Gombrowicz Versus Nature Cover Image

Gombrowicz i natura
Gombrowicz Versus Nature

Author(s): Jerzy Jarzębski
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: WITOLD GOMBROWICZ; NATURE VS. CULTURE

Summary/Abstract: Gombrowicz’s relations with the Nature have always been pretty tense, and beset with paradoxes. First, he mocked at Enlightenment-Romanticist stereotypes of displaying the Nature; in biology, he saw a destructive power, undermining the structure of Culture. Then, he would put an emphasis on attempts at finding an understanding between the ‘human’ and the ‘non-human’, be it via a simple ‘glance’ (a cow in an eucalyptus alley), a community of shared pain that unifies all the living beings, up to plaiting (as in Kosmos) a metaphysical world order with one being built upon excesses of a libido, which has been generated within the Nature’s sphere. The further up we go, the Gombrowicz vs. Nature relationship becomes more and more complex, culminating in Operetka where Albertynka, naked, a symbol of natural beauty and charm, gets pregnant with the memory of a ‘Nature’s scandal’: “ugliness of the body that’s growing old”.

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 17-26
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Polish