Successful Writer Blog

Witold Gombrowicz is one of the most influential Polish writers from the first half of the 20^th century. Pornografia is a story about the corruption of two young resistance members by the author’s alter egos, who try to draw from the youth’s zeal. He was very critical about the culture of his country and saw it as a cultural wasteland. His devotion to youth culture reminds me of Yukio Mishima, as his dualism concerning youth and the grown-up world is somewhat similar because the two books end with murder. But here, unlike The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, the youth are manipulated to commit this murder, and are not the manipulators. What is so interesting about this book’s structure is that as Gombrowicz himself admits, he used a formula to write the book:

“My literature artwork is based on classical shapes… Pornografia is based on the good old Polish countryside story, Cosmos is a kind of detective novel, my theater is a parody of Shakespeare and my last play is a kind of operetta. I use classical shapes because they are perfect and the reader has become accustomed to them, but do remember – it’s important – that the shape, in my case, is but a parody upon shape. I use it but put myself outside of it, I’m looking for a connection between readable literary types and new, fresh world experiences.” 

This idea of basing a novel upon shape is one important lesson that I have learnt from Pornografia. The other great aspect is the alter-ego of the author who narrows the distance between the writer and the character – a character who tries to direct the events in the book and in turn makes the book more interesting.

The following article will be on another borrower of sorts – Israel Rabon.

I have been avoiding answering a letter from the editor of Mashiv Haroach (a Jewish poetry newspaper) for some time. They are about to publish a volume about my homeland, the Negev and I have never written about my homeland seriously. One might say that everything you write is harks back to your home, and now, as I try to write a novel about Ben-Gurion University of the Negev I can see how many emotional charges are there, in the back of my mind. Still I feel that prose, being less concentrated than poetry is a far better way to overcome these obstacles. Or perhaps it’s because that there are some ways of writing that hurt too much, and the writer is only flesh and blood.

I did not plan this but the truth is the books that I chose to deal with this week of Polish literature somehow deal with the questions and problems that I have mentioned.  Pochwala Snow, the wonderful poetry collection of Szymborska’s poetry edited by Rafi Weichert, has the unique ability to give you exactly the poems you need whenever you need them, not only that, the book has a very interesting point of view on the subject of what is a homeland. For the very first time, I’ve read her Nobel Prize speech and there is a lot to learn from it about being a poet, as I shall write in the post about her.

Another book is Witold Gombrowicz’s book Pornografia that tells the story of World War II Poland without being there. Gombrowicz is one of the most important novelists of 20^th century Polish literature and in his first books he also wrote about the idea of youth and its internal battle in the grownup’s mind with adulthood.

The last article this week focuses on a Jewish-Polish writer called Israel Rabon. In his book, The Street, he describes his birthplace from the point of view of a Jewish soldier trying desperately to settle in Lodz. I will also talk about the simple and surreal Shund literature, which served as a basis for this book.