‘Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) is part of a celebrated generation of mid-20th-century Polish writers, one that includes the doomed magic-realist short story writer Bruno Schulz, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz and Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, author of the great and sexily titled novel Insatiability. All these writers knew, admired and supported one another.
‘Schulz, for instance, once gave a lecture on Gombrowicz in which he underscored that his friend’s fiction “did not follow the smooth path of intellectual speculation but the path of pathology, of his own pathology.” In recalling that talk, Gombrowicz added: “This was true.”
‘Certainly, Pornografia, first published in Polish in 1960, seems as sick, as pathologically creepy a novel as one is ever likely to read. In some ways, it resembles a rather more polymorphously perverse version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses or one of those disturbing fictions by European intellectuals that blend the philosophical with the erotic: Think of Georges Bataille’s The Story of the Eye or Pierre Klossowski’s Roberte Ce Soir. Gombrowicz himself once dryly described Pornografia as “a noble, a classical novel. . . . The novel of two middle-aged men and a couple of adolescents; a sensually metaphysical novel.”
‘Set in Poland during World War II, the book focuses on a visit by two Warsaw intellectuals to a country estate, where a pair of young people catch their eye. Henia is engaged to an upright young lawyer; Karol is a handsome 16-year-old farmhand. The narrator, who is named Witold, and his extremist friend Fryderyk soon decide that these two “children” belong together, even though they reveal absolutely no particular interest in each other. But what does that matter?
‘Fryderyk soon begins to act like a theater director, manipulating the people around him, designing ambiguous encounters and sexually charged scenes. When, early on, he points out that Karol’s dirty workpants are dragging in the mud, the boy starts to bend over to adjust the cuffs. “No, wait,” says Fryderyk. “Let her roll them up.” After a brief silence, the obedient Henia, who is the daughter of the household, stoops down and does as she has been told.
‘Fryderyk, it is clear, possesses a sometimes painfully acute awareness of social dynamics, always sensing the dark impulses and desires lurking within the most upright-seeming people. Commenting on his almost parodistically Nietzschean character, Gombrowicz asserted that Fryderyk ultimately aims “to reach different ‘realities,’ unforeseen charms and beauties, by selecting people, by forming new combinations between the young and the old — a sort of Christopher Columbus who isn’t searching for America, but for a new reality, a new poetry.”
‘In the novel, however, Witold repeatedly questions Fryderyk’s sanity, even though he, too, is soon caught up in an unsettling drama. The four of them, he concludes, make up “some strange erotic combination, an eerie yet sensual quartet.”
‘Throughout his work, and especially in his most famous book, Ferdydurke (1937), Gombrowicz espouses a cult of youth. Man, he insists, wants to be young, and in “Ferdydurke” he shows what happens to an adult who is changed into a schoolboy. That novel is, to some degree, often bizarrely comic. Not so, the distressing Pornografia, though he insists that this much later book is simply “a particularly irritating case of the Ferdydurkean world: the Younger creating the Older.”
‘Certainly, the novel’s two vampiristic debauchees desperately need their connection with childlike Henia and Karol — who, it turns out, aren’t quite as innocent as they seem. Karol admits that he would like to sleep with Henia’s mother; Henia confesses that marriage will keep her from giving in to certain of her sexual inclinations. Following such revelations, Witold proclaims that he is virtually “bathing in their eroticism.” The tacitly homosexual relationship of Witold and Fryderyk further intensifies the book’s perfervid kinkiness.
‘Gombrowicz’s French publisher once summed up the author’s personality as “irritating” but added that that quality was transmuted into work that was perennially “perturbing.” Certainly, most readers will find Pornografia perturbing, or worse: repulsive, confusing, ugly. As Milosz once said of Gombrowicz: “He had no reverence whatsoever for literature. He derided it as a snobbish ritual, and if he practiced it, he attempted to get rid of all its accepted rules.”
‘Perhaps not quite all of them. Gombrowicz did believe that “the primary task of creative literature is to rejuvenate our problems.” That seems absolutely right. Whether you like his work or not, you can still understand why Milan Kundera called him “one of the great novelists of our century.” Pornografia — which follows Danuta Borchardt’s earlier and now standard translations of Ferdydurke and Cosmos — compels its reader to recognize the complexities of human psychology and the darkness at the heart of sexual desire.’ — Michael Dirda
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Gallery
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Further
Witold Gombrowicz Official Website
The Witold Gombrowicz Home Page
Witold Gombrowicz Museum
‘The World of Witold Gombrowicz’
‘Witold Gombrowicz, and to Hell with Culture’
Witold Gombrowicz Archive
‘Gombrowicz’s Unknown Journal’
‘What You Didn’t Know About Gombrowicz…’
Witold Gombrowicz @ goodreads
‘Imp of the Perverse’
‘Art of Self-Defense’
‘Witold Gombrowicz or The Sadness of Form’
‘BACACAY BY WITOLD GOMBROWICZ’
‘The Untranslatable Literature of Witold Gombrowicz’
‘consciousness & masturbation: a note on witold gombrowicz’s onanomaniacal novel cosmos’
‘Reading Witold Gombrowicz’
Witold Gombrowicz @ The Paris Review
‘Wrapped Up in the Mystery of Cosmos’
‘The Plotlessness Thickens
‘Witold Gombrowicz confronts (Polish) provincialism’
‘ORIGINS OF A ‘PRE-INTERNET BLOG”
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Extras
Witold Gombrowicz – 1 – Vence, 1969
Witold Gombrowicz – 2 – Vence, 1969
Witold Gombrowicz – 3 – Vence, 1969
Witold Gombrowicz – Forma Upupiona
Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969): Une vie une oeuvre
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Manuscripts
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Interview
by Paul Beers
Monsieur Gombrowicz, one could say that in your last novel Kosmos you have, as it were, penetrated to the ground that also determines your other work, but now in a more general, philosophical way – that your battle with Form is here reveals all nakedness?
‘I don’t really know, my main theme of course dominates all my work, but it is true that Kosmos is a bit more philosophical than my other books. So that main theme is: man as creator of Form.’
Your main theme, yes. But you also talk about themes that gradually change over the course of your existence. So the main theme has varied in a certain way.
‘Yes, one could say this very briefly and very generally. Ferdydurke : man created by other man; Pornography : the adult created by the youth; Kosmos : man created by and himself creator of the Form.’
Could we say that in Kosmos man is formed by things instead of by people?
‘No, in Kosmos people are also central, in all my work people are at the center. Because the emphasis is not on things, but on associating and connecting in the human mind. My art, the art, is the passion and the need to understand things.’
Aren’t you, especially in your Diary, not just as much a philosopher as an artist?
‘No, no, I want to be an artist first and foremost. It was only after I had written Ferdydurke that I became aware of the implications, and it was only because people did not understand that book and my other work that I was forced to explain myself. But I want to be read as an artist, I hate overly philosophical explanations of my work, I want people to read the story, the history and be carried away by it. That’s how I would like to see criticism written, not philosophical extracts, not an impossible representation of the flow of the story, but a creative showdown with the author. The critic must try to convey the electricity, the attractiveness of the book. But unfortunately, I know so few of them and people get the impression that I am a thinker.’
You are making it very difficult for your critics with these demands. To convey your style as well as your ideas, they should be a second Gombrowicz.
“Hmm.”
To return to your being a thinker, your Diary clearly contains more than explanations of your own work and personal notes. You discuss in detail writers from such different directions as Catholicism, communism and existentialism, where, in the midst of all the rejection, a great loyalty stands out.
‘As for loyalty, it is the other side of disinterest. Because I am not committed to any of these -isms, I can view them all the more objectively. So I am not a philosopher, but I have acquired great intellectual rigor.’
Did you also study philosophy during your years in Paris?
‘There were no Parisian years, although I sometimes went to Paris for a longer period of time during my law studies in Warsaw, but because I didn’t do anything there my father put an end to it.’
Would you like to tell me something about the past?
‘As usual, I came from a Catholic family of which I, born in 1904, was the youngest, besides a now deceased sister and two older brothers. I still have contact with them, in writing, because I have never been to Poland again. So after high school I studied law in Warsaw and I only completed my studies because of financial support from home. I never did anything with it and I don’t remember anything about it. Falling away from faith did not come as a shock to me at all, at least internally, it happened naturally. Already at the age of sixteen or seventeen I was working on Kant, his Prolegomena on the Critique of Pure Reason , and with books about him, because the Critiques themselves were still too difficult at the time. Then Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.’
I wanted to ask you about that. In your Diary you are sharply critical of Nietzsche. But isn’t it true that if one were to name a philosopher who at least thinks in your direction, more a thinker of life than a philosopher of the spirit, then one would think of Nietzsche first?
‘Yes, Nietzsche is also very important, and for me was more important than Kierkegaard, but in that passage the point for me was that Nietzsche wanted to unite ‘young’ and ‘wise’, while for me youth equals the lower, the immature, the inferior.’
You talk about existentialism in more detail in your Diary , have you studied its major works?
‘Yes, Sartre’s L’être et le néant and Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Jaspers less so. But never as a philosophy student, always as a layman. Philosophy is important for the intellectual rigor I mentioned, and it helps us order the world.’
Despite this, you don’t write your novels with a specific plan in mind.
‘Oh no, in all my work I am guided by natural impulses that drive me in a certain direction, sans préméditation . And by ‘natural’ I mean: attractive, fascinating, unexpected, I don’t know in advance how the story will develop. In Kosmos, for example, there is first the sparrow hanging, then the mouths, the arrow on the ceiling that points to another hanging, thus creating the theme of hanging, which in turn seeks a connection with the mouths, but I don’t know how. Thus the book creates itself as the gradual formation of a reality of references.’
Couldn’t one say that in your work you attempt to catch and portray life itself, its wildness and unformedness, in the act, especially since your working method also follows the capriciousness of life, unexpectedly and without premeditation?
‘No, certainly not, because that would mean capitulating to chaos. And writing is a means of organization.’
I wanted to come back to Kosmos . Although the emphasis is on the associations, the connections between things, the things themselves play a major role in this book. Because this is also the case in the nouveau roman , I wanted to ask you whether you see parallels.
‘The only coincidental parallel is perhaps that emphasis on things. But otherwise the nouveau roman is of a horrible intellectualism. Of course, one should not generalize, there is more to be said about Robbe-Grillet in particular, but in general this is true. They seek the object, which for me is an absolutely false thing, because one can only start from oneself, that is to say from the subject. That bottle there is for me, not me for the bottle. And the worst thing is: they make literature boring, the French nouveau roman is boring and unreadable. Kosmos also wants to order the world, but in a lyrical, passionate way, the nouveau roman is cerebral, intellectual, dead.’
These are more common accusations against French culture. How do you feel about France?
‘Very ambivalent. I don’t like France very much, it’s too intellectual, too cultural for me. But I know the language, I have most of my contacts there, my Polish publisher Kultura is in Paris, I know my French translators, whose work I can correct myself. But I don’t like the country. I briefly visited Italy and I immediately liked it much better. Much more the South. I like the South, not the North. Argentina, that is a good country, I enjoyed it the most there, the lightness, the looseness. But now it doesn’t matter anymore, I’m old now.’
I had another question about your Paris-Berlin Diary. You are giving, I thought, a true account of your return to and your first year in Europe. But I noticed that several times you almost unnoticed leave the territory of credibility and describe a bizarre fantasy, as we know it from your work. For example, that sailor who swallows the end of a rope and is hoisted up the mast by the coils of his esophagus, or taking off your trousers during dinner with the French writers.
‘No, no, that is indeed a fantasy, the one about that dinner, of course! Also in my diaries I don’t stick strictly to reality, more, but not completely. And that sailor with that line ties in with an earlier story of mine, ‘Occurrences on the Schooner Banbury ‘, in which a similar episode occurs and in which I describe a boat trip to Argentina at a time, 1932, when I have not yet heard anything about my later Argentinian fate could know. So that was a prediction, a kind of clairvoyance, and because this was quite preoccupied with me at that moment, that story comes back to me: the simultaneity, the flow of time.’
Then your stage work. You know that Yvonne and Het Huwelijk will be played in the coming season in the Netherlands . It took a long time for your plays to be performed in Europe.
‘Yes, Yvonne dates from 1935 and has remained unplayed for almost thirty years. The Marriage , from 1945, was first performed in Paris in 1963, directed by Lavelli, and with great success. Since then, Yvonne has also played in France. Germany now follows suit, and last year there was a performance of The Wedding in Stockholm, directed by Sjöberg, which is said to have been the biggest theatrical event of the season. My theater was certainly ahead of its time. In all these years I have gone unnoticed as a playwright. But now I am suddenly a serious name in discussions about modern theatre, while a man like Lavelli has become a director of international significance thanks to his success.’
Have you seen performances of your own plays?
‘No, I was in Berlin for the performance of The Marriage in Paris, and vice versa. By the way, I’m not a theater fan at all, I prefer films, I’m a theater writer who doesn’t like theater.’
Finally, I would like to ask you whether you could come to the Netherlands on the occasion of the appearance of Kosmos and the performance of The Marriage.
‘No, that’s out of the question, my health absolutely doesn’t allow that.’
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Book
Witold Gombrowicz Pornografia
Grove Atlantic
‘An outlandish stylist, a provocative philosopher on youth and sexuality, and one of the indisputable totems of twentieth-century world literature, Witold Gombrowicz wrote Pornografia after leaving his native Poland for Argentina in 1939 and then watching from afar as the German invasion destroyed his country. Translated for the first time into English from the original Polish by award-winning translator Danuta Borchardt, Pornografia is one of Gombrowicz’s highest regarded works—a richly imagined tale of violence and carnality set in wartime Poland.
—-‘In the midst of the German occupation, two aging intellectuals travel to a farm in the countryside, looking for a respite from the hellish scene in Warsaw. They quickly grow bored of their bucolic surroundings—that is, until they are hypnotized by a pair of country youths who have grown up alongside each other: the betrothed daughter of the farm’s owner, and a young farmhand who has just returned from a stint in the Polish resistance. The older men are determined to orchestrate a tryst between the two teenagers, but they are soon distracted by a string of violent developments: the cold-blooded murder of the young girl’s future mother-in-law and, even more disturbing, an order that comes down from the leadership of the underground movement for the men at the farm to assassinate a rogue resistance captain who has sought refuge there. The erotic games are put on hold—until the two dissolute intellectuals find a way to involve their pawns in the murderous plot.’ — Grove Atlantic
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Excerpt
I’ll tell you about yet another adventure of mine, probably one of the most disastrous. At the time—the year was 1943—I was living in what was once Poland and what was once Warsaw, at the rock-bottom of an accomplished fact. Silence. The thinned-out bunch of companions and friends from the former cafés—the Zodiac, the Ziemiańska, the Ipsu—would gather in an apartment on Krucza Street and there, drinking, we tried hard to go on as artists, writers, and thinkers … picking up our old, earlier conversations and disputes about art. … Hey, hey, hey, to this day I see us sitting or lying around in thick cigarette smoke, this one somewhat skeleton-like, that one scarred, and all shouting, screaming. So this one was shouting: God, another: art, a third: the nation, a fourth: the proletariat, and so we debated furiously, and it went on and on—God, art, nation, proletariat—but one day a middle-aged guy turned up, dark and lean, with an aquiline nose and, observing all due formality, he introduced himself to everyone individually. After which he hardly spoke.
He scrupulously thanked us for the glass of vodka we offered him—and no less scrupulously he said: “I would also like to ask you for a match …” Whereupon he waited for the match, and he waited … and, when given it, he proceeded to light his cigarette. In the meantime the discussion raged—God, proletariat, nation, art—while the stench was peeking into our nostrils. Someone asked: “Fryderyk, sir, what winds have blown you here?”—to which he instantly gave an exhaustive reply: “I learned from Madame Ewa that Piętak frequently comes here, therefore I dropped in, since I have four rabbit pelts and the sole of a shoe.” And, to show that these were not empty words, he displayed the pelts, which had been wrapped in paper.
He was served tea, which he drank, but a piece of sugar remained on his little plate—so he reached for it to bring it to his mouth—but perhaps deeming this action not sufficiently justified, he withdrew his hand—yet withdrawing his hand was something even less justified—so he reached for the sugar again and ate it—but he probably ate it not so much for pleasure as merely for the sake of behaving properly … towards the sugar or towards us? … and wishing to erase this impression he coughed and, to justify the cough, he pulled out his handkerchief, but by now he didn’t dare wipe his nose—so he just moved his leg. Moving his leg presented him, it seemed, with new complications, so he fell silent and sat stock-still. This singular behavior (because he did nothing but “behave”, he incessantly “behaved”) aroused my curiosity even then, on first meeting him, and in the ensuing months I became close to this man, who actually turned out to be someone not lacking refinement, he was someone with experience in the realm of art as well (at one time he was involved in the theater). I don’t know … I don’t know … suffice it to say that we both became involved in a little business that provided us with a livelihood. Well, yes, but this did not last long, because one day I received a letter, a letter from a person known as Hipolit, Hipolit S., a landowner from the Sandomierz region, suggesting that we visit him—Hipolit also mentioned that he would like to discuss some of his Warsaw affairs in which we could be helpful to him. “Supposedly it’s peaceful here, nothing of note, but there are marauding bands, sometimes they attack, there’s a loosening of conduct, you know. Come, both of you, we’ll feel safer.”
Travel there? The two of us? I was beset by misgivings, difficult to express, about the two of us traveling … because to take him there with me, to the countryside, so that he could continue his game, well … And his body, that body so … “peculiar”? … To travel with him and ignore his untiring “silently-shouting impropriety”? … To burden myself with someone so “compromised and, as a result, so compromising”? … To expose myself to the ridicule of this stubbornly conducted “dialogue” … with … with whom actually? … And his “knowledge,” this knowledge of his about … ? And his cunning? And his ruses? Indeed, I didn’t relish the idea, but on the other hand he was so isolated from us in that eternal game of his … so separate from our collective drama, so disconnected from the discussion “nation, God, proletariat, art” … that I found it restful, it gave me some relief. … At the same time he was so irreproachable, and calm, and circumspect! Let’s go then, so much more pleasant for the two of us to go together! The outcome was that—we forced ourselves into a train compartment and bore our way into its crowded interior … until the train finally moved, grinding.
Three o’clock in the afternoon. Foggy. A hag’s torso splitting Fryderyk in half, a child’s leg riding onto his chin … and so he traveled … but he traveled, as always, correctly and with perfect manners. He was silent. I too was silent, the journey jerked us and threw us about, yet everything was as if set solid … but through a bit of the window I saw bluish-gray, sleeping fields that we rode into with a swaying rumble. … It was the same flat expanse I’ve seen so many times before, embraced by the horizon, the checkered land, a few trees flying by, a little house, outbuildings receding behind it … the same things as ever, things anticipated … Yet not the same! And not the same, just because the same! And unknown, and unintelligible, indeed, unfathomable, ungraspable! The child screamed, the hag sneezed …
The sour smell … The long-familiar, eternal wretchedness of a train ride, a stretch of sagging power lines, of a ditch, the sudden incursion of a tree into the window, a utility pole, a shed, the swift backward dash of everything, slipping away … while there, far, on the horizon a chimney or a hill … appeared and persisted for a long time, stubbornly, like a prevailing anxiety, a dominant anxiety … until, with a slow turning, it all fell into nothing. I had Fryderyk right in front of me, two other heads separating us, his head was close, close by, and I could see it—he was silent and riding on—while the presence of alien, brazen bodies, crawling and pressing on us, only deepened my tête-à-tête with him … without a word … so much so that, by the living God, I would have preferred not to be traveling with him, oh, that the idea of traveling together had never come to pass! Because, stuck in his corporality, he was one more body among other bodies, nothing more … but at the same time here he was … and somehow here he was, distinctly and unremittingly. … This was not to be dismissed—not to be discarded, disposed of, erased. Here he was in this crush and here he was. … And his ride, his onward rush in space, was beyond comparison with their ride—his was a much more significant ride, even sinister perhaps. …
From time to time he smiled at me and said something—probably just to make it bearable for me to be with him and make his presence less oppressive. I realized that pulling him out of the city, casting him onto these out-of-Warsaw spaces, was a risky undertaking … because, against the background of these expanses, his singular inner quality would necessarily resound more powerfully … and he himself knew it, since I had never seen him more subdued, insignificant. At a certain moment the dusk, the substance that consumes form, began gradually to erase him, and he became indistinct in the speeding and shaking train that was riding into the night, inducing nonexistence. Yet this did not weaken his presence, which became merely less accessible to the eye: he lurked behind the veil of nonseeing, still the same. Suddenly lights came on and pulled him back into the open, exposing his chin, the corners of his tightly drawn mouth, his ears. … He, nonetheless, did not twitch, he stood with his eyes fixed on a string that was swaying, and he just was! The train stopped again, somewhere behind me the shuffling of feet, the crowd reeling, something must be happening—and he just was and was! We begin moving, it’s night outside, the locomotive flares out sparks, the compartments’ journey becomes nocturnal—why on earth have I brought him with me? Why have I burdened myself with his company, which, instead of unburdening me, burdened me? The journey lasted many listless hours, interspersed with stops, until finally it became a journey for journey’s sake, somnolent, stubborn, and so we rode until we reached Ćmielowo and, with our suitcases, we found ourselves on a footpath running along the train track, the train’s disappearing string of cars in the clangor dying away. Then silence, a mysterious breeze, and stars. A cricket.
I, extricated from many hours of motion, of crowding, was suddenly set down on this little footpath—next to me Fryderyk, his coat on his arm, totally silent and standing—Where were we? What was this? I knew this area, the breeze was not foreign to me—but where were we? There, diagonally across, was the familiar building of the Ćmielowo train station and a few lamps shining, yet … where, on what planet, had we landed? Fryderyk stood next to me and just stood. We began to move toward the station, he behind me, and here are a carriage, horses, a coachman—the familiar carriage and the coachman’s familiar raising of his cap, why then am I watching it all so stubbornly? … I climb up, Fryderyk after me, we ride, a sandy road by the light of a dark sky, the blackness of a tree or of a bush floats in from the sides, we drive into the village of Brzustowa, the boards glow with whitewash, a dog is barking … mysterious … in front of me the coachman’s back … mysterious … and next to me this man who is silently, affably accompanying me. The invisible ground at times rocked our vehicle, at times shook it, while caverns of darkness, the thickening murkiness among the trees, obstructed our vision. I talked to the coachman just to hear my own voice:
“Well, how’s it going? Is it peaceful over your way?”
And I heard him say:
“It’s peaceful for the moment. There are gangs in the forests. … But nothing special lately. …”
The face invisible, the voice the same—yet not the same. In front of me only his back—and I was about to lean forward to look into the eyes of his back, but I stopped short … because Fryderyk … was indeed here, next to me. And he was immensely silent. With him next to me, I preferred not to look anyone in the face … because I suddenly realized that this something sitting next to me is radical in its silence, radical to the point of frenzy! Yes, he was an extremist! Reckless in the extreme! No, this was not an ordinary being but something more rapacious, strained by an extremity about which thus far I had no idea! So I preferred not to look in the face—of anyone, not even the coachman’s, whose back weighed me down like a mountain, while the invisible earth rocked the carriage, shook it, and the surrounding darkness, sparkling with stars, sucked out all vision. The remainder of the journey passed without a word. We finally rolled into an avenue, the horses moved more briskly—then the gate, the caretaker, and the dogs—the locked house and the heavy grating of its unlocking—Hipolit with a lamp …
“Well, thank God you’re here!”
Was it he or not? The bloated redness of his cheeks, bursting, struck me and repelled me. … He seemed to be generally bursting with edema, which made everything in him expand enormously and grow in all directions, the awful blubber of his body was like a volcano disgorging flesh … in knee boots, he stretched out his apocalyptic paws, and his eyes peeped from his body as if through a porthole. Yet he wanted to be close to me, he hugged me. He whispered bashfully:
“I’m all bloated … devil only knows … I’ve grown fat. From what? Probably from everything.”
And looking at his thick fingers he repeated with boundless anguish, more softly, to himself:
“I’ve grown fat. From what? Probably from everything.”
Then he bellowed:
“And this is my wife!”
Then he muttered for his own benefit:
“And this is my wife.”
Then he screamed:
“And this is my Henia, Hennie, Hennie-girl!”
Then he repeated, to himself, barely audibly:
“And this is Henia, Hennie, Hennie-girl!”
He turned to us, hospitably, his manner refined: “How good of you to come, but please, Witold, introduce me to your friend …” He stopped, closed his eyes, and kept repeating … his lips moved. Fryderyk, courteous in the extreme, kissed the hand of the hostess, whose melancholy was embellished with a faraway smile, whose litheness fluttered lightly … and the whirl of connecting, introducing us into the house, sitting, conversing, drew us in—after that journey without end—the light of the lamp induced a dreamy mood. Supper, served by a butler. We were overcome with sleep. Vodka. Struggling against sleep, we tried to listen, to grasp, there was talk of aggravation by the Underground Army on the one hand, by the Germans on the other, by gangs, by the administration, by the Polish police, and seizures—talk of rampant fears and rapes … to which the shutters, secured with additional iron bars, bore witness, as did the blockading of side doors … the locking and bunging up with iron. “They burned down Sieniechów, they broke the legs of the overseer of the farm laborers in Rudniki, I had people here who were displaced from the Poznań region, what’s worse, we know nothing of what’s happening in Ostrowiec, in Bodzechów with its factory settlements, everybody’s just waiting, ears to the ground, for the time being it’s quiet, but everything will come crashing down when the front comes closer … Crashing down! Well, sir, there will be carnage, an eruption, ugly business! It will be an ugly business!” he bellowed and then muttered to himself, absorbed in thought:
“An ugly business.”
And he bellowed:
“The worst of it is there’s no place to run!”
And he whispered:
“The worst of it is there’s no place to run!”
But here’s the lamp. Supper. Sleepiness. Hipolit’s enormousness besmeared with a thick sauce of sleep, the lady of the house is here as well, dissolving in her remoteness, and Fryderyk, and moths hitting the lamp, moths inside the lamp, moths around the lamp, and the stairs winding upward, a candle, I fall onto my bed, I’m falling asleep. The following day there’s a triangle of sunlight on the wall. Someone’s voice outside the window. I rose from my bed and opened the shutters. Morning.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Steve Erickson, Yikes. Yeah, that’s why whenever I have a health issue when visiting the US I wait until I’m back here to get it looked at. I’ll seek out that Joe D’Amato film, thanks. Sounds quite doable. ** Charalampos, My total pleasure on the successful Pollard rec. Anytime. Interesting about Samson deBrier. I guess I never cottoned to the names of the ‘Pleasure Dome’ performers, even thogh it’s my favorite Anger. I do not look forward one little bit to being on Instagram, but the future is always full of surprises. Happy b’day to your mom a little late. Love from thus far not rainy for once Paris. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Awesome! I’m gonna find those magic sand videos as soon as I get a decent film work bteak because that sounds like a very lustrous viewing experience. Ha ha, yeah, love may have to find you an instrumental track. Interesting. Today I give love the workmanlike task of making a big Zoom business meeting about the film today not turn into an ugly shitshow, and it definitely may need love to prevent that, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘Trash’ is a blast. Whatcha gonna put in that mug? Or does it being empty increase the luck? ** Jack Skelley, Jack of All Trades. Cool, I’ll read that article. I’m in my usual rush to get to work, but later is in the offing. I’m going to do my utmost to just stop into Instagram long enough to post something and then vamoose. We’ll see. Yours, Freddie Kruger. ** Misanthrope, Dude, keep that up and you may have to change your screen name. Just saying. ** Mark, Hi. I, in fact, have that very zine sitting on my desk, not, oh, even 6 inches from my very nose. If that post hadn’t been from many years ago, I would’ve scanned it to use the shebang. Everyone, If you need more Holly Woodlawn, and trust me, you do, plus her compadre Joe Dallesandro, you are hereby highly encouraged to pick up Mark’s crazy great zine about the vaunted duo, which you can find and order right here. ** Justin, Cool that you understand my ‘Salo’ trepidation. I do think that: that the novel itself is just the drug that makes the novel possible. I wish more writers thought about their work that way. How’s ‘All of Us Strangers’? I hear a lot of good about it, but I’m trepidatious re: it, I don’t know why. I guess because of all the hype. When’s the last time hype attached itself to something actually great, I wonder? ** Guy, Hi! Well, Japanese sword class definitely counts as exciting. Wow. And your instructor’s visual attributes don’t hurt either. Wild, cool. Oh, I’m an absolutely terrible flirter. I have no idea how to flirt. Never have. I don’t even know how to be flirted with successfully. I understand that relaxing and exuding confidence works pretty well? Good luck. Anyway, that’s such an interesting thing you’re doing. Hm, I’m so locked down with finishing the film every day that almost nothing else is going on. And that’s exciting. But tedious. So, it’s a kind of complicated excitement. My favorite pizza restaurant, which I had thought went out of business, just magically reopened, so I’m excited to eat a pizza there. That’s a pretty lowkey excitement thing, but it’ll do for now. What are you doing when you’re not swinging a sword around? ** Darby 🔥🔥, Yeah, no dung beetle today. I am going to try to make that post, but it’s a labor intensive once, so I think it’ll have to wait at least a couple of weeks because my post-making time is severely hampered by the film stuff for now. Oh, shit, really, you may have to move out? That’s stressful. What happened? Where did you go if you had to move? I have an annoying back too. Lifelong. I grew too fast when I was around 11 years old, and my spine didn’t develop properly. It’s not a huge deal, and it doesn’t look weird or anything, but my back is always annoying me. Me, I’m really just going to be working on the film and not much for the next couple of weeks. I might eat some okay food. A lentil burger sounds so good. I’m gonna find one. I hope today goes okay and much better for you, my pal. ** Uday, Cool, happy to help fill in the blank. The writer C Carr, who wrote the Wojnarowicz bio, has a big bio of Candy Darling coming out soon that I’m excited about. Oh shit, about the racism imposition. I’m so sorry. People can so fucking idiotic sometimes. It’s just fear, but you know that. Have the best day you can. ** Right. Perhaps you know or do not know today’s spotlit novel by the great, misanthropic novelist Witold Gombrowicz, whose diaries are also scabrous fun. Anyway, that’s what I’ve put before you today. See you tomorrow.
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