STANISLAW BARANCZAK
Monday
Me.
Tuesday
Me.
Wednesday
Me.
Thursday
Me.
87
To the Polish exiled reader in 1953, one thirsting in those
troubled times for spiritual support and advice from the moral
authority that the Polish writer traditionally had been, this monosyl–
labic confession of egotism sounded like the utmost effrontery.
In
spite of the conservative critics' and readers' outrage, however,
Gombrowicz continued unswervingly in the same vein, making him–
self consistently the center of his diaristic universe. "Do not allow
yourselves to be intimidated," he addressed other artists:
The word "I" is so basic and inborn, so full of the most palpable and
thereby the most honest reality, as infallible as a guide and severe as a
touchstone, that instead of sneering at it, it would
be
better to fall to
your knees before it. I think rather that I am not yet fanatical enough
in my concern with myself and that I did not know how, out of fear of
other people, to surrender myself to this vocation with enough of a
categorical ruthlessness to push the matter far enough. I am the most
important and probably the only problem I have: the only one of all
my protagonists to whom I attach real importance.
This provocative bill of an egotist's rights forms, at the same
time, a constitution for culture at large. At another point, Gom–
browicz says:
To be an individual ... I do not want to say that collective and
abstract thought, that Humanity as such, are not important. Yet a
certain balance must be restored. The most modern direction of
thought is one that will rediscover the individual man .
Today, twenty years after Gombrowicz's death, when numer–
ous biographical books have already appeared dealing in detail with
various phases of his life, it seems clear that this individualistic basis
for his System had developed as a result of his early obsession with
the
rigid, schematic and oppressive Form that emerges in any in-
