Ferdydurke

Infobox Book |
name = Ferdydurke
release_date = Oct 1937 (1st ed dated 1938)
translator = Danuta Borchardt


image_caption =
author = Witold Gombrowicz
cover_artist = Bruno Schulz
country = Poland
language = Polish
genre = Novel
publisher = Towarzystwo Wydawnicze "Rój", Warsaw (1st ed);
Harcourt, Brace and World (New York 1961); Yale University Press (2000)
english_release_date = 1961 (1st US ed), Aug 2000 (new translation)
media_type = Print (Hardcover & trade paperback)
pages = 281pp (YUP ed)
isbn = ISBN 0-300-08240-1 (YUP pb), ISBN 0-7145-3403-X (2005 UK pb)

"Ferdydurke" is a novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, published in 1937.

Considered a masterpiece of European modernism, "Ferdydurke" was published at an inopportune moment. World War II, Soviet Union's imposition of a communist regime in Poland and the author's decades of exile in Argentina nearly erased public awareness of a novel that remains a singularly strange exploration of identity and cultural and political mores. In this darkly humorous story, Joey Kowalski describes his transformation from a 30-year-old man into a teenage boy. Kowalski's exploits are comic and erotic -- for this is a modernism closer to Dada and the Marx brothers than to the elevated tones of T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound -- but also carry a subtle undertone of philosophical seriousness.

Gombrowicz is interested in identity and the way time and circumstance, history and place impose form on people's lives. The book itself is a parody of common literary forms in prewar Polish literature - an introspective, almost Proustian monologue transitions into a schoolboy memoir, then abruptly becomes a story of intergenerational struggle before finishing up as a "socially conscious" tale of life in a country manor. At each transition point there is a general brawl, a moment of escape, followed by a descent back into rigid form. Gombrowicz weaves into the book his theme that immaturity is the force behind our creative endeavors, but he's also clear that there's no getting away from this relentless, normalizing force.

Gombrowicz himself wrote of his novel that it is not "... a satire on some social class, nor a nihilistic attack on culture... We live in an era of violent changes, of accelerated development, in which settled forms are breaking under life's pressure... The need to find a form for what is yet immature, uncrystalized and underdeveloped, as well as the groan at the impossibility of such a postulate -- this is the chief excitement of my book."

Translations

The novel's rich celebration of language, full of neologisms, pastiche, and linguistic playfulness, makes it very difficult to translate. Anglophone readers have not been helped by the fact Eric Mosbacher's first translation was indirect, done from the French. Danuta Borchardt's complete direct translation of the novel, published in 2000 with introduction by Susan Sontag, deftly captures Gombrowicz's idiosyncratic style, allowing English speakers to fully experience the text.

The first Spanish translation of the novel, published in Buenos Aires in 1947, was done by Gombrowicz himself. A translation committee presided by the Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera helped him in this endeavor, since Gombrowicz felt that he did not know the language well enough at the time to do it on his own.

In 2006, the first Brazilian translation, direct from the Polish original text, was delivered. Tomasz Barcinski was responsible for the project.

Adaptations

Jerzy Skolimowski directed the 1991 film adaptation of "Ferdydurke" (alternate English title: "30 Door Key") with international cast including Iain Glen, Crispin Glover, Robert Stephens, Judith Godrèche, Zbigniew Zamachowski and Fabienne Babe.

In 1999s, "Ferdydurke" was adapted into internationally acclaimed stage play by Provisorium & Kompania Theater from Lublin.

External links

* Danuta Borchardt: [http://www.corpse.org/issue_5/critical_urgencies/borchar.htm Translating Witold Gombrowicz's "Ferdydurke"]
*
* [http://www.marionboyars.co.uk/Amy%20Pages/Ferdydurke%20Extract.html Short extract] at UK publisher website
* Eva Hoffman: [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E2D8133DF933A25751C1A9669C8B63 Stream of Subconsciousness] – review in "New York Times" 10 December 2000
* [http://www.polishlibrary.org/review/ferdydurke.htm Overview] at Polish Library
* [http://www.everba.org/spring05/ferdydurke.pdf Ferdydurke A. D. 1947] : article about the publication of the Spanish translation in Argentina (PDF)
* [http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/reviews.asp?isbn=9780300082401 YUP page with reviews]
* [http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?html_title=&tols_title=FERDYDURKE%20(PLAY)&pdate=20011114&byline=By%20BRUCE%20WEBER&id=1077011429950 Review of the play] in 2001 NYT
* [http://seeitfirst.co.uk/trailers/ferdydurke.html Play online trailer]