Ferdydurke
Friday, March 3rd, 2006 @ 19:01
by Witold Gombrowicz (1937)
A parody of common literary forms in prewar Polish literature, in Ferdydurke a 30-year-old complacent narrator, Johnnie (who, like Gombrowicz, has also published a book called Memoirs of a Time of Immaturity), is dragged by an old, all-cultural imposing professor Pimko back to secondary school, where everyone believes him as another poseur juvenile, “inclined to pose in order to appear grown up”. Absurdism of pomposity, immaturity, posed masks, unapologetic mysogyny, with short stories about Philifor and Philimor Honeycombed with Childishness inserted in the middle, Gombrowicz presents a madcap comic parody with intense underlying analysis of the way the externals shape one’s (re)actions.
From face-making, ear-exposing, money-piling duels, struggles to be unaffected, modern, indifferent girl, to stable-boy fraternisation and cultural aunts and their strangling kindness, first published in Warsaw in 1937, Ferdydurke (from Freddy Durkee, an anti-social character who appears in Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit) caused a literary sensation and controversy. Despite (and probably, for) being reviled by the Polish nationalists, banned by the Nazis, and again by the Communists, the novel became an instant cult that keeps gaining faithful audiences. But Ferdydurke had never been translated directly form Polish to English, until September 2000, done by Danuta Borchardt. Unfortunately the library only has the now out-of-print copy of the old second-hand translation which is said to be much sterilised — indeed, sometimes ponderous and awkward. Though honestly I still find it enjoyable, I suspect I’m missing a lot of gas (not to mention Bruno Schulz’ illustration). In any case I’d pick this any day over direct reading (or translated three times removed, if you like) of The Catcher in the Rye.
