“GOMBROWICZ AUTUMN”  IN  “THE YEAR OF GOMBROWICZ”

“The Year of Gombrowicz”, so named because 2004 marked the 100th anniversary of the writer’s birth (August 4) and the 35th anniversary of his death (July 24), was officially launched in March at Cracow’s Jagiellonian University with a week-long international conference, Witold Gombrowicz – Our Contemporary, honoring “a thinker whose concepts show the beginnings of philosophical ideas and methodologies popular during the second half of the twentieth century, from existentialism to deconstruction,” in whose writings are “the harbingers of postmodernism, gender, queer, and post-colonial studies, as well as numerous other currents of thought that came into being after the death of the author of Ferdydurke.”       

The Year of Gombrowicz was observed in the United States through a multi-faceted celebration called the Gombrowicz Autumn, co-organized by the Polish Cultural Institute in collaboration with a broad range of cultural and academic institutions to honor a playwright and author of world stature who had hitherto been under-appreciated in the U.S.

September was a month of exciting “curtain-raisers” – with Gombrowicz’s Hell Meets Henry Halfway performed in Philadelphia’s Live Arts Festival by the Pig Iron Theater Company  –  which then took it to Princeton (and a highly-acclaimed three-week run at Manhattan’s Ohio Theatre in November); a dramatic reading of Ivona, Princess of Burgundia at Fordham University; and an adaptation of Gombrowicz’s short story, Meditations on Virginity, performed by Barbara Krafftowna at UCLA.

October saw the keystone event of the Gombrowicz Autumn unfold at Yale University with a two-day international conference October 22-23, with distinguished Polish and American scholars and translators giving nine presentations on three panels at the Beinecke Library, where an exhibition, “The World of Witold Gombrowicz”, was opened, to run through January 2005; and the legendary adaptation of Ferdydurke by the Teatr Provisorium/Kompania Teatr opened with two performances at the Yale University Theater before going on to Claremont McKenna College, the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. At the same time, three books by Gombrowicz were published, all in English for the first time: two from the Yale University Press (Polish Memories, and A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours), and Bacacay, from Archipelago Books.

Before the month ended there were screenings of Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Ferdydurke and Jan Jakub Kolski’s Pornografia at Manhattan’s Anthology Film Archives, and showings in November of two documentaries on Gombrowicz by Andrzej Wolski on New York’s CUNY-TV. November also saw recognition of the Gombrowicz Year and the Gombrowicz Autumn with a 3-day “G-Day” at Indiana University featuring Kolski’s Pornografia, a lecture on Gombrowicz followed by readings from Bacacay by its translator, Bill Johnston, and a dramatic reading of Gombrowicz’s play The Marriage with audience participation encouraged.

Apart from the ripple effect of so much public exposure to Witold Gombrowicz in the United States this past autumn, one of the lasting fruits of the Gombrowicz Autumn is the publication at year’s end of Volume 34, Number 3, of the periodical Theater, edited by the Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre, two thirds of which are devoted to articles about and excerpts from Witold Gombrowicz. The issue is entitled Witold Gombrowicz’s Century.