love. Jozio frets that she's about to lose her virginity, but Pimko arrives, tapping at the same window. Kopeida hides in the bed and Zutka lets Pimko in, an old man intoxicated by lust. Just then Jozio shouts "burglars!" and Zutka's parents rush in. They are amused and somewhat proud to see that Zutka was sleeping with a boy, but then Jozio opens the closet where Pimko is hiding and their smiles fade away. Now they are shocked: her girl sleeping with two men at the same time, and one of the two a much older man. There's a limit to their modernity. At this point Jozio tries in vain to save Pimko by inventing an alibi. Victor slaps Pimko in the face. He then tries to slap also Kopeida, but this starts a fight in which all five get involved: Victor, his wife, Pimko, Kopeida and Zutka. Jozio is suddenly disgusted and bored by the scene. He realizes that he is neither young nor old, neither modern nor ancient, neither mature nor immature. He packs his belongings and leaves the house. Outside he meets Mentius, who decides to follow him and proposes as destination the countryside, where stable-boys can be found.
The story is interrupted again by a "preface" to a tale in which Gombrowicz discusses absurd aesthetic principles. Then we get the actual tale, "Philimor Honeycombed with Childishness" (aka "The Child Runs Deep in Philimor" ), another demented and cryptic parable. Two tennis players are playing a game when a soldier shoots at the ball. He disintegrates the ball (and the players keep playing without the ball for a while) but also hits a spectator. This sets in motion a series of incidents that involve several spectators, one after the other, and each time the crowd cheers the event with a thunderous applause
Jozio and Mentius venture deeper into the countryside looking for stable boys. They run into danger when a village of peasants turns into dogs and is about to eat them alive. Luckily they are saved by a car. The car belongs to Jozio's distant "aunt" Aunt Hurlecka, a distant relative of his dead mother. During the car ride, Mentius overhears the aunt mention that Jozio is 30, and is shocked. When they reach the country mansion, Jozio is introduced to "uncle" Edward, to his cousins Alfred and Isabel, and (to Mentius' delight) to the stable boy, Bert. The family is rich and aristocratic. Uncle and aunt are snobs. Their children are spoiled. Mentius immediately invites Bert to their room, but Jozio is seized by an impulse to slap him in the face. Later, Mentius begs Bert to slap him in the face so that they can become brothers. Now the aunt thinks that Mentius is a Bolshevik (who fraternizes with the workers) and the uncle thinks that Mentius is a homosexual (who is lusting after Bert). The parents decide to fire Bert. Jozio decides to leave with Mentius, and they decide to take Bert with them. However, Jozio is seized by the thought of kidnapping Isabel. However his actions result in Bert being suspected of wanting to steal the silver of the family. Uncle and cousin Alfred slap, torture and humiliate poor Bert, and Mentius try in vain to intervene. A fight between servants and masters ensues. Jozio runs away like a child but then, ashamed of being a child, kidnaps Isabel so he can justify his fleeing as an adult love story. In reality he only wants a pretext to run away, and plans to get rid of Isabel once they reach the capital. Isabel, however, is flattered and excited that a man fell in love with her and took her away from her boring life. Jozio now hopes that someone will rescue him from Isabel, his mature choice.

"Iwona Ksiezniczka Burgunda" (1938) [t]

synopsis forthcoming

"Slub/ Marriage" (1946) [t] +

synopsis forthcoming

"Trans-Atlantyk" (1953)

synopsis forthcoming

"Dziennik" (1957)

synopsis forthcoming

"Pornografii" (1960) +

Witold ricorda come conobbe l'enigmatico Federico nella Varsavia del '43, occupata dai nazisti. Invitati da un proprietario terriero, si recano nella sua dimora: Ippolito è una palla di lardo che ripete sempre due volte quello che dice; sua moglie Maria è una religiosa devota; la figlia sedicenne Enrichetta sembra docile ed ingenua. I due forestieri intuiscono, però, l'esistenza di un rapporto d'amicizia tra Enrichetta e Carlo, un bellissimo contadino coetaneo della fanciulla, e si attaccano morbosamente all'idea che i due adolescenti siano amanti; in realtà Enrichetta è promessa ad un avvocato di nome Alberto, del quale è pienamente soddisfatta; non solo, ma confessa d'essere andata a letto con molti ragazzi. Dal canto suo, Carlo è attratto dal sesso senile: alza le gonne di una vecchia comare e dichiara di preferire Maria alla figlia. Witold, che già si figurava una tenera storia d'amore tra i due puri, ne rimane deluso.

Durante una visita della famiglia a casa del futuro genero, avviene un fatto di sangue: la padrona di casa Amelia viene accoltellata a morte assieme a Beppe, un altro ragazzo sedicenne; prima di morire, invece del crocefisso che Maria premurosamente le mostra, fissa Federico. La versione di Beppe d'essere stato aggredito con un coltello e di essere stato anche colpito a morsi da Amelia non viene creduta perché contrasta troppo vivacemente con il carattere della defunta; Alberto in particolare tormenta il ragazzo per estorcergli un'altra confessione, mentre Federico è più propenso ad ammettere che al buio, ed in determinate circostanze, in lei si siano potuti scatenare degli istinti selvaggi.

Intanto Federico ha un piano per costringere Enrichetta e Carlo a tradire Alberto, e riesce ad entusiasmare anche Witold; entrambi desiderano spasmodicamente accoppiare quei due corpi per potersi poi identificare nel loro erotismo: Federico attira i due giovani su un'isola e, col pretesto di una prova teatrale, fa compiere loro dei gesti compromettenti, mentre Witold mostra da lontano la scena ad Alberto; il piano viene diretto da Federico tramite delle lettere lasciate all'amico sotto un mattone.

contemporaneamente si svolge un altro complotto: un partigiano di nome Siemian, che alloggia presso Ippolito, diserta e viene condannato a morte; mentre Ippolito, Alberto, Witold e Federico progettano come ucciderlo, Siemian implora che lo lascino andare; passano il tempo ad ammazzarlo a parole, ma nessuno ha il coraggio bastante per farlo sul serio. Allora Federico escogita un metodo che consiste nel coinvolgere anche i due ragazzi: Enrichetta sale sino alla sua camera e bussa; quando Simian le apre, Carlo lo accoltella; ma, ormai ossessionato dall'idea di essere tradito, Alberto s'introduce nella camera di Simian, lo uccide e poi si sostituisce a lui per farsi uccidere dai ragazzi; per completare l'opera, Federico sgozza Beppe: il loro piano è ora completo.

Witold è un erotomane che vuol vedere il sesso in tutte le cose, oppure è diventato un erotomane perché in tutte le cose c'è il sesso; Federico è un impotente: il suo breve ed intenso rapporto con Amelia non può che essere platonico; al sesso fa da contraltare la religione: è alla messa che Witold ipotizza una relazione tra i due ragazzi, è molto religiosa Amelia in confronto all'ateo Federico; le truppe naziste, che s'intuiscono sullo sfondo, acuiscono il senso di una prigionia da cui tutti i personaggi sembrano ossessionati; l'ambientazione in campagna li isola dal mondo.

La lucida follia di Federico si tradisce soltanto alla fine, mentre per tutto il libro s'è presentata sotto la forma d'una razionale partita a scacchi con la natura. Witold gli è succube perché sente che Federico è in grado di realizzare l'intrusione nell'erotismo giovanile, che da solo non saprebbe procurarsi.

Con stile veloce, essenziale, telegrafico, Gambrowicz mescola narrazione, psicoanalisi, filosofia; i personaggi sono i simboli di un codice da decifrare, buffe marionette la cui personalità è stata ridotta ad un tratto caratteristico, senza il quale sarebbero semplicemente persone comuni. L'adolescenza eccita la morbosità degli adulti, che, ormai impotenti, ne spiano con concupiscenza le mosse.

Gombrowicz called "Kosmos" (1965) ++ "a novel about a reality that is creating itself". He sets in motion a series of mysterious signs that seem to lead one to the other. Suddenly the world is inhabited by a profusion of possible signs, and the difficulty is to decide which ones are natural and which ones are not. The reality of these events cannot be doubted: it's their meaning that can be doubted. And so the novel becomes a psychiatric detective novel: a possibly pointless plot that only leads to the workings of the human mind, to the obsessive-compulsive behavior of frustrated humans who become so paranoid that they see clues to inscrutable conspiracies and possibly horrible crimes everywhere they look. Or perhaps they are philosophers trying to find out what things and events mean in the grand scheme of the universe. The book can be read as a postmodernist meditation on meaning: that everything is connected to everything, that everything happens for a purpose, that nothing is an accident and nothing is a coincidence.
One wonders if this might also be a joke on literary critics and cultural historians: we too assume as clues to the meaning of the book all sorts of words, sentences, factors, hints that might in reality be just randomly there. The whole history of art and literature and music might just be piles of unjustified arbitrary illusions and paranoias by the category of critics.
However, the novel feels unfinished, as if Gombrowicz didn't know how to finish the very funny joke that he had started.

It is a very hot summer. Witold is sick of his parents. He runs into his friend Fuchs, who loathes his boss Drozdowski. They decide to leave the city and move together to a countryside inn. Along the way they find a dead sparrow hanging on a bit of wire from a tree branch. At the inn they are welcomed by a friendly couple of owners, Kulka and Leo. Kulka introduces them to her sexy daughter Lena and to the sexy maid Katasia. In Witold's mind the mouths of these two women merge into one erotic vision, although Katasia's mouth has a scar due to a bus accident. Witold's hopes are shattered when he discovers that Lena, a language teacher, is married to Louis, an architect who is designing a new hotel. When Witold tells the family of the hanged sparrow, Louis narrates that he saw a hanged chicken.

Witold and Fuchs notice a crack in the shape of an arrow on the ceiling of their room and, suspecting that it might be a sign drawn on purpose, they set out to follow the direction of the arrow. They walk through the house and onto the garden and finally find a piece of wood hanging from a a brick.

Dinners are the time when everybody sits around the table and engage in discussion. Leo discusses his work at the bank and the 37 happy years of marriage to Kulka. Witold spends them staring at the two women, in particular at Lena, and wondering whether she's happy with her husband. Later Fuchs drags Witold back to the hanging piece of wood and shows Witold that there is a pole nearby that points straight in the direction of Katasia's room. The two wait for the right moment and then enter her room. Fuchs brings a frog in a box, so that, if caught in the act, they can claim that they only meant to carry out a harmless practical joke. They find nothing out of the ordinary, except many nails. Nails imply hammer. And, sure enough, they start hearing loud hammering around the house. They run away, convinced of a connection.

Obsessed with Lena, Witold climbs a tree to spy on her and sees her undressing in front of her husband. Witold climbs down and, furious, strangles Lena's cat. Then he hangs the cat on the wall just like the sparrow. The discovery of the strangled cat causes much commotion in the house. Fuchs himself doesn't know that Witold did it. Katasia found the frog in her room but Fuch is ready to explain where it came from: he tells them the whole truth because, from his point of view, the strangled cat confirms the suspicion that there is a design in all the "hanging" things. The hammering sound that they heard, however, is readily explained: Kulka has hysterical fits that result in her hammering on a tree stump. Nothing special.

Leo takes the whole group, Lena's parents and two newly wed friends of Lena, Lola and Lolo, to a mountain hut. Along the way they meet a young priest who got lost and give him a ride. At the hut they meet another young couple, the cavalry captain Tolo and the ugly but rich Jadeczka (whom Witold feels repulsed to).

Witold has a lengthy conversation with Leo. Leo likes to talk, especially about the past, but is often obscure, and likes verbal games. Witold loses his temper and calls him a pervert. Instead of reacting angrily, Leo starts making fun of Witold in his self-invented language. Witold gets the message though: Leo has guessed correctly that Witold is obsessed with Lena. It is Witold who is the pervert. Leo likes him, nonetheless, because this fits perfectly with the real mission of their excursion: Leo wants to take everybody back to the very spot where he once had sex with a cook, the only time in his life that he felt true pleasure. This is an anniversary of sort that he wants to celebrate with his friends and family. Witold is the only one who is told. Leo sings "If you can't get what you want you must want what you've got".

Later Witold is briefly affected by a strange case of immobility: he cannot decide which route to take between a tree and an ant nest. He stands motionless until he realizes that this is what death is and then he quickly continues his walk.

His mental condition keeps worsening. After a wild party, he catches first the priest and then Jadeczka vomiting, an act that reminds him of the mouths of Lena and Katasia. The last straw is when he finds Louis' body hanging: Lena's husband hanged himself and his mouth is wide open. Now the obsession with hanging (the sparrow, the bit of wood, the strangled cat) and with the mouths (Lena, Katasia, the priest, Jadeczka) merge into one. Instead of rejoicing that his rival for Lena's heart committed suicide, Witold is taken by the urge to hang Lena too. He joins the others without saying anything. Leo is leading them to the rock where he made love to the cook 27 years earlier. On that rock he cannot say any more than "berg" which Witold repeats solemnly. Then it starts raining, a violent rain. Lena gets sick and has to be taken to the doctor. That's enough to break the spell. Witold returns to the city.

"Operetka" (1966) [t]

synopsis forthcoming


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