Pornografia: A Novel [Hardcover]

Witold Gombrowicz (Author), Danuta Borchardt (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2009

One of the indisputable totems of twentieth-century world literature, Witold Gombrowicz wrote Pornografia after leaving his native Poland for Argentina in 1939 and then watching from afar as the German invasion destroyed his country. Translated for the first time into English from the original Polish by award-winning translator Danuta Borchardt, Pornografia is one of Gombrowicz’s highest regarded works—a richly imagined tale of violence and carnality set in wartime Poland. In the midst of the German occupation, two aging intellectuals travel to a farm in the countryside, looking for a respite from the hellish scene in Warsaw. They quickly grow bored of their bucolic surroundings—that is, until they are hypnotized by a pair of country youths who have grown up alongside each other at the farm. The older men are determined to orchestrate a tryst between the two teenagers, but they are soon distracted by a string of violent developments, including an order from the underground movement for the men to assassinate a rogue resistance captain who has sought refuge with them. The erotic games are put on hold—until the two dissolute intellectuals find a way to involve their pawns in the murderous plot.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Gombrowicz's strange, bracing final novel probes the divide between young and old while providing a grotesque evocation of obsession. While recuperating from wartime Warsaw in the Polish countryside, the unnamed narrator and his friend, Fryderyk, attempt to force amour between two local youths, Karol and Henia, as a kind of a lewd entertainment. They become increasingly frustrated as they discover that the two have no interest in one another, and the games are momentarily stopped by a local murder and a directive to assassinate a rogue member of the Polish resistance. Gombrowicz connects these threads magnificently in a tense climax that imbues his novel with a deep sense of the absurd and multiplies its complexity. Gombrowicz is a relentless psychoanalyzer and a consummate stylist; his prose is precise and forceful, and the narrator's strained attempts to elucidate why he takes such pleasure at soiling youth creepily evoke authentic pride and disgust. Borchardt's translation (the first into English from the original Polish) is a model of consistency, maintaining a manic tone as it navigates between lengthy, comma-spliced sentences and sharp, declarative thrusts. (Nov.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1 edition (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802119255
• ISBN-13: 978-0802119254
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,001,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious and harrowing, November 17, 2009

By 

Barbra Tarkenton (Simsbury, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pornografia: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a terrific translation of a classic of European literature that has not been widely read here in the States. By turns hilarious and harrowing, Pornografia is full of gorgeous prose and turns of phrase that last long in the memory (a garden in the late afternoon is described as "weary;" night is said to slip into nooks and crannies like ink). The story is a carefully-calibrated turn of psychological manipulation and obsession; as Gombrowicz turns the screws, the reader's psyche feels the pressure. Unusual and vivid.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kundera was right, November 22, 2009

By 

Henry Alford (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pornografia: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a darkly comic masterpiece. Sam Lipsyte`s terrific introduction to this new translation provides a lot of helpful context. Gombrowicz is a master of comic escalation--the tension builds and builds and builds.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Eerie, yet Sensual Quartet, July 18, 2011

By 

A Certain Bibliophile (San Antonio, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pornografia: A Novel (Paperback)

When reaching the end of a novel, rarely do I have so much to say, and also so little. This was my first experience with Gombrowicz, and it was a bewildering, exciting one. It has elective affinities with Kundera that make it a unique, and not wholly pleasurable, read. About one third of the way through the novel, I wasn't sure that I would make it the rest of the way. The purely distilled, unrelenting psychological depictions of its characters and occasional absurdism can sometimes make it arduous, but this eventually lets up a bit. I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did. I think I had insisted a bit too much before I even began reading the novel that it would have somehow relate to the War, our relation to it, and how we react to it.

As has already been noted by other reviewers, the title is appropriate, but the novel is not "pornographic" in the sense that we usually use the word. Perhaps that's why "Seduction" has often been used as a translation in the past. Instead the pornography here is a perversely pathological inspection of its central characters. While the novel is set only in Poland, Gombrowicz actually fled Poland shortly before the outbreak of World War II, thinking that he would wait it out; he would remain there for almost twenty-five years.

The two main characters in the novel, Fryderyk and Witold (again, like Coetzee, Gombrowicz tempts the reader with autobiography by using his name), conspire to get Henia and Karol romantically interested in one another, even though they hardly notice each other, and Henia is already engaged to a young attorney. Witold initially is the one who shows an interest in the young couple, however Fryderyk's interest soon comes to border on the obsessive, conniving to have Henia's fiancée catch them in a romantic tryst. Meanwhile, a Polish soldier fighting in the resistance movement heightens the tension of the story as several plots to kill him are eventually hatched within the household.

A fascination with youth apparently imbues much of Gombrowicz's work (the effort to realize the romantic connection consumes an inordinate amount of time), including 1937's "Ferdydurke," which I look forward to reading. He views youth as a kind of purity, physical and perhaps ideological. He says in his play "The Marriage," "Each person deforms the other person, while being at the same time deformed by them." I find it interesting and telling how he chose to define the interaction between two people here as a kind of destruction instead of construction. It definitely sums up the bleak undertones of the novel, while also showing what a relentless psychologist Gombrowicz is.

A few words in closing: I have heard that Danuta Borchardt's translation is the best one, so opt for this one, assuming you cannot read the original Polish. Also, do not approach it with some preconceived notion that it should be a philosophical meditation on war simply because World War II is its setting. I think this was one of the things that vitiated my reading pleasure the most. This novel certainly is not for everyone, but for those that love a thoughtful author - a real writer's writer - I would recommend this.