Trans-Atlantyk [Hardcover]

Witold Gombrowicz (Author), Professor Carolyn French (Translator), Nina Karsov (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 1994

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969), novelist, essayist, and playwright, is considered by many to be the most important Polish writer of the 20th century. Author of four novels, several plays, and a highly acclaimed Diary, he was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1968. Trans-Atlantyk is a semi-autobiographical, satirical novel that throws into heightened perspective all of Gombrowicz's major literary, philosophical, psychological, and social concerns. First published in Paris in 1953, it is based on the author's experience of being caught in Argentina at the outbreak of World War II. The narrator finds himself alone, without family and friends, at odds with the Argentinian literary world and with Polish emigre society. Throughout the book, Gombrowicz ridicules the self-centered pomposity of the Polish community in Argentina. More than this, he explores with prophetic vision the modern predicament of exile and displacement in a disintegrating world. The form and style of Trans-Atlantyk reinforce Gombrowicz's satire. The novel is written in the idiom of the gaweda, a 17th- and 18th-century Polish oral genre typical of the conservative culture of provincial nobility, that presents a jarring and sometimes hilarious contrast to the formless and expansive culture of the modern world. Because of its stylistic difficulty, Trans-Atlantyk is the only one of Gombrowicz's works that has never before been translated into English. Now Carolyn French and Nina Karsov have produced a daring and original translation, the product of over ten years of effort, that corresponds roughly in tone and diction to a 17th/18th-century English idiom and that conveys Gombrowicz's irreverent and fierce parody of an anachronistic culture in the 20th century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gombrowicz (1904-1969) is best known in this country for the meditations on life and literature contained in his Diary , but he wrote several novels that are highly regarded for their dazzling stylistics and exploration of the Polish national character. This semi-autobiographical work, hitherto unavailable in English, is written in the narrative style of the 17th- and 18th-century and in the voice of a country squire. In it, Gombrowicz pokes fun at the insular and parochial Polish community living in Argentina just before WW II. Like the author, the eponymous narrator is a young Polish writer who is stranded abroad when the Nazis invade his homeland. (Gombrowicz himself never returned to Poland and lived in exile for the rest of his life.) Penniless, he is "adopted" by the Polish embassy staff and emigre community. A fantastical series of twists and turns follow in which the young man finds himself, after a debauched night of drinking, involved as a second in a duel. The often farcical adventures prove a real dilemma for the narrator, who is torn between his Polish identity and a new emigre status. Regarded as the author's most personal piece of fiction, this novel benefits from a scholarly introduction by Stanislaw Baranczak.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Gombrowicz (1904-69), considered by many to be the most important Polish author of the 20th century, here builds a satiric novel around a Polish writer who embarks on a small ocean cruise only to be caught in Argentina at the outbreak of World War II. Thus, the protagonist begins a series of exasperating attempts to reconcile himself as a forced expatriate to both native writers and writers of the Polish emigre community; to the ideas of exile and patriotism; and to the dialectic between Form and Chaos, that is "between total subordination of the ego to the generally accepted patterns of behavior . . . and total liberation from all that is inherited or imitated." Some of the more bizarre scene from this novel remind the reader of Bruegel paintings. Because the novel is written in the idiom of the gaw eda, an oral genre once popular among Poland's provincial nobility, the translators have chosen 17th- and 18th-century English as their linguistic medium. They consider the version that results experimental. A curious work, not easily understood; recommended for large public libraries and academic collections.
- Olivia Opello, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 152 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 27, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300053843
• ISBN-13: 978-0300053845
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,092,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant approach to the literature of exile, December 27, 2001

By 

"fredfrederickson" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trans-Atlantyk (Hardcover)

Gombrowicz's take on the generally painful experience of exile is an artful combination of the particular and the universal. The novel's comic tone seems a historically and culturally specific attack on hackneyed Polish nationalism. Yet Trans-Atlantyk manages to raise greater questions of literature's ability to do justice to 20th-century horrors such as WWII. The translation is a work of art in itself -- for those who can't read Polish (such as myself), you will not be bothered by that fear of a mediated, second-rate experience so common to mediocre translations. To the contrary, the language of this translation is unbelievably rich. Indeed, do not let the richness scare you off -- the style becomes easier to digest as the novella moves forward. Enjoy...

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roar with laughter: you can do it, March 11, 2006

By 

Leah Osad (Second Peter, Chapter 2, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trans-Atlantyk (Paperback)

Yale University Press did a fine job of promoting Witold Gombrowicz with its anachronistic translation by Carolyn French and Nina Karsov of TRANS-ATLANTYK, published in 1994. The Introduction by Stanislaw Baranczak describes how Witold Gombrowicz arrived in Buenos Aires on August 21, 1939, eleven days before the Nazi invasion of Poland presented Gombrowicz with the fundamental dilemma of human existence in which he refused to take the ocean liner Boleslaw Chobry back to Europe. His new situation obviously called for some literary explanation of how his life had changed since he had been lauded in his homeland as the author of the novel FERDYDURKE. As the Introduction explains, the world had to wait until 1953 for the little book, 122 pages, that captures how events had put Gombrowicz into a situation so intense that TRANS-ATLANTYK was his `Life Line,' to incorporate by reference a great song by Harry Nilsson from a great cartoon story called `The Point.'

"Begun in 1948, it appeared only in 1953, sixteen years after FERDYDURKE. To be sure, Gombrowicz did not spend all of that time chiseling TRANS-ATLANTYK's fine points. During most of the war and postwar years he was reduced to struggling for survival, coping with extreme poverty and wasting his energies on a job as a bank clerk offered to him by a Polish banker in Buenos Aires. According to Gombrowicz, he wrote TRANS-ATLANTYK on his desk at the bank, hiding the manuscript whenever his superior entered the room." (p. xiii).

" . . . this novel, perhaps the most grotesquely fantastic ever written in Polish, is also the most personal and engaging of all Gombrowicz's works of fiction." (p. xiv).

In Poland, "TRANS-ATLANTYK appeared in 1957 and immediately became a modern classic, in spite of the modest printing of ten thousand copies." (p. xx).

On a personal level, Stanislaw Baranczak credits TRANS-ATLANTYK with helping a group of Polish literature majors prepare for their final exam on Marxist political economy in May 1967 by roaring with laughter the night before the exam at lines like, "I'm not so mad as to have any views These Days or not to have them." (p. xxi).

A Note on Pronunciation on page xxviii includes the author's name:

Witold Gombrowicz VEE-told gom-BROH-veetch

Whereupon I commented to my neighbor, and quite loudly so that he there could hear: "I don't like Butter too Buttery, Noodles too Noodly, Millet too Millety and Barley too Barley!" (p. 32).

Cursed that warp of Mankind! Cursed that swine of ours wallowing in mud! Cursed that Slough of ours! Indeed that one who Walked there, with whom I Walked, was no Bull, but a cow! (p. 36).
A Man who, being a Man, fain would not be a Man but after Men chases, and after them Flies, admires, oh, Loves, Heats for them, Lusts for them, Hungers for them, makes up to them, simpers, adulates them, him folks hereabouts give the contemptuous name "puto." Upon seeing those lips, the which although a Man's with woman's rouge bled, I could have no trace of doubt that my lot was to have happen to me a Puto. It was he and I who before all Walked, Walked as in a couple forever coupled! (p. 36).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "One of the greatest novelists of our century". - Kundera, February 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Trans-Atlantyk (Paperback)

The New York Times Book Review wrote: "A triumphantly unconventional short novel.... This new edition [is] tanslated from the original Polish with breathtaking ingenuity." Excerpt (page 12): "Minister Kosiubidzki Feliks was one of the strangest people I've come upon in my life. Lean-Plumpy, somewhat fatty, he had a nose likewise rather Lean-Plumpy, an eye vague, fingers Slim-Plumpy and belike a Leg Slim and plumpy or fatty, and that Baldpate of his as of Brass over which he combed his black-red hairs; he was wont to flash his eye and every now and then he flashes it. By his behaviour and bearing he displayed extraordinary respect for his high dignity and by his every movement upon himself bestowed honour, and likewise continuously, mightily honoured by his Selfness the one he was talking to, so that one spoke to him almost on one's Knees. Instantly then, having burst into tears, I threw myself down at his feet and kissed his hand; and my services, blood, fortune offering, begged him to make use of me and place me at his disposal in this holy moment, according to his holy will, his reckoning. Most kindly honouring me and himself by his holy listening, he blessed and flashed at me, then says: "I cannot give you more than 50 pesos (he took out his purse). I shan't give you more since more I have not. But if you fain would go to Rio de Janeiro and hold to the Legation there, then I'll pay your fare and even add something to be quit of your hold as I would have no Writers here: they just Milk you and Bark at you. So get ye to Rio de Janeiro, I counsel you well."