WITOLD GOMBROWICZ: SCENES IN A NON-EUCLIDEAN SPACE (Witold Gombrowicz: sceny w przestrzeni nieeuklidesowej)

• Authors: Zadencka Maria
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The authoress proposes a statement that Gombrowicz's imagination was 'geometric'. Two contemporary mathematical theories seem to be particularly useful for a reading of his early works, fragments of poetic prose of his 'Diary' and the novel 'Kosmos'. These include the crystallographic theory of 'tesselation', that is, regular division of the space, and the assumptions of non-Euclidean geometry, which, contradicting the primary intuitions on space, are devised for constructing models of infinity. The authoress compares Gombrowicz's prose against 'geometrical' prints of M.C. Escher, the artist who made use of, and developed, mathematical intuitions. Fragments of poetic prose and Kosmos were recently described as testimonies to eeriness, illegibility and decomposition of the world (Markowski, Neuger). The present article complements these characteristics by adding a paradoxical 'holistic' aspect derived from analysis of the way space is being built in those works.

Keywords

EN

GEOMETRIC IMAGINATION; GOMBROWICZ WITOLD; POLISH LITERATURE (20TH C.)

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Teksty Drugie (Second Texts)
• Year: 2009
• Issue: 3(117)
• Pages: 63-84
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Zadencka Maria

• Maria Zadencka, Stockholm University (for postal address contact the journal editor)

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09PLAAAA067032