Who is Gombrowicz?

Czestaw Mitosz WHO IS GOMBROWICZ? THE SEER A picturesque but rather painful sight met our eyes after the death of Gombrowicz . The Almighty Form of custom picked up his immaterial remains, whirled them around and whisked them off into that distant realm inhabited by geniuses of bygone years. If even I contributed to this state of affairs by writing a rather lyrical obituary about him, then I must now quickly oppose myself to this slavery of Form. For native traditions were celebrating too obvious a victory. During his life time a crazy, swaggerer, snob and haughty fellow, but after his death we suddenly hear the voice of Professor Plmko, choir director: "All right now, why are we supposed to love Witold Gombrowicz ?" and then the answer (in chorus): "Because he was a seer." This game of seer, once so ridiculed by Gombrowicz himself, imposes its unchanging , long-established laws. It would seem that it might be enough to leave behind an outstanding body of work, but no. A seer must be an illustrious figure, splendid, heroic, and if one shoulder blade was higher than the other, well, that can be deftly concealed when the monument is erected. And the reverse: those who attempt to cast doubt on his stature as seer will not concentrate on the work itself but on biographical detail. Boy' once led a campaign against the so-called "glIders," 2 instructive insofar as it was absolutely ineffective. If he had lived longer, he would have become con7 vinced that the activity of the "gilders" was gaining in strength if not in charm when a host of countries joined in. Why, a few years ago in Poland a freshly printed book was sent through the shredder because it contained some unheroic detail about our seer Adam.3 The next edition appeared without the document which will probably remain a professional secret passed on to some young Mickiewicz scholar by an old one on his deathbed . Keeping in mind the power of this custom, should one be surprised that those who want to minimize the uncomfortable writer Witold, look into his private letters? Respect for Gombrowicz, for the great boldness of his spirit, demands that he be extricated from these sorry posthumous circumstances. This can be done only if one remembers how disturbing his writings are, how challenging , enigmatic, how many problems there are in his writings that are impossible to solve, how little bronze there is in his work for a self-monument to its author, who, after all, said openly many times that he was building on his own weaknesses. Who knows if this does not mean that it is more appropriate to speak on behalf of those who always admitted that they did not understand Gombrowicz, rather than on behalf of those perceptive ones who claimed that everything in his writings was obvious. For Gombrowicz touched on subjects that are, perhaps, incomprehensible to us in this century or maybe just incomprehensible in general. A DIGRESSION The method of evaluating literary works according to whether they are useful or harmful to the soul is not a popular one. Yet the responsibility for an especially venom-ridden course in Polish literature somehow disturbed me. Because reading works by Witkacy, Gombrowicz, Mroiek, Borowski, Andrzejewski and R6iewicz will not dispose young people favorably toward the world. And that is why one March morning of 1970, when I arrived to administer the course exam, I suggested that the students read, as an antidote, the book Man's Search for Meaning, written by the Viennese psychiatrist Victor Frankl. I explained briefly that in the first section they would find a description of the author's experiences as an inmate of Auschwitz, corroborating what they found in Borowski.4 In the second section was a lecture on the basics of so-called logotherapy. After which the students wrote for three hours (all the exams are written), mainly about Gombrowicz. These young Americans, who read him only in translation (they were almost exclusively English or Comparative Literature students), were quite perceptive. Outside the window the sun of a California spring. The enormous bare feet of the young man in the first row were black...