Romantic Dialectics: Schulz, Gombrowicz, Witkacy

Abstract

Schulz, Gombrowicz, and Witkacy are often mentioned in one breath as the greatest representatives of the avant-garde of the interwar period – the three innovators who revolutionized Polish literature. However, the deeper we examine their works, the more differences appear, thus making it impossible to talk about them in terms of one literary school and revealing how superfi cial these apparent similarities really are. Naturally, this does not mean that comparative studies are ruled out. Yet, they would require much more than the narrow horizon of their personal relations and a much wider context of literary affiliations. All three authors (paradoxically) disagreed with some romantic principles, yet they did so in the name of other romantic principles. Mocking the legendary Mickiewicz and Słowacki and writing Pan Tadeusz à rebours, Gombrowicz is the romantic advocator of youth: that eternal revolutionist. Schulz, in turn, focussed his romantic treatises (in The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of Hourglass) on being, nature, and poetry, with an ironic upbeat. Finally, Witkacy, who expressed the utmost dislike for messianic ideals and for Mickiewicz’s call to “love one another”, as well as attacking the romantic worship of homeland – was a romantic dandy and valued, above all, individuality and art: the last shelter of metaphysics.