Ferdydurke (2 page)

No one can forget the notorious opening of the
Diary:

Monday Me. Tuesday Me. Wednesday Me. Thursday Me.

Having got
that
straight, Gombrowicz devoted Friday's entry to a subtle reflection on some material he had been reading in the Polish press.

Gombrowicz expected to offend with his egocentricity: a writer must continually defend his borders. But a writer is also someone who must abandon borders, and egotism, so Gombrowicz argued, is the precondition of spiritual and intellectual freedom. In the "me ... me . . . me . . . me" one hears the solitary emigre thumbing his nose at "we ... we ... we .. . we." Gombrowicz never stopped arguing with Polish culture, with its intractable collectivism of spirit (usually called "romanticism") and the obsession of its writers with the national martyrdom, the national identity. The relentless intelligence and energy of his observations on cultural and artistic matters, the pertinence of his challenge to Polish pieties, his bravura contentiousness, ended by making him the most influential prose writer of the past half century in his native country.

The Polish sense of being marginal to European culture, and to Western European concern while enduring generations of foreign occupation, had prepared the hapless émigré writer better than he might have wished to endure being sentenced to many years of near total isolation as a writer. Courageously, he embarked on the enterprise of making deep, liberating sense out of the unprotected-ness of his situation in Argentina. Exile tested his vocation and expanded it. Strengthening his disaffection from nationalist pieties and self-congratulation, it made him a consummate citizen of world literature.

More than sixty years after
Ferdydurke
was written, little remains of the specifically Polish targets of Gombrowicz's scorn. These have vanished along with the Poland in which he was reared and came of age—destroyed by the multiple blows of war, Nazi occupation, Soviet dominance (which prevented him from ever returning), and the post-1989 ethos of consumerism. Almost as dated is his assumption that adults always claim to be mature.

In our relations with other people we want to be cultivated, superior, mature, so we use the language of maturity and we talk about, for instance, Beauty, Goodness, Truth
....
But, within our own confidential, intimate reality, we feel nothing but inadequacy, immaturity . . .

The declaration seems from another world. How unlikely it would be for whatever embarrassing inadequacies people feel now to be covered over with hifalutin absolutes such as Beauty, Goodness, Truth. The European-style ideals of maturity, cultivation, wisdom have given way steadily to American-style celebrations of the Forever Young. The discrediting of literature and other expressions of "high" culture as elitist or anti-life is a staple of the new culture ruled by entertainment values. Indiscretion about one's unconventional sexual feelings is now a routine, if not mandatory, contribution to public entertainment. Anyone now who would claim to love "the inferior" would argue that it is not inferior at all; that actually it's superior. Hardly any of the cherished opinions against which Gom-browicz contended are still cherished.

Then can
Ferdydurke
still offend? Still seem outrageous? Exception made for the novel's acidic misogyny, probably not. Does it still seem extravagant, brilliant, disturbing, brave, funny . . . wonderful? Yes.

A zealous administrator of his own legend, Gombrowicz was both telling and not telling the truth when he claimed to have successfully avoided all forms of greatness. But whatever he thought, or wanted us to think he thought, that cannot happen if one had produced a masterpiece, and it eventually comes to be acknowledged as such. In the late 1950s
Ferdydurke
was finally translated (under auspicious sponsorship) into French, and Gombrowicz was, at last, "discovered." He had wanted nothing more than this success; this triumph over his adversaries and detractors, real and imagined. But the writer who counseled his readers to try to avoid all expressions of themselves; to guard against all their beliefs, and to mistrust their feelings; above all, to stop identifying themselves with what defines them, could hardly fail to insist that he, Gombrowicz, was not
that book.
Indeed, he has to be inferior to it. "The work, transformed into culture, hovered in the sky, while I remained below." Like the great backside that hovers high above the protagonist's half-hearted flight into normality at the end of the novel,
Ferdydurke
has floated upward to the literary empyrean. Long live its sublime mockery of all attempts to normalize desire . . . and the reach of great literature.

Translator's Note

For several years the question has been whether
Ferdydurke
could be translated into comprehensible English, and if so, would it still be
Ferdydurke? Ferdydurke
was published in Poland in 1937 and translated into Spanish in 1947 in Buenos Aires, the result of a collaboration between Gombrowicz and his Hispanic literary friends. In the early 1960s it was translated into French and German. An English version was derived from the French, German, and possibly the Spanish translations, but some of the most beautiful and important passages were omitted. This is the first unabridged English translation, and it is taken directly from Gombrowicz's original text. I hope that it will establish that it is possible to translate
Ferdydurke,
at least for the most part.

I arrived at the task of translating
Ferdydurkeby
a circuitous route. I was born in Poland, and my mother tongue is the language in which Gombrowicz was creating his works and on which he was already exerting an influence. I began to learn English at the age of thirteen when, as a refugee during World War II, I found myself living in England and Ireland. I settled in the United States in 1959

and began, some years later, to write short stories in English—rather idiosyncratic in content and style—and discovered an affinity with Gombrowicz's writing. After reading Gombrowicz's last novel,
Cosmos,
in Polish, I thought that it would sound beautiful in English. I translated the first chapter of
Cosmos,
as well as some of Gombrowicz's short stories, and began to explore the possibilities of having them published. This brought me into contact with publishers and scholars, and with Gombrowicz's widow, Rita Gombrowicz. They all encouraged me to translate
Ferdydurke,
Gombrowicz's first major work.

I decided at the outset to use American rather than British English because it is less formal and therefore better suited to Gombrowicz's style. My own English is influenced by my having learned it in London and Dublin. For this reason, and also because the translation was going to be from a native language to an acquired one, it became apparent that I would need the assistance of a born speaker of American English. My husband's reviews of the many drafts proved to be most useful in this respect. In some instances, however, when he would interject, "But we don't say it this way," my reply would be, "In Polish we don't either; it's pure Gombrowicz"—and this would be the final court of appeal. Clearly I was dealing with yet another language: Gombrowicz's Polish.

Gombrowicz had availed himself of four idioms: colloquial Polish; literary Polish; the language of the intelligentsia and the landed gentry; and the language of the peasantry. But he also introduced his own idiosyncrasies by playing
with
and
on
words, by changing nouns into verbs and adjectives, by using unusual phraseology, and by inventing new forms, some of which have entered colloquial Polish. Had I not worked as a psychiatrist with English-speaking schizophrenics who invent their own languages, I may not have felt comfortable "neologizing" English in such crucial words and phrases as "proffed" and "he had dealt me the
pupa"
The Polish word
pupa
(pronounced "poopa") presented a special problem. It means the buttocks, behind, bum, tush, rump, but not one of these (nor any others that I considered) adequately conveys the sense in which Gombrowicz uses "pupa" in the text. While the "mug" is Gombrowicz's metaphor for the destructive elements in human relationships, the pupa is his metaphor for the gentle, insidious, but definite infantilizing and humiliation that we inflict on one another. We made the decision to stay with the Polish word.

Ferdydurke
is a tragi-farce, in which events are often tragic and comic at the same time, and in which the mug and the pupa are the metaphors for violence and belittlement. Names of body parts are given meaning beyond the usual, often through wordplay. This wordplay is, whenever possible, translated literally. Some plays on words are impossible to translate—for example, Gombrowicz uses the fact that the Polish term for fingers and toes is same word to create wordplay between "fingers" and "tiptoeing."

I had to bear in mind that in English the sequence of words is crucial to meaning, whereas in Polish there is a more complicated grammar that clarifies the meaning of a sentence. Mishaps such as "he threw his mother from the train a kiss" do not occur in Polish.

Gombrowicz delighted, it seems, in compressing the abstract into the concrete: it is not the thought of the farmhand but the farmhand himself that "paints the morning in bright and pleasant colors," or, "she was generally a bit disgusted with mother," instead of "mothering."

Gombrowicz's long sentences and paragraphs, frequent use of dashes, and his grouping of entire conversations into single paragraphs were part of his style, and I preserved these. The same applies to his repeating a word rather than providing its synonym; by doing so he evokes a sense of emphasis and rhythm.

I was equally faithful to Gombrowicz's changes of tense between past and present in the same paragraph and even in the same sentence. The metamorphosis of a thirty-year-old man into a teenager is often indicated by past tense becoming present. Also, the change of tense imbues the story with a surreal sense of time.

In translating idioms I sometimes had to use an English one that had the same meaning as the Polish but was entirely different. For
z palca—
"from the finger"—I substituted "out of thin air." However, the English idiom "the end justifies the means" was changed to "the end sanctifies the means," preserving a nuance of the Polish.

In Polish, the use of diminutives imparts, in many instances, an aura of affectation and artificiality, and they often sound ridiculous. Gombrowicz spared no effort in pointing this out by his frequent and exaggerated use of diminutives. I have tried to capture this with diminutive adjectives, as in "cute little head," or by using the ending "-ie."

In Poland, French was not the language of the aristocracy, as it had been in Russia until the early 1800s, but the occasional use of French and other languages was, nonetheless, a common affectation and a fruitful field for Gombrowicz's satire. I have followed Gombrowicz in not offering a translation of familiar foreign words and phrases.

Two important names—Kneadus (from the verb "to knead") and Youngblood—were translated into English because they have definite connotations in Polish that contribute to the meaning of the tale. The title itself,
Ferdydurke,
has no meaning in Polish, although there is some conjecture that the word was a contraction and alteration of the name Freddy Durkee, the chief character in Sinclair Lewis's
Babbitt,
which was widely read in Poland in the early 1930s. Gombrowicz himself never explained the title.

Gombrowicz has presented us with a remarkable novel in a bold and innovative style—with élan, humor, beauty. No translation is final, but it was incumbent on me to make a valiant effort to transfer the original text to the English-speaking reader with fidelity and with the verve inherent in the original; my guiding principle was to approach Gombrowicz with humility and the reader with audacity.

The following texts were used in this translation.

Witold Gombrowicz,
Ferdydurke
(Paris: Institut Littéraire, 1969). Includes changes by Gombrowicz.

Gombrowicz,
Ferdydurke,
translated into English by Eric Mosbacher (London, 1961).

Gombrowicz,
Ferdydurke,
translated into French by George Sédir (Paris, 1973).

Gombrowicz,
Ferdydurke,
translated into Spanish, based on 1947 translation (Buenos Aires, 1964).

Gombrowicz,
Polish Reminiscences and Travels Through Argentina
(in Polish).

Gombrowicz,
Diary
(in Polish).

Michal Glowihski,
Witold Gombrowicz's "Ferdydurke"
(in Polish).

Acknowledgments

It is my pleasure to acknowledge the unfailing support of Professor Stanislaw Baranczak in this difficult and challenging endeavor. Coming from such an esteemed translator, it meant a great deal to me. When I cried to high heaven for succor, he always gave me encouragement and valuable suggestions.

My gratitude also goes out to my husband, Thom Lane, whose familiarity with American colloquial English and slang, as well as his wide reading of European literature, were of great assistance to me. He also helped me clarify complex passages through his mindful reading of my translation drafts.

I also want to thank Dr. Richard Fenigsen for his careful verification of my translation from the Polish, and for his helpful remarks.

No less appreciation is due my family, friends, and colleagues for their support during the long process of the translation, and for their comments.

And, last but not least, I want to thank Jonathan Brent of Yale University Press for his willingness to let this work reach the light of day.

D.B.

1 Abduction

Tuesday morning I awoke at that pale and lifeless hour when night is almost gone but dawn has not yet come into its own. Awakened suddenly, I wanted to take a taxi and dash to the railroad station, thinking I was due to leave, when, in the next minute, I realized to my chagrin that no train was waiting for me at the station, that no hour had struck. I lay in the murky light while my body, unbearably frightened, crushed my spirit with fear, and my spirit crushed my body, whose tiniest fibers cringed in apprehension that nothing would ever happen, nothing ever change, that nothing would ever come to pass, and whatever I undertook, nothing, but nothing, would ever come of it. It was the dread of nonexistence, the terror of extinction, it was the angst of nonlife, the fear of unreality, a biological scream of all my cells in the face of an inner disintegration when all would be blown to pieces and scattered to the winds. It was the fear of unseemly pettiness and mediocrity, the fright of distraction, panic at fragmentation, the dread of rape from within and of rape that was threatening me from without—but most important, there was something on my heels at all times, something that I would call a sense of inner, intermolecular mockery and derision, an inbred superlaugh of my bodily parts and the analogous parts of my spirit, all running wild.