A Carnival of One's Own
FALKENBERG, BETTY
A Carnival of One's Own Trans-Atlantyk By Witold Gombrowicz Translated by Carolyn French and Nina Karsov, with an Introduction by Stanislaw Baranczak Yale. 122 pp. $20.00. Reviewed by Betty...
...Gonzalo's lair is the "corrupt" New World of political and sexual freedom, anarchy, chaos...
...contributor...
...There are wild goings on...
...The officials accept his decision not to return home...
...It also required the total renunciation of all social, moral, political and, hence, nationalist cant...
...The story is told in the manner of a gaweda—a form popular among the Polish provincial gentry in the late 17th and 18th centuries when the country, following a series of devastating wars, entered a prolonged cultural decline...
...that man, not large in stature, very Thin, in glasses dark, horn-rimmed, as a mummy dried up, with Sparse hair that as a wreath wrapped around his large Bald pate...
...From here on, it's free-fall down the rabbit hole for the semi-fictive Gombrowicz...
...Empty everything as an empty bottle, as a Stalk, as a Barrel, as a shell...
...he insists that Gombrowicz talk the other man out of his madness...
...Although he is an aging mestizo with Old World blood, this Gonzalo's immature and irresponsible behavior makes him an embodiment of the "younge" New World...
...But Gombrowicz does not adhere strictly to the conventions of gaweda...
...the spirit of comedy triumphs...
...But Gombrowicz, caught between his emotions and his values, says: "I would not be a Pole if I were to set a Son against a Father...
...As newsboys in the street shout, "Polonia, Polonia"?for Poland has just fallen to the invading Germans—the crowd gathers expectantly...
...Gombrowicz mutters to himself...
...Beyond those facts, however, the degree of congruence between author and narrator is impossible to determine...
...The mock duel has to be called off, though, because some of the hunting dogs attack Ignac...
...Trans-Atlantvk is a difficult book, yes...
...After much anguished deliberation he does go to the Polish Embassy, where he is duly reminded of his patriotic obligations as a cultural representative...
...I'm not so mad as to have any views These Days or not to have them," the friend says...
...liquidation there in Poland had not happened...
...Everyone knows there are no hares anywhere...
...The very ambiguity of the relationship, in fact, sets up one of the book's ongoing internal tensions...
...When the transvestite, in a drunken rage, throws a mug at the boy's father, a retired Army major, the father demands a duel...
...The narrator, also named Gombrowicz, is a literary celebrity serving as a cultural envoy, and the novel begins with his arrival in Buenos Aires...
...even the animals are depraved...
...Major themes of the book are encapsulated in single key words, and "empty" is one of them...
...And so from Laughter into Laughter, they with Laughter Boom, with laughter bam, boom, boom, bam, Boom...
...In its absurdist way, this sums up the attitude held by people long inured to the illogic of state paternalism, whether the absolutist customs of feudal Europe or the modern totalitarian variety...
...Empty the Dread, empty the Pain...
...End of book...
...But should he bring shame on them, they threaten, they will expose him as "Great Sh.t Genius Gombrowicz," because "Propaganda requires this...
...As if the newly-arrived author-turned-clerk does not have worries enough, he shortly finds himself enlisted as a pander in Gonzalo's effort to lure a deliriously innocent Polish boy, Ignac, into his lavish lair...
...A few more bizarre narrative twists follow, including a grotesque torture scene, and the stage is set for what will surely be a murder—either patricide if one plot wins out, or filicide if the other does...
...Sail, sail, you Compatriots, to your People...
...Trans-Atlantykis a distillation of the author's early experiences in the New World...
...Beneath the rather simplistic dichotomy there is a subtext: The Argentine's love of youth—and youths—actually masks a desperate, pitiable fear of growing old...
...The very notion is laughable to Gonzalo...
...Stanislaw Baranczak's illuminating Introduction provides the literary and social background needed to fully appreciate this extraordinary work...
...Now the second novel he wrote, Trans-Atlantyk(1953)—considered by many to be his best—has been published in an exuberant translation by Carolyn French and Nina Karsov...
...Finally, in, 4 Kind of Testament, he sums up his purpose in a few words: "To wrest the Pole from Poland, so that he may become just a human being...
...As the ship enters port there is already news of the War in Europe...
...It reappears at calculated intervals, until a cumulative impact is achieved near the end: "Ergo Emptiness...
...Monster Dark, dying for ages yet unable to die...
...In 1961 Harcourt, Brace published a translation of Gombrowicz' first novel, Ferdydurke, with a lengthy Introduction by Czeslaw Milosz...
...In Trans-Atlantyk's symbolic universe, the boy's paternal nest represents Poland itself...
...The novel's translation, over 10 years in the works, is sure to raise many hackles...
...Sail to that holy Nation of yours haply Cursed...
...And it's difficult to put down—especially after you've read it...
...When he presents himself at work, "Popacki, the old Accomptant, gave me Deeds to enter, but the devil knows whether there was any need for that entering, viz...
...But more can be said for this rendering: the rhythmic urgency, the jarring juxtaposition of anachronistic and contemporary modes, the hilarity and the melancholy beauty of the words—all presumably in the Polish—are vividly conveyed...
...he deviates from it just enough to remind his readers that form should not be slavishly pursued...
...Gonzalo manages to save the youth, thus winning the gratitude of his quixotic father and erasing all grudges...
...know you that we Poles our Fathers respect exceedingly, and thus you do not tell a Pole that he should a Son from a Father and, moreover, for Deviation take...
...Elsewhere in the Diaiy he makes a similar argument: "We must become the iconoclasts of our own history...
...The boom of gunshot is pitted against the boom of laughter...
...But now that you have tarried here, get ye anon to the Legation or do not get ye there and Report your presence there or do not Report, for if you Report your presence or you do not Report it, you may be in great trouble or you may not...
...One of the schemes would involve the mad baron and his cohorts—since, as Poles now defeated in war, they must prove their prowess in some other arena...
...But to preserve decorum—a duel is still a duel—a hunt for hares is arranged nearby to give people an excuse to gather...
...New York "Times Book Review'" WHY, ONE WONDERS, is Witold Gombrowicz not better known in this country...
...Things having turned around, the Argentine announces a celebration at his palace...
...This ingenious, wholly original stylistic device helps create an ironic distance between Gombrowicz the author and Gombrowicz the narrator: While the one is an avant-garde expatriate, the other sounds like a traditional aristocratic Pole...
...At nightfall, Gonzalo—having cleverly lured everyone to the party just to capture the Polish boy?prevents everyone from leaving...
...Reviewed by Betty Falkenberg Freelance writer...
...Quibbles indeed...
...To which Gonzalo replies: "But wherefore need you be a Pole...
...In the novel's last scene, an opera buffa grand finale, all of Gombrowicz' thematic motifs are pulled together in one cacophonous chorus...
...No consideration of 20th-century literature is conceivable without including his work...
...At the wild, Mad Hatter-like party given by the Embassy in his honor, Gombrowicz is be friended by a gay transvestite...
...Has the lot of the Poles up to now been so delightful...
...Meanwhile the Polish Embassy, hearing of the scheduled duel, decides to turn the occasion into a great spectator event...
...Such odd and convoluted syntax, the Introduction explains, is not merely an affectation...
...Why, for example, when the translators preserve numerous Polish words of dubious importance, do they find it necessary to invent "chitsh.t" for the sly goumiarz?a term of contempt implying childish inadequacy...
...As quoted in Gombrowicz' Diaiy, Milosz faulted his friend for "acting as if that entire...
...Watching my work, this or that character he corrects for me now and again, and scratches himself behind the ear, or wipes his nose, or flicks a mote off his suit...
...All the other Poles on board decide to return at once to defend their Fatherland...
...He soon rebelled against the fatuity and hypocrisy of the ideals that were drilled into him, and his early writings met with outrage from all except the most avant-garde literary circles...
...Only those who know Polish well?and I do not—can judge its fidelity to the original...
...and you come along with your revulsion to an immature, provincial Poland from before 1939...
...He can barely contain his joy at having escaped the detritus of worn-out feudal values, and a country clinging to old dreams of glory—dreams that were foolish and false to begin with, and shortly will prove historically superannuated...
...To placate his eccentric friend, Gombrowicz agrees to empty the pistols immediately before the duel—reducing it to the empty charade it is anyway, like the ideal of Polish honor itself...
...But instead a different kind of "invasion" takes place at Gonzalo's palace—a Kulig ("a party of ladies and gentlemen in sleighs proceeding] from manor to manor," according to an old Polish custom) turns the premises upside down with carousing and dancing...
...Never then will I out of this empty Coffin come...
...With the help of the family friend, he lands a job as clerk in a brokerage firm run by a mad baron and his two odious partners...
...Nevertheless, in 1939 he was asked by the Polish government to visit Argentina as a cultural representative...
...but most eagerly bread crumbs for sparrows through the window throws...
...Each, of course, has its ambivalent attraction...
...For Gombrowicz, "becoming a human being" meant coming to terms with the darker sides of one's nature, even one's own infantilism...
...Would you not become something Else, something New...
...Quibbles one may have...
...He asks an old family friend in Buenos Aires whether he was wise to stay...
...the threat of death is answered with derision...
...Off they go all the same, "their cavalcade across a glade...
...Following two other novels and several plays, his three-volume Diary appeared in English between 1988 and 1993...
...At the time of Trans-Atlanh'k's publication in Paris, an interesting exchange about it took place between the author and Czeslaw Milosz...
...Gombrowicz answers: "Even though Trans-Atlantykusespre-1939 Poland, it is aiming at all Polish presents and futures, where the point is victory over national form...
...Born in 1904, Gombrowicz grew up in an aristocratic milieu on his father's country estate in Central Poland, where Polish honor was much touted...
...Why do we find a solitary footnote, the explanation of a Polish-Spanish pun on page 4? Did the editors decide at some point against footnotes and forget to remove this one, or what...
...Ten days before the outbreak of World War II he left by ship for Buenos Aires, where he would remain for 24 years...
...Sail to that St...
...and also Fingers long, lean...
Vol. 77 • September 1994 • No. 9
