Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz

First published: 1960 (English translation, 1966)

Type of work: Philosophical realism

Time of work: During World War II

Locale: German-occupied Poland

Principal Characters:

• Witold, the narrator
• Frederick, the narrator’s companion and the instigator of many of the novel’s incidents
• Hippolytus (Hippo) S., the landowner whom Frederick and Witold visit
• Karol, a young Pole with whom the two men are obsessed
• Henia, Hippo’s daughter, whom Frederick and Witold wish to match up with Karol
• Albert, a distinguished gentleman engaged to Henia
• Lady Amelia, the owner of the estate that Frederick and Witold visit
• Siemian, a soldier in the Home Army who is murdered by Karol at Frederick’s instigation

The Novel

Frederick and Witold are two older men who visit the country estate of their friend Hippolytus S. They soon become obsessed with two young people, Karol and Henia, and scheme to bring them together as lovers. Frederick is the motivating force in this erotic plan, and Witold is his passive and somewhat distrustful ally. No precise reason is given for Frederick’s interference in the lives of others, except that he seems to derive his pleasure from manipulating others. He has no beliefs. He is an atheist who kneels in church only because that is the behavior required of him in that setting. He performs the act of kneeling so carefully that it looks as though he really is a believer. His actions are so correct that for the moment (Witold speculates) Frederick may actually believe in the act he is performing. Similarly, to Frederick, Karol and Henia, who are about the same age and who have grown up together, seem to be made for each other. Frederick and Witold regard Albert (Henia’s fiancee) as an older man who is not fit to have her.

Frederick and Witold conspire to contrive situations in which Karol and Henia are thrown together. Witold is somewhat surprised when he finds that Henia is no innocent and has had other men. Karol, too, is no innocent and shocks Witold when he lifts the skirt of an old woman. Nevertheless, Witold and Frederick are never shaken in their belief that Karol and Henia belong together, and the conspirators achieve their goal when they manage to have Albert see what appears to be an erotic meeting between Karol and Henia.

Much of the satisfaction Frederick and Witold seem to derive from the Henia-Karol coupling has to do with their apparent dislike of growing old, although they never say so. They are clearly rejuvenated by their creation of a love affair between the young people. They also obtain a thrill by disconcerting the mature Albert, who has never doubted Henia’s constancy. In the end, Albert contrives his own death by assuming the identity of Siemian, a Home Army soldier who has lost his nerve and who therefore must be murdered before he reveals vital information to the German occupiers. Hippo, Frederick, and Witold have agreed on the murder and persuade Karol to do it, but Karol mistakes Albert for Siemian and murders him. At the end of the novel, Frederick and Witold and Karol and Henia find themselves united in recognition of Karol’s error. Witold’s last words indicate the satisfaction he and Frederick share with this young couple they have made their own: “They smiled. As the young always do when they are trying to get out of a scrape. And for a split second, all four of us smiled.” For an instant, at least, Frederick and Witold have succeeded in becoming young again.

The Characters

Frederick is Witold’s source of fascination. Witold knows that his middle-aged companion is attracted to the young for lack of a belief in anything else. The visit to the countryside does not really have much appeal to either Frederick or Witold. They remain only when they discover Karol and Henia, seeing them as playthings. The other characters have little real interest for Frederick and Witold. Hippo is the imperceptive country gentleman, who believes that his daughter is a good match for Albert and who welcomes an alliance with a good family. Albert (Witold acknowledges) is an accomplished and elegant man, but Albert’s air of confidence only incites Frederick and Witold to prove that it is a sham and that it can easily be shattered. Siemian is a fascinating character, a courageous underground soldier who has succumbed to fear, but in Frederick’s and Witold’s eyes, that only means that he should be eliminated without any moral anguish.

Lady Amelia, however, excites Witold’s curiosity because she is the exact opposite of Frederick. She is a devout Catholic and a wise old woman. She seems entirely secure in her faith and her way of life. Yet Frederick bothers her, and she attempts to impress him. In the end, like Albert, she proves to be unstable. She dies in mysterious circumstances, having engaged in some sort of struggle with a young intruder. Her behavior suggests hysteria and perhaps some kind of sexual need. Has her grappling with a young man been an effort to defend herself or in some sense to possess him, as Frederick and Witold have tried to possess Karol and Henia? Her motivations are not clear, but there is no doubt that she has not lived the life of repose that her calm demeanor suggests.

Critical Context

In his preface to Pornografia, Gombrowicz states that the novel “springs from Ferdydurke” (1937; English translation, 1961). In his words, this earlier novel is about the way “youth, biologically superior, physically more beautiful, has no trouble in charming and conquering the adult, already poisoned by death.” In Ferdydurke, the author says he struggled against immaturity and tried to show through humor and sarcasm the ridiculousness of an obsession with youth. In Pornografia, on the other hand, it could be argued (he suggests) that he is “in love with immaturity.” In the latter work he has “given up the distance lent by humor. It is not a satire but a noble, a classical novel.” The themes of the two novels are virtually identical, but Pornografia is more profound, Gombrowicz implies, because he has admitted that he himself is the source of his theme. It is not something he has observed outside himself.

By adopting the guise of personal confession in his preface, and by calling his narrator Witold, Gombrowicz paradoxically creates another kind of fiction, which is more real precisely because he admits that it comes out of his own experience. Yet he is surely having some fun with his reader and putting distance between himself and his creation when he uses his preface to become his own critic: “The novel of two middle-aged men and a couple of adolescents; a sensually metaphysical novel. What a disgrace!” The exclamation mark, the value judgment, are terms that would never be used in the novel proper. The preface’s critical terms, in other words, provide a clever way of distancing the author from his fiction even as he proclaims that it is the product of his own obsessions.

Gombrowicz has also suggested in his preface that Pornografia is an attempt “to renew Polish eroticism.” He refers to recent Polish history as “composed of rape, slavery, and boyish squabbles.” In effect, he suggests that there has been an immaturity in Polish life that is apparent on both the private and public levels. Frederick and Witold have tried, in a sense, to rape and enslave Karol and Henia. Frederick and Witold have wanted to master the younger generation, and in postwar Poland that generation has suffered the indoctrination of a government that would manipulate it just as obscenely as Frederick and Witold manipulate Karol and Henia. By suggesting that Pornografia is “a descent to the dark limits of the conscience and the body,” Gombrowicz holds in his preface that much more than ideas, political and otherwise, must be considered in explaining Polish destiny. Rather, he advises his readers to look to the impulses of the body, to the fact that all philosophy is grounded in the erotic, and to ideas that cannot be “desexualized.”

Bibliography

Boyers, Robert. “Aspects of the Perversion in Gombrowicz’s Pornografia,” in Salmagundi. XVII (1971), pp. 19-46.

Fletcher, John. “Witold Gombrowicz,” in New Directions in Literature: Critical Approaches to a Contemporary Phenomenon, 1968.

Jelenski, Constantin. “Witold Gombrowicz,” in Tri-Quarterly. No. 9 (Spring, 1967), pp. 37-42.

Miosz, Czesaw. A History of Polish Literature, 1983 (second edition).

Thompson, Ewa. Witold Gombrowicz, 1979.