Volume 53, Number 1 · January 12, 2006
Salvation Through Laughter
By Charles Simic
Polish Memories
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston
Yale University Press, 191 pp., $22.00
Bacacay
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polishby Bill Johnston
Archipelago Books, 275 pp., $26.00
Ferdydurke
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polishby Danuta Borchardt, with a foreword by Susan Sontag
Yale University Press, 282 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Cosmos
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt
Yale University Press, 189 pp., $25.00
A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polish by Benjamin Ivry
Yale University Press, 110 pp., $22.00
The World of Witold Gombrowicz,1904–1969
by Vincent Girond
Catalog of a centenary exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Beinecke Library/University Press of New England, 74 pp., $17.95 (paper)
For the celebration of the centenary of his birth in Poland, the Ministry of Culture officially proclaimed 2004 'The Year of Gombrowicz,' and Yale University organized an international conference that featured an exhibition of Gombrowicz materials in the Beinecke Library archives, as well as academic panels, films, and theater performances of his works. Despite these shows of deference, the translation of his books into more than thirty languages, and wide readership abroad, in the United States Gombrowicz is mainly known among writers. Susan Sontag and John Updike see him as an influential figure in modern literature, comparable to Proust and Joyce. I'm not sure if that would have pleased Gombrowicz, who had an entirely different idea of the kind of fame he wanted for himself. He in no way wanted to be compared, he said, to the Tolstoy of Yasnaya Polyana, the Goethe of Olympus, or the Thomas Mann who linked genius to decadence, and he had no use for Alfred Jarry's metaphysical dandyism or Anatole France's affected mastery. He claimed that he didn't even wish to be known as a Polish writer, but simply as Gombrowicz.
Review, 4651 words
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