NOT-MY-OWN PLACES (IN THE WORKS) OF WITOLD GOMBROWICZ (Nie-swoje miejsca (w twórczosci) Witolda Gombrowicza)

• Authors: Zaremba Lukasz
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The text broaches the topic of the home in the oeuvre of Witold Gombrowicz not in its spatial aspect - as a microcosmos whose order corresponds to that of the world, while consecutive spaces possess symbolic properties and a hierarchic value - but the temporal aspect, in order show that the family home, the childhood home, is an impossible place, and that returning to it is doomed to fail. The author compares Gombrowicz's drama Slub (The Wedding) and autobiographical Dziennik (Diary) - both treated as literary texts; everything that we can learn from them about Gombrowicz pertains to the literary figure of 'WItold Gombrowicz'. The instrument that is to assist our analysis is the Freudian category of das unheimliche, endowing identity and a specific structure to the return home and, simultaneously, the return to oneself. The 'uncanny' is both alien, menacing and familiar, a return to that which is closest and disturbs the certitude of the subject's power. An analogous structure is indicated in the texts by Gombrowicz: fragrances recognizable from Maloszyce and returning during a yearly sojourn in Germany indicate death. In the world of Gombrowicz, which, as M. P. Markowski recalled recently, begins with a 'double association', birth and youth must be paired with death, present, however, not at the end but from the beginning, and not according to the principle of Gombrowicz-style oppositions but the Freudian heimlich-unheimlich, contained in a single word.

Keywords

EN

HOME; WITOLD GOMBROWICZ

Discipline

• ANTHROPOLOGY: ANTHROPOLOGY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Konteksty - Polska Sztuka Ludowa
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 2-3(289-290)
• Pages: 263-266
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Zaremba Lukasz

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11PLAAAA094146