Stanislaw Baranczak
WITOLD GOMBROWICZ:
CULTURE AND CHAOS
A few days before the fateful date of September 1, 1939,
the thirty-five year-old Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz disem–
barked a transatlantic liner that had just brought him to Buenos
Aires on its maiden voyage across the ocean . Little did he know that
those few steps down the ship's ladder would lead him into an abyss
of obscurity. Instead of several weeks, he was to stay in Argentina
for the next twenty-four years-a largely ignored writer from the
margins of a marginal literature, as exotic and odd to his emigre
compatriots as he was to the Argentinian literary salons.
But, in some strange way, during those years obscurity and
loneliness also acted on Gombrowicz's behalf. Their depths offered
him, as it were, enough room to persistently work his way up to
prominence . Forgotten by some, made light of by o{hers, and
unknown to most, he had no other choice but to fight for recogni–
tion, to try to impose his uniqueness upon the world. His post-1939
novels and plays which began to come out in the early 1950s, and
above all his three-volume
Diary,
today considered by many one of
the most important books in twentieth-century European literature,
put into effect his brazen maxim: "Writing is nothing more than a
battle that the artist wages with others for his own prominence."
Against all odds, he won that battle. Even before his death in
1969 he managed to become a celebrity in Europe (he was widely
translated in France and Germany, and, as legend has it, lost the
1968 Nobel Prize by one vote) and an object of a veritable cult
among young intellectuals in his native Poland. One of the things
about American culture I fail to understand is why he still has to
conquer these shores. The fact that his major novels have not been
translated into English from the original but, ludicrously enough,
have been retranslated from French translations (and lost much of
their stylistic vigor in the process) does not fully explain Gom–
browicz's so far rather limited impact in this country. True, an un–
prepared reader who opens any of his books may have the dis–
quieting impression of encountering a total oddball, but has there
ever been a shortage of total oddballs in American literature itself?
Can't it assimilate another one, especially since on closer reading he
