Volume 8, Number 11 · June 15, 1967
Dancing the Polka
By D.J. Enright
Pornografia
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated by Alastair Hamilton
Grove Press, 191 pp., $5.00
Ferdydurke
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated by Eric Mosbacher
Grove Press, 272 pp., $5.00
Compared to Pornografia in subject matter and action, Lolita (to which Gombrowicz's novel bears an obvious though superficial resemblance) is a veritable Odyssey. Pornografia treats of two elderly gentlemen, visiting a country estate in Poland in 1934, who imagine and then encourage an erotic relationship between two teenagers, (a boy) and (a girl). The narrator, Gombrowicz himself, promises to explain this use of brackets, but fails to do so; never mind, the reader is more likely to resent his arch dealings with quotation marks. The tow gentlemen erect a painstaking and tremulous construction of speculation and exegesis around gestures and actions for which there are innocent and obvious explanations, thus achieving an exceptionally refined form of voyeurism in that what is being watched quite possibly does not exist.
Review, 1369 words
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