Witold Gombrowicz

Polish novelist, short-story writer, and playwright.

• Born: August 4, 1904
• Place of birth: Małoszyce, Poland
• Died: July 24, 1969
• Place of death: Vence, France

Biography

Witold Gombrowicz , one of the greatest twentieth-century innovators of Polish prose and drama, was born on the estate of his father in Małoszyce, about 125 miles east of Warsaw. He was educated privately at home before being sent to the Wielopolski Lyceum in Warsaw in 1915. From 1923 to 1926 Gombrowicz studied law at the University of Warsaw, where he obtained his master’s degree. Though he detested the legal profession, Gombrowicz believed that this course of study would provide him with knowledge set in an exact discipline.

After Gombrowicz was licensed to practice law, his father sent him to the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales (Institute of Higher International Studies) in Paris, France. However, he ignored his studies there, instead traveling Europe and keeping what was considered to be dubious company. Eventually, when his father refused to support him any longer, he was forced to return to Poland, where he obtained a modest position in the Warsaw courts.

The young writer’s first short stories soon made their appearance: Seven tales were published in 1933 under the collected title Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania (Memoirs of a time of immaturity). After the publication of this work Gombrowicz left his legal career and dedicated himself entirely to literature. He began writing his first drama, Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda (1938; Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, 1969), which would not be staged until many years later. Gombrowicz also published a few critical articles and polemics in Varsovian literary gazettes. Following Ivona, two years of work on his first preserved novel was crowned in the year 1937 with the publication of Ferdydurke (English translation, 1961), which would become Gombrowicz’s best-known, best-received, and most successful work of fiction.

In this early work the main problem Gombrowicz addressed throughout his entire later period—the problem of form and chaos—is already articulated. “Form” is shorthand for the repressive, conformist forces that individuals struggle against despite their attraction to the security that form provides in a chaotic world. Imperiled by opposing forces, individuality represents the highest value to Gombrowicz as the only source of beauty, novelty, and renewal.

In the late summer of 1939 Gombrowicz participated officially in the maiden voyage of the Polish transatlantic liner Bolesiaw Chrobry, on which he sailed to Buenos Aires with a number of other Polish writers. By the time they docked in Buenos Aires, World War II had broken out in Europe. Thus began Gombrowicz’s thirty-year exile from his homeland.

For a time Gombrowicz, without money or a knowledge of Spanish, was almost totally isolated, cut off from friends and family. He supported himself by writing pseudonymous articles for local newspapers, but during the first five years of his exile he wrote nothing of any import. At last, in 1944, he began work on the play Ślub (The Marriage, 1969), which was published first in Spanish, in Buenos Aires, as El casamiento, in 1948 with the financial aid of a wealthy friend.

A subsequent position as secretary at the Banco Polaco in Argentina brought Gombrowicz a more stable existence. During this period he wrote his next novel, Trans-Atlantyk (1953; English translation, 1994), which evoked a storm of comment. A semiautobiographical work, Trans-Atlantyk is also a serious and biting polemic on behalf of the individual. One of the catch phrases from the work is the cry to forget about the Fatherland (ojczyzna) and concentrate rather on the Sonland (synczyzna).

Gombrowicz continued his polemic against Poland and Polishness in the feuilletons (serials) he wrote for the Polish emigré periodical Kultura, published in Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s. These articles, subsequently gathered into the three-volume Dziennik (1957–67; Diary, 1988–93), are an extraordinary record. Although the intellectual journeys of Gombrowicz can be traced to a certain extent, the Diary is above all a collection of political and social polemics, literary criticism, and fiction. Many critics hold the Diary to be the consummate literary works of the author, of more value even than Ferdydurke and Gombrowicz’s other fiction.

Two other novels appeared during the Argentine sojourn: Pornografia (1960; English translation, 1966), in which the author continues his battle with patriotic stereotypes, and Kosmos (1965; Cosmos , 1966), in which he strives to bring the chaos of the macrocosm under the control of the microcosmic individual.

In 1963, as the result of the belated worldwide acclaim he received for Ferdydurke, Gombrowicz was awarded a grant from the Ford Foundation, which permitted him to return to Europe and take up a year’s residence in Berlin. At the conclusion of the year he moved to France, where he lived for the last five years of his life. Occasionally he suffered from chronic asthma, which he had inherited from his mother, and in July 1969 he died of a heart attack. After many decades of obscurity, during which his work remained misunderstood and vilified, Gombrowicz was ultimately recognized as the creator of Polish existentialism and as a great European writer of his time.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Ferdydurke, 1937 (English translation, 1961)

Opętani, 1939 (serial), 1973 (in Dzieła zebrane, volume 10; Possessed; or, The Secret of Myslotch, 1980)

Trans-Atlantyk, 1953 (English translation, 1994)

Pornografia, 1960 (English translation, 1966)

Kosmos, 1965 (Cosmos, 1966)

Three Novels by Witold Gombrowicz, 1978 (contains Ferdydurke, Pornografia, and Cosmos)

Short Fiction:

Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania, 1933

Bakakaj, 1957 (reprint of Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania, plus five new stories; Bacacay, 2004)

Drama:

Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda, pb. 1935, revised pb. 1958 (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, 1969; known in the UK as Princess Ivona)

El casamiento, pb. 1948 (first published in Polish in 1953; The Marriage, 1969)

Historia, wr. 1951, pb. 1975

Operetka, pb. 1966 (Operetta, 1971)

Nonfiction:

Dziennik, 1953–1956, 1957 (Diary, volume 1, 1988)

Dziennik, 1957–1961, 1962 (Diary, volume 2, 1989)

Dziennik, 1961–1966, 1967 (Diary, volume 3, 1993)

Sur Dante, 1968

Entretiens avec Gombrowicz, 1968 (A Kind of Testament, 1973)

Wspomnienia polskie: Wędrówki po Argentynie, 1977 (Polish Memories, 2004)

Miscellaneous:

Dzieła zebrane, 1969–77 (11 volumes)

Bibliography

Berressem, Hanjo. Lines of Desire: Reading Gombrowicz’s Fiction with Lacan. Northwestern UP, 1998. A theoretically advanced psychoanalytical reading of Gombrowicz.

Longinović, Tomislav Z. Borderline Culture: The Politics of Identity in Four Twentieth-Century Slavic Novels. U of Arkansas P, 1993. Discusses Gombrowicz’s fiction.

Thompson, Ewa M. Witold Gombrowicz. Twayne Publishers, 1979. Includes biography, analysis of major works, and a good bibliography.

Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska, editor. Gombrowicz’s Grimaces: Modernism, Gender, Nationality. State U of New York P, 1998. A collection of essays.