Witold Gombrowicz
| Witold Gombrowicz | |
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| Born | Witold Marian Gombrowicz August 4, 1904 Małoszyce, Congress Poland |
| Died | July 24, 1969 (aged 64) Vence, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, dramatist, diarist |
| Language | Polish |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Alma mater | University of Warsaw |
| Notable works | Ferdydurke Trans-Atlantyk Kosmos Pornografia The Marriage |
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Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish writer. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke, which presented many of his usual themes: the problems of immaturity and youth, the creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature. His diaries were published in 1969 and are, according to the Paris Review, "widely considered his masterpiece".
Gombrowicz was born in Małoszyce, in Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a wealthy gentry family. He was the youngest of four children of Jan and Antonina (née Kotkowska). In an autobiographical piece, A Kind of Testament, he wrote that his family had lived for four hundred years in Lithuania on an estate between Vilnius and Kaunas but were displaced after his grandfather was accused of participating in the January Uprising of 1863. He later described his family origins and social status as early instances of a lifelong sense of being between (entre). In 1911 his family moved to Warsaw. After completing his education at Saint Stanislaus Kostka's Gymnasium in 1922, he studied law at Warsaw University, earning a master's degree in law in 1927. He spent a year in Paris, where he studied at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales. He was less than diligent in his studies, but his time in France brought him in constant contact with other young intellectuals. He also visited the Mediterranean.
When he returned to Poland he began applying for legal positions with little success. In the 1920s he started writing. He soon rejected the legendary novel, whose form and subject matter were supposed to manifest his "worse" and darker side of nature. Similarly, his attempt to write a popular novel in collaboration with Tadeusz Kępiński was a failure. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s he started to write short stories, which were later printed under the title Memoirs of a Time of Immaturity, later edited by Gombrowicz and published under the name of Bacacay, the street where he lived during his exile in Argentina. From the moment of this literary debut, his reviews and columns started appearing in the press, mainly in the Kurier Poranny (Morning Courier). He met with other young writers and intellectuals forming an artistic café society in Zodiak and Ziemiańska, both in Warsaw. The publication of Ferdydurke, his first novel, brought him acclaim in literary circles.
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