Another week, another trip to the hospital for an infection. Fortunately this was caught early enough that medication may be enough to handle it. On to brighter things… The video appears to be the 1991 movie 30 Door Key based on Witold Gombrowicz’s book Ferdydurke. I’ll be checking it out this weekend. I had […]
Tag: Witold Gombrowicz
Trans-Atlantyk by Witold Gombrowicz An Alternate Translation by Danuta Borchardt Yale University Press ISBN 978-0-300-17530-1The need for a new English translation of this novel has been well documented, but I’ll point to Michael Orthofer’s post at ‘the complete review’ for how bad the previous effort was regarded. So is this translation a success? I’m not […]
Trans-Atlantyk by Witold Gombrowicz An Alternate Translation by Danuta Borchardt Yale University Press ISBN 978-0-300-17530-1I haven’t read much lately and obviously have posted even less, so I’ll try and correct that with a few posts on the recent translation of Trans-Atlantyk of Witold Gombrowicz. This post will look at some comments about the book by […]
Publicity card from The Collected Works’ production of Princess IvonaSaturday night my wife and I attended The Collected Works’ production of Witold Gombrowicz’s Princess Ivona at the Performance Art Institue in San Francisco. I provide a cursory overview of the play in this post. As a director, I know a good play through working with […]
I am supposed to attend a performance of Princess Ivona (the English title) by Witold Gombrowicz this weekend and I wanted to write about the play in advance. For the record, there will be lots of spoilers in this post. Gombrowicz wrote Ivona, Princess of Burgundia from 1933 to 1935 and it was first published […]
Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz Translation by Danuta Borchardt Grove Press, 248 pages (paperback) ISBN: 978-0802145130I’m having trouble getting motivated to read or post so I’ll provide a wrap-up on Pornografia that is heavy on links, quotes, and impressions. First, the summary from the Publishers Weekly review (taken from Bacacay: The Polish Literature Weblog): While recuperating […]
At Frederick’s command, Henia (Sandra Samos) rolls up Karol’s torn pants legI continue with my erratic foreign movie posts for this year as well as posting on movies adapted from books (as usual, this post will look at the differences between the film adaptation and the novel). For more foreign movies, check out Caroline’s World […]
Witold Gombrowicz wrote A Kind of Testament, an autobiographical account of his life and work, in 1968, a year before he died. While anything that comes directly from Gombrowicz has to be taken with a grain of salt, the flow of information and insight that comes from the book feels as wonderful as his other […]
I plan on posting occasional entries from Diary by Witold Gombrowicz over the next few months (or however long it takes me to get through it). I’m reading the 2012 Yale University Press edition, translation by Lillian Vallee. There are several references to Pornografia in the Diary and I’ll post from two related entries. Before […]
I’ll tell you about yet another adventure of mine, probably one of the most disastrous. At the time—the year was 1943—I was living in what was once Poland and what was once Warsaw, at the rock-bottom of an accomplished fact. Silence. The thinned-out bunch of companions and friends from the former cafes—the Zodiac, the Ziemiańska, […]
Bruno Schulz’s drawing for the original cover, 1937Previous posts on Ferdydurke: Introduction: who’s read it is an ass Source of the title? Freddy Durkee The first chapter: do you know what it feels like to be diminished within someone else? An overview: they’re NOT a bunch of harmless duffers Online videos Gombrowicz had published two […]
Still from 30 Door Key‘s face-pulling sceneI was unable to find a copy of 30 Door Key, the 1991 English adaptation of Ferdydurke directed by Jerzy Skolimowski (who just directed The Avengers) and starring Iain Glen and Crispin Glover. All copies available on WorldCat were at institutions that don’t participate in interlibrary loans for audiovisual […]
Wiesław Walkuski’s poster for the third Gombrowicz Festival in Radom, Poland, 1997 Picture sourceCzeslaw Milosz’s overview can be found here and the opening chapter addresses some of the book’s themes. After Joey’s transformation into a teenager by Pimko, he finds himself assigned to the sixth grade in Principal Piórkowski’s school. His fellow students, angry at […]
I provided Czeslaw Milosz’s overview of Ferdydurke in the opening post on this book. I’ll probably have one post on the action he summarizes because it is the most straightforward part of the book. Well, as straightforward as Gombrowicz can be. I want to spend more time on a few sections that people might tend […]
I run the risk of posting too much on this novel since I thoroughly enjoyed it. As I sit down to write I’m starting to understand more of what’s going on in the book, causing me to appreciate it even more. I don’t plan on covering the entire novel in detail but there are parts […]
Cover of original release of Ferdydurke, 1937/1938 Cover drawing by Bruno Schulz Picture sourceSince mash-ups are popular now, imagine a combination of Kafka (particularly The Trial), Voltaire, and François Rabelais. It turns out something akin to this combination has already been done in Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. Any description of the book will fall short […]