Gombrowicz in Transnational Context

Translation, Affect, and Politics

Silvia Dapia, Silvia G. Dapia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000011708
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) was born and lived in Poland for the first half of his life but spent twenty-four years as an émigré in Argentina before returning to Europe to live in West Berlin and finally Vence, France. His works have always been of interest to those studying Polish or Argentinean or Latin American literature, but in recent years the trend toward a transnational perspective in scholarship has brought his work to increasing prominence. Indeed, the complicated web of transnational contact zones where Polish, Argentinean, French and German cultures intersect to influence his work is now seen as the appropriate lens through which his creativity ought to be examined.

This volume contributes to the transnational interpretation of Gombrowicz by bringing together a distinguished group of North American, Latin American, and European scholars to offer new analyses in three distinct themes of study that have not as yet been greatly explored — Translation, Affect and Politics. How does one translate not only Gombrowicz's words into various languages, but the often cultural-laden meaning and the particular style and tone of his writing? What is it that passes between author and reader that causes an affect? How did Gombrowicz's negotiation of the turbulent political worlds of Poland and Argentina shape his writing? The three divisions of this collection address these questions from multiple perspectives, thereby adding significantly to little known aspects of his work.

Part I

Lost in Translation

1 The Rex Café, Buenos Aires, 1947

On the Spanish Translation of Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke¹

Daniel Balderston

As is well known, the first translation of Gombrowicz into any language was the collective translation undertaken by the Polish writer with an unruly group of some twenty friends and acquaintances in the chess parlor of the Confitería Rex in 1947.² It was published by Editorial Argos in Buenos Aires in that year with Gombrowicz crediting Virgilio Piñera, the Cuban writer, as leading the group, which was also composed of such people as the Cuban Humberto Rodríguez Tomeu, the Argentine Adolfo de Obieta (son of Macedonio Fernández), and many others.³ I wrote about the relations between Ferdydurke and Piñera’s novel Pequeñas maniobras more than thirty years ago,⁴ but could not have known then that Gombrowicz gave Piñera nineteen pages related to the project, including seventeen pages of hand-corrected typescript. These were sold by Piñera’s friend and heir Antón Arrufat (along with other Piñera materials) to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division of the Firestone Library at Princeton University.⁵

In what follows, I analyze these pages, most of which correspond to the latter part of what was to be Chapter 9 of the Argos edition. I also refer to the English translation done directly from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt and published by Yale University Press in 2000.⁶ The importance of these pages is that they show some aspects of the translation process, including handwritten corrections by Gombrowicz. The pages also include a letter from Gombrowicz to Graciela Peyrou and some notes for the preface to the Spanish edition, as well as some notes on style (“Decir”).

In the Argos preface, Gombrowicz explains that “Esta traducción fué efectuada por mí y sólo de lejos se parece al texto original” (“This translation was carried out by me and only distantly resembles the original”),⁷ then goes on to credit Virgilio Piñera as leader of the committee⁸ and Cecilia Benedit de Debenedetti for apparently material support. He concludes the discussion of the translation by saying that it was the result of “amenas discusiones … realizadas casi todas en la sala de ajedrez de la confitería Rex bajo la enigmática y bondadosa sonrisa del director de la sala, maestro Paulino Frydman” (“pleasant discussions … almost all of which took place in the chess hall of the Rex Café under the enigmatic and generous smile of the director of the hall, Master Paulino Frydman).”⁹ Frydman was indeed a Polish-born chess player awarded the title of International Master in 1955. In his Diary, Gombrowicz credits Frydman with giving him money in 1943 to go to the Sierras de Córdoba to recover from a persistent fever, though the fever turned out to be the result of Frydman’s thermometer which was not working correctly.¹⁰

There are several letters from Gombrowicz to Piñera and Rodríguez Tomeu, written in January 1947 from Cecilia Benedit de Debenedetti’s house in the Sierras de Córdoba town of Salsipuedes.¹¹ In them Gombrowicz speaks of Benedit’s hospitality and support of the translation, at the same time urging Piñera and Rodríguez Tomeu to carry on with the project. There is also the information that Gombrowicz met Benedit at the home of Antonio Berni, the notable Argentine painter.¹² Gombrowicz called Benedit “Condesa,” and refers to his life at this point in Buenos Aires as oscillating between the realm of the “Condesa” and the area near the Retiro train stations (Gombrowicz’s preferred cruising grounds).

In a letter to Graciela Peyrou, a writer and sister of the better-known writer Manuel Peyrou, Gombrowicz asked her to correct the Spanish translation and to make three typed copies maintaining the divisions in the text. He signed the letter “el noble y desgraciado Witoldo de Gombrowicz” (the noble and unlucky Witoldo von Gombrowicz). In his letters to Piñera and Rodríguez Tomeu, Gombrowicz refers to Peyrou as “Graziella” which seems to establish her as the typist, though perhaps of a clean copy only. This background helps us to understand the letter to Graciela Peyrou noted earlier. In this letter, Gombrowicz adds, “¿Qué hizo, Graciela, con Ferdydurke? Cuide de no dar un paso en falso porque ya sabe que es un escrito delicado y de mucha responsabilidad” (“Graciela, what have you done with Ferdydurke? Be careful not to make any false steps because you know that it is a delicate piece of writing and one on which much rests.”) (Figure 1.1).

An important page of the Princeton materials is a brief and partly illegible handwritten notation called “Decir” (Figure 1.2) in Gombrowicz’s handwriting. In it he says the following:

Decir. Sacrificar la verdad a la ironía no me parece acertado. Si decimos que ?? debe entenderse que ello queda referido a lo que se ha distorsionado, o alterado misteriosamente (?) en toda interacción (?), y no a las probables gaffes que encierre la traducción, a los errores tipográficos, al cambio de letras, etc.--cosas éstas que aun en la mayoría (?) de las traducciones siempre se dan ?calireten?” (“Saying. Sacrificing truth to irony doesn’t seem right to me. If we say that ??? should be understood as saying that what it tells about has been distorted, or mysteriously altered, in every interaction (?), and not the probable gaffes that the translation contains, the typographical errors, the changes of letters, and so forth, all things that happen in the majority of translations).

Figure 1.1 Gombrowicz’s letter to Graciela Peyrou in which he asks, “what have you done with Ferdydurke?”

Figure 1.2 The “Decir” in which Gombrowicz indicates a concern about the accuracy and style of the translation.

In this note, written on the verso of the page in which he outlines the Spanish edition, he also notes “Ojo. Algunas partes del texto no están todavía corregidas y falta la última revisión” (“Attention: some parts of the text are not yet corrected and the final revision has not been done).” This indicates a concern with the accuracy and style of the translation, something that is also a concern in the note by the translators (perhaps written by Piñera).

Now it is worth examining the translation and comparing it to the Polish version and to the Borchardt translation. On page 5 of the Princeton materials (page 161 of the typescript and page 161 of the Argos edition), we read:

La colegiala, en verdad, dormía no privada sino públicamente, no tenía vida nocturna propia y la dura publicidad de la muchacha la juntaba con Europa y América, con los campos de trabajo, con los cuarteles, las banderas, los hoteles y las estaciones, creaba perspectivas enormemente vastas, excluía la posibilidad de un rincón propio.

The typescript is identical to the Argos edition here. The Polish version reads:

Pensjonarka spała właściwie nie prywatnie, lecz publicznie, nie miała nocnego życia prywatnego, a twarda publiczność dziewczyny łączyła ją z Europą, z Ameryką, z Hitlerem, Mussolinim i Stalinem, z obozami pracy, z chorągwią, z hotelem, dworcem kolejowym, stwarzała zasięg niezmiernie rozległy, kącik własny wykluczała.¹³

The notable change here is the exclusion in the Spanish version of the specific mention of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. On the same page, there is an identical typo in the manuscript and in the Argos edition: a reference to Fred Astaire and Gingers, not Ginger, Rogers; a strikethrough eliminates a reference to two zlotys (six in the Polish version).

On this and the following pages it is clear that the handwritten corrections—in fountain pen in Gombrowicz’s handwriting and in pencil in some other hand—correspond precisely to the version that was published by Argos. A minor difference appears on page 164 of the typescript: “¡Oh, el pandemaonio de la colegiala moderna!,” which becomes “¡Oh, el pandemonium de la colegiala moderna!” on page 163 of the Argos edition. The Polish text reads, “O, pandemonium pensjonarki nowoczesnej!”¹⁴ Here the correction of the spelling, in pencil, then cedes to the use of the Latin word. Later in the same paragraph “belleza” is corrected to “hermosura” and “hermosura” to “beldad,” no doubt because of a prejudice in Spanish style against the repetition of words in near proximity; the English here repeats “beauty.”¹⁵ The passage is interesting in the typescript, since it shows an extended concern with questions of style (Figure 1.3):

Hay algo ultra conmovedor en eso de que sólo las personas sujetas a la disciplina de la belleza ^hermosura tienen acceso a cierta^os vergüenzas ^{vergonzosos contenidos psíquicos} de la humanidad. ¡Oh, la muchacha, aquel receptáculo de la infamia ^vergüenza cerrado con la llave de la hermosura! ^beldad! Aquí, a ^en este temple, cada uno, joven o viejo ^depositaba tales cosas que posiblemente preferiría morir tres veces seguidas y quemarse a fumaza lenta (?) fuego lento antes de que eso fueseⁿ dado^as a la publicidad… Y el rostro del siglo – el rostro del siglo XX, del siglo de la confusión de las edades, aparecía dubitativamente como un Sileno,. desde la espesura. (It’s a wondrous thing that only those constrained by beauty ^loveliness have access to certain shames ^{shameful psychological contents} of humankind. Oh, a girl, that receptacle of disgrace ^shame, locked under loveliness ^beauty’s key!” Here, at ^{in this} temple, each man, whether young or old ^brought such things that he would probably prefer to die three times and be roasted slow fume (?) over slow fire rather than publicize them…. And the face of this century – the face of the twenti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Lost in Translation
• Part II Cartography of Affect in Gombrowicz’s Works
• Part III The Political Gombrowicz
• Bibliography
• Index