Witold Gombrowicz - Writing

Writing

The salient characteristics of Gombrowicz’s writing include incisive descriptions of characters' psychological entanglement with others, an acute awareness of conflicts that arise when traditional cultural values clash with contemporary values, and an exasperated yet comedic sense of the absurd. Aesthetically, Gombrowicz's clear and precise descriptions criticise Polish Romanticism, and he once claimed he wrote in defiance of Adam Mickiewicz (especially in “Trans-Atlantic”). The writing of Gombrowicz contains links with existentialism and with structuralism. Gombrowicz's work is also well known for its playful allusions and satire, as when in "Trans-Atlantic", a section of the text takes the form of a stylized 19th century diary, followed by a parody of a traditional fable.

For many critics and theorists, the most engaging aspects of Gombrowicz’s work are the connections with European thought in the second half of the 20th century, which links him with the intellectual heritage of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Paul Sartre. As Gombrowicz stated, "Ferdydurke was published in 1937 before Sartre formulated his theory of the regard d'autrui. But it is owing to the popularization of Sartrean concepts that this aspect of my book has been better understood and assimilated."

Gombrowicz uses first-person narrative in his novels, with the exception of Opętani. The language of the writer includes frequent neologisms. Moreover, he created 'keywords' which shed their symbolic light on the sense covered under the ironic form (e.g. "gęba", "pupa" in Ferdydurke.)

In the story "Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania" the author above all engages in paradoxes which control the entrance of the individual into the social world and also the repressed passions which rule human behaviour. In Ferdydurke (his first novel, published in autumn 1937, the date on the cover 1938) discusses form as a universal category which was understood both in the philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic sense. Furthermore, this form is a means of enslavement of the individual by other people and society as a whole. Famous phrases of Gombrowicz are found in the novel and became common usage in Polish, for instance words such as "upupienie" (imposing on the individual the role of somebody inferior and immature) and "gęba" (a personality or an authentic role imposed on somebody). Ferdydurke can be read as a satire on various Polish communities: progressive bourgeoisie, rustic, conservative. Therefore, the satire of Gombrowicz presents the human being either as a member of a society or an individual who struggles with himself and the world. Stage adaptations of Ferdydurke and other works of Gombrowicz were presented by many theatres, especially prior to 1986, before the first 9 volumes of his works were published. It was the only official way of gaining access to the works of the writer.

The first dramatic text written by Gombrowicz was Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, 1938), a tragicomedy — a play that describes what the enslavement of form, custom, and ceremony brings. In 1939 he published in installments in two daily newspapers the popular novel Opętani, where he interlaced the form of the 'gothic novel' with that of sensational modern romance. In the text entitled Ślub, which was written just after the war, Gombrowicz used the form of Shakespeare’s and Calderon’s theatre. He also critically undertook the theme of the romantic theatre (Z. Krasiński, J. Słowacki) and portrayed a new concept of power and a human being created by other people. In the novel Trans-Atlantyk Gombrowicz juxtaposes the traditional vision of a human that serves the values of the new vision, according to which an individual frees oneself of this service and basically fulfills oneself. The representative of such a model of humanity is the eccentric millionaire-homosexual Gonzalo.

The novel Pornografia shows Poland in times of war when the eternal order and the whole system of traditional culture, based on the faith in God, collapsed. In its place a new drastic reality appears, where the elderly and the young cooperate with each other in order to realize their cruel fascinations streaked with eroticism. Kosmos is the most complex and ambiguous work of Gombrowicz. In this text the author portrayed how human beings create a vision of the world sense, what forces, symbolic order and passion take part in this process and how the novel form organizes itself in the process of creating sense. Operetka is the last play of Gombrowicz and it uses an operetta form in order to present the changes of the world in the 20th century in a grotesque way, that is the transition to totalitarianism. At the same time, the author expresses a tentative faith in rebirth through youth. According to many scholars the most outstanding work of Gombrowicz is Dziennik (Diaries), which was published in serial form in Kultura in 1953–1969. Dziennik is not only the author’s record of life but also a philosophical essay, polemics, collection of auto-reflection on folk poetry, views on politics, national culture, religion, world of tradition, present time, and many other important issues. At the same time, the author is able to write about the most important topics in the form of an ostensibly casual anecdote and to use the whole range of literary devices.

Two novels by Gombrowicz were filmed: Pornografia directed by Jan Jakub Kolski (the film was completed in 2003) and Ferdydurke directed by Jerzy Skolimowski.

The year 2004, the centenary of his birth, was declared the Year of Gombrowicz.