Where was I?  Oh, right!  Gombrowicz.

I’ve been on a huge Gombrowicz kick lately.  A few weeks ago I picked up Ferdydurke for the thirty-fourth time, and this time it clicked.   Gombrowicz now is open.

Two funny things I’ve noticed:

(1)

The name Ferdydurke is, as most people say, taken from Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt.  But Freddy Durkee is not the “chief character” of Babbitt, as Ferdydurke translator Danuta Borchardt has it, nor is he, strictly speaking, a “character” in the book at all.  He’s just a name in an advertisement  that Babbitt’s dumbbell son Ted cuts out of the newspaper.  Here’s the whole passage:

[Ted] snatched from the back of his geometry half a hundred advertisements of those home-study courses which the energy and foresight of American commerce have contributed to the science of education. The first displayed the portrait of a young man with a pure brow, an iron jaw, silk socks, and hair like patent leather. Standing with one hand in his trousers-pocket and the other extended with chiding forefinger, he was bewitching an audience of men with gray beards, paunches, bald heads, and every other sign of wisdom and prosperity.  Above the picture was an inspiring educational symbol — no antiquated lamp or torch or owl of Minerva, but a row of dollar signs.  The text ran:

$   $   $   $   $   $   $   $   $

POWER AND PROSPERITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

A Yarn Told at the Club

Who do you think I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe Restaurant? Why, old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead or-alive shipping clerk in my old place — Mr. Mouse-Man we used to laughingly call the dear fellow. One time he was so timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and never got credit for the dandy work he did.  Him at the De Luxe!  And if he wasn’t ordering a tony feed with all the “fixings” from celery to nuts! And instead of being embarrassed by the waiters, like he used to be at the little dump where we lunched in Old Lang Syne, he was bossing them around like he was a millionaire! I cautiously asked him what he was doing.  Freddy laughed and said, “Say, old chum, I guess you’re wondering what’s come over me. You’ll be glad to know I’m now Assistant Super at the old shop, and right on the High Road to Prosperity and Domination, and I look forward with confidence to a twelve-cylinder car, and the wife is making things hum in the best society and the kiddies getting a first-class education.

“Here’s how it happened.  I ran across an ad of a course that claimed to teach people how to talk easily and on their feet, how to answer complaints, how to lay a proposition before the Boss, how to hit a bank for a loan, how to hold a big audience spellbound with wit, humor, anecdote, inspiration, etc. It was compiled by the Master Orator, Prof. Waldo F. Peet. I was skeptical, too, but I wrote (JUST ON A POSTCARD, with name and address) to the publisher for the lessons–sent On Trial, money back if you are not absolutely satisfied. There were eight simple lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I studied them just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife.  Soon found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and say, old doggo, what do you think they’re paying me now? $6,500 per year!  And say, Ifind I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on any topic.  As a friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no obligation) and valuable free Art Picture to: –

SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO.
Desk WA        Sandpit, Iowa.

ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?

Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable him to speak with authority.  Nothing in motoring or real estate had indicated what a Solid Citizen and Regular Fellow ought to think about culture by mail.

You’re certainly missing a good Gombrowiczian laugh if you know about the Babbitt connection but haven’t read this passage.

(2)

So after reading Ferdydurke I read A Kind of Testament, in which Gombrowicz tells the story of his life and explains why he wrote his other books.  This one’s brilliant too.

I loved this passage:

I had tried to write since the age of sixteen.  My early works were extraordinarily uneven.  They were naive and awkward at a time when I was neither that naive nor that awkward myself.  My pen betrayed me, and I suffered because of it …

A few years elapsed and I wrote the story “Kraykowski’s Dancer.”  It seemed good to me.  I realized it was literature, and after that I started writing seriously.

“I realized it was literature.”  I loved that.

A few days ago, flipping through Notes from Underground, I discovered why “Kraykowski” seemed like literature to Gombrowicz.  Why did it seem like literature?  Because it was literature.  He had stolen the story from Dostoevsky. What a nut.

“Kraykowski” is the story of a man who tries to cut into the line at a theater, and is physically removed to the end of the line by another man, the ”Kraykowski” of the title.  (”Is it not a mortifying thing to be taken by the collar in a public spot?”)  He becomes obsessed with Kraykowski, follows him everywhere, writes letters to Kraykowski’s lady friend, pays in advance for Kraykowski’s pastries, and just generally makes himself a nuisance.  (”I had time to spare.”)

It’s a very funny story.

I was on my way to  see the operetta “The Gypsy Princess” for the thirty-fourth time — and, since it was late, I bypassed the line and went straight to the lady at the ticket window: “My dear madam, please just quickly give me my usual, in the balcony” — when suddenly someone took hold of me from behind, and coldly — yes, coldly — dragged me away from the window and pushed me back to my proper place, i.e. the end of the line.

After this confrontation, the narrator learns Kraykowski’s name by following him to his apartment building and using the following ploy:

“Excuse me,” I said to the doorman of the brown, four-story apartment building, “that was Engineer Dziubinski who came in a moment ago, was it not?”

“Oh no sir,” he replied, “that was Lawyer Kraykowski and his wife.”

Now get out your copy of Notes and turn to part 2, chapter 1:

One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window — and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. “Perhaps,” I thought, “I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.”

I was not drunk — but what is one to do — depression will drive a man to such a pitch of hysteria? But nothing happened.

It seemed that I was not even equal to being thrown out of the window and I went away without having my fight.

An officer put me in my place from the first moment.

I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word — without a warning or explanation — moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me.

And later on:

Of course, this trivial incident could not with me end in that. I often met that officer afterwards in the street and noticed him very carefully. I am not quite sure whether he recognised me, I imagine not; I judge from certain signs. But I — I stared at him with spite and hatred and so it went on … for several years! My resentment grew even deeper with years. At first I began making stealthy inquiries about this officer. It was difficult for me to do so, for I knew no one. But one day I heard someone shout his surname in the street as I was following him at a distance, as though I were tied to him — and so I learnt his surname. Another time I followed him to his flat, and for ten kopecks learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey, whether he lived alone or with others, and so on — in fact, everything one could learn from a porter.

Interesting, huh?   Of course I’m not saying the Gom plagiarized from Dos — among literary authors, in my view, there are no rights, and that concept has no meaning.  I’m just amused at the connection and delighted to observe how this totally unique, 20th century genius earned his confidence as a writer — through imitation.

There’s also, now that I think of it, a related scene in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black — I’ll have to track it down.  That’s probably where Dostoevsky stole it from.

Gom was right — now that’s literature.