Gombrowicz diary gets new lease of life

Published by Yale University Press

Long out of print, and previously only available in three separate volumes, the new edition has been released as a single tome, with the translation furnished with a much-needed index.

One of the self-appointed “Three Musketeers” of Poland's pre-war avant-garde, alongside Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) and Bruno Schulz, Gombrowicz provoked a mixture of scandal and admiration before the war.

Unlike, his fellow musketeers, he survived the conflict, having boarded a cruise liner to South America in the summer of 1939, and the diary was largely written in Argentina between 1953 and 1969.

His diary takes an ironic and often scathing look at aspects of Polish culture, while evoking the frustration of the exile.

“Gombrowicz sought in the diary to revive Polish culture from the near-fatal blows dealt to it over the twentieth century,” writes Ruth Franklin in The New Yorker.

“But he was equally concerned with saving himself.”

Much of Gombrowicz's work was banned in communist Poland, but copies of the diary printed on the underground press gained cult status, alongside emigre journal Kultura, for which he wrote.

Enjoyed for its wit and incisive criticism, the diary was celebrated by opposition activists not least as a beacon of freedom of speech.

It was not until 1986 that the work was officially published in Poland, and even then in a censored form.

The new edition of the diary, published by Yale University Press, revives the well-received translation of Lillian Vallee. (nh)