Trans-Atlantyk

Yale University Press did a fine job of promoting Witold Gombrowicz with its anachronistic translation by Carolyn French and Nina Karsov of TRANS-ATLANTYK, published in 1994. The Introduction by Stanislaw Baranczak describes how Witold Gombrowicz arrived in Buenos Aires on August 21, 1939, eleven days before the Nazi invasion of Poland presented Gombrowicz with the fundamental dilemma of human existence in which he refused to take the ocean liner Boleslaw Chobry back to Europe. His new situation obviously called for some literary explanation of how his life had changed since he had been lauded in his homeland as the author of the novel FERDYDURKE. As the Introduction explains, the world had to wait until 1953 for the little book, 122 pages, that captures how events had put Gombrowicz into a situation so intense that TRANS-ATLANTYK was his `Life Line,' to incorporate by reference a great song by Harry Nilsson from a great cartoon story called `The Point.' "Begun in 1948, it appeared only in 1953, sixteen years after FERDYDURKE. To be sure, Gombrowicz did not spend all of that time chiseling TRANS-ATLANTYK's fine points. During most of the war and postwar years he was reduced to struggling for survival, coping with extreme poverty and wasting his energies on a job as a bank clerk offered to him by a Polish banker in Buenos Aires. According to Gombrowicz, he wrote TRANS-ATLANTYK on his desk at the bank, hiding the manuscript whenever his superior entered the room." (p. xiii). " . . . this novel, perhaps the most grotesquely fantastic ever written in Polish, is also the most personal and engaging of all Gombrowicz's works of fiction." (p. xiv). In Poland, "TRANS-ATLANTYK appeared in 1957 and immediately became a modern classic, in spite of the modest printing of ten thousand copies." (p. xx). On a personal level, Stanislaw Baranczak credits TRANS-ATLANTYK with helping a group of Polish literature majors prepare for their final exam on Marxist political economy in May 1967 by roaring with laughter the night before the exam at lines like, "I'm not so mad as to have any views These Days or not to have them." (p. xxi). A Note on Pronunciation on page xxviii includes the author's name: Witold Gombrowicz VEE-told gom-BROH-veetch Whereupon I commented to my neighbor, and quite loudly so that he there could hear: "I don't like Butter too Buttery, Noodles too Noodly, Millet too Millety and Barley too Barley!" (p. 32). Cursed that warp of Mankind! Cursed that swine of ours wallowing in mud! Cursed that Slough of ours! Indeed that one who Walked there, with whom I Walked, was no Bull, but a cow! (p. 36). A Man who, being a Man, fain would not be a Man but after Men chases, and after them Flies, admires, oh, Loves, Heats for them, Lusts for them, Hungers for them, makes up to them, simpers, adulates them, him folks hereabouts give the contemptuous name "puto." Upon seeing those lips, the which although a Man's with woman's rouge bled,

The only novel I have ever turned directly from the last page back to the front page to begin reading again. Laugh-out-loud funny; brilliant; and so unique in the world of literature that it beggars description. Just read it.

Setting this book in the strange form of exile which eradicates whatever benefits Gombrowicz might have enjoyed from his own greatness in Poland, this outrageous examination of Polish insecurities is better than his strange submission to the greatness of the heroic poets in Ferdydurk, or to the frank realization that he, himself, is best described as "Up pops a clown" in his diary. He is not just any writer, but the great Gombrowicz here, because he is filled with a terror that is obviously being cooked up for the world to see. And therefore, what a vividly realized world we see. The difficulties involved in reading this book succeed in making it what it is.

Gombrowicz is the only author I know whose criticism of human nature does not yield to despair and pessimism. This book is profound, and yet full of devastating comic. Something like a remake of 'The Stranger' by Tex Avery.

The New York Times Book Review wrote: "A triumphantly unconventional short novel.... This new edition [is] tanslated from the original Polish with breathtaking ingenuity." Excerpt (page 12): "Minister Kosiubidzki Feliks was one of the strangest people I've come upon in my life. Lean-Plumpy, somewhat fatty, he had a nose likewise rather Lean-Plumpy, an eye vague, fingers Slim-Plumpy and belike a Leg Slim and plumpy or fatty, and that Baldpate of his as of Brass over which he combed his black-red hairs; he was wont to flash his eye and every now and then he flashes it. By his behaviour and bearing he displayed extraordinary respect for his high dignity and by his every movement upon himself bestowed honour, and likewise continuously, mightily honoured by his Selfness the one he was talking to, so that one spoke to him almost on one's Knees. Instantly then, having burst into tears, I threw myself down at his feet and kissed his hand; and my services, blood, fortune offering, begged him to make use of me and place me at his disposal in this holy moment, according to his holy will, his reckoning. Most kindly honouring me and himself by his holy listening, he blessed and flashed at me, then says: "I cannot give you more than 50 pesos (he took out his purse). I shan't give you more since more I have not. But if you fain would go to Rio de Janeiro and hold to the Legation there, then I'll pay your fare and even add something to be quit of your hold as I would have no Writers here: they just Milk you and Bark at you. So get ye to Rio de Janeiro, I counsel you well."