STANISLAW BARANCZAK
91
into the schematic framework of whatever is socially and culturally
acceptable.
If
Gombrowicz stopped at this point, he would appear a
mere-and not terribly creative-continuator of the argument of
Freud, if not Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the whole Romantic tradi–
tion. But he is much more original than that. His innately dialectic
mind immediately counterpoises the argument with its exact op–
posite. He is equally aware that, contrary to his need to remain free
and unique, the individual also fears isolation and desires to affirm
himself through contacts with other people, through his reflection in
the eyes of others . This contradiction is particularly dramatic in the
case of an artist: He wishes to reveal his individual uniqueness to the
audience, but in order to reach it and be understood, he has to resort
to a comprehensible language of approved convention, which, in
turn, destroys his uniqueness. In other words, each public mani–
festation of the artists' freedom-seeking self is tantamount to his
self-imprisonment iii
a
rigid scheme of finished shapes-and thus ;
it means his death as an artist.
Yet the situation of an artist, however dramatic, is for
Gdrii–
browicz just one version of a more universal paradox of human ex–
istence as such. In his view, every individual lives his life in constant
suspension between two ideals: "Maturity"
ana
"Irmrlaturity." These
two may be variously called Fullness and Unfuifiilment, Com–
pleteness and Freedom, Perfection and Spontaneity, Typicality and
Uniqueness or, perhaps most generally, Form and Chaos. Just as
the protagonist of
Ferdydurke,
who sincerely desires to be mature,
responsible and respected, but at the same time is secretly attracted
to anything that is immature, chaotic and inferior,
virtually
all
characters in Gombrowicz's fiction (more often than not, dellbetate
impersonations of himself and his own neurotic obsessions) are torn
between their striving for Form on the one hand and Chaos on
the
other. As Gombrow1cz puts it succinctly in his
Diary:
Volume
Oflt:
The most important, most extreme, and most incurable dispute
is that waged in us by two of our most basic strivings: the one
that desires form , shape, definition and the other, which protests
against shape , and does not want form.
In both his literary works and
Diary
this basic antinomy takes
on the flesh of various specific interhuman relations, from politics to
