Witold Gombrowicz: The Formal Imperative and the Power of Writing," in Gombrowicz's Grimaces: Form, Sexuality. Ferdydurke, Witold Gombrowicz’s fundamental work and first novel. The word “Ferdydurke. CosmosWitold Gombrowicz Cosmos Translated from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt Yale University Press / New. Cosmos / Witold Gombrowicz;. Witold Gombrowicz Gombrowicz, Witold (Vol. Essay. Gombrowicz, Witold 1. Gombrowicz, a Polish novelist, was a masterful prose stylist. He is best known for Ferdydurke and Pornografia. Vols. Is it a picture of the Polish realities in 1. Contrary to what you might at first believe, it most certainly is. Admittedly everything seems completely dreamlike and fantastic. Everything depicted as the consequence of associations. The language (actually, the words) are arranged musically like leitmotifs not according to their meaning—as in the case of Thomas Mann—but according to their tonal and emotional power of expression. Cosmos by Witol Gombrowicz by pablo. Cosmos by Witol Gombrowicz. Consciousness extreme programing cosmos witold gombrowicz chemistry mole. Witold Gombrowicz; Cosmos; Grove Press; 2005. Manual middle school math with pizzazz book a answer key cosmos witold gombrowicz queensland beginners font.Hoffmann, of the etchings by Alfred Kubin, of the eery dream scenes in Kafka's novel that take place in courtrooms located somewhere in an attic. And this is what Gombrowicz would have wanted. As a writer he entered the realm of dreams, created dream pictures. He abandoned himself to the flow, creation, fables, and associations in order to bring about new dream worlds for the reader—not merely to bring about the reproductions of his own visions, but to allow for the free associations of the reader and those to whom the work is addressed. The compulsion to repeat is a basic element in the thinking of children. Repetition is an element of propaganda and also infantilism.) In the realm of dreams there is no absolute. The dreamer, dreaming, still lives in the real world. His visions and emotions may be spaceless and timeless. They may dispense with all causality. However, they can only produce something that has not been experienced from the reproduced bits and pieces of past experience. The old dreambooks distinguish themselves from the new Freudian ones by their relation to this phenomenon. In the former it is dream as anticipation, as preexperience of the future. In the latter it is dream as a strange and unsuitable reproduction of past experience. The epic dreamworld of Witold Gombrowicz would like to be both: the interpretation of dreams in a double sense—according to the biblical Joseph and Professor Sigmund Freud. Planted between past and future. In the hollow of the present. Yet, as the decisive force behind it all, there is the immaturity of a country, the Polish state in 1. Social immaturity and social maturity rubbing elbows with one another. This is true of the unresolved relationships between the city and the country, the feudal world and the bourgeois world in Poland of that time. This is also true, however, as the novel demonstrates, of the corresponding ideologies and . However, what Gombrowicz intended to represent was the two extreme doctrines that were set against each other at that time in Poland: official messianic and ecstatic idealism ostensibly derived from the Polish romantic writers Mickiewicz and S. The real and the imagined Poland. However, behind it all stood the real Poland of 1. Visions of immaturity both general and specific as representative of the real environment in Poland. On the other hand the novel Pornografia describes scenes that are, to be sure, gruesome, agonizing, and repulsive (all these adjectives are actually meaningless, for there are no corresponding values), but all these scenes are possible, conceivable, even probable. Unity of place determined essentially by the landowner's house and its environs. Unity of time that is maintained by the passage of only a few days. Unity of action in which five men . A novel in two parts which both end like the final act of a play. The first part ends with the murder of the landowner's wife Amelia. The novel ends with three murders, and only the murder of Simian has a rational basis to it. Presented in conformity with the classical unities, which can be fixed and repeated. Nevertheless, as Gombrowicz correctly explains, an imaginary Poland. The complete opposite of Ferdydurke. This time an apparently realistic story that can say nothing about the real Poland during the period of occupation. Anyone who is somewhat familiar with Gombrowicz's clowning would already suspect as much from the first glance at the title Pornografia. Nowhere is there even a realistic sexual situation depicted. If one can speak of intellectual obscenity (which is entirely possible here), then it lies precisely in the fact that there is not one natural sex act described among the young people, nor is there one between the young and the old. Everything remains in a condition of sexual potential. It is exactly this that Gombrowicz calls pornography. This form does not allow for the completion of anything, for anything to reach maturity. Everything remains in progress, everything is provisional, noted down always with the possibility of being retracted later by another note. In extreme cases the diary form recommends itself as an escape from really giving shape to ideas. What is once committed to a diary will in all likelihood not be resurrected in another artistic form. The literary phenomenon of Witold Gombrowicz lies beyond all assertions and biographical facts. He would be a loner who nevertheless achieves harmony with others. He will never admit that a critical analysis interprets him correctly. On the other hand, literary critics must avoid equating their final judgment of Gombrowicz with Gombrowicz's judgment of Gombrowicz. The uniqueness of Witold Gombrowicz in literary history lies in the fact that this warped relationship between artist and critic, between the . Into the peculiar theme of Witold Gombrowicz. Crowell Co., Inc.), Crowell, 1. Noticing the superficial kinship with Nabokov, a British reviewer has remarked that Gombrowicz festers less. True, gossamer doesn't fester. But this seems a doubtful point of superiority in the present case, for if a story of this sort doesn't fester, it is hard to see what it can do. The oldsters are not sex maniacs, they are simply incomprehensible, simply weirdies. It would seem a perverse complaint to make at a time like the present, but one is tempted to reproach the book with failing to live up to its title. Ferdydurke is very nearly fantastic enough. The apparent preoccupations and theories of the later novel are already present here, indeed are more overt from the start. Frothier on the surface, it none the less impresses as a more substantial piece of work. Perhaps it doesn't make much more sense than Pornografia, but it certainly provides more amusement. Even so, you can dance with the book quite merrily for much of the time, whereas with Pornografia you won't stagger more than a few steps before tripping over your partner. Enright; reprinted by permission of Open Court Publishing Co. Perhaps the Pole is an enfant terrible among the Slavs, asking awkward questions, always on the run from the parental myth. A squire or a peasant, he has enough aristocratic defiance to accept disillusionment. His manner of writing stemmed from his Polish predecessors, both 1. Parody and mimicry need models to work on: a style cannot pull faces at nothing. The past was more useful to Gombrowicz than the present. And there were iconoclasts of genius before him. Irzykowski was one of them. His Paluba, a very early psycho- analytical novel (1. Freud, but it probed deeply into patterns of self- deception, into bashful moments hiding behind big words and poses, it exposed both social and patriotic cant. Ferdydurke's comedy is in essence triumphant. As an artistic instrument the operetta is a sort of pianola, with Gombrowicz banging it until the whole pretence breaks to pieces. And the intellectual mania for paradox. The idiosyncratic style of Gombrowicz has structural patterns which can be reproduced in another language, and on the whole he translates better than most Slavonic novelists. He is essentially the writers' writer. Will he ever become popular? How his books will read in the future is difficult to predict. They are light, not ponderous, and the charm is in their lightness. The public unfortunately confounds weight with seriousness, length with permanence. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but the immortality of that soul is another question.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2017
Categories |