Nuda i eksces w Zdarzeniach na brygu Banbury Witolda Gombrowicza
Boredom and Excess in Witold Gombrowicz’s The Events on the Banbury

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the unconventional approach to boredom in Wi¬told Gombrowicz’s “The Events on the Banbury.” The story takes place on a ship, where an overwhelming ennui, synonymous with an existential impasse, is the result of a clash between two contradictory aspirations – the human need for purity and order, and the urge to transgress the borders of law and identity, which is greatly impacted by the closeness and intensity of the extra-human world. Boredom is a force coming from the realm of unbridled nature and irrational impulses. It is a peril to the integrality of the human “I,” thus the protagonist rejects it in disgust. However, bore¬dom is also an experience that reveals the artificiality of the existing rules and leads to imagining alternatives. On the Banbury, a fantasy produced by boredom provokes the sailors to a mutiny affirming shamelessness and an excess of homoerotic lust.

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