Unintentionally exiled to Argentina at the outset of World
War II, Gombrowicz would seem to
represent something of the reverse of my intentions, the unbecoming polakiem:
he wanted to move beyond a native Polishness that he found provincial,
conventional, self-satisfied, and at the same time, insecure and defensive
vis-à-vis the world and "higher" national cultures. I like very much what he had
to say, though the post-Polish Polishness he advocated demands more ambition
and strenuousness of purpose, more greatness than I can muster for my lesser
task. Still, I can learn a great deal from him and take some encouragement from
his reflections. For example:
Wednesday
Wind and spindles of clouds
crowding the peaks from the south. A lone chicken pecks away on the lawn. . . .
To be a concrete man.
To be an individual. Not to strive to transform the whole world. To live in the
world, changing only as much as possible from within the reach of my nature. To
become real in harmony with my needs, my individual needs.
I do not want to say
that collective and abstract thought, that Humanity as such, are not important.
Yet a certain balance must be restored. The most modern direction of thought is
one that will rediscover the individual man. (I, 90)
On another Wednesday, he wrote:
I know well what sort
of Polish culture I would like to have in the future. The only question is: am
I not spreading a program that is only my personal need on an entire people.
This is it: the weakness of today’s Pole results from his being too monolithic,
and too one-sided; therefore, all effort should be aimed at enriching him by
one more pole, at completing him with another Pole, an absolutely, radically
different Pole. (I, 109)
It would be presumptuous to presume that that other Pole
might be an American, but for me, the pole of Polishness might be absolutely,
radically different from my Americanness, this Joshness. (I seem to find him
particularly enlightening on Wednesdays in 1954.)
