B005GEZ23A EBOK (2 page)

Let me give you a couple of examples of how far the earlier two-step translation had wandered from the original Polish. One of the central characters, Fryderyk, writes a letter to his companion, the narrator, in which he reveals how his somewhat twisted psyche operates. It is clear, from the Polish, that Fryderyk says: “I walk the line of
tensions,
do you understand? I walk the line of
excitements.
” The earlier translation has this as “I follow the lines
of force
… The lines of
desire.
” The meaning is quite different and, according to one expert on Gombrowicz
*
, this has led to a major philosophical misinterpretation of
Pornografia
by Hanjo Berressem and subsequently to that by Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan. The reader may wish to investigate this issue.

Another example is from the ending of the book, which reads as follows: “I looked at our little couple. They were smiling. As the young do when faced with the difficulty of extricating themselves from a predicament. And for a second, they and we, in our catastrophe, looked into each others’ eyes.”
The previous English translation presents this passage as: “I looked at our couple. They smiled. As the young always do when they are trying to get out of a scrape. And for a split second, all four of us smiled.” The word “smiled” in the last sentence is incorrect, and the word “catastrophe” has been left out. The result is that Gombrowicz’s ending, which is bizarre and striking, has lost much of its impact.

Here are a couple of examples of the way that Gombrowicz’s linguistic idiosyncrasy has been lost in this two-step translation. The two main characters, Witold and Fryderyk, are riding on a train and Witold observes about Fryderyk: “and he just was! … and he just was and was!” The previous translation opts for the prosaic statement “but he remained there!” Another example is a condensation typical of Gombrowicz, where we are told: “the point is HENIA WITH KAROL,” which the previous translation converts to a full sentence “in fact it is only about making: HENIA WITH KAROL.”

A major piece of literature always has philosophical and psychological implications, and this is definitely true of
Pornografia.
To view it merely as entertainment or as a study on voyeurism would be a great mistake. There is no better way to convey this than by quoting the author himself, again from
A Kind of Testament

“… The hero of this novel, Fryderyk, is a Christopher Columbus, setting out to discover unknown lands. What is he searching? Actually it is this beauty and new poetry, concealed between the adult and the boy. He is a poet of great,
extreme consciousness, this is how I wanted him to be in the novel. But how difficult it is to understand each other these days! Some critics saw Satan in him, more or less, while others—mostly Anglo-Saxons—were satisfied with a more trivial label,
voyeur.
My Fryderyk is neither Satan nor a
voyeur,
but rather he has within him something of a stage director, even a chemist, who by bringing people together tries to create the alcohol of a new charm.

… [In this novel there is] a desperate fight of the adult wish for fulfillment with an easing-of-burden quality of youth that is light, reckless, irresponsible. A wish, that is the stronger the more it hits something that does not offer resistance. In the finale, the seventeen-year-old lightness deprives the criminals, the sins, of their importance, the novel ends in non-fulfillment.”

Because of the novel’s many levels of complexity, it is clearly important to convey the original with both clarity and faithfulness. A seamless translation would be wonderful, but it has been a challenge to achieve this while still leaving Gombrowicz’s stylistic voice unscathed. It is my hope that my effort will lead to a greater appreciation and enjoyment of the novel.

—D.B.

PORNOGRAFIA

Pornografia
takes place in the Poland of the war years. Why? Partly because the atmosphere of war is most appropriate for it. Partly because it is very Polish—and perhaps it was initially conceived on the model of a cheap novel in the manner of Rodziewiczówna or Zarzycka (did this similarity disappear in its subsequent adaptation?). And partly just to be contrary—to suggest to the nation that its womb can accommodate conflicts, dramas, ideas other than those already theoretically established.

I do not know the wartime Poland. I did not witness it. After 1939 I never visited Poland. I wrote this as I imagined it. So it is an imaginary Poland—and don’t worry that what I have written is sometimes crazy, sometimes perhaps fantastic, that is not its point and is of no significance at all to matters happening here.

One more thing. Let no one look for critical or ironic intent in the theme pertaining to the Underground Army (UA, in the second part). I want to assure the UA of my respect. I
invented the situation—it could happen in any underground organization—because this is what was required by its composition and its spirit, somewhat melodramatic here. UA or no UA, people are people—it could happen anywhere when a leader is stricken with cowardice or when a murder is impelled by an underground resistance movement.

—W.G.

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 Ziemia
ń
ska, 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: