Witold Gombrowicz Research Articles

Witold Gombrowicz i Bruno Schulz. Biografie równoległe

This article gives an account of the overlapping biographies of Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz. It frames the events which brought the two writers together with a discussion of their literary debuts in 1933, which preceded their first meeting, and the post-war memories of Gombrowicz, who kept reminiscing about his “deceased friend”. The author describes the meetings and conversations between Schulz and Gombrowicz that took place at the latter’s apartment or in Zofia Nałkowska’s salon, their joint undertakings, such as the publication of open letters in Studio magazine, and their battle with literary critics, whose spiteful comments and attacks were aimed at what they called “young literature”. The article presents testimonies of Gombrowicz and Schulz’s mutual inspirations and interpretations, and discusses texts and events which echo their vigorous correspondence, mostly lost during the Second World War. This mosaic of dispersed facts and memories depicts a great friendship between two artists, who approached each other with curiosity and respect, but also with their typical penchant for self-irony. The idea of parallel biographies was born during the author’s work on the research project Calendar of the Life, Work, and Reception of Bruno Schulz.

A Queer Construction of Identity in the Memoir of Stefan Czarniecki by Witold Gombrowicz

ABSTRACT The article presents the analysis and interpretation of Witold Gombrowicz’s short story: Memoirs of Stefan Czarniecki from the volume Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania [Memoirs from Time of Immaturity] 1933 (included after the Second World War in the volume Bakakaj [English translation: Bacacay]). The author interprets the story as narrative about life with the stigma that results from the social effects of anti-Semitism. At the same time however, he shows that the conceptualizations of “race” are often very clearly combined with the considerations about masculinity and effeminacy of the main hero. The author shows - referring to the historical works and theoretical and literary criticism (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick) that “effiminacy” combines narratives about Jewishness and male homosexuality in a complex way, which at the same time constitutes the aporia of Gombrowicz’s text and queer construction of identity of the main hero.

Teatralny ekwiwalent literackiej autonarracji – przypadek Kronosu Krzysztofa Garbaczewskiego

The main assumption of the article is the interpretation of Kronos based on Witold Gombrowicz’s private journal, directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski in Teatr Polski in Wrocław (2013). The author also seeks forms of transmitting and receiving relations in Gombrowicz’s diarism, (both in his Dziennik and Kronos) which are significant for performing arts and used in Garbaczewski’s staging. The director treated the structure of the writer’s intimate diary as a kind of creative method, attempting to translate the idea of self-narration into the language of theatre. The structure of Garbaczewski’s performance reflects the heterogeneous composition of Gombrowicz’s Kronos, despite treating its content only as a pretext. Garbaczewski’s staging can also be called an anti-spectacle, in which the vivid boundary between reality and mimicry, truth and confabulation, aesthetics and obscenum, a phenomenal and semiotic body is blurred.

Od powieści filozoficznej do teatru (post)epickiego? Kosmos Witolda Gombrowicza w inscenizacji Jerzego Jarockieg?

The aim of the article is to present the way in which Jerzy Jarocki transforms Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos into a theatrical script. The director does not try to extract a purely dramatic form from the novel, but creates a dramatization that takes into account the epic elements of the work. He proves with his realization Od powieści filozoficznej do teatru (post)epickiego that the producer does not have to deconstruct the work or even modernize it in order to introduce a discussion about the work and its readings to the stage. The scenography (created by Jerzy Juk-Kowarski) is extremely important in the context of the realization of the Cosmos, which allows the creators to place the staging in a specific philosophical context, enlivens the recipient’s imagination and, in a way, forces an active reception of the work.

ІСТОРІЯ НЕСКІНЧЕННОГО ДОЗРІВАННЯ – ПСИХОЛОГІЯ ДИТИНИ У ТВОРАХ ВІТОЛЬДА ҐОМБРОВИЧА

The article considers the concept of childishness and the signs of child psychology in the works of Witold Gombrowicz. This concept is a key to the whole philosophical system of the writer, as the vast majority of his works written before and after leaving for Argentina, based on the moral and ethical conflict of maturation and participation of children and adults in this process – in this series are works “Ferdydurke”,”Diary of maturation”,”Marriage”,”Space”,”Pornogr aphy”, “Trans-Atlantic”. The phenomenon of infinite maturation is inextricably linked with Gombrowicz’s conception of Form as a personality-creating factor, but at the same time childishness has a greater ontological force than the imposition of social roles and masks. The analysis of Gombrowicz’s prose and dramatic works makes it possible to crystallize the manifestations of obvious signs of child and adolescent psychology embodied in the behavior of the protagonists. And the fact that most of Gombrowicz’s characters are a symbolic embodiment of the author’s personality only confirms these observations: the state of permanent childhood and the burden of family influence are autobiographical components taken from the author’s personal life and his relationship with his family, especially his mother. Gombrowicz repeatedly wrote about this in his diary, analyzing his status in the family and his mother’s influence on the formation of his personality.

Nasz dramat erotyczny Witolda Gombrowicza — „europejskość” na sprzedaż

NASZ DRAMAT EROTYCZNY BY WITOLD GOMBROWICZ: ‘EUROPEANNESS’ ON SALE The essay is an analysis of a serious of newspaper articles written by Witold Gombrowicz in the 1940s in Argentina, which were later published in a volume entitled Nasz dramat erotyczny [Our Erotic Drama]. The idea of collective identity and the changing patterns of its construction are key to the analysis. The writer’s individual projects prove useful in the contemporary analysis of wartime texts by Gombrowicz, as they highlight the specificity of various elements of European and South American cultural identities, which are often contradictory.

Tradycja i melancholia o „Zdobyczy i wierności” Jerzego Pietrkiewicza

TRADITION AND MELANCHOLY: ON LOOT AND LOYALTY BY JERZYPIETRKIEWICZ The article offers an analysis of Jerzy Pietrkiewicz’s novel Loot and Loyalty, primarily from historical and geopoetic perspectives. It demonstrates how Pietrkiewicz uses the historical setting to represent the plight of an immigrant and their double alienation. In the context of the works by Henryk Sienkiewicz and by Witold Gombrowicz, alienation is not so much rooted in history itself as in the most popular Polish narratives on this topic, namely the ones created by Sienkiewicz and Gombrowicz themselves.

Witold Gombrowicz and Philosophy

The author of the article examines Witold Gombrowicz’s literary texts, diaries, lectures, essays, interviews and letters, as well as memoirs about him, trying to reconstruct the most important philosophical issues that concerned the writer and to describe the nature of his philosophizing. Gombrowicz’s philosophyzing is placed in the very broad context of the Western philosophical thinking tradition. Subsequently, that context is narrowed down to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism which was closest to Gombrowicz and from which he specified his own position by strictly limiting Sartre’s concept of activistic freedom and self-creation and introducing the issue of pain and suffering.Gombrowicz fundamentally modified Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological conception of the transcendental ego, paradoxically identifying it with his own self. The author of the article also draws attention to the philosophy of life, mentioned neither by Gombrowicz nor the authors who researched his philosophy, which is important for understanding the foundations of writer’s thinking. He also analyzes the relationship between philosophical and literary thinking, the personality or even privacy of philosophizing, the “implementation” of philosophical thinking, and other issues.

Maturity – immaturity dichotomy in Witold Gombrowicz’ novel Ferdydurke and in Journal

Maturity – immaturity dichotomy in Witold Gombrowicz’ novel <i>Ferdydurke</i> and in <i>Journal</i>

Maska czy gęba? Operetka Witolda Gombrowicza w kontekście komedii dell’arte

The article is an attempt at placing Operetka (Operetta) in the context of commedia dell’arte by comparing the basic structural and ideological characteristics of Witold Gombrowicz’s drama with the key traits of the commedia dell’arte genre. The author of Ferdydurke, who coined the phrase przyprawiać (komuś) gębę (put the screws to someone’s mug), brings to the grotesque distortion any manifestations of form domination both in life and in art. Ironically, it is the elements of Operetka, related to commedia dell’arte – a thoroughly conventionalised and schematised genre, that become the tool for a sort of removal of mask or mug. Given the mask, protagonists are given “a mug”, and cannot be themselves, they can only be what is allowed by the mask they were given and so they become its prisoner, in a way. The only antidote to “the mug” is nudity that frees one from any mask that forces them to play the designated roles. The article aims to present the relationship between Operetka and the commedia dell’arte genre, with particular emphasis on analysing the Gombrowicz’s concept of form against the convention of mask and costume in the commedia dell’arte, and on the “nudity” vs. “mask” opposition that focuses the drama’s main artistic and existential issues, while it is also precisely the point where the relationship between Gombrowicz’s work and Italian commedia dell’arte is seen most clearly.

O ilustracjach Brunona Schulza do noweli „Z dworu ślepej bogini”

The cause of this investigation were two unknown drawings by Bruno Schulz (ink, two 4x7 cm, two 6x7 cm, each with the artist’s signature) found in the newspaper Chwila, a Polish language Zionist daily published in Lviv in 1919-1939. Chwila paid much attention to Schulz: 43 articles, reviews, and notes on his life and work were published throughout the paper’s history. Few texts published in the Chwila were illustrated, and book illustrations were also rare in the artistic career of the writer: next to illustrating his own books, he designed covers and illustrations only for Juliusz Witt and Witold Gombrowicz. Searching for information about the author of an illustrated story “Z dworu ślepej bogini,” Oskar Alexandrowicz (1885-1939?), a resident of Drogobych, painter, art critic, and lawyer, added to the knowledge about the circle of Schulz’s friends. For instance, an interesting character was Oskar’s brother, Roman Alexandrowicz (1882-1940), a well-known lawyer and collector of Schulz’s works which he used to show to the public in his apartment on the corner of Akademicki Square and Fredry Street in Lviv. The literary critic Ostap Ortwin (1876-1942), who was a regular patron of a famous café in the same building, most likely supported Schulz’s participation in the Spring Salon of 1922. Just opposite, on 7 Fredry Street, there was a studio of Kazimierz Sichulski, painter and professor of the Lviv State Industrial School, and Wanda Diamand’s photo studio “Światłocień.” The author also succeeded in establishing the identity and biographical data of another Alexandrowicz, Marek (1890-?), manager of one of the biggest oil companies in Europe, “Gazy Ziemne,” who was a close friend of Izydor Schulz.

The Difficult Childhood of an Adult: Aging and Maturity in Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornografia

Maturity and immaturity are the hallmarks of Witold Gombrowicz’s literary texts. They were introduced in his first novel, Ferdydurke, and an early collection of short stories, Memoirs from a Time of Immaturity, and continued to play a central role in his fiction and nonfiction works, including the Diary, A Kind of Testament, and the penultimate novel, Pornografia. Although Gombrowicz has been widely regarded as a staunch critic of maturity and defender of immature spontaneity, playfulness, and formlessness, this view is largely based on his earlier writings. Later works offer a more complex image of Gombrowicz. Pornografia, in particular, no longer pits immaturity against maturity with the goal of discrediting the latter through humor and irony. Instead, it experiments with the possibility of a new relationship between the two, a relationship which would ameliorate the discontents that often come with aging.

Exilios impropios y peregrinación profana: Juan José Saer y Witold Gombrowicz

Después de haberse mudado a Francia en 1968 y de haber escrito gran parte de su obra en el extranjero, Juan José Saer comienza a regresar periódicamente a la Argentina a partir de los ochenta, y escribe a propósito del regreso y del exilio una serie de textos en los que alude a la figura de Witold Gombrowicz. En este trabajo se indagarán los vínculos, correspondencias y divergencias entre ambos. Como se verá, Saer ubica a Gombrowicz en dos series de viajeros e intelectuales. Por un lado, una serie anacrónica e intemporal que lo relaciona con viajeros de épocas disímiles y en la cual se destaca su singular percepción del paisaje nacional; por el otro, una serie histórica que devuelve al escritor polaco a las rivalidades literarias de su época (Borges, Caillois y el grupo Sur). Cada una de estas inscripciones abre una sugerente contemporaneidad entre las poéticas y los exilios impropios de Saer y Gombrowicz. La “perspectiva exterior” de este último le permitirá a Saer radicalizar una figura de escritor exiliado y excéntrico capaz de resistir tanto los “infalibles” valores de Europa como los deberes de identificación nacional; y configurar además formas disruptivas de percibir el paisaje de la zona en sus regresos al país.

Form and Power On the Disciplinary Coding of National Identity in “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” by Witold Gombrowicz

The aim of this article is to analyse Witold Gombrowicz’s short story entitled “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” in the context of the convergence between the writer’s worldview and the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Nietzschean motifs inspired both authors to formulate a similar constructivist anthropology and a similar criticism of the concept of discipline. The themes of form and creating a human being by a human being – central to Gombrowicz’s writing – correspond to Foucault’s notion of the production of the subject. In such a perspective, “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” can be read as a record of the experience of an individual subjected to social practices of disciplinary embarrassment, aimed at producing a subject defined by nationality and heteronormativity, as well as the experience of rebellion against an imposed identity. Such a reading reveals the political stakes of the literary output by the author of Ferdydurke: expressed in the deconstruction of authoritarian forms of empowerment and in the pursuit to replace them with forms of subjectification based on irony, fluidity and distance.

Between Realism and Nominalism. Gombrowicz and the Debate on Polish and European Archetypes of Political Culture

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is an analysis of Witold Gombrowicz’s position in reference to the archetype of Polish political culture.&#x0D; THE RESEARCH PROBLEMS AND METHODS: The main problem undertaken in the article is an analysis of Witold Gombrowicz’s position in reference to the question of Polishness, its components, and its relationship to Latin civilization. The article is based on an analysis of Gombrowicz’s Diary.&#x0D; THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The article begins with a synthetic outline of two fundamental issues: the Latinness of European civilization and the debate surrounding the archetype of Polish political culture. This is followed by what constitutes the main body of the article: an analysis of Gombrowicz’s views on Polishness.&#x0D; RESEARCH RESULTS: The most important result of the scientific analysis conducted here is the indication of the main theses of Gombrowicz’s understanding of Polishness and of the relationship between Polishness and Latin civilization. Gombrowicz’s conception is presented as an innovative approach to the problem, transcending traditional takes on Polishness as a specific type of realism.&#x0D; CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: In his conclusions, the author indicates interpretative possibilities resulting from the perspective taken in the article, as well as areas that require further study, concerning such issues as the relationship between the Sonland and the Fatherland, and the culture of the Polish nobility during the “Saxon Era.”

The Problem of “Polishness” in the London Student Periodicals („Życie Akademickie" – „Kontynenty”)

Theis article presents the views and opinions expressed in two London periodicals published in the 1950s and 1960s by Polish students living in exile, namely „Życie Akademickie” and „Kontynenty”, focusing on the problem of preservation of “Polishness” among Polish emigrants of the younger generation. In the first part of the text, the views presented, include those of the members of the older generation of emigrants and refugees (e.g. Czesław Miłosz or Witold Gombrowicz), giving advice to the young, as well as of the young themselves (e.g. Wiktor Poznański or Wojciech Gniatczyński). The second part of the article refers to the notion of patriotism and the problem of national vices, which were also subject to a discussion which went on in the émigré press. The aim of the article is to illustrate the discrepancies between the attitudes of two – or even three – generations of Polish emigrants, concerning the issue of Polish national identity.

АНТИ-МІЦКЕВИЧ: РОЗРАХУНОК З ПОЛЬСЬКИМИ ЛІТЕРАТУРНИМИ ІДОЛАМИ У ПРОЗІ ВІТОЛЬДА ҐОМБРОВИЧА

The article considers the functioning of Polish national myths based on the images of iconic representatives of Polish literature, in particular Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Józef Ignatius Kraszewski, Boleslaw Prus, in the prose works of Witold Gombrowicz - the novel “Trans-Atlantic” and the memoir series “Diaries”. Gombrovych’s available means of embodying the goal - debunking the Polish national inferiority complex, as well as elements of linguistic and cultural stylisation in the author’s prose works are analysed. Examples of interpretation of figures from the modern and almost modern Gombrowicz literary world, including representatives of Young Poland and the interwar twentieth century, are given. Currently, there is a widespread view that national identity is a fully constructed phenomenon that lacks, so to speak, existential attachment. In other words, the national allegedly does not exist, although it is considered to exist by those people who are under the spell of the national idea. It is in this sense that national feelings are called myths, that is, myth here means deception of feelings and belief in fairy tales. In fact, the national reality is mythical, but mythical in another sense, in that we give this word after Losev. This can be interpreted as follows: the national living and vital is a synthesis of idea and life, and a synthesis with an element of “alienation”. Witold Gombrowicz considered the national myth as a part of Form, which is the main source and one of the most powerful factors limiting personality. In turn, the national myth is a form that prevents individuals from entering a broad cultural context and leads to their conservation in their own, limited environment.

Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective by Dariusz Skórczewski

Reviewed by: Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective by Dariusz Skórczewski Agnieszka Jezyk (bio) Dariusz Skórczewski, Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective ( Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2020). 341 pp. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-58046-978-4. The past is never dead. It's not even past. William Faulkner After the death of Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859), the Polish national poet and one of Poland's Three Bards (together with Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki), his fellow Romantic lyricist, also a painter, Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883) wrote a letter containing a sentence that later became a famous and included the painfully relevant maxim: "We can only argue or love but we are not able to differ beautifully and strongly." This apothegm accompanied me from the start as I read the book by Dariusz Skórczewski, an associate professor of Polish literature at the Catholic University of Lublin. Speaking from a strong ideological position of Christian personalism about East-Central Europe, a region still new to postcolonial studies, the author presents a clear and consequential vision of Polish literature and demonstrates rhetorical passion, which is so infrequent in academia. Engaging [End Page 325] and original, Skórczewski's publication may stir some controversy, as it is surely one of the most thought-provoking projects in Polish studies available in English that you will have the pleasure to read this year. In this review, I will present the author's unique perspective and some of the reasons that one could disagree with his vision, but also why Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective is a must for enthusiasts of all things Polish. Divided into eleven chapters and an afterword, the book consists of three thematic parts. In the first part (chapters 1–4) the author discusses the theoretical issues related to postcolonialism in Poland and East-Central Europe. Among these topics are the significance of Christian personalism for postcolonial studies and its connections with Marxism, the history of discourse in the Polish context (from the partitions by Russia, Prussia, and Austro-Hungary in the eighteenth century to the communist period and dependence on the USSR in 1945–1989), the question of identity and West/East opposition, and the positionality of the intelligentsia in the situation of dependence. In the second part (chapters 5–8) Skórczewski focuses on the representations of Self and Other in concrete examples from Polish literature (work by Witold Gombrowicz, Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Paweł Huelle, and Andrzej Stasiuk). The final section (chapters 9–11) concerns the postcolonial identity of Poles, especially as viewed in the texts of Anglo-American academics. Skórczewski begins with the history of postcolonial studies in Poland that originated in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. The first Polish translation of Edward Said's Orientalism (1991) did not attract much attention. The author registers a serious interest toward the topic among Polish academics with the switch of focus to Central and Eastern Europe, more precisely with Ewa Thompson's Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (2000). Initially, Polish academics were skeptical about the postcolonial approach. On one hand, postcolonialism was perceived as "another oddity of Western culture" but on the other hand, especially among some younger scholars, it also "tasted of something exotic" (P. 1). Distrust in the method was partially caused by what the author himself views as a matter of legitimate concern, namely, the danger of framing Polish experience in postcolonial terms as a way to "simply rename, or rebrand, existing categories of analysis, as suggested by research into communism and totalitarianism" (Pp. 2–3). A productive application of the postcolonial approach entailed a focus on historical situations of dependence, such as the periods [End Page 326] of partitions and communist rule in Polish history, and Skórzewski duly concentrates on these periods in his analysis. He believes that the postcolonial approach in studies of East-Central Europe is not only refreshing but also necessary, because it allows one to go beyond studies of totalitarianism, communism, and postcommunism. It offers a perspective on the region from the vantage point of the "cultural and mental effects...

The Novel as Third Space in the Struggle for One’s Own Place: Witold Gombrowicz’s Hidden Polemic with German Literature in „Pornografia”

This paper deals with Gombrowicz’s novel „Pornografia” which can be interpreted as a third space where different literary discourses and philosophical concepts are interwoven. In this respect two German authors deserve special attention: Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche. It is the aim of this article to show to what extent Gombrowicz refers to the writings of these two authors in his attempt to establish himself as an important writer during his exile in Argentina. The novel „Pornografia” works in this respect as a sphere of interferences and a space of emerging hybridity, where Gombrowicz creates a special textuality consisting of hidden references to and even polemic with both Mann and Nietzsche. The notion of conflict is thus applicable in the description of Gombrowicz’s literary practice in this novel.

APPROACHING EMOTIONAL DEFICITS THROUGH THE LENS OF EPIGENETICS. THE SENSORY SUBLIMATION OF TRAUMA IN ANNA WIŚNIEWSKA-GRABARCZYK’S PORZECZKOWY JOSEF

The article examines Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk’s Porzeczkowy Josef (Currant Josef), which was nominated for the 2019 Witold Gombrowicz Literary Award, from the epigenetic perspective. The novel tells a story of coping with the difficult memories of a concentration camp. Those experiences and the anxiety that they produce were ‘inherited’ by the granddaughter from her grandmother. In the suppressed memories, love merges with hatred and the victim’s attachment to the perpetrator – with shame. As the article argues, what plays an important role in coping with this trauma are richly described sensory impressions (scents, flavours, tactile impressions).