Witold Gombrowicz: Pornografia

Witold Gombrowicz
Witold Gombrowicz

Existentialism tries to re-establish value, while for me the “under-value,” the “insufficiency,” the “under-development,” are closer to man than any value. I believe the formula “Man wants to be God” expresses very well the nostalgia of existentialism, while I set up another immeasurable formula against it: “Man wants to be young.” Witold Gombrowicz

About the author

In his “Testament—Conversations with Dominique de Roux”, Witold Gombrowicz said about himself: “I am a humorist, a clown, a tightrope walker, a provocateur, my works stand on their head to please, I am a circus, lyricism, poetry, terror, struggle, fun and games—what more do you want?”

Gombrowicz was born in a small town in Congress Poland, Russian Empire to a wealthy gentry family. “He was the youngest of four children of Jan and Antonina (née Kotkowska.) In 1911 his family moved to Warsaw. After completing his education at Saint Stanislaus Kostka’s Gymnasium in 1922, he studied law at Warsaw University (in 1927 he obtained a master’s degree in law.) Gombrowicz spent a year in Paris where he studied at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales; although he was less than diligent in his studies his time in France brought him in constant contact with other young intellectuals.” (4)

‘Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) is part of a celebrated generation of mid-20th-century Polish writers, one that includes the doomed magic-realist short story writer Bruno Schulz, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz and Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, author of the great and sexily titled novel “Insatiability.” All these writers knew, admired and supported one another. ‘ (5)

Polish American Liner S.S. Chrobry
Polish American Liner S.S. Chrobry

In 1939, shortly before the Second World War errupted, Gombrowicz went to Argentine, more by chance than by design. He stayed there until 1963.

First Class Passenger List
First Class Passenger List

“In July 1939, fellow writer Czeslaw Straszewicz met Gombrowicz at Zodiak, a bohemian café in Warsaw. Straszewicz told Gombrowicz that he had been invited to participate in the Chrobry’s maiden voyage to Argentina. In exchange, he would write on the Chrobry for the Polish press. Gombrowicz asked Straszewicz if he could get the same deal and Straszewicz promised to pass Gombrowicz’s name to the Gdynia America Line. It obviously worked out, and Gombrowicz was added to the exclusive list of guests.” (3)

Gombrowicz was to stay in Argentina longer than he initially planned. The Nazis invaded Poland on the 1st September 1939 and Gombrowicz decided to stay in Argentina rather than return to occupied Poland. In 1953, still living as an expatriate in Argentina, Gombrowicz began his Diary with one of literature’s most memorable openings:

“Monday Me.

Tuesday Me.

Wednesday Me.

Thursday Me.”

Gombrowicz was not a mainstream writer. Indicative is his distaste for Borges.

Jennifer Marquart writes in her review of Pornografia: ‘One of my favorite (apocryphal) anecdotes about Gombrowicz is about how one day in Buenos Aires he was ranting about Borges to his friends (the two authors didn’t really get along), and one of them interrupted to ask if he had ever even read Borges. “Pfft. Why would I waste my time reading that crap?” (1)

Gombrowicz to Gomez
Gombrowicz to Gomez

Gombrowicz stayed in Argentina until 1963, when he crossed the Atlantic and went to Berlin, with a Ford Foundation grant for a year’s stay. After Berlin he went to France. His friendship ties, however, remained strong.

In a letter to his friend Gomez, Gombrowicz writes (9):

Poor Goma, you are unaware of one thing: I had been hiding before you, in part in order to spare you, and in part so as to avoid questioning, etc., that since the moment that I left Argentina, I haven’t had a single good day. (…) You, and also Ada think that I am lazily streched out on a bed of roses, and what’s more, together with Rita. And meanwhile, I am exhausting myself here bit by bit in each direction. In the last resort, maybe it is not all that dramatic. There are moments of good humour. But – my friend – I have never resembled an egoistic and demonic monster more than I do now. Bye, W.G. Now I weigh 68 kg I w e i g h e d 83 kg

Witold and Rita Gombrowicz with their dog Psina in Vence, France, 1967.
Witold and Rita Gombrowicz with their dog Psina in Vence, France, 1967.

During the crossing of the Atlantic from Buenos Aires to Europe Gombrowicz notes, upon reading Sein und Zeit in Spanish, “It’s rocking hard. […] Reading Heidegger is calming”. (10)

Pornografia

Pornografia was published in 1960. I read it in 1985 in a Greek translation, and since then it is one of my favourite novels. The story is as follows. Two middle aged friends visit the country side during the nazi occupation of Poland.

Luca Ronconi's staging of Pornografia
Luca Ronconi’s staging of Pornografia

“The narrator, Witold (Gombrowicz), and his companion, Fryderyk, leave the city and stay with Hipolit, his wife Maria and their daughter Henia and the farmhand Karol. It doesn’t take long for the men to grow bored of the quiet country life, causing them to devise intricate plans to get Karol and Henia to sleep together. They set up meetings and prod the teenagers with questions of sexual attraction to one another. These simple games escalate to a masterfully choreographed play, aimed at breaking-up Henia and her fiancé. Part joke and part perverse desire, Gombrowicz and Fryderyk’s plans take a bizarre turn following the murder of Henia’s future mother-in-law. Hidden notes, hostages, murder-conspiracies and the ultimate manipulation of youth, love and a detached thirst for power are now in play.” (1) ‘Henia is engaged to an upright young lawyer; Karol is a handsome 16-year-old farmhand. The narrator, who is named Witold, and his extremist friend Fryderyk soon decide that these two “children” belong together, even though they reveal absolutely no particular interest in each other. But what does that matter? … Karol admits that he would like to sleep with Henia’s mother; Henia confesses that marriage will keep her from giving in to certain of her sexual inclinations. Following such revelations, Witold proclaims that he is virtually “bathing in their eroticism.” ‘ (5)

Gombrowicz in 1965
Gombrowicz in 1965

“In cryptic conversations and memorably febrile internal monologues, the two men share their fantasies about the young people and scheme to make them a couple. But nothing comes of this folie à quatre until Vaclav’s mother is suddenly stabbed to death, and a resistance fighter who’s come to the end of his courage announces his intention of abandoning the cause and going back home. Goaded by a series of unsigned notes that play on their already considerable paranoia, Witold and Fryderyk hatch a monstrous new plan to bring Henia and Karol together.” (6)

In an interview (2) Pornografia’s translator into English, Danuta Borchardt, says: “Pornografia focuses, perhaps more than his other three novels, on the outer limits of the imagination—on the “forbidden”on the erotic fantasies of middle age and on living them through the young, and on manipulations that influence the young to the point of crime and murder.

Also, in Pornografia Gombrowicz tests the notion of belief in God versus non-belief. According to Jerzy Jarzębski, one of Gombrowicz’s foremost scholars: “Pornografia is blasphemous in the sense that it presents traditional culture and national customs in a state of exhaustion and atrophy.”

Jarzębski, suggests that Gombrowicz’s ideas may originate from the existentialists’ “death of God,” from old age generally, from World War II and the demands it placed on Polish society, and from the collapse of moral values.” Jennifer Marquart says it all in one sentence:

“It isn’t the actual act of sex that is pornographic, but its entanglement with power, domination, desire and obsession.” (1)

A page from Gombrowicz's diary
A page from Gombrowicz’s diary

‘Gombrowicz himself once dryly described “Pornografia” as “a noble, a classical novel. . . . The novel of two middle-aged men and a couple of adolescents; a sensually metaphysical novel.” ‘ (5)

When Gombrowicz finished the noval on 4 February 1958, he wrote in his diary:

“…One of my most persistent needs, during the writing of this…. was: to pass the world through youth; to translate it into the language of youth, that is, into the language of attraction… To soften it with youth…. To spice it up with youth – so it allows itself to be violated.” (quoted by Hanjo Beressem in source 7).

In the 2013 Summer Festival  “Spoleto 56 Festival dei 2 Mondi“, Italian Theater Director Luca Ronconi staged “Pornography”, based on Witold Gombrowicz’s novel.

The play is staged in Rome during April 2014.

Epilogue

As an epilogue, I quote from Gombrowicz’ Diary a paassage on the clarity of art.

“Clarity? Its clarity is the clarity of night, not day. Its brightness is exactly like that of a flashlight that extracts just one object out of the darkness, immersing the rest in an even more bottomless night. It should be, beyond the boundaries of its light, dark like the pronouncements of the Pythia, veiled, not spelled out, shimmering with a multiplicity of meanings and broader than precision. A classical clarity? The clarity of the Greeks? If this seems clear to you then it is because you are blind. Go at high noon to take a good look at the most classical Venus, and you will see the darkest night.”    

Sources

(1) Three Percent, a review of Gombrowicz’s Pornografia

(2) Translating Gombrowicz’s Pornografia – an interview with Danuta Borchardt, Raintaxi Online

(3) Gombrowicz on the Chrobry  (1939)

(4) Goodreads, Pornografia

(5) Book World: Michael Dirda reviews ‘Pornografia’ by Witold Gombrowicz. The Washington Post.

(6) Pornografia, Kirkus Review

(7) Hanjo Berressem. Lines of Desire: Reading Gombrowicz’ Fiction with Lacan.

(8) Friday: Me, The Paris Review

(9) Gombrowicz to Gomez, Culture.PL

(10) What you didn’t know about Gombrowicz, Culture.PL

1001 Ways to Die (12) – Alvaro Mutis Jaramillo, Colombian, Writer and Poet

Alvaro Mutis, Colombian Writer and Poet
Alvaro Mutis, Colombian Writer and Poet

Alvaro Mutis Jaramillo, one of my absolute favorite writers of all times, died on Sunday 22 September 2013 in Mexico City, aged 90.

His wife, Carmen Miracle,  was quoted as saying that Alvaro Mutis died in hospital from a cardio-respiratory problem.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos sent his condolences after Mutis’ death was confirmed by the cultural commission Sunday night.

“The millions of friends and admirers of Alvaro Mutis profoundly lament his death,” Santos wrote. “All of Colombia honors him.”

Colombian writer Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal called him “a remarkable narrator, remarkable poet and remarkable friend.”

I wrote about him back in 2010: An introduction first, Alvaro Mutis, and then Fragments.

Today in his memory I would like to share some exerpts (presented below in italics) from his interview by Francisco Goldman published in BOMB 74/Winter 2001.

Mutis was born in Colombia, the son of a diplomat, but he became a citizen of the world.

Tramp Steamer
Tramp Steamer

I am just passing through.

“I traveled with my family from the age of two. We went to Brussels. My father was in the Colombian diplomatic service and we were there for nine years. We traveled to Colombia by sea for vacations. Those trips were wonderful for me. They were like an extended holiday, because on a ship you are not responsible for anything. All you have to do is coexist with the sea and its life and watch it all go by. And again, when I worked for Standard Oil as Colombian head of public relations for five years, I traveled on oil tankers and had interesting experiences and met extremely curious people, many of whom appear in my novellas. So I loved traveling and moving around. And interestingly, without actively trying, I have always had jobs that forced me to move around. For over 23 years, I worked for Twentieth Century Fox and then Columbia Pictures as sales manager for the television division in Latin America, selling sitcoms and specials and made-for-TV movies. And I went from capital to capital to capital: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, to Chile and back through Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and then back to Los Angeles. So my life became a long trip and I met thousands of people, in all different kinds of situations. And this was like a continuation of what I had experienced as a child. In this way I lost the sense of belonging to a particular country. I know that I am Colombian and will be until I die, and there are landscapes in Colombia that I love and am fascinated by, and they appear in my poetry, but I don’t feel a commitment to any one country because, after all, I’m just passing through.”

A hopeless view of the world

 “I’ve never been involved in politics. I’ve never voted. I have never believed and have no faith in the intentions of a man who wants to make life better for all men. I think this just leads to concentration camps and Stalinist purges, the Inquisition and all of that horror. I believe that man is a species one should be very suspicious of. Now, I have no bitterness, but I am not going to change things, and I don’t want to change them. I accept them as they are, and that is how I live. So, it is natural that Maqroll (note: Maqroll is the key character in his novels), without being my exact reflection—which he is not at all—should have my hopeless view of the world.”

Mutis with writer Garcia Marquez and sculptor Botero
Mutis with writer Garcia Marquez and sculptor Botero

I say no to things

“But he (note: he refers to Maqroll), unlike Saint Francis, does not want to make this renunciation into a regimen for others or for a community. He says no to things precisely because of his philosophy of not trying to change anyone—each person is the way he is and that’s it. Now, if I were to load up on—as Maqroll would say—luxury items and objects, and these objects were to define me, I would be forced to stay still, not move. This doesn’t suit me; I don’t need anything.”

On women

“He (Maqroll) has a great admiration for women and he realizes that they see much more deeply than we men do, and know much more than we do, and that the best thing is to listen to them and do as they say. He always creates a sense of complicity with the person he loves. He thinks, We are together, but with no obligations—we won’t get married or enter into a bourgeois lifestyle. I love you deeply, and whenever we meet we will be together, because it is wonderful to have a relationship with someone who is my accomplice, and someone who feels no sense of obligation towards me. So that is his attitude, and if women sustain him and love him, why is that? Because he is not obliging them to do anything—he’s leaving the next day, or will be arriving the day after. He is their friend, their accomplice. There is a basic friendship in love that I do believe exists.”

AlvaroMutis

On Monarchy and Democracy

Monarchy is a thing of the past, and a government with divine right and absolute power like that of Louis XIV or Charlemagne is the last thing I would want. In this day and age, something like that is impossible. The kind of monarchy that I am dreaming of does not exist. I agree with Borges when he said that democracy is “a deception of statistics,” I think that it is something that does not work, and we see it failing all the time. Something that we must keep in mind is that one of the most sinister characters, the most sick and diabolical murderers, Adolf Hitler, was voted chancellor of the German Reich by a majority. So, I say, like Ortega y Gassett, that when a lot of people agree about something, it’s either a stupid idea or a beautiful woman. Dictatorships, which I detest, especially these military dictatorships in Latin America, have had enormous popular support. I saw the Plaza de Mayo full of people yelling “Perón! Perón!” and it filled me with disgust, but that’s how it was. So, one must be careful with the application of the formula. But I don’t mean to frighten anyone. As I don’t follow politics, I have never voted, and the most recent political event that really preoccupies me and which I am still struggling to accept is the fall of Byzantium at the hand of the Turks in 1453.”

The absolute density of human relations

“I worked like everyone else. In those days, the jail was managed by the prisoners, who were divided into wards. I was the head of a ward, which was a huge responsibility—but not a privilege. There is one thing that I learned in prison, that I passed on to Maqroll, and that is that you don’t judge others, you don’t say, “That guy committed a terrible crime against his family, so I can’t be his friend.” In a place like that one coexists because the judging is done on the outside. This is vital, because in there, the density of human relations is absolute.”

Alvaro Mutis – Writer, Novelist, Poet

Today I want to pay tribute to one of my favourite South American writers, Alvaro Mutis.

By way of introduction

“These disasters, these decisions that are wrong from the start, these dead ends that constitute the story of my life, are repeated over and over again. A passionate vocation for happiness, always betrayed and misdirected, ends in a need for total defeat; it is completely foreign to what, in my heart of hearts, I’ve always known could be mine if it weren’t for this constant desire to fail.”

“Her blue-black hair was as dense as honey and fell to shoulders as straight as those of the kouros in the Athens Museum. Her narrow hips, curving gently into long, somewhat full legs, recalled statues of Venus in the Vatican Museum and gave her erect body a definitive femininity that immediately dispelled a certain boyish air. Large, firm breasts completed the effect of her hips.”

(See reference 3)


The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port of Call

“The Tramp Steamer” is a sea story. It is the story of an old dilapidated wandering boat that the narrator – an oil company executive who travels around the world – coincidentally sees limping into various harbors at different times in his life. Helsinki, Costa Rica, Kingston, Jamaica. He becomes, for years, haunted by the image of this tramp steamer. “This nomadic piece of sea trash bore a kind of witness to our destiny on earth….” A sea story, but also, like any great story maybe, it is a love story. Years after his last encounter with that strange, memorable boat, the narrator (again coincidentally, but as Mutis suggests, our lives are made up of these sorts of coincidences) meets the captain of it and becomes privy to the story behind the image.
(See reference 4)

Short Biography (Source: New York Review of Books)

Álvaro Mutis was born in 1923 in Bogotá, Colombia. As a child he lived in Brussels, returning to Bogotá to complete his education. He has lived in Mexico since 1956. Mutis is the author of poetry, short stories, and novels. His first poems were published in 1948, his first short stories in 1978, and his first novella, The Snow of the Admiral—the initial volume of the Maqroll series—in 1986. He has received many literary awards, including the Prix Medicis in 1989 and, most recently, the 2002 Neustadt Prize for Literature.

References

1. BOMB Magazine Interview

2. From Johns Hopkins University’s online site:  Diary of Lecumberri

3. The New Yorker, John Updike reviews Mutis’ book: “The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll”.

4. Peter Orner’s Brief Thoughts