27 Perverse Quotes by Poland's Most Subversive Author

image_gallery4923088_3.png, default, Witold Gombrowicz in Venice, photo: Bohdan Paczowski, 27 Perverse Quotes by Poland's Most Subversive Author

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The peculiar idiom of Witold Gombrowicz – both in thinking and writing ‒ has influenced Polish culture more than any other 20th-century author. See for yourself what it is in his words that has inspired a cult following...

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Rita & Witold Gombrowicz, philosophy course, Vence, 1969, photo: Hanne

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On his literature

My literature must remain that which it is. Especially that something which does not fit into politics and does not want to serve it. I cultivate just one politics: my own. I am a separate state.

On presence

Isn't it true (I thought), that one is almost never present, or rather never fully present, and that's because we have only a halfhearted, chaotic and slipshod, disgraceful and vile relationship with our surroundings.

– Cosmos

On himself

I, a child of chaos, son of darkness, blind coincidence, and absurdity.

– Diary

On becoming oneself

I became bold because I had absolutely nothing to lose: neither honors, nor earnings, nor friends. I had to find myself anew and rely only on myself, because I could rely on no one else. My form is my solitude.

– Diary

On egotism

Monday: Me
Tuesday: Me
Wednesday: Me
Thursday: Me
– Diary

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Witold Gombrowicz, Vence, photo: Bohdan Paczowski

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Witold Gombrowicz, Vence, fot. Bohdan Paczowski

On what it means to be a man

To be a man means to pretend to be a man - to be a man means to 'act like' a man while not being one deep inside - to be a man is to recite humanity.

– Diary

On dependence

Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.

– Ferdydurke

On philosophy

I do not believe in non-erotic philosophy.

– Pornografia

On sex

They were suddenly united, not like a man and a woman, but in another way, in a common offering to an unknown Moloch, incapable of possessing each other, only capable of offering themselves—and the sexual contract between them grew blurred, giving way to another contract, something undoubtedly more cruel but more beautiful. All that lasted only a few seconds. Nothing happened, either; all four of us just stood there.

– Pornografia

On spirit & being a writer

Spirit is born of the imitation of spirit and a writer must pretend to be a writer in order finally to become a writer.

– Diary

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Jan Lenica, Witold Gombrowicz i Sławomir Mrożek, photo: Bohdan Paczowski

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Jan Lenica, Witold Gombrowicz i Sławomir Mrożek, fot. Bohdan Paczowski

On humanity

It is not without pleasure that I can tell my majestic colleagues who write for humanity, and in the name of humanity, that I have never written a single word other than for a selfish purpose; but at, each time, the work betrayed me and escaped from me.

– A Kind of Testament

On existence

Revolutions, wars, cataclysms – what does this foam mean when compared to the fundamental horror of existence?

– Diary

On poetry

Why then does this pharmaceutical extract called "pure poetry” bore and weary me, especially when it appears in rhymed form?

– Against Poets

On reading novels

I do not fear that 'future generations will not read novels', etc. It is probably a complete misunderstanding to conceive of serious art in categories of production, market, readers, supply and demand (...) art is not the fabrication of stories for readers but a spiritual cohabitation, something so tense and so separate from science, even contradictory to it, that there can be no competition between them.

If someone fine, dignified, prolific, brilliant (this is how one ought to speak of artists this is the language art demands) is born in the future, if someone unique and unrepeatable is born, a Bach, a Rembrandt, then he will win people over, charm and seduce them...

– Diary

On falling in love

All the same, who knows whether it is possible... whether in general it is possible for a man to fall in love with a woman without the co-operation, without the intermediary of another man? It may be that in general man is incapable of responding to a woman except through the imntermediary of another man. Might this not be some new form of love? Before, only two were needed, but today it's three.

– Henry in The Marriage

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Witold Gombrowicz, Vence, 1965, photo: Bohdan Paczowski

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Witold Gombrowicz, Vence, 1965, fot. Bohdan Paczowski

On the world

It was too late to retreat - the world exists only because it is always too late to retreat.

– Ferdydurke

On emigration

Any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an émigré.

On homeland

Homeland is not a blot on a map but the living essence of man.

On different kinds of intellectuals (I)

Intellectuals can be divided into two groups: those who have never got a kick in the backside, and those who have got a kick in the backside. The latter are more sensible.

– Operetta

On different kinds of intellectuals (II)

The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough. In keeping with the thought of this aphorism, our strong point (I include myself in this) would be that we are representatives of a brutalized culture, that is, a culture that is close to life.

– Diary

On things

We say 'forest' but this word is made of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unencompassed. The earth. Clods of dirt. Pebbles. On a clear day you rest among ordinary, everyday things that have been familiar to you since childhood, grass, bushes, a dog (or a cat), a chair, but that changes when you realize that every object is an enormous army, an inexhaustible swarm.

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Witold Gombrowicz & Konstanty Jeleński, Vence, photo: Bohdan Paczowski

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On sparrows (I)

A hanged sparrow! Who would ever think of hanging a sparrow? It's like flavoring borscht with two mushrooms instead of just one – it's too much!

– Cosmos

On sparrows (II)

A soaring bird appeared — high in the sky, immobile — vulture, hawk, eagle? No, it was not a sparrow, and by the very reason of not being a sparrow it was after all a non-sparrow, and being a non-sparrow, it was, in a small way, a sparrow...

– Cosmos

On the Tatra Mountains

Agglomeration, whirl and welter... too much, too much, too much, crowding, movement, heaping, crashing, pushing, a general hurly-burly, huge mastodons filling space that, in the blinking of an eye, would break up into thousands of details, combinations, masses of rock, brawls, in a clumsy chaos, and suddenly all those details would again collect into an overpowering shape!

– Cosmos

On pain (I)

In my youth I tortured animals. I remember how in Małoszyce I amused myself with the country boys. We chopped up frogs with whips. Today I am afraid—if this is the right word—of the suffering of a fly. And this fear, as if some awful weakness toward life were contained in it. I am in fact afraid of this, that I cannot bear the pain of a fly.

– Diary

On pain (II)

Reality is that which offers resistance, namely, that which hurts. And a real man is one who is in Pain. (…) No matter what we are told, there exists in the entire expanse of the Universe, throughout the whole space of Being, one and only one awful, impossible, unacceptable element, one and only one thing that is truly and absolutely against us and absolutely devastating: pain. It is on pain and on nothing else thet the entire dynamic of existence depends. Remove pain and the world becomes a matter of complete indifference.

– Diary

His credo

Do not be bribed with sympathy! Don't allow nauseating sentimentality and sweet understanding with the masses, in which so much of Polish literature has drowned, to dissolve you. Be foreign forever! Be reluctant, distrustful, sober, sharp, and exotic. Hang in there, boy!

– Diary

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Witold Gombrowicz at the Paczowskis in Chiavari, 1965, photo: Bohdan Paczowski

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Witold Gombrowicz u Paczowskich w Chiavari, 1965, fot. Bohdan Paczowski

On his novel 'Ferdydurke'

It’s the end, what a gas,
And who’s read it is an ass!

– Ferdydurke

Written by Mikołaj Gliński, 23 Oct 2015

_{Most quotes come from the available editions of Gombrowicz, most of whose oeuvre is now available in English translations, with important recent contributions coming from Danuta Borchardt (novels), Lillian Vallee (Diary) & Bill Johnston ('Polish Memories', Baccacay)}

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20th century literature

20th century polish literature