Witold Gombrowicz - Wikipedia

On July 24, 1969, Witold Gombrowicz, Polish author (Ferdydurke, Diaries), died at age 64. From the article:

"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 the Polish authorities' 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 the 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. Aesthetically, Gombrowicz's clear and precise descriptions criticise Polish Romanticism, and he once claimed he wrote in defiance of Adam Mickiewicz (especially in Trans-Atlantic). The writing of Gombrowicz contains links with existentialism and with structuralism. Gombrowicz's work is also well 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 links him with the intellectual heritage of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, and Jean-Paul Sartre. As Gombrowicz stated, "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."[9]

Gombrowicz uses first-person narrative in his novels, with the exception of Opętani. The language of the writer includes frequent neologisms. Moreover, he created "keywords" which 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" the author above all engages in paradoxes which control the entrance of the individual into the social world and also the repressed passions which rule human behaviour. In Ferdydurke (his first novel, published in autumn 1937, with a cover dated 1938) he discusses form as a universal category which was understood in philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic senses. Furthermore, this form is a means of enslavement of the individual by other people and society as a whole. Famous phrases of Gombrowicz are found in the novel and became common usage in Polish, for instance words 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 on various Polish communities: progressive bourgeoisie, rustic, conservative. Therefore, the satire of Gombrowicz presents the human being either as a member of a society or an individual who struggles with himself and the world. Stage adaptations of Ferdydurke and other works of Gombrowicz were presented by many theatres, especially prior to 1986, before the first 9 volumes of his works were published. It was the only official way of gaining access to the works of the writer."