Russian Literature LXII (2007) IV

www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit

THE ANGUISH AND GLORY OF BEING AN OUTSIDER

ARENT VAN NIEUKERKEN

Abstract

Gombrowicz attempts in his oeuvre to give voice to a paradoxical, self-undermining

concept of authenticity. “Inauthentic” authenticity is best realized by the personal

and fragmentary form of his Diary. Gombrowicz turns out to be an heir of Ro-

manticism, especially of the philosophy of the self-development of “Geist” (Hegel),

which, however, in his case, does not culminate in “fulfilment”. The author’s

ambivalent attitude towards Romantic authenticity determines his critical attitude to

Polish Romanticism, which in his times had become an ossified part of the Polish

national tradition. According to Gombrowicz the thoughtless adoption of the Polish

romantic paradigm of exile, suffering and alienation as the general fundament of

Polishness made it unfit (in spite of its similarity to the predicament of twentieth-

century man) to express existential anguish. So he had to find a new form of

alienation without reminiscences of its romantic counterpart. This led to a re-

appraisal of the Polish literary tradition. Especially to Gombrowicz’s liking was the

“degenerate” style of the Sarmatic Baroque.

Keywords: Gombrowicz; Polish Romanticism

1. Gombrowicz is – as far as his reception is concerned – the most

universal of modern Polish writers. He has been translated into all major

European languages. The appeal of his novels, plays and especially his

Dziennik (Diary) to the modern reader appears to be more than a purely

literary phenomenon. Gombrowicz’s retrieval from oblivion in the fifties and

0304-3479/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ruslit.2007.10.011

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sixties of the twentieth century, when it seemed that he had been buried for

good in a country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern

hemisphere, at the periphery of Western civilization,

1

was due to the specific

sensibility of an epoch in which all traditional centres had fallen apart or

become discredited. Authentic existence seemed – if at all – merely possible

on the border, at the edge, in extreme situations. All traditional hierarchies of

sense were experienced as essentially false. Man, wanting to be true to his

self, should do away with all forms of mediation. Authenticity presupposed a

lack of determination. Man should be able to make his own particular exist-

ence at every time and place completely new. However, twentieth-century

man experienced himself as a creature that had been determined by the past

and his milieu. For the heirs of historicism immediacy of existence was only

conceivable as a utopian concept.

2

The disintegration of the traditional

concept of self, that for three centuries had been the unifying force of Euro-

pean culture, turned out to be the very material of which Gombrowicz com-

posed (with a premeditated effort) his universe of particularity. His universal-

ity consists in the systematic affirmation of the impossibility of universality,

the inevitability of particular being, which is given, rather than achieved.

Man does not escape from the centre of being to its edge in order to achieve

authenticity, but by discovering that the centre does not exist, he realizes that

even at the edge of being authenticity is illusory. Man cannot truly transcend

himself, but he can achieve the insight that self-transcendence and authenti-

city are “fictional” forms, that help him to cope with his own unbearable de-

termination by agents outside his “self”, who in reality (reality is delusion)

are his self, his “particular” self.

Gombrowicz is not only a writer, but also a philosopher who uses lite-

rature as a means of expressing his Weltanschauung. In this respect he could

be compared to modernist poets like William Butler Yeats and Stefan

George, who also used poetry as a means of conveying ideas, but Gombro-

wicz appears to be even more closely allied to Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche

fused a literary sensibility that stressed the uniqueness of each moment of

being, with the generalizing idiom of philosophy. He did so by writing pa-

rables (hiding behind the mask of the prophet Zarathustra) and aphorisms

(general observations on the nature of being, that are the result of fleeting

moments of individual inspiration – suddenly “I” perceive the “real” state of

a particular aspect of being, that cannot be grasped as a whole, but with

which my particular existence is inextricably intertwined). Gombrowicz

commented on the nature of being, giving words to (analysing) fleeting

moments of inspiration, states of clairvoyance, with regard to his own

particular, unrepeatable existence (the intuition of man, being determined by

form), in his famous Diary. The elusiveness of being, it seems, is not an

attribute of being exterior to the self (or of transcendence, the divine), but lies

at the heart of human existence, determines the act of man attempting to

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 501

grasp his own particularity. “I” elude “my-self”. Gombrowicz constructed in

his novels out of his particular intuitions of existence a paradoxical system,

(the philosophy of form), putting on a transparent mask (Józio, Gombrowicz,

Witold).

Thus, it appears that even in the realm of poetics it is impossible to

escape from the irony of existence. Both Nietzsche and Gombrowicz set out

to expose their intuitions about the immediacy of existence in an impersonal,

generalizing, or “fictional” form (treatise [“Betrachtung”], parable, drama,

novel).

3

They used these forms before they hit on the proper fragmentary and

personal form that allowed them to express these intuitions in a manner

impervious to the dialectics of the general. It could, however, be argued that

only these attempts to generalize the particular made them fully conscious of

the momentary, contingent, disrupted nature of being. The “truth” of the

disrupted nature of being reveals itself against the background of the whole,

the coherency of life “I” want to achieve. Perceiving reality as a finished

whole is a particular human quality.

4

Man’s “integrating” capability is in it-

self (as existential “performance”) the expression of the disrupted nature of

being. As a matter of fact it is a particular instance of being, “being” as a

process that must be reflected on. So reflection is an essential part of the

process, a mode of its self-development. This intuition that “truth” of being is

not a “substance” grasped by an exterior “subject”, but the marriage of the

subjective with the substantial as self-development, had already been formu-

lated in Hegel’s famous Preface to the Phänomenologie des Geistes:

Die lebendige Substanz ist ferner das Sein, welches in Wahrheit Sub-

jekt, oder, was dasselbe heißt, welches in Wahrheit wirklich ist, nur in-

sofern sie die Bewegung des Sich-selbst-setzens, oder die Vermittlung

des Sich-anders-werdens mit sich selbst ist. Sie ist als Subjekt die reine

einfache Negativität, eben dadurch die Entzweiung des Einfachen, oder

die entgegensetzende Verdopplung, welche wieder die Negation dieser

gleichgültigen Verschiedenheit und ihres Gegensatzes ist; nur diese sich

wiederherstellende Gleichheit oder die Reflexion im Anderssein in sich

selbst – nicht eine ursprüngliche Einheit als solche, oder unmittelbare

als solche, ist das Wahre. (HPG: 21)

Gombrowicz was an attentive reader of Hegel,

5

and the inability of Polish

nineteenth-century literature to grasp the nature of Hegelian dialectics was in

his opinion one of the main causes of the parochialism of the Polish mind.

6

From the point of view of “literary history” his assessment seems rather bold

as almost the whole body of Polish romantic philosophy and to a certain

extent also the dynamic mysticism of Sáowacki’s and KrasiĔski’s poetry are

pervaded by the idea of Spirit as self-development. It must, however, be ad-

mitted that Gombrowicz’s particular perspective has determined our rather

impoverished conception of Polish romanticism.

7

Romanticism has turned

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Arent van Nieukerken

into Gombrowicz’s romanticism, a sensibility that by his “touch” (“do-

tkniĊcie”) has become ossified and superseded by Gombrowicz’s own Welt-

anschauung. Thanks to his Wille zur Macht, his desire to become the author

of his being, Gombrowicz has become the axis of Polish literary tradition

which has been reshaped according to his “resemblance”.

Thus, the dialectics of literary form reveal the “real” nature of form as

the ontological (absence of) fundament of being. Form is not an indifferent

receptacle for meaning, but being (“being” meaningful) itself. Literary form

tries to establish an identity between “my” own particular being, that happens

to me hic et nunc, and the same “self” (myself), reflecting on the fact of my

existence hic et nunc (reflection, even when it attempts to generalize, turns

out to be a particular aspect of being a self [myself]). Reflection is not a

means of achieving [self]-transcendence, but a particular instance of being as

the “happening” of transcendence. Nietzsche’s “symbol” of this identity be-

tween being and reflection in the self is the ecstatic God Dionysus (the sign

of immediacy of human existence as “performance”), who is supposed to

accomplish in his ecstatic drunkenness (Yeats defined this primeval “state of

being” as the identity of the dancer and the dance) the hopeless task of “me-

diation” between the particular instances of immediacy of being. According

to Nietzsche, authentic existence is a drama in which man is at the same time

actor and author. This task can only be accomplished by a hero, a man who

from the mountain ridges of authentic existence oversees the complacency

and futility of everyday life in the plains of conventional, “inferior” being.

Under the azure skies of the Engadin the hero has achieved insight into the

disrupted, unfinished nature of being, and then he descends into the plains of

low life, where his existential superiority (his sense of “being chosen”) meets

a tragic fate.

Gombrowicz denies the possibility of immediacy of existence, unity of

being, of authentic existence, the identity between being a self and reflecting

on being a self, the ecstasy of the dancing Zarathustra, but it could be argued

that the affirmation of this impossibility allows “me” to grasp “my” identity

as a human. Gombrowicz analyses the motif of dance in his Diary. Dancing

is always a collective experience that effaces the individuality of the dancers.

These dancers are “common” people, devoid of all beauty and sublimity, and

the communal experience of dancing does not in any respect ennoble them,

nor makes them more conscious of their existential status. The rhythmical

movement of the dance appears to be a mode of being below all “forms” of

meaning – it allows people for a moment not to make sense out of their lives,

to forget the intellectual aspect of their humanity and become a collective

body (people are not dancing to music, that has been composed as the mean-

ingful product of artistic devices, but the music is “aroused” by the spontane-

ous and physical movement of the dance). Dancers are never alone (Gom-

browicz’s dancing couples differ from the ecstatic Zarathustra, who is danc-

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 503

ing on his own), thanks to their dance they are “self-sufficient” (however, not

as a “self”, but as a “body”) and need not justify their being. The dancers

have achieved authentic inauthenticity. They are in tune with the meaning-

lessness of life. However, in order to be meaningful (or rather “meaningless”)

the concept of authentic inauthenticity must be formulated by someone who

does not partake in the unifying experience of the dance (that dismisses all

meaning). Thus, the meaninglessness of being is perceived by a beholder,

who despite the “nonsensical” fundament (perhaps one should say “abyss”)

of being makes the dance meaningful. It is a revelation of nonsense. More-

over, the revelation of the meaninglessness of being (hidden behind a “veil”)

is the result of a process that appears to be a parody of Hegelian dialectics

(the development of the idea as ascending by a spiral movement). Gombro-

wicz’s attempt to overcome the modern quest for the hidden essence of

meaning must fail, because the “unspeakable”, purely physical non-sense of

the dance is contaminated by the “sublime” inexpressibility of transcendence

as the ultimate aim of the self-developing idea. At this moment the beholder

(Gombrowicz) cannot any longer cope with the giddying implications of the

paradoxical dialectics of meaning and meaninglessness and commits self-

destruction:

Zjawiáem siĊ na tej zabawie tanecznej (byáo to w Nowy Rok) o 2-ej

rano, mając w sobie, oprócz indyka, sporo wódki i win. Umówiáem siĊ

tu ze znajomymi – ale ich nie byáo – chodziáem po rozmaitych salach –

usiadáem w ogródku – gdzie niespodziewanie táum rozáamaá siĊ w pary

i zataĔczono [...] Ale cóĪ to za taniec! Taniec brzuchów, taniec

rozbawionych áysin, taniec zwiĊdáego oblicza, taniec spracowanej, zwy-

káej codziennoĞci, która tu hulaáa przy ĞwiĊcie, taniec szaroĞci i nie-

foremnoĞci [...] Wyglądaáo, jak gdyby oni postanowili siáą zdobyü i

posiąĞü PiĊknoĞü, ĩart i ElegancjĊ, WesoáoĞü i oto, puĞciwszy w pląs

defekty swoje i caáą swoją przyziemnoĞü, wytwarzali wspólnie ksztaát

roztaĔczony, rozbawiony [...] – po czym znowu nastĊpowaáa dzika,

ciemna, gáucha, Boga pozbawiona, wspóápraca roztrzĊsionych, sobą

porwanych ciaá.

A

wiĊc taniec stwarzaá muzykĊ, taniec gwaátem zdobyá melodiĊ i to

wbrew niedoskonaáoĞci swojej! Na widok tej myĞli doznaáem jakĪe

gáĊbokiego wzruszenia – gdyĪ ze wszystkich myĞli Ğwiata, ta wáaĞnie

byáa dla nas, dzisiaj, najwaĪniejsza, nam najbliĪsza, tak, to objawienie

czaiáo siĊ za zasáoną [...] Ku tej idei – Īe taniec stwarza muzykĊ – paráa

ludzkoĞü wszystkimi drogami swoimi, ona staáa siĊ natchnieniem i metą

mojego czasu, ku niej i ja dąĪyáem po spirali, coraz ciaĞniejsze

zataczające krĊgi. Ale w tejĪe chwili zostaáem unicestwiony. GdyĪ zda-
áem sobie sprawĊ, Īe myĞl tĊ myĞlĊ jedynie dla jej patosu!

(GD, I: 99-100)

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(I appeared at this dancing party (this was on New Year’s day) at two

A.M. having consumed, in addition to a turkey, quite a bit of vodka and

wine. (I had arranged to meet with friends but they weren’t there and so

I wandered through the various rooms until I sat down in the garden

where, unexpectedly, a crowd broke up into pairs and started dancing.

[…] What dancing! The dance of bellies, gyrating bald heads, wilted

faces, the dance of overworked, ordinary everydayness, kicking up its

holiday heels, the dance of drabness and deformity. […] It seemed as if

they were determined to conquer and possess Beauty, Wit, Elegance,

and Gaiety by force and so in releasing their defects, they mutually

created a dance, an amused form […] after which there appeared once

again that wild, dark, remote, godless working of frenzied bodies,

carried away with themselves. […] The dance, therefore, created the

music, the dance conquered the music with its violence and this in spite

of its imperfection! At the flash of this thought I was so deeply moved

that of all the thoughts in the world, it was that one that was most

important to us, today, the one closest to us, yes, this revelation

crouched behind that curtain […] Humanity rushed toward this idea,

that the dance creates the music, with all of its means and became the

inspiration and metaphysics of my time. Even I strove to reach it along

a spiral or more narrow loops. Yet it was exactly at this moment that I

became devastated for I realized that I thought this thought only for its

pathos!; GDi, I, 63-64)

This short “subjective” essay on the existential nature of the dance should be

compared with the closing scene of the novel Trans-Atlantyk, in which every-

body (with the exception of the beholder, “I, Witold Gombrowicz”) unites in

an ecstatic, comical, vulgar dance that culminates in an orgy of nonsensical

laughter. Fiction does not require any further reflection on this reconciliation

of all oppositions (“Father” – “Son” etc.) by parody. It is simply represented

as an objectified experience. The status of the beholder, making sense out of

nonsense, needs no further explication. The author of a work of fiction is

himself a dancer:

OtóĪ ja po troszĊ teĪ jestem tancerzem i mnie ta perwersja (Īeby

“áatwo” podejĞü do tego, co “trudne”) jest bardzo wáaĞciwa, mniemam,
Īe to jeden z fundamentów mego literackiego uzdolnienia. (GD, I: 323)

(I am also to a certain extent a dancer and this perverseness [seeking an

“easy” approach to things “difficult”] fits me very well, I think it is one

of the foundations of my literary ability; translation mine – A.v.N.)

In his Diary Gombrowicz has, however, no other choice than to clarify his

own role in the revelation of the real nature of being as the reconciling

immediacy of “nonsense”. “Authentic inauthenticity” can only be understood

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 505

(we remember that life should not be “understood”, but “performed”) by an

outsider, who is mutilated and ultimately annihilated by the very process he

grasps. Gombrowicz and Nietzsche are united in their dialectics of self-

destruction – it is the price they pay for insight.

Now we know the “real” nature of being a human. It is living in a low

land, “plain” existence, without places of retirement for the “chosen”. The

“plainness” of being can only be understood by consciously experiencing its

inevitably plain nature. However “I, Gombrowicz” can only consciously

experience the plainness of being as a state, in which I do not share. Instead

of attempting to overcome the division between “plain” experience and

understanding it, “I” should articulate the essential discontinuity of giving

voice to being on the “plains” of existence and actually living in this “low

land”. “I” am divided and disrupted and must catch this very divisibility and

disruption of “my” being. Authentic existence means to me to be divided, to

be apart from my self as “fulfilment” (the realization of the idea of

“humanity”, which “in reality” is not an idea, but self-performance). I am an

outsider. However, the “plains of existence” are not a monotonous landscape.

They are the habitation of “a lot of” people with many different and often

conflicting attitudes that are reconciled in certain traditional, self-evident

rituals, such as the dance. I am an outsider, because even when I share in

these rituals, I try to express their sense from a superior, transcendent point of

view (of which I know that it does not exist). This vantage point contradicts

the unifying power of ceremonies that precede all forms of mediation.

I do know that the grace of indetermination (liberty) has not been

awarded to me. Even as an outsider I share in the ceremonies of nationhood.

“I, Gombrowicz” am a Pole. One of the most important unifying rituals of

Polishness is hero-worship. By worshiping the great romantic Polish poets

(Mickiewicz, Sáowacki) and the self-sacrificing heroes of the Polish upris-

ings, each “common”, “plain” Pole shares spontaneously (naïvely) in a surro-

gate of the sublime (authentically experiencing sublimity demands a certain

distance of the subject, when he is struck by terrifying natural or historical

phenomena). Heroism, being a precondition for the survival of the Polish

nation, has lost its exceptional status, and the sublimity of romantic poetry

has become a rallying point for people who are not inclined to any self-

reflection or self-questioning. So, when “I” want to reflect on my being,

when I want to be transparent to myself, I have to provoke, I have to dress up

as an anti-hero, or even play the role of a coward. In contrast to the Nietz-

schean Zarathustra the Polish hero is never alone. The very fact of his defeat

(which rather stresses the “nobility” of attempting to accomplish a great task

than its final result) incorporates him in the community of the “Poles”.

Mankind and especially “my” native Poland have known many heroes, with

whom I have to rival, but this task exceeds my strength – besides, when I

attempt to follow in their footsteps, I would lose “myself”, become a parti-

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cular instance of a general process. I would betray the “understanding”

essence of being human that can only be experienced in loneliness (it is often

an anguishing experience – its archetype seems to be the vigil of Christ in the

garden of Gethsemane, a theme taken up from an atheist perspective by the

French romantic poet Gérard de Nerval). So I (Gombrowicz) “oppose” my-

self to the “heroic” forms of Polishness. I do not take part in the heroic

Polonaise (from the point of view of the outsider this unifying dance seems

often a little comical) of the Polish emigration,

8

or, when I cannot avoid

being present, I dance clumsily, introduce unfamiliar partners (e.g. Gonzalo

in Trans-Atlantyk) or try to change the choreography.

9

I choose an aesthetic

strategy of anti-sublimity that, in changed circumstances, permits me to stand

apart from the realm of national stereotypes and conventions. In the post-

romantic world this strategy of parody accomplishes the same task as sublim-

ity in the epoch of post-classicism – it allows me to obtain distance from the

self-evident, to regain the contemplative faculty, to rediscover the brokenness

of the self (the “superior” point of view of self-transcendence gives way to

the “inferior” perspective of self-immanence).

2.

Particular being means to be determined by form (even when we want

to rebel against it). In the case of modern Polish literature it means to be

determined by the national tradition. The idea of the Polish nation was

created by Polish romanticism. One of its main achievements had been the

invention of historiozofia (Hoene-WroĔski, Cieszkowski, KrasiĔski). This

particular instance of historicism reveals itself (it is indeed a revelation,

showing the destiny of the Polish people, making them conscious of their

destination, the first step towards its realization) as a particular experience,

which pretends to be universal as a unique moment of a dialectical process,

the development of Hegelian Geist. Thus, historiozofia made use of the same

dynamic, intellectual structure that a century later was taken up by Gom-

browicz in his hopeless attempt to relieve himself from the pressure of form

and achieve immediacy of existence as precondition of insight into the

dynamics of being (the revelation of chance as the destiny of the individual –

becoming aware of the necessity of determination as the only “true” realiza-

tion of liberty).

Historiozofia considered history to be more than a simple continuity of

past moments. It interpreted history as an organic, meaningful whole. The

discovery of the dynamics of historical development made it possible to

predict the future, to grasp hic et nunc the purposes and aim of history (as a

matter of fact the very establishment of historiozofia as a science, the

discovery that the historical process possesses meaning, was not merely a

theoretical achievement, but a concrete stage in the historical development of

humanity itself).

10

From the romantic point of view Poland played a unique

part in the theatre of history (the development of its “plot”). The dis-

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 507

appearance of the motherland from the map of Europe became a sacrifice (a

catharsis) that initiated a new stage in world history.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the philosophical tenets of

this tradition had become simplified and vulgarized. What was meant to be a

dialectical process of inner development, had become a fixed state. When

Gombrowicz went to school and university the highly eccentric and dynamic

tradition of Polish romanticism had turned into an ossified repertoire of

cliché’s that prevented rather than stimulated critical reflection. One of the

most negative consequences of the Polish national ideology was that man, his

individual existence as a “material” entity (a “beautiful” [Karol in Porno-

graphy] or “ugly” body [Józio in Ferdydurke]),

11

had been completely sub-

jected to historiozofia as the development of the idea of Polishness. However,

the particular Polish national idea had ceased to be a stage in a universal

process of redemption.

12

Its aim had become mere self-preservation, the self-

sufficient existence of a nation partitioned and occupied by enemies. The

body of each Pole had turned into the instrument of an impoverished national

Geist, the collective heir to individual selfishness. The only accepted “body”

was the “body national” that originally, in order to fulfil its purpose, played

its part in the embodiment of a dynamic idea, but had now become the

passive, suffering body of Polish nationhood. The Polish literary tradition had

lost its eye for the more sensual aspects of (human) being, because it

concentrated its attention on this abstract “body national”.

13

Gombrowicz chastised this tendency in the work and life of the Ska-

mandrite poet Jan LechoĔ, who was, as we already have seen, Gombrowicz’s

chosen adversary. One of the many roles of Gombrowicz as author of the

Diary was to consider himself as an anti-LechoĔ. Thanks to his ability to

manipulate Hegelian dialectics he was able to formulate LechoĔ’s static

conception of “Polishness”, which is impossible the other way round. The

relationship between LechoĔ and Gombrowicz is asymmetrical. LechoĔ is

blind to the brokenness of his existence. He believes in, but cannot accept the

essential nothingness of bodily existence, so he attempts to achieve immortal-

ity by affirming the cyclic recurrence of the essence of Polishness (sacrificing

oneself for the sake of the national idea in order to redeem mankind, to

“cement” humanity by spilling “our own Polish blood”), which is expressed

by the repertoire of national mythology that beforehand determines all

particular instances of “being a Pole”. LechoĔ is authentic when he writes

about the fruitlessness of sexual desire and the mortality of beautiful bodies

(cf. his famous volume of poems Srebrne i czarne). He deludes himself in a

very (self-)convincing manner when he repeats the metaphors of patriotic

romanticism (not to be confused with romantic historiozofia). However, his

delusion does not consist in his attempts to “embody” illusions, but in his

conviction that in this manner he achieves “true” reality, transcending parti-

cular instances of Polishness towards the ideal essence of a “heavenly Polish

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Jerusalem”. Due to his lack of philosophical insight LechoĔ cannot grasp the

dialectical relationship between the temporality of particular being and

developing Polishness. From his point of view authentic existence has to be

an accomplished state of being, present in its totality. That is why his

attempts at presenting Polishness in its fulness (e.g. his own role as a Tyrtean

bard of Poland battling during the Second World War for the sake of

humanity), when we look at them with Gombrowicz’s eyes, appear to be

merely lifeless, static cliché’s. The poet presents an image of “self” that is

incapable of further development. He “is”, has fixed himself as a national

bard, and as such he must repeat the gestures of Polish romantic poetry that

during the nineteenth century had become completely ritualized. This role

cannot be transcended – it can only be acted with more or less conviction.

LechoĔ “acted” his authorship with great straightforwardness

14

and the motif

of acting a part, being the prototype of real life, is a recurring theme of his

poetry:

ReĪyserze! Co widzĊ? Zamek! Zamek burzą!

I nagle Ğnieg na scenie i rampa zgaszona,

I áuna ponad miastem. Widzisz owe kruki?

Sáyszysz wycie? To krzyczy Matka Rollisona,

Tylko Īe to z innej i straszliwej sztuki.

Tego ksiĊdza, patrz, Īoánierz uderzyá po twarzy

Za to, Īe nie chciaá bluĨniü BoĪemu imieniu.

Ach! po twoim teatrze juĪ popióá siĊ Īarzy.

Co to, drogi Konradzie? NaprawdĊ w wiĊzieniu?

I tylko blask mu bije, jak nigdy, z oblicza,

Ta rana jest prawdziwa, nie pytaj, czy boli.

Ach, ten Konrad! Tak wierzyá sáowom Mickiewicza,
ĩe zagraá nawet wiĊcej, niĨli byáo w roli.

(LP: 71-72)

(Director! What do I see? The castle! They destroy the castle!

And suddenly snow lies on the scene and the lights are extinguished,

And there spreads a blaze above the town. Do you see these ravens?

Hear this weeping? It is the mother of Rollinson who cries,

Only it comes from a different and terrible play.

Look, a soldier strikes that priest in his face

Because he did not want to blaspheme God’s name.

O! The ashes glow in your theatre.

How now, my dear Conrad? You have been imprisoned?

Yet brightness emanates from his countenance, as never before,

This wound is real, do not ask if it hurts.

O, that Conrad! He did so strongly believe in Mickiewicz’s words

That he performed even more than his role required.)

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 509

(LechoĔ dedicated the poem ‘Ostatnia scena z “Dziadów”’ to the actor Józef

WĊgrzyn, who in pre-war Warsaw played the great roles of Polish romantic

drama, and in December 1939 was arrested by the Gestapo and for some

months held in the notorious Pawiak prison, just as in 1823, in Wilno, Mic-

kiewicz had been imprisoned in the former Bazylian monastery.)

It is hardly surprising that in LechoĔ’s artistically best poems national

mythology concurs with metaphysics (his belief in the ultimate futility of

being – everything turns into nothing). In the famous poem ‘Jan Kazimierz’

the speaker (LechoĔ) acts the part of a Polish king whose gesture of abdi-

cation (which is religious, despite LechoĔ’s own agnosticism – the Polish

seventeenth-century king emigrated to France and took refuge in a monas-

tery) was tantamount to the acceptance of being as lack of substance. Every-

thing passes away, so being must be nothingness. LechoĔ’s last word is from

Gombrowicz’s point of view the first word, the foundation (or perhaps one

should say “the abyss”) of particular being, the precondition of “my” crea-

tive, albeit tragic, liberty.

Jan Kazimierz

Chwalcie usta PannĊ MariĊ!

JuĪ wiĊcej nie wierzĊ

Ani w dziaáa, ni w husariĊ,

W zbroje ni w pancerze.

Za nic wszystkie mi potĊgi,

Wojsk ogromnych chmura,

Za nic peráy, záoto, wstĊgi

I strusiowe pióra.

Padáem krzyĪem, zapáakaáem,

ZáoĪyáem koronĊ

I pas sáucki przewiązaáem

Na Īaáobną stronĊ.

(LP: 121)

(John Casimir

Lips, praise the virgin Mary!

I do not trust anymore

Cannons or hussars,

Nor cuirasses and armour.

I hold all worldly might in contempt,

Clouds of large armies,

I hold in contempt pearls, gold, garters

And ostrich-feathers.

510

Arent van Nieukerken

I lay down as a cross, wept,

Took off my crown

And put my belt from àuck

with the wrong [not embroidered] side on, for mourning.)

The mark of determination by tradition can only be grasped by some-

one who is at the same time inside and outside the tradition. The tension

between negation and affirmation (affirmation by negation) is irresolvable.

There is no escape from form (which means – in the Polish [Central Euro-

pean] context – nationality). Gombrowicz, who inherited this form, tried to

liberate himself from the mark of Polishness by reviving pre-romantic literary

tradition. Romanticism, which in Germany, England and France discovered

the worth of particularity, “inferiority” (the appreciation of scenes of rural

and “low” life – e.g. Wordsworth’s poems about “simple” people) and the

periphery, constitutes (constituted before 1989) the general centre of Polish-

ness. Thus, Mickiewicz, even when in his Ballady i romanse he imitated the

romantic attempts to create a poetry of “simple” people (in the sense of

Schiller’s distinction between the naïve and the sentimental), did not manage

to create a style that could grasp the individual experience of “being deter-

mined”. Gombrowicz had to seek a different “form”. At the farthest periphery

of Polish literature he found the Sarmatic Baroque, which by its lack of

artistic discipline appears to be the very negation of the Renaissance and all

forms of European classicism (it did not shun ugliness as a literary theme),

and at the same time, by its naïve affirmation of the self-sufficiency and

superiority of the Polish nobility (in the eighteenth century, before the first

partition, Poland was still the second-largest country of Europe), did not

succumb to the romantic cult of suffering and martyrdom. From the point of

view of Gombrowicz (an excellent literary craftsman, who suffered from an

excess of historical “self-consciousness”) Polish eighteenth-century literature,

which literary history considered an epoch of decadence, was just what he

needed – the experience of grotesque innocence and naïve liberty. Writing in

Trans-Atlantyk about “Gombrowicz” he attempts to create a new identity at

the periphery of European civilization. Gombrowicz re-creates the unsophi-

sticated style and language of the Sarmatian Baroque, in order to regain the

“material”, physical side of being. Polish romanticism had made out of beau-

ty an incorporeal, “moral” idea, so the poetics of Trans-Atlantyk prefer the

ugly and lascivious. The writer justifies this idea, underlying his artistic

practice, in his Diary:

WeĨcie do rĊki literaturĊ naszą z XVI i XVII stulecia, a przekonacie

siĊ, Īe ona prawie zawsze utoĪsamiaáa urodĊ z cnotą. Nie byáo w niej

miejsca na piĊknoĞü, zrodzoną wyáącznie z Īycia, wrĊcz przeciwinie
Īycie ukazywaáo siĊ tutaj okieáznane moralnoĞcią i tylko máodzieniec

zacny, bogobojny i poczciwy mógá dostąpiü kanonizacji estetycznej w

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 511

sztuce. To wáaĞnie nam siĊ dzisiaj nie podoba – to nas nudzi – to

wydaje nam siĊ nieĪywotne. GdyĪ cnota, sama w sobie, jest nieciekawa

i z góry wiadoma, cnota jest zaáatwieniem sprawy, to jest Ğmiercią;

grzech jest Īyciem. [...]

[…]

Co w sposób nieunikniony musiaáo doprowadziü do skostnienia

formy. [...]

[…]

I

stąd ta niesáychana przygoda nasza, jaką byá wiek XVIII, genialny

nieomal kryzys piĊknoĞci polskiej, który postawiá nas oko w oko z

Brzydotą, z RozwiązáoĞcią naszą. [...] wiek sklerotycznego, starczego

zesztywnienia i zarazem tĊpego rozwydrzenia, kiedy to rozbrat pomiĊd-

zy formą a instynktem wytworzyá przepaĞü

15

[...] najgáĊbszą chyba,

jaka kiedykolwiek objawiáa siĊ sielskiemu naszemu duchowi. Nigdy,

ani przedtem, ani potem, nie otarliĞmy siĊ bliĪej o piekáo i niewiele

warta jest myĞl o Polsce i Polakach, która z lekcewaĪeniem pomija

okres saskiego báazeĔstwa. [...]

[…]

Bez kwestii, potĊĪny idiotyzm nasz z tego okresu rodzi siĊ miĊdzy

innymi z nie zaspokojonego pragnienia urody. Polska ówczesna to po

prostu naród który nie umie byü piĊkny. Na dnie owego kontredansu

opasáych szlachciurów dostrzegaü siĊ daje rozpacz wskutek niemoĪ-

noĞci dotarcia do Ĩródeá Īywego wdziĊku, to dramat istot zmuszonych

zaspakajaü siĊ takimi namiastkami jak ceremoniaá, honory, godnoĞci i

wyáadowywaü siĊ w uroczystym rytuale, podczas gdy obĪarstwo, lu-

bieĪnoĞü i pycha nie znajdują juĪ Īadnego hamulca. Jaka szkoda

niepowetowana, Īe saska groteska nie zostaáa doprowadzona do swych

ostatecznych konsekwencji! GdyĪ to samoudrĊczenie w brzydocie, w

gáupocie, zawiodáoby nas prawdopodobnie do wyĪszych postaci piĊk-

noĞci i rozumu – ten drĊczący konflikt z formą, która staáa siĊ nam

wroga, mógáby znakomicie udoskonaliü naszą wraĪliwoĞü na formĊ – i,

kto wie, moĪe uzyskalibyĞmy w ten sposób lepsze zrozumienie tego

nieuleczalnego rozdĨwiĊku, jaki istnieje miĊdzy czáowiekiem a jego

formą, jego “stylem” – a ta myĞl pozwoliáaby nam dostrzec na koniec

istnienie Formy, jako takiej, sprawiáaby, Īe nie tyle “styl polski” ile

stosunek nasz, jako ludzi, do tego stylu, staáby siĊ naszą najwaĪniejszą

troską. (GD, I: 354-355)

(Take a look at our sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and

you will be convinced that it has almost always equated beauty with

virtue. There was no room in it for beauty born exclusively of life; on

the contrary, life here turned out to be a bridled morality and only a

virtuous youth, decent and god-fearing, could come to know aesthetic

canonization in art. This is exactly what does not appeal to us today.

This bores us, it seems neuter, unattractive, for virtue in itself is

512

Arent van Nieukerken

uninteresting and predictable. Virtue is settling the matter, that is, death.

Sin is life. […]

[…]

Which inevitably had to lead to an ossification of form […]

[…]

This is the source of our incredible, adventurous eighteenth century,

the almost brilliant crisis of Polish beauty, which put us face-to-face

with our Ugliness, our Profligacy… a century of sclerotic, senile old

stiffening and at the same time, a dull unruliness, when the [conflict]

between form and instinct had created a chasm… probably the deepest

which had ever shown itself to our idyllic spirit. Never before or since

have we been closer to rubbing up against hell and any thought about

Poland and the Poles is not worth much if it bypasses the period of

Saxon scurrility. […]

[…]

Undoubtedly the profound imbecility of our behavior during that

period derived from, among other things, an unsatisfied desire for

beauty. The Poland of that day was a nation which simply did not know

how to be beautiful. At the bottom of that quadrille of obese squires one

can divine a despair which results from an incapacity to reach the

sources of living grace; this is the tragedy of beings forced to be

satisfied with such surrogates as ceremony, honors, distinctions and to

find outlets in solemn ritual, while gluttony, debauchery and pride are

boundless. What irreparable harm! That this Saxon burlesque did not

get carried out to its ultimate conclusions! For the self-torment in

ugliness, in stupidity, would have led us most likely to the higher forms

of beauty and understanding – this tormenting conflict with form,

which became hostile to us, could have wonderfully perfected our

sensitivity to form – and, who knows, maybe we would have gained a

better understanding of this incurable disharmony in this way, the

disharmony which exists between a man and his form, his “style” – and

this would have resulted not so much in the “Polish style” as much in

our relationship, as people, to that style having become our highest

concern; GDi I, 224-225)

According to Gombrowicz our greatest impediment in this attempt to

unearth the determination by form as the universal mode of human being is

Polish romanticism, especially its “canonical” poet Adam Mickiewicz, the

bard of a beaten, humiliated nation, who reduced the Polish “style” to moral

beauty, destroying the vital tension between life and form, trying to dodge the

antinomies of being. Is Gombrowicz right in deprecating Polish romanticism?

Does he not overlook its essential eccentricity, rooted in the experience of the

émigré?

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 513

3.

In modern European literature opposition to tradition is a dialectical

necessity, but does not suffice. Gombrowicz’s self is authentic when it expe-

riences itself as being conscious of human inauthenticity. This consciousness

grasps the essential determination and alienation of man, but exiles the

conscious self from the human community. The gap between “true” know-

ledge and sharing it with others cannot be bridged. Furthermore, conscious

being, existing as man, is the fruit of grace, but this gift is only accorded to

those who are prepared to accept it. “Existential” preparation is a necessary

precondition for “authentic inauthenticity”. When I want to regain myself in

the essential alienation of humanity, “I” must provoke society, I have to

create “anti-form”, I have to act, in order to be acted upon. The Polish

romantic émigré was acted upon (being the victim of the military catastrophe

of failed uprisings or frustrated political conspiracies). His transfer to the

periphery of his former being, where he was thrown out of his culturally

determined self (to the pavement of Paris), was not an act of his own choice,

but the decision of fate. Grace preceded understanding (here we reach the

limits of the self-sufficient, self-developing dialectics of Hegel and are

confronted with the spontaneous revelation of Otherness). Alienation had to

be explained and justified, which was usually done with regard to the prior

form of “being a Pole”. The émigré was afflicted by Providence. He had to

atone for the “sins” of his nation, to submit himself to this “divine” trial, after

which he and his brethren would return in triumph to the former harmony of

their homeland and endow it with a “purified” form.

However, when the misery of exile lasted longer and the hope of a

speedy return to a born-again Poland receded, some émigré’s endowed with a

poetical and metaphysical sensitivity began to experience their painful

predicament as a chance to explain and justify the general alienation of man,

who, in his very mortality, seemed an exile from the original source of being.

Grace, accorded to me without the intellectual effort of “anti-form”, allows

me to grasp exile as the essential form of human existence. “I”, a Polish

émigré, perceive my hereditary tradition from an inferior point of view, but

the awareness of inferiority is a precondition of the hope of fulfilment. The

“pavement of Paris” from which Adam Mickiewicz and his romantic

colleagues longed for their homeland (Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland) as a

“Paradise Lost”, that should be “regained” in order to achieve wholeness and

fulfilment in all eternity (in this longing politics concur with metaphysics, the

annihilation of Poland appears a political expression of the fruitless

emptiness of the Newtonian universe) was, of course, not itself inferior (it

was the centre of nineteenth-century European culture). However, the

romantic Polish poets experienced their exile in the capital of Europe as a

proof of their own “material” inferiority, i.e. the inferiority of the Polish form

(the superiority of the rational and technical civilization of France and

England in comparison with the rural East was undeniable). This form ceased

514

Arent van Nieukerken

to be self-evident to them and required improvement. Statics turned into

dynamics. The idea of Polish nationhood needed to be further developed,

which could be achieved only in confrontation (or dialogue) with other na-

tional ideas. Self-alienation transformed into self-transcendence.

Polish romanticism attempted to vindicate the rural and irrational (or

perhaps rather pre-rational) form of the Polish tradition. Its inferiority, its

simplicity of mind (a certain intellectual slowness) was treated as a source of

moral strength, a readiness for sacrifice, by means of which it would become

possible to redeem not only the Polish nation, but also the inhuman, merely

technical and commercial world of modern rationality. This moral simplicity

of the “spiritually poor” reintegrates what had been dissipated by the one-

sided appreciation of the intellect (one of the favourite themes of the

metaphysical meditations of Polish romanticism is the necessity to reunite

reason [“head”] and feeling [“heart”] – intellectual pride must give way to the

humility of feeling). Such convictions, establishing a dialectical link between

the identity of the Polish émigré and France, the land of his exile (the choice

of which turned out to be more than an accident), were voiced by almost all

romantic poets. The Polish mystic Andrzej TowiaĔski,

16

founder of a sect,

which at one moment united the two greatest poets of Polish romanticism,

Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Sáowacki, was very conscious of the binding

force of “simplicity”. Typical is a statement of his, which is quoted by

another romantic poet who had succumbed to the hypnotizing spiritual force

of the prophet, Seweryn GoszczyĔski. The grotesque atmosphere of this pas-

sage is somewhat reminiscent of the parts of Trans-Atlantyk that describe

Gombrowicz’s (the protagonist’s) imprisonment in the dungeon of the

“Knights of the Spur”. The same holds true for the ideas that are expounded

by the prophet. The praise of simplicity, of self-centredness and even a

certain intellectual dearth as a force for the Good, are akin to the apology of

weakness that in Trans-Atlantyk is given voice to by the at first sight ex-

tremely prosaic Rachmistrz. Thanks to God, Whose Providence had exposed

self-centred Polishness to oppression and suffering, these very limitations

become – according to TowiaĔski – an instrument of concentration, re-inte-

gration, allowing to harvest the fruits of merely intellectual development and

to attain a higher stage in the Progress of man towards God. The awkward

(perhaps even grotesque) alliance between exaltation and earthiness, spirit

and body, is one of the characteristics of the more extreme forms of Polish

romanticism and determines its exponents, who mistrust elegance, smooth-

ness, politeness and behave consciously in a clumsy manner, relish in abrupt,

violent speech and dress themselves as plainly as possible.

17

In a very exotic

passage of the Diary of the Godly Cause GoszczyĔski summarizes the theses

of his spiritual master, linking Historiozofia with the earthbound passivity of

a rural society:

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 515

Polska i Francja są dziĞ dwa jedyne narody ducha wysoko wyzwo-

lonego; w innych są tylko wyjątki. Ale Polacy zakopują swojego ducha,

a francuski jest rozsypany. Pojrzyj na Francuza, a poznasz zaraz

wysokie jego wyzwolenie; pojrzyj na jego rĊce, na caáą postaü, nie ma

prawie ciaáa. Ziemia czuje tĊ siáĊ i nie mogąc jej wytĊpiü wszystkiego

dokáada, aby ją zwróciü na drogi niewáaĞciwe. Tysiąc kierunków

pokazuje, aby tam zwróciü ruch ducha francuskiego ku sprawom

ziemskim, rozsypaü go po ziemi. Widziemy zadziwiające rzeczy, które

stąd powstają, bo wszystko to robi siáa wyzwolonego ich ducha, ale

wszystko jest tylko dla ziemi. Powoáaniem Kolą skupiü tego ducha [...]

Jak Francuzi rozpraszają swojego ducha, tak polski znowu byá dotąd

zakopany. ĩe ruch sprowadzaá przykroĞü, kaĪdy wiĊc wybrawszy sobie

jakąĞ kryjówkĊ, zagrzebywaá siĊ w niej i chciaáby juĪ tam wiecznie

pozostaü – Ĩle czy dobrze, aby spokojnie. Stąd jedni utonĊli i gnuĞnieją

w Īyciu wygodnym, drudzy w gospodarstwie, tam ci w naukach, w

doktrynach; inni w bezczynnej poboĪnoĞci. Ale Bóg na to nie pozwala.

Nie bierze on ducha za rĊkĊ i nie wyprowadza go z tego stanu, byáby to

przymus, a Bóg zostawia czáowiekowi wolnoĞü, tylko budzi go,

ostrzega o záym jego stanie przez dociskania zewnĊtrzne. Wszelkie

dotychczasowe dociskania materialne Polski byáy dla obudzenia w niej

ruchu ducha i gdyby ten ruch nie nastąpiá, caáa Polska byáaby

przesiedlona na Sybir, aĪ póki by nie nastąpiá. (GDSB, I: 81)

(Poland and France are at the moment the only two peoples of the

superior liberated spirit; in other [peoples] there occur only exceptions.

But the Poles bury their spirit, and the French [spirit] is dissipated.

Look at a Frenchman, and you immediately perceive his superior

liberation; look at his hands, his entire shape, it is almost bodiless. The

earth felt this force and, because she could not exterminate it entirely,

used her utmost strength to lead it astray. She shows a thousand

directions, attempts to lead the French spirit towards worldly affairs,

dissipate it over the earth. We see wondrous things arising hereof,

which is brought about by their liberated spirit, but all this is for the

earth. The vocation of the Circle consists in concentrating this spirit.

[…] As the French dissipated their spirit, the Polish [spirit], in its turn,

was, until now, buried. Because motion caused unpleasantness,

everybody chose some hiding-place, dug himself in, and wanted to

remain there for ever – in good or bad luck, for the sake of tranquillity.

Hence some drowned in the idleness of a comfortable existence, others

in the ways of rural life, others again in science and doctrines, still

others in passive piety. But God does not permit this. He does not take

hold of the spirit in order to lead him out of this state – that would be

compulsion – God leaves man his freedom, He merely arouses him,

makes him apprehend his state by external oppressions. All material

oppressions, experienced by Poland hitherto, were to arouse the move-

ment of her spirit, and if this movement would not arise, all of Poland

516

Arent van Nieukerken

would be forced to settle in Siberia, just until this would be brought

about; translation mine – A.v.N.)

There appears to be no structural difference between the romantic image of

Polishness and Gombrowicz’s point of view. The self-mutilation of the self-

appointed spokesmen of an oppressed nation is but the consequence of trans-

cendent pressure, the atonement for rural inertia. Apparently without any

intellectual effort both strains can coexist in the Polish mind, as long as it be-

lieves in its being an instrument of Providence. Gombrowicz’s world, at-

tempting to invert the traditional roles of Polishness, is of course a realm of

chance, so the modern writer feels “himself” divided from “his self”.

Living in Argentina since 1939, on the opposite periphery of European

culture, Gombrowicz continues the romantic appreciation of the periphery,

but rejects its eschatological aspects. He admits the possibility of moments of

authenticity, of insight into the core of being, but questions the moral sense of

these moments and denies the possibility of ultimate fulfilment. The hidden

core of Polish romanticism consisted in the conviction that all the fleeting

moments of particular life are in reality “accidents” of the timeless moment

of eternity, the pleroma. The ultimate heir of Polish romanticism, Czesáaw

Miáosz, called the real presence of eternity the “Communion of the Holy”

(“Obcowanie ĝwiĊtych”). Polish romanticism rejects a conception of time as

a simple, mechanical succession of particular moments, without any trans-

cendent motivation. If this were the case, our lives would be the result of

contingency, chance, which is impossible, because it would contradict the

existence of providence. It is the individual who makes sense out of his life.

He creates sense. Sense (Logos) “is”, by consequence, an attribute (perhaps

the very essence) of God, so the principle of providence must exist, and be

present in the core of being (what “is”, cannot pass away – the fleeting

moments of individual human, mortal life must be part of eternity – in reality

there “is” not nothing, because we “are” the Communion of the Holy). Even

on the border of our existence we create sense out of nonsense, being out of

nothingness. On the edge of existence we are in a most radical way con-

fronted with nothingness, but even then our faith (the convictions of the

Polish romantic émigré, who is in reality a pilgrim, fulfilling his simultane-

ously individual and national Quest for the sources of being) overcomes all

doubt and despair.

Nothing is more important than authenticity. In this respect Gom-

browicz is a true (albeit rebellious, badly behaving [“krnąbrny”]) son of

modernity (and romanticism). Man should be an individual. Individuality is

constituted by expressing the irresolvable tension between particularity and

universality. This is the burden of modernity that “I” can regret, but cannot

do away with. But in order to regret, “I” have to grasp the tensions, which

constitute the modernist sensibility. “I” can only grasp these tensions by an

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 517

act of grace. It is something that happens to “me” and hurts (this is, of course,

not a general statement on the nature of human being, but the concrete

expression of “my” place in history, determined by form and culture, or

perhaps rather the attempt to overcome this determination). God, providence

or chance (contingency) should transfer “me” (this always is essentially an

experience of the first person singular) to the border of my culture, i.e. my

being. It is only possible to obtain a deeper insight into the mechanics of

human being, when the individual becomes conscious of his alienation. The

price we pay for authenticity is to be a stranger to our normal, culturally

determined existence, which means – from the perspective of the Poles – to

be an émigré. However, we encounter immediately an almost insurmountable

problem. The very experience of alienation, being a stranger, turns out to be

one of the central experiences of the Polish idea of affirming nationality. It is

a “universal” form of Polishness (history likes to repeat itself). This paradox

lies at the heart of the famous novel Trans-Atlantyk and many fragments of

Gombrowicz’s Diaries. When we want to come to terms with the anguishing

experience of being banished from our homeland, the natural centre of each

particular human being, we should revive the “given” alienation of the

romantic émigré and seek refuge in the immediacy of this existential model

with its sacred ceremonies and rituals, its “authentic inauthenticity” (often

this attitude is not a matter of choice, but rather the effect of succumbing to

the necessities of life). If, however, “I” (Gombrowicz) want to get insight into

the “inauthentic” essence of being, I must alienate my own alienation,

achieve even deeper loneliness, become more than an émigré in a foreign

country (this attitude is a matter of repeated grace). I must be born again as

an outsider among my fellow émigré’s (e.g. by courting the culture of the

country, in which I have sought refuge, in opposition to all attempts of my

compatriots to retain their national identity). “I” must be consciously in-

authentic.

NOTES

1

Gombrowicz characterizes Argentina as a European country “lost in the

ocean”, a territory at the same time within and beyond the space of “mature”

civilization, a land of immaturity naturally leaning towards the mature, a

periphery attempting to become more central than the centre (which in

Gombrowicz’s existential geography is France, especially its capital, Paris).

When Gombrowicz, a citizen of the opposite periphery of European culture,

518

Arent van Nieukerken

after a few years spent in Paris, by chance (the outbreak of the Second World

War) was forced to stay in Argentina, he discovered the vital meaning of the

periphery, which for Poles in Poland and Argentines in Argentina is simply a

pre-reflexive state of being. So, chance (Gombrowicz’s arrival in Buenos

Aires) suddenly is transformed into destiny. Being an sich remains devoid of

sense, but the human individual possesses under certain conditions the power

to give meaning to his own particular being (“destiny” seems to be a meta-

phorical way of speaking about reality as contingency, allowing us to come to

terms with the “Geworfenheit” of human being):

R: [Dominique de Roux] – I pan myĞli, Īe to [Gombrowicz’s being

“transplanted” to Argentina] nie byá przypadek? G: [Gombrowicz] –

Caáa ta historia z wyjazdem to byáo, wie pan, jakby jakaĞ rĊka

olbrzymia wziĊáa mnie za koánierz, wyjĊáa z Polski i przeniosáa do

tego lądu, zgubionego w oceanie, a jednak europejskiego... akurat na

miesiąc przed wybuchem wojny. R: – A dlaczego RĊka nie osadziáa

pana w zachodniej Europie? G: – GdyĪ to skoĔczyáoby siĊ wczeĞniej,

czy póĨniej na ParyĪu. Gdybym nie opuĞciá Europy, prawie na pewno

zamieszkaábym po wojnie w ParyĪu. A tego RĊka najwidoczniej sobie

nie Īyczyáa. R: – Dlaczego? G: – Albowiem ParyĪ zamieniáby mnie à

la longue w paryĪanina. A ja miaáem byü anty-paryĪaninem. Nie

byáem jeszcze wówczas doĞü odporny. Moim przeznaczeniem byáo

pozostaü jeszcze dáugie lata na peryferiach Europy, z dala od jej stolic

i jej mechanizmów literackich, pisaü “do szuflady”, jak siĊ dziĞ mówi

w Polsce. Niech pan spojrzy na mapĊ. Z trudnoĞcią moĪna by wybraü

lepsze miejsce niĪ Buenos Aires. Argentyna to kraj europejski, tu siĊ

czuje silnie EuropĊ, silniej niĪ w samej Europie, a jednoczeĞnie jest

siĊ poza nią [...] Magia. Kztaát, jakby zaprojektowany, Īycia. Im bard-

ziej jest siĊ poza formą, tym bardziej jest siĊ w jej mocy. Zagadkowe

przeciwieĔstwa, niedocieczone kontrasty. (GT, 81-82)

(R. [Dominique de Roux] – and you think, this [Gombrowicz being

“transplanted” to Argentina] did not happen by chance? G: [Gom-

browicz] – As far as my departure is concerned, it was, you know, as

if a gigantic hand seized me by the collar, took me out of Poland, and

transferred me to a land lost amidst the ocean, but nevertheless

European, exactly a month before the outbreak of the war. R: – But

why did this Hand not settle you in Western-Europe? G: Because

Paris would have changed me à la longue into a Parisian. And I was to

become an anti-Parisian. At that time I was not sufficiently stubborn.

It was my destiny to remain for many years at the periphery of

Europe, far from its capitals and literary mechanisms, writing “for the

shelf”, as people in Poland nowadays say. Take a look at the map. It

would be difficult to choose a better place than Buenos Aires.

Argentina is a European country, here you feel Europe very strongly,

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 519

even stronger than in Europe itself, yet, at the same time, you are on

the outside of it […] Magic, a shape – as if it were designed – of life.

The more you are on the outside of form, the stronger you are in its

power. Mysterious oppositions, never clarified contrasts; translation

mine – A.v.N.)

2

In Gombrowicz’s world it happens as the sudden eruption of chaos that de-

stroys all forms, including “anti-form”, which is merely form denying its own

formality, form provoking earlier forms of being in order to escape from form,

when, in reality, it only creates a new hierarchy of forms. Immediacy of

existence, its indeterminacy, is a far more radical notion. It turns out to be the

structural counterpart of Christian grace in a world without God. It is non-

sense (in Ferdydurke Gombrowicz attempts to represent it by the grotesque

experience of “kupa”, a heap of tumbling bodies, people at random beating

each other up) as the ultimate (non)-sense of the world.

3

Gombrowicz, as a matter of fact, likes to explain the ideological content of his

fiction, to straighten out irregularities and filling up gaps in his conceptions.

His prefaces and epilogues are an essential part of the dialectics of literary

form, striving to achieve unity in the face of the eternal incompleteness of

being.

4

Attempts to overcome the paradox of being give birth to new paradoxes. This

anti-metaphysical truth is of great importance for Gombrowicz’s understand-

ing of the literary genre. His Diary sets itself the purpose of creating a

fragmentary form that expresses the essentially fragmentary nature of being.

However, the highly individual insights into the inevitability of particular

being, which are the contents of the Diary, often have the form of comments

on the philosophical and existential implications of Gombrowicz’s fiction.

They attempt to construct out of a former particular state of being that had

achieved “objective” form, a universal and “self-conscious” model of parti-

cular being. “I” am the real subject of my fiction – the theme of my fiction is

the universal paradox of selfhood – “I” am writing about “man” – this very act

of generalizing particularity is a self-deconstructing mechanism. Let us from

this point of view analyse the comments on Ferdydurke, with which begins

the second volume of the Diary (1957-1961). This novel expressed the

obsession of Gombrowicz with “my” particular being as self-alienation with

regard to the other – “I” want to look at myself from a point of view that

transcends my particularity, and yet remain myself. So, “I” have to create a

form (which means at the same time that “I” myself am created by this form).

In his Diary Gombrowicz develops his own anthropology out of the dialectics

of self and form:

Oni mówią – i sáusznie – Īe w Ferdydurke czáowiek jest stwarzany

przez ludzi. Ale rozumieją to przede wszystkim jako uzaleĪnienie

czáowieka od grupy spoáecznej, która narzuca mu obyczaj, konwe-

nans, styl... [...] Jednego wszakĪe nie dostrzegli. Mianowicie, iĪ ten

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proces urabiania czáowieka przez ludzi jest w Ferdydurke pojĊty

nieskoĔczenie szerzej [...] Oni mówią dalej, Īe ja w Ferdydurke (i w

innych utworach) walczĊ z faászem, z zakáamaniem... Zapewne. Ale

czyĪ nie jest to znowu uproszczenie mego czáowieka i moich intencji?

PrzecieĪ mój czáowiek jest stwarzany od zewnątrz, czyli ze swojej

istoty nieautentyczny – bĊdący zawsze nie sobą, gdyĪ okreĞla go

forma, która rodzi siĊ miĊdzy ludĨmi. Jego “ja” jest mu zatem

wyznaczone w owej “miĊdzyludzkoĞci”. Wieczysty aktor, ale aktor

naturalny, poniewaĪ sztucznoĞü jest mu wrodzona, ale stanowi cechĊ

jego czáowieczeĔstwa [...]. (GD, II: 9)

(They say – and correctly – that in Ferdydurke, man is created by

people. But they understand this primarily as man’s being dependent

on a social group, which imposes custom, convention, and style upon

him… […] They say further that in Ferdydurke (and in my other

works) I wage a battle with distortion, with hypocrisy… Undoubtedly.

But isn’t this also a simplification of my intentions and my concept of

man? Why, my man is created from the outside, that is, he is in-

authentic in essence – he is always not him-self, because he is determ-

ined by form, which is born between people. His “I”, therefore, is

marked in that “interhumanity”. An eternal actor, but a natural one,

because his artificiality is inborn, it makes up a feature of his

humanity; GDi, II: 3-4)

Gombrowicz’s anthropology must be negative. Humanity is something im-

posed from beyond my self, but still “I” impose it on “myself”. Without this

act of self-imposition “I” would not exist. The quotation from the Diary

presents this general reflection on humanity as “my” attempt to make sense

out of the “given” state of alienation. Commenting on the philosophical,

general concept of self in Ferdydurke, Gombrowicz constructs his novel as an

act of mis-communication: “They say that I…but”. My intentions are mis-

understood, but thanks to this mis-understanding I can affirm my own self. As

a matter of fact I did not exist before I was misunderstood. Alienation turns

out to be the core and the surface of existence, the internalization of the

essential outwardness of being (“byü czáowiekiem to ‘zachowywaü siĊ’ jak

czáowiek, nie bĊdąc nim w samej gáĊbi”; GD, II: 9).

5

Cf. his notes for a lecture on the Prussian “state philosopher”, delivered on 3

May 1969, in which he appreciated Hegel’s dialectics of becoming as a great

step forward:

Filozofia Hegla jest filozofią stawania siĊ, wielkim krokiem naprzód,

gdyĪ proces stawania siĊ nie wystĊpuje we wczeĞniejszych filozo-

fiach. Jest to nie tylko ruch, lecz i postĊp, gdyĪ ów proces dialekty-

czny przenosi nas na coraz wyĪszy poziom, aĪ do ostatecznego celu

rozumu, a proces ten jest u Hegla w naturalny sposób oparty na postĊ-

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 521

pie rozumu, to znaczy nauki. A to z kolei prowadzi go do nadania

najwiĊkszej waĪnoĞci dziejom. (GF: 91)

(The philosophy of Hegel is a philosophy of becoming, a great step

forward, as the process of becoming did not occur in previous philo-

sophies. It is not merely a matter of movement, but also of progress, as

the dialectical process conveys us to an ever higher level, just until the

ultimate goal of reason, and this process is – according to Hegel –

naturally founded on the progress of reason, which means science.

And this, in its turn, inclines him to award the greatest importance to

history; translation mine – A.v.N.)

Henceforth it became impossible to meditate on the sense of being without

reference to Hegelian dialectics. It seems that Gombrowicz tries to “pervert”

the process of becoming as the self-development of Geist, by depriving it of

the Absolute as its outcome (“Es ist von dem Absoluten zu sagen, daß es

wesentlich Resultat, daß es erst am Ende das ist, was es in Wahrheit ist; und

hierin eben besteht seine Natur, Wirkliches, Subjekt, oder Sich-selbst-werden,

zu sein”; HPG: 22). The Absolute can only be thought by itself, so man trying

to grasp the ultimate goal of self-developing Geist (Hegel thought he had

succeeded in this attempt: “czáowiek jest podstawą, poprzez którą rozum
Ğwiatowy dochodzi do ĞwiadomoĞci samego siebie”; GF: 92 [“Man is the

foundation, by which the reason of the world achieves consciousness of its

self”; translation mine – A.v.N.]), appears to be more than a stage of this

process – he precedes its outcome (“Das Wahre ist das Ganze. Das Ganze

aber ist nur das durch seine Entwicklung sich vollendende Wesen”; HPG: 22).

Man must already be an absolute in himself. However, from the Hegelian

point of view he shares in the Absolute merely as generalizing reason, using

intellectual categories (“indem die Wahrheit behauptet wird, an dem Begriffe

allein das Element ihrer Existenz zu haben”; HPG: 12) and not as particular

being, being aware of itself by feeling, or existing as a body hic et nunc, prior

to intellectual development (“Hegel pojąá juĪ z góry swój Ğwiat – co do jego

rozumu itd. A wiĊc obmyĞlenie. To pewien mankament rozumowania

abstrakcyjnego”; GF: 96 [“Hegel did understand his world in advance – as far

as its reason is concerned etc. By consequence [individual] thinking is a

certain deficiency of abstract reasoning”; translation mine – A.v.N.]).

Gombrowicz’s most intimate existential awareness (which allows him to

experience his “selfhood”, even when it seems to precede the self as reason) is

the contingency of individual man. The opposition between the self as reason

on the one hand and bodily (or emotional and social) existence on the other

cannot be overcome. The human absolute (immediacy of “my”-self) turns out

to be the gap between bodily (emotional, social) immediacy of being and the

act of thinking it. I grasp my “self” as being for ever divided from myself (in

the first chapter of Ferdydurke Józio, awakening from sleep, has difficulties to

recognise the alien shape in his room as the body of his “self”). “I” am a

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human when I am not immediately my-self, but mediated by exterior forms.

Gombrowicz is aware of the fact that he owes this form of self-determination

to Hegelian dialectics, which were radicalized by Existentialist philosophy:

JuĪ tu moĪna dostrzec wielkie otcháanie, jakie otwierają siĊ dla

umysáu miĊdzy tym, co obecnie nazywa siĊ: synchroniczne i diachro-

niczne. Ta otcháaĔ stanowi czĊĞü wielkich sprzecznoĞci cechujących

stale ludzkiego ducha, jak np. przedmiot-podmiot, Einsteina teoria

continuum a Plancka teoria kwantów [...] Duch ludzki zjawia siĊ w tej

perspektywie jako coĞ uformowanego z dwóch róĪnych elementów,

które nie spotykają siĊ ze sobą. To rozdarcie to wáaĞnie czáowiek.

(GF: 92)

(Here it is possible to perceive the deep abyss, opening up for the

mind, between what we presently call: the synchronic and diachronic.

This abyss is a part of the great contradictions, by which the human

spirit is continuously characterized, as e.g. subject-object, Einstein’s

theory of the continuum and Planck’s theory of Quantum Mechanics

[…] The human spirit shows itself from this perspective as being

conceived out of two different elements that do not concur. Man is

made up of this disruption; translation mine – A.v.N.)

However, the existential structure of Gombrowicz’s world is the exact oppo-

site of Hegel’s realm of self-developing Geist. True being is disrupted. The

isolation and division of particular being is real, wholeness (“das Ganze”)

false. The former is “felt”, but its pressure cannot be adequately expressed.

The latter is expressed by intellectual categories (“Begriffe”), but “thought”

does not really exist. The self (subject) in Hegel’s philosophy is part of a

process of re-integration. Gombrowicz’s self is just alienated, without any

hope of achieving wholeness. It can only give voice to its own state of being

divided.

Egzystencjalizm narodziá siĊ wprost z ataku Kierkegaarda na Hegla

[...] Przykáad: pierwszy moment to, jak juĪ powiedziaáem a propos

Kierkegaarda, przeciwieĔstwo abstraktu i konkretu. Rzecz jest dla

umysáu w najwiĊkszym stopniu powaĪna, a nawet tragiczna, gdyĪ

rozumujemy przy pomocy pojĊü, a zatem abstrakcji. Tragiczna, bo

rozumowanie moĪe siĊ dokonywaü tylko poprzez pojĊcia i logikĊ, a

praw ogólnych nie moĪna tworzyü bez pojĊü i bez logiki. Z drugiej

strony pojĊcia nie istnieją w rzeczywistoĞci (bardzo waĪne). (GF: 95)

(Existentialism was born in a straight line out of Kierkegaard’s attack

on Hegel [...] For instance: the first moment – as I already said with

regard to Kierkegaard – is the opposition between the abstract and the

concrete. This matter is to the self extremely important and even

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 523

tragic, as we reason by means of ideas, i.e. abstractions. Tragic,

because reasoning can only accomplish itself through ideas and logic,

and it is impossible to formulate general laws without ideas and logic.

On the other hand in reality ideas do not exist [very important];

translation mine – A.v.N.)

Hegel’s subject overcomes its self-alienation. It not only develops itself (be-

coming an other), but at the same time grasps its self-development, the

difference between the beginning of the process and its outcome, as the re-

establishment of its identity, which it achieves through reason (“im Begriffe”):

Der ausgeführte Zweck oder das daseiende Wirkliche ist die Bewe-

gung und das entfaltete Werden; eben diese Unruhe aber ist das

Selbst; und jener Unmittelbarkeit und Einfachheit des Anfangs ist es

darum gleich, weil es das Resultat, das in sich Zurückgekehrte, – das

in sich Zurückgekehrte aber eben das Selbst, und das Selbst die sich

auf sich beziehende Gleichheit und Einfachheit ist. (HPG: 23)

Gombrowicz agrees with Hegel that the self is essentially “Unruhe”, and that

its identity consists in establishing a link between different states of its being.

However, this intellectual act of grasping the self as alienation is not real (as is

“my” being divided), but merely fiction. According to Gombrowicz existence

and thought remain heterogeneous.

6

The incarnation and universal heir of Polish nineteenth-century literature

(which Gombrowicz considers the product of a narrow mind) was the Ska-

mandrite poet Jan LechoĔ. He wrote “beautiful” poems, static “works of art”,

completely deprived of life (it would be wrong to say that LechoĔ’s “poésie

pure” is redeemed by time, because he lacked the Hegelian consciousness of

being as a process of becoming, flux). The aim of these “beautiful” poems was

to affirm the eternal commonplaces of “martyred Poland”:

Co gorzej poeta ten, zabarykadowany w wieĪy klasycyzmu […] straciá

zupeánie wyczucie czáowieka wspóáczesnego i jego problematyki (o

której nb. niewiele mu byáo wiadomo, gdyĪ drogi myĞlenia ludzkiego

począwszy od Hegla byáy tej gáowie polskiej prawie nie znany). Jego
Īycie nielojalne, hierarchia niezasáuĪona, postawa nieszczera, nie byáy

z tych, które pozwalają wejĞü w bezpoĞrednią stycznoĞü z epoką, z

historią [...] LechoĔ jako wieszcz emigracji – to byá kiepski pomysá,

predestynowaáy go na ten stolec jedynie najgorsze jego sáaboĞci,

paseizm, klasycznie polski romantyzm [...]. (GD, II: 182-183)

(What was worse, this poet, barricaded in a tower of classicism […]

completely lost a sense of modern man and his problems [about

which, nota bene, he knew little, since the paths of human thought

beginning with Hegel were almost completely unknown to this Polish

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head]. His life was disloyal, his place in the hierarchy undeserved, his

position insincere; none of these things allowed him direct contact

with the epoch, with history […] LechoĔ as the bard of the emigration

– what a bad idea; he was predestined for that chair only by his worst

weaknesses, his veneration of the past, his classically Polish romanti-

cism […]; Gdi, II: 147-148)

From Gombrowicz’s point of view LechoĔ, “classicizing” romanticism, had

fallen victim to “inauthentic” inauthenticity by equating the Polish experience

of oppression and resistance (emigration) in the nineteenth century with the

catastrophe of the Second World War and the communist occupation of

Poland. History does not repeat itself, because every actor of history is a parti-

cular human being, who should attempt to create his own form of alienation.

LechoĔ, playing the role of a twentieth-century Mickiewicz is not Mic-

kiewicz, but only a fake-LechoĔ. Gombrowicz’s attitude towards the past is

entirely different, which is undoubtedly due to his conscious reception of

Hegel’s philosophy of history. Understanding Hegelian dialectics meant to

radicalize them. Gombrowicz turns the self-development of the Idea (Geist)

into a never-ending movement, in which starting point and final purpose are

mere fictions, an eternal dance:

Hegel? Hegel ma niewiele wspólnego z nami, gdyĪ my jesteĞmy

taĔcem. (GD, I: 151)

(Hegel does not have much in common with us because we are dance;

GDi, I: 96)

[…] I wówczas powoli uĞwiadomiáem sobie, Īe jestem w posiadaniu

dynamicznej idei, zdolnej przeksztaáciü nasze narodowe samopoczucie

i nadaü mu nowy wigor. Idea nie byáa zapewne niczym, co mogáoby

zaepatowaü nowoczesnego intelektualistĊ – po Heglu zwáaszcza – nie

byáa Īadnym odkryciem Ameryki, byáa raczej naturalną konsekwencją

dzisiejszego naszego myĞlenia, które zwraca siĊ z taką pasją ku

ruchowi i stawaniu siĊ, porzucając Ğwiat statyczny, okreĞlony. (GD, I:

151)

([...] and then I slowly realized that I was in the possession of a

dynamic idea, capable of transforming our national sense of self and

giving it new vigor. The idea was certainly nothing that could épater

the modern intellectual – especially after Hegel – and was no dis-

covery of America; it was rather natural consequence of our thinking

today, which turns with such passion toward movement and becom-

ing, casting off the static, defined world; Gdi, II: 13)

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 525

7

Gombrowicz identifies Polish romanticism with the genus of lyric poetry that

has become outdated, because it cannot reflect on history, the nature of being,

and its own existential status. Poetry is anti-intellectual, and our times demand

an intellectual, self-ironic literature, that mirrors the development of man. In

this respect Gombrowicz’s conception of literature is mimetic, but his mime-

ticism is linked to history – not as continuity, but as disruption. Poetry can

only be saved by a new beginning:

Jak zemĞciáa siĊ na tych ludziach [the Skamandrite heirs of ro-

manticism] ich wiarĊ w PoezjĊ i w PoetĊ, ich kult formy poetyckiej,

ich zapamiĊtanie we wszystkich fikcjach, jakie wytwarza Ğrodowisko

poetów! Poeta dnia dzisiejszego powinien byü dzieckiem, ale dziec-

kiem chytrym, trzeĨwym i ostroĪnym [...] Niech, bĊdąc poetą, nie

przestaje ani na chwilĊ byü czáowiekiem i niech czáowieka nie pod-

porządkowuje “poecie”. Ale tego auto-szyderstwo, tej auto-ironii,

auto-pogardy, auto-nieufnoĞci nie byáa w stanie zapewniü naiwna

szkoáa Skamandra, której jedyną ambicją byáo pisaü “piĊkne wiersze”.

(GD, I: 86]

(How the naïveté of their faith in Poetry and the Poet, their cult of the

poetic form, and their loyalty to all the fictions that a poetic milieu

creates have avenged themselves on these people. Today’s poet ought

to be a child, but a cunning, sober, careful child. [...] Let him, while

being a poet, not stop being a man even for an instant. Let the man

refuse to subordinate himself to the “poet”; GDi, I: 54)

(Gombrowicz is of course unfair to LechoĔ and his colleagues.)

8

The motif of the Polish national dance as a national unifying symbol is one of

the themes of LechoĔ’s “histrionic” poetry of Polishness (“Piásudski”: “DziĞ!

DziĞ! WieĞ zaciszna I sznury korali. / RoztaĔczyáa siĊ sala tĊgim nóg

tupotem”; LP: 22 [“Today! Today! The silent village and ropes of coral./ The

entire room is dancing with vigorous stamping of feet”; translation mine –

A.v.N.]). The prototype of the dance unifying for a moment all “estates”

(“wszystkie stany”) is of course the “grand polonaise” at the end of the last

(twelfth) book of Pan Tadeusz (“Kochajmy siĊ”). However, in this last epic

poem of Western literature Mickiewicz shows the society of noblemen, [re]-

united for a final moment by the power of a solemn dance, as irretrievably

lost, a reminiscence of his youth that has passed away and cannot be revived

in the same form. From LechoĔ’s point of view the Polish national dance is an

essential element of the eternal idea of Polishness, which can be staged

wherever and whenever Poles come together. Certain rituals with magic

power that transcends space and time enact Polishness. “I” cannot only be a

Pole in the Polish countryside, but also in Paris, London or New York, when I

only find fellow-Poles, with whom I can stage a fresh act of the play of

Polishness. The stage-properties remain the same. Gombrowicz parodies this

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attitude in Trans-Atlantyk with its transparent references to Pan Tadeusz (the

“kawalkada” and the dance preceding the great outburst of laughter).

9

Cf. the following fragment from Gombrowicz’s Diary (it concerns the tra-

ditional relationship between man and woman, but it also applies to Gom-

browicz’s idea of “nationhood” – as a matter of fact it summarizes his attitude

towards reality as alienation, that, in order to be understood, must even further

be alienated):

I tutaj, jak zawsze w caáym pisaniu moim, cel mój – jeden z mych

celów – polega na popsuciu gry; albowiem tylko gdy milknie muzyka

i rozáamują siĊ pary moĪliwa jest inwazja rzeczywistoĞci, tylko

wówczas staje siĊ nam jawne, Īe gra nie jest rzeczywistoĞcią, lecz grą.

Wprowadziü na ten wasz bal goĞci nie zaproszonych; związaü was

inaczej z sobą [the theme of the novel Pornografia!]; zmusiü abyĞcie

inaczej siebie wzajem okreĞlali; popsuü wam taniec. (GD, I: 187)

(Here, as in all my writing, my goal – one of my goals – is to spoil the

game, for as soon as the music dies and the couples break up, an

invasion of reality is possible and only then does it become clear to us

that the game is not reality but a game. To bring uninvited guests to

that ball of yours; to bind you differently to one another; to ruin your

dance; GDi, I: 119)

10

In Hegelian ontology the establishment of a purpose, its realization and final

outcome cannot be severed, without destroying the truth of the whole process

of becoming: “Denn die Sache ist nicht in ihrem Zwecke erschöpft, sondern in

ihrer Ausführung, noch ist das Resultat das wirkliche Ganze, sondern es

zusammen mit seinem Werden” (HPG: 11). Historiozofia, explaining the

meaning of the past, establishing the direction of the historical process, creates

a consciousness that anticipates on its future stages, in which facts become

meaningful deeds (“That”, “Thatsache”), the product of human self-

consciousness. So, historiozofia grasps an essential aspect of being as be-

coming – the link between purpose and its realization, theory and practice.

The discovery that past “facts” are not accidental, but possess a meaning of

their own, until now concealed, cannot remain without practical conse-

quences. Our world is not the final outcome of the historical process, yet now

we know that history is the realization of a purpose, and it is to be achieved by

us. True knowledge is never merely theoretical. So, we must become the

conscious architects of our future. The dialectics of historiozofia, which

appears to be a rational form of prophecy, were expounded by Count August

Cieszkowski in his short, but very influential treatise Prolegomena zur

Historiosophie:

Wenn wir also die Sphäre des Vorgefühls, welches dem Bewusstsein

vorausgehen müsste, längst überschritten haben, wenn wir uns bereits

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 527

in der Sphäre des Wissens befinden, und zwar auf dem Punkte, wo das

Bewusstsein durch die Historiosophie eben ganz dieser vortheoreti-

schen Praxis adäquat wird, so ist hier ein Umschlagen in das ent-

gegengesetzte unausweichbar, nämlich, dass das Bewusstsein die

Facta übereile, und, nachdem es einen Vorsprung gewonnen hat, die

wahre That erzeuge, nämlich die nachtheoretische Praxis, die der

Zukunft anheim fallen wird. [...] So sehen wir also, dass die Ge-

schichte wirklich die drei Instanzen der Ahnung, des Bewusstseins

und der That durchschreitet, und erst dadurch erkennen wir, warum

bis jetzt die Vergangenheit so trübe gewesen ist, warum die Gegen-

wart Alles mit dem Lichte der Wahrheit beleuchtet, und warum die

Zukunft so bestimmt bewusst und eigenkräftig sich entwickeln wird.

(CPH: 19-20)

11

The protagonists of Gombrowicz experience their body spontaneously as alien

to themselves, but their obsession with physical decrepitude is rather ima-

ginary, a product of a “degenerate” mind, fascinated by sordidness. The

author’s inclination to inferiority does not arise from empirical observation of

reality (including “my” body and the spiritual self), but appears to be the

result of a mystifying, theatrical attitude to “my” being a human (“Jak to siĊ

we mnie áączyáo? Ale to siĊ nie áączyáo. I Īadna z tych rzeczywistoĞci nie byáa

istotniejsza od innych. Byáem caáy w kaĪdej z nich. I nie byáem w Īadnej. By-
áem ‘pomiĊdzy’. I byáem aktorem”; GT: 32-33 [“How did that get connected

in me? But it was not connected. And none of these realities was more

essential than others. I was whole in each of them. And I was absent from all.

I was ‘somewhere between’. I was an actor”; translation mine – A.v.N.]). First

Gombrowicz expresses himself by hiding behind a mask (e.g. Józio in

Ferdydurke), then, in the autobiographical genre of the literary conversation,

he takes off his mask and shows his “true” face, which turns out to be just

another mask… existence is being, being acted.

12

Hegel stresses the negative consequences of arbitrarily severing “purpose”,

“realization” and “outcome”, which are united in the “true whole” of be-

coming: “der Zweck für sich ist das unlebendige Allgemeine, wie die Tendenz

das bloße Treiben, das seiner Wirklichkeit noch entbehrt, und das nackte

Resultat ist der Leichnam, der sie [die Tendenz] hinter sich gelassen” (HPG:

11). From Gombrowicz’s point of view the Polish national idea was indeed

reminiscent of a “naked corpse”.

13

This is the theme of LechoĔ’s famous poem ‘Herostrates’:

Czyli to bĊdzie w Sofii, czy teĪ w Waszyngtonie,

Od egipskich piramid do Ğniegów Tobolska

Na tysiączne siĊ wiorsty rozsiadáa nam Polska,

Papuga wszystkich ludów – w cierniowej koronie.

528

Arent van Nieukerken

Kaleka, jak beznodzy Īoánierze szpitalni,

Co bĊdą ze ázą wieczną chodzili pod Ğwiecie,

Taka wyszáa nam Polska z urzĊdu w powiecie

I taka siĊ powlokáa do robót – w kopalni. [...]

JeĪeli gdzieĞ na Starym pokaĪe siĊ MieĞcie

I utkwi w was KiliĔski swe oczy zielony,

Zabijcie go! – A trupa zawleczcie na stronĊ

I tylko wieĞü mi o tym radosną przynieĞcie.

Ja nie chcĊ nic innego, niech jeno mi páacze

Jesiennych wiatrów gĊdĨba w póánagich badylach;

A latem niech siĊ sáoĔce przegląda w motylach,

A wiosną – niechaj wiosnĊ, nie PolskĊ zobaczĊ.

(LP: 3-5)

(Whether this will be in Sofia, or in Washington,

From the Egyptian pyramids and as far as the snow of Tobolsk,

At a distance of many thousand versts Poland straddled,

The parrot of all nations – with a crown of thorns on her head.

Crippled, like soldiers without legs in a hospital

That shall wander about the world with perpetual tears in their eyes,

Poland was led out of the district-office,

and in such shape she went to hard labour in a mine. […]

If anywhere in the Old Town KiliĔski shows up

and gazes at you with green eyes,

You must slay him! – and drag the corpse aside

And bring me these joyous tidings.

I do not wish for more, only that the music

of autumn winds wail through the almost leafless stalks;

– That in summer-time the sun see itself reflected in the butterflies,

– And that in spring-time I perceive the spring and not Poland.)

(translation mine – A.v.N.)

LechoĔ’s attitude is typical of the poetics of “Skamander”, that wanted to give

Polish literature a fresh start by a sacrilegious gesture, the burning of the

sanctuary of national tradition. However, it soon became clear that these

“vitalist” histrionics (cf. the title of Kazimierz WierzyĔski’s famous juvenile

poem ‘Wiosna i wino’) were doomed, precisely because of their inability to

grasp history as a dialectic process of development. They attempted to drive

history out (“I chciaábym raz zobaczyü, gdy przeszáoĞü wyĪeniem, / Czy

wszystko w pyá rozkruszĊ, czy [...] PolskĊ obudzĊ” [“I would once like to see,

if, when we chase the past away,/ everything will crumble to dust, or…

Poland will be awakened by me”; translation mine – A.v.N.]), but it soon

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 529

returned with a vengeance in their own poetry which, when in the thirties the

clouds began to darken on Poland and Europe, again enacted (and not

developed) the eternal drama of suffering Polishness.

14

Gombrowicz mocks LechoĔ’s artistic barrenness, but grudgingly admits a

certain greatness. As a “figure”, a person who enacts motifs of the past,

existential situations that have lost their vitality, LechoĔ (his physical appear-

ance, physiognomy, being authentically theatrical) cannot be overseen:

CeniĊ Lechonia! CeniĊ Lechonia tym bardziej, im liczniejsze znajdujĊ

racje aby go poniĪyü, ceniĊ go wbrew racjom, ceniĊ bo to jednak i

pomimo wszystko byá ktoĞ – to byáa figura – nie wiadomo jak, nie

wiadomo dlaczego, ten profil wryá nam siĊ w pamiĊü, ten gest i ton, ta

sylwetka, pozostaną, gdy o dzieáach juĪ mowy nie bĊdzie... On

osobiĞcie siĊ urzeczywistniá. (GD, II: 183)

(I value LechoĔ! The more reasons I find to denigrate him, the more I

value him; I value him in spite of the reasons I have given, I value him

because in spite of everything, this was someone – this was a

personage – no one knows how, no one knows why this profile has

become engraved in our memories; the gestures, tone, silhouette, will

remain long after everyone has forgotten his work… He realized

himself as a person; GDi, II: 148)

We can only add that in literature his person has been “perpetuated” thanks to

his “chosen” enemy Gombrowicz.

15

Cf. note 5: “Duch ludzki zjawia siĊ w tej perspektywie jako coĞ uformo-

wanego z dwóch róĪnych elementów, które nie spotykają siĊ ze sobą. To

rozdarcie to wáaĞnie czáowiek.” Thanks to the gap between form and instinct

the epoch of Saxon decadence aspires to pre-reflective truth of inauthenticity.

This unconscious state of being “thinks itself” through Gombrowicz, who, by

his own role as thinker, thinking the Saxonian antinomy to its logical end,

particularizes in his Diary the generalizing discourse of Hegelian dialectics.

However, fulfilment can never be a merely intellectual act, so “Gombrowicz”,

the anti-hero of Trans-Atlantyk, turns this general truth of being immediately

into an existential truth, creating fiction, which, because it is performance and

not thought, must be more real than fact. So, the speaker of the novel, “I,

Gombrowicz”, describes the world of the Polish emigration in Argentina

(including his own involvement in it) in a style, pervaded by the spirit of

Polish eighteenth-century decadence. By his disciplined recreation of the

loosely knit discourse of the declining Sarmatic Baroque Gombrowicz

reminds us (“himself”) of another genius of literary pastiche, Henryk Sien-

kiewicz, who in his famous Trylogia showed a similar mastery of style.

However, overlooking the antinomies of form and being, Sienkiewicz turned

the world of the Sarmatic Baroque, this “Salon de Beauté” [GD, I: 353] into a

530

Arent van Nieukerken

stage for shallow, unproblematic (with the purpose to “strengthen our hearts”)

“moral beauty”:

Lecz Sienkiewicz to wino, którym rzeczywiĞcie upajaliĞmy siĊ i tu

serca nasze biáy… I z kimkolwiek siĊ rozmawiaáo, z lekarzem, z

robotnikiem, z profesorem, z ziemianinem, z urzĊdnikiem, zawsze

natrafiaáo siĊ na Sienkiewicza, na Sienkiewicza jako na ostateczny,

najbardziej intymny sekret polskiego smaku, polski “sen o urodzie”.

(GD, I: 353)

(Sienkiewicz is wine which really intoxicated us and here our hearts

beat quickly... and no matter whom you talked to, a doctor, worker,

professor, landowner, clerk, you always came upon Sienkiewicz, upon

Sienkiewicz as the most ultimate, most intimate secret of Polish taste,

the Polish “dream about beauty”; GDi, I: 223]).

16

TowiaĔski, a well-to-do Lithuanian landowner, went to Paris (1841) by his

own choice. His decision did not result from any fear of persecution by the

Tsarist government (many Polish émigré’s even suspected him of being a

Russian agent), but was an attempt to rise to the heights of the “metaphysical”

task he had set himself: to reunite “fallen” man with the spiritual realm and

ultimately with God. Creating a community out of the quarrelling factions of

the “Great Emigration” was meant to be a prelude to the re-establishment of

human brotherhood. The mission of the “prophet” was, of course, from the

very beginning condemned to failure. The “Towianists” became a small, self-

centred and aggressive sect, attacking other factions of the Polish emigration

and prone to unending squabbles among themselves (see the excellent

monograph on Towianism by Alina Witowska [TowiaĔczycy, Warszawa

1989]).

17

A favourite object of attack of Towianism were the elegant manners of the

Parisian salon – its main source of authenticity was the way of life of the poor

and oppressed Polish (or Russian) peasant, whom TowiaĔski, Mickiewicz and

GoszczyĔski considered to be the prototype of true humanity, almost unspoil-

ed by civilization. It is impossible not to link this apology of the unpolished

and “ludowoĞü” with “Gombrowicz’s” provocative behaviour in the Argenti-

nian salon of Trans-Atlantyk, where he challenges the “gran escritor” (cf. also

the chapter of the Diary, describing the author’s relationship with Borges and

Victoria Ocampo; GD, I: 203-230), and MiĊtus’s adoration of simple country

lads (“parobek”) in Ferdydurke (we also remember that Gombrowicz presents

the “communal” experience of the dance as “earthy”, unelegant and even

“macabre”). There exists of course an essential difference between his and the

romantics’ appreciation of simplicity. Gombrowicz is self-ironic – he knows

that his preference is a case of anti-form. Furthermore, romantic simplicity is

“pure”, religious – in Gombrowicz’s world everything is sordid and “soiled”

(by sexual “perversity”!) and ultimately devoid of transcendent sense.

The Anguish and Glory of Being an Outsider 531

LITERATURE

Cieszkowski, August [von]

1838

Prolegomena zur Historiosophie. Berlin. [CPH]

Gombrowicz, Witold

1953-1956 Dziennik, I. Kraków. 1997. [GD, I]

1957-1961 Dziennik, II. Kraków. 1997. [GD, II]

1962-1969 Dziennik, III. Kraków. 1997. [GD, III]

1988-1993 Diary, Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III (Trans. Lillian Vallee). Evanston.

[GDi]

1991

Gombrowicz filozof (Ed. F.M. Cataluccio and J. Illg). Kraków. [GF]

1996

Testament (rozmowy z Dominique de Roux). Kraków. [GT]

GoszczyĔski, Seweryn

1984

Dziennik Sprawy BoĪej, I-II. Warszawa. [GDSB]

Hegel, G.W.F.

1987

Phänomenologie des Geistes. Stuttgart. [HPG]

LechoĔ, Jan (Leszek Serafimowicz)

1990

Poezje. Wrocáaw. [LP]