page_title: Witold Gombrowicz
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: Witold Gombrowicz / Writing
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Tablica upamiętniająca Witolda Gombrowicza na kamienicy przy ul. Chocimskiej 35 w Warszawie English: Plaque in memory of Witold Gombrowicz at 35 Chocimska Street in Warsaw
context_page_description: Witold Marian Gombrowicz was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. Because he was a leftist, bisexual, and anticlerical who defied all party lines, his books were banned in communist Poland. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke, which presented many of his usual themes: problems of immaturity and youth, creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature. His diaries were published in 1969 and are, according to the Paris Review, "widely considered his masterpiece". He was a Nobel Prize candidate in Literature in 1966, according to a recently published database.
context_section_description: Gombrowicz wrote in Polish, but he did not allow his works to be published in Poland until the authorities lifted the ban on the unabridged version of Dziennik, his diary, in which he described their attacks on him. Because he refused publication in Poland he remained largely unknown to the general reading public until the first half of the 1970s. Still, his works were printed in Polish by the Paris Literary Institute of Jerzy Giedroyć and translated into more than 30 languages. Moreover, his dramas were repeatedly staged around the world by prominent directors such as Jorge Lavelli, Alf Sjöberg, Ingmar Bergman, and Jerzy Jarocki and Jerzy Grzegorzewski in Poland.
  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. Gombrowicz's clear and precise descriptions criticise Polish Romanticism, and he once claimed he wrote in defiance of Adam Mickiewicz (especially in Trans-Atlantic). Gombrowicz's work has links with existentialism and structuralism. It is also known for its playful allusions and satire, as in a section of Trans-Atlantic written in the form of a stylised 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 link him with the intellectual heritage of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Paul Sartre. As Gombrowicz said, "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, except Opętani. The language includes many neologisms. Moreover, he created "keywords" that 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" Gombrowicz engages in paradoxes that control the entrance of the individual into the social world and the repressed passions that rule human behaviour. In Ferdydurke he discusses form as a universal category that was understood in philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic senses, and is a means of enslavement of the individual by other people and society as a whole. Certain turns of phrase in the novel became common usage in Polish, 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 of various Polish communities: progressive bourgeoisie, rustic, conservative. The satire presents the human either as a member of a society or an individual who struggles with himself and the world. Adaptations of Ferdydurke and other works of Gombrowicz were presented by many theatres, especially before 1986, when the first nine volumes of his works were published. It was the only official way to gain access to his work.
  Gombrowicz's first dramatic text was Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, 1938), a tragicomedy. It describes what the enslavement of form, custom, and ceremony brings.
  In 1939 he published in installments in two daily newspapers the popular novel Opętani, in which he interlaced the form of the Gothic novel with that of sensational modern romance.
  In Ślub, written just after the war, Gombrowicz used the form of Shakespeare's and Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s theatre. He also critically undertook the theme of the romantic theatre (Zygmunt Krasiński, Juliusz Słowacki) and portrayed a new concept of power and a human being created by other people.
  In Trans-Atlantyk Gombrowicz juxtaposes the traditional vision of a human who serves values with a new vision according to which an individu
caption: Memorial plaque at the Gombrowicz's Warsaw home (1935–39)
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