Kronos by Witold Gombrowicz

reviews masterly ability; he achieves ease in nearly every line, and this book keeps pace with any he has written. We find the persistent influences that have long ago blended uniquely into his agile and protean imagination but which seem ever to refresh themselves in his work: most prominently , in addition to the JudeoChristian tradition, we find the poets of ancient China, the natural world, Rilke, Cézanne, and, to a much lesser degree, other painters and various contemporary poets such as Mark Strand and James Wright. The planes of Cézanne, of course, find their correspondence in the structure of Wright’s poems, but Rilke’s influence is in part that of vision. Rilke’s “white city” makes an appearance in one of these poems, but, more importantly, his vision of purpose in the Duino Elegies, that of the world re-arising through the poet’s gaze and imagination on its way to becoming poetry, is essentially what Wright comes to in the final lines of “Ancient of Days.” These poems are frequently allusive, depending on the reader’s knowledge; sometimes in the case of especial indebtedness, Wright appropriately acknowledges the poets/ poems in the endnotes. Read this book. Charles Wright’s poetry has never been better. Fred Dings University of South Carolina Miscellaneous Witold Gombrowicz. Kronos. Kraków. Wydawnictwo Literackie. 2013 isbn 9788308050781 In the view of most critics, Dzienniki (Diaries) is among the best writings of Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969). These are highly stylized diaries that present an egocentric writer for whom independence and authenticity are the highest values. Gombrowicz is a writer who pretends to ignore history, discarding any allegiance to the humanistic or patriotic ideals upheld by many of his illustrious fellow writers. While Dzienniki entails his thoughts for public consumption, the recently published Kronos is in fact a collection of personal notes stretching from 1922 to May 1969, a few months before Gombrowicz’s death. In other words, Kronos provides a sketchy biographical background to the private Gombrowicz. In contrast to the elaborate and often elegant prose of the “Diaries,” it is in a “factual shorthand,” the informative value of which varies from year to year. Beginning with 1940, each year ends with a kind of “summary” of the author’s literary achievements, state of finances, general health, and sexual life. These are not harmonized; for example, during the first years in Argentina (where Gombrowicz arrived in the summer of 1939 on a Polish ocean liner), he has many homoerotic experiences while living in abject poverty; witness an entry from 1943: ”I have no overcoat. I am sleeping on the floor at Morón.” There are months when the writer ekes out a living just playing chess for money (he is an excellent chess player, managing to win several prizes). In later years, his financial situation greatly improves , but then his health becomes an everyday concern. From Kronos it becomes clear that while Gombrowicz loathed Polish nationalism and eschewed patriotism , what saved him from destitution in Buenos Aires was his job at Banco Polaco, obtained in mid–1947. For the growth of his literary reputation , contact with the émigré journal Kultura and its legendary editor Jerzy Giedroyc was decisive. Finally, when in 1963, thanks to a grant from the 92 worldliteraturetoday.org Ford Foundation, Gombrowicz left South America for Paris and Berlin and became a writer appreciated all over Europe, he acquired the means to settle in Vence, in southern France. But the notes in Kronos make it clear that in the last five years of his life Gombrowicz struggled just to stay alive: when he had enough money to live in style and married a much younger French Canadian woman, he also had to prepare for slowly approaching death. Kronos is illuminating in another respect, too

Art · Art history · Literature · Painting · Poetry · Wright · Central European Literary Studies · European Cultural and National Identity · Philosophy · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies