"itself became an atrophied and barren dogma of questioning.

" By contrast, "a philosophy which tries to do without the absolute and without the prospect of completion cannot, by its very nature, be a consolidating structure, for it has no foundations and desires no roof." The latter "has all the vices and virtues of an indiscreet person whose sense of respectability has not developed." Think of this indiscreet person as a "jester [who does not jeer out of sheer contrariness! he jeers because he mistrusts the stabili"ed world." Think of his opposite number as a "priest," or a commissar, and then think of the necessary conflict between these types as "a contest between the irritating features of adolescence and the irritating features of senility! the difference is this# only the former are curable." $ndeed, in %ombrowic"&s fiction everything is permeated by immaturity, and the quest for maturity is both ongoing and doomed to failure. 'erdydurke pursues its hapless thirtyyear( old protagonist in his engagements with persons who are e)travagantly conventional, boorish, or childish, and who inspire in him the fear that he himself will be reduced to childishness or else made to obey "the iron laws of symmetry" and convention. The encounters are di""yingly various and often hilarious, but in all of them the impressionable narrator finds himself confronted by a rigidly structured phalan) of codes and assumptions. %ombrowic" suggests that maturity requires an investment in stable forms(decorums, narrative conventions, familial pieties, class and social distinctions(that all citi"ens of a society accept as if they could not do without them. *rotest, where it e)ists at all, will inevitably entail the adoption of rebellious and adolescent postures that have no prospect of changing things. +s his protagonists are wont to say ,at many times, in many ways-# .ow can you escape from what you already are/ 0here is the leverage to come from/

0e may well ask why someone so admired elsewhere should still seem a rather e)otic bird to +merican readers, who have opened their arms to other intransigently original and merciless writers. $t is not as if %ombrowic"&s major works haven&t been available here for more than thirty years. 0hat is more, 1nglish and +merican reviewers were long ago using terms like "masterpiece" and "unforgettable" to speak of the novels and the 2iaries! 3ohn 4pdike, among others, compared %ombrowic" with 5abokov and 6aclos, the author of 6es 6iaisons 2angereuses. But then the *olish master is a genuine original and really resembles no one at all. 'ormed in the *oland of his youth, where he made a considerable reputation by the time he was thirty, %ombrowic" lived in +rgentina from 7898 to 78:; and later in *aris, but he never ceased to write in *olish and to write about things *olish. To be sure, his animadversions never seem narrow or provincial, and the peculiarly *olish idiocies he anatomi"es are also to be found in other ostensibly advanced societies. The *olish names of characters or caf<s shouldn&t distract us from the fact that, like many 1uropean modernists, from 1ugene $onesco to %unter %rass, %ombrowic" was relying on e)cess and iconoclasm to pillory the cool analytic rationalism and high modernist forrmlism that seemed to such writers tired and stifling. 0hen he first began to write with some hope of publication, %ombrowic" discovered what he would later call an improbable "sureness of hand," and produced stories "not at all... trivial(quite the opposite." $n a volume of autobiographical sketches entitled *olish =emories, he recalls how "the nonsensical and the absurd were very much to my liking, and $ was never more satisfied than when my pen gave birth to some scene that was truly cra"y, removed from the ,healthy- e)pectations of mediocre logic."

1ven though he was a cosmopolitan modernist living in 0arsaw, %ombrowic" could never quite shake off a partial identification with the "bumpkins" he had known when he was growing up in the country. .e may have been all too familiar with their "naivety and indolence," but "something of their mistrust of art and artists had permanently attached itself" to him. The bi"arre antics that fill the pages of his first collection of stories, Bacacay ,which was originally published as =emoirs 0ritten in *uberty-, are an e)pression of %ombrowic"&s aversion to the studied maturity and "pretentious" finish he was never quite willing to adopt as his own. %ombrowic" published Bacacay in 7899, and it is this volume, somewhat augmented by a few additional pieces, that has now been made available in an 1nglish(language translation for the first time. $n Bacacay(the title designates a street in Buenos +ires but has nothing to do with the contents of the collection(the opening story perfectly sets the tone of the book. +n eccentric young man becomes obsessed with a lawyer named >raykowski and relentlessly insinuates himself into the lawyer&s affairs. "?h," the young man cries, "$ could have stared for hours at the place where his hair ended in an even line and his pale neck began." *ursuing his prey from one location to another, refusing to be turned away or insulted by the lawyer&s rebuffs, he swoons at every gesture, even at the lawyer&s casually overheard "if you please," which seems to the young man "so emphatic and compelling, so cultured yet authoritative, like a three(word chronicle of all possible triumphs." 0hen 6awyer >raykowski threatens to break his bones, the young man happily receives the threat "into myself like a communion," until "in silence $ merely bent over and offered my back." +lthough nothing comes of the encounter(or of any other encounters in a consistently feverish story that gestures at se)ual inebriation without following up the traces(an air of

unspeakable obsession circulates powerfully throughout. The improbable and incomprehensible never become mere frivolity in %ombrowic", and even where the first(person narrator himself suspects that his utterances and activities amount to "a stupid joke" or "some pitiful claptrap," we cannot but feel that there is more to everything than the narrator himself can e)press. ?f course, %ombrowic" is a notorious provocateur, and he often pretends to be hot on the trail of meaning when he is only merrily scattering clues that lead nowhere. .e loves to remind us that we have no tolerance for undifferentiated fact, that the moment we confront chaos(which is to say, raw, uninterpreted reality(we look for signs of order, pattern, meaning. 6ook up at the cracks or stains on a ceiling, %ombrowic" proposes in the novel @osmos, and you will see what may or may not look like a sign, a portent. "=aybe it is an arrow," a character observes, to which the narrator responds, "=aybe . . . maybe not. . . ." *ursue some or all of the possible signs and you may well find yourself the dupe of some cosmic joke. Think about the possibilities on offer, the assorted "heaps and multitudes," and you will feel oppressed, overwhelmed by the "many meanings," most of which will in any case turn out to be misleading or irrelevant. ?ften, not surprisingly, signs in %ombrowic" seem to point to some se)ual content, whether obvious or obscure. $n the case of 6awyer >raykowski, the narrator&s obsession leads him to repeated reflections on "the lawyer&s fragrance," the ineffable "tapping" of his cane, his "deep baritone voice that was soft and caressing," so that we are led to wonder whether all of the emotional e)acerbations have finally to do with a forbidden se)ual longing. $s the lawyer&s "signet ring on one finger" an erotic symbol/ $s the "toothpick between [the lawyer&s teeth" a fatal, unmistakable erotic emblem/ 1verywhere in %ombrowic" the answer to such questions is yes, and no# yes,

in the sense that eroticism permeates just about everything in the fiction, and no, because if se) and desire are the primary determinants of mystery, then there is little more to say beyond, "Ao what/" $t isn&t as if %ombrowic" has much to tell us about desire, aside from the fact that it e)ists and often assumes disturbing guises. 0hat does inform all of %ombrowic"&s fiction, then, is what may well be called the tyranny of form. +gain and again, the *olish writer notes that we are, all of us, obedient to a di""ying range of formal imperatives. $n 'erdydurke, a girl compulsively enacts "her enslavement to the modern schoolgirl pattern." Ahe behaves, in other words, as she must in order to confirm that she is "young" and "modern," "spontaneous," "free," and "decisive," betraying in every gesture her subordination to the e)pectations that define her. 3ust so, in his attraction to 6awyer >raykowski, the narrator of %ombrowic"&s story is moved by the sovereign insouciance of the lawyer, his apparently commanding relations with women, his way of casually making himself a cocktail or looking over a menu, his easy disdain for others. To be such a man, the narrator feels, is to be so entirely what one is as to deserve universal applause, the undying devotion of inferiors, and, so far as is possible, emulation. +nd yet(there is always in such a writer an "and yet"( %ombrowic" will not permit us to believe that the lawyer can be so sovereign and perfectly formed a being. .e must be, whatever appearances there are to the contrary, both more and less than he seems, must be merely human, susceptible to conflict, irritation, and fear, like the rest of us. $f we are in any doubt about this, we need only subject him to the kinds of trials and eruptions that typically figure in a %ombrowic" fiction. $nterfere with such a man, %ombrowic" suggests! drive him to irritation! see whether the man can be made to behave in a way that upholds his reputation for maturity and selfpossession.

Bend over and offer him your back and see how he responds. +ssaulted at one characteristic moment by the inane, offensive mutterings of the narrator, the lawyer dismisses him to his companions with the words, "$t&s just some idiot." $n the end you will find that the lawyer, like the schoolgirl, or the aristocratic dandy in 'erdydurke, can behave only in accordance with the formal codes and assumptions that constrain his every instinct, and that even his deviations from the norm will seem predictable, the e)pression of an infle)ible logic. %ombrowic" insistently offers, as he says in his 2iary, "the image of the battle for one&s own maturity by someone enamored of his own immaturity." 'orm and finish are felt as intolerable constraints and as a violation of our very nature, but they also provide a refuge against the chaos of raw instinct. +t the same time, although our attraction to innocence, to the vulgar and infantile and uncensored, may seem unworthy of the enlightened beings we hope to become, it remains an attraction to something real and vital, which we are loath to renounce. The bi"arre fits and starts in a %ombrowic" fiction, its manic eruptions and digressions, are manifests of a refusal to make things too neat and coherent. The very wildness of this author&s imagination is the surest token we have of his resistance to his own theories of form and enslavement, even as he can never quite let go of those theories, so entirely are they borne out by what he observes in everything we do. $n some respects, the most remarkable thing about %ombrowic"&s work is that it manages to be so various and yet all of a piece. "The =emoirs of Atefan @"arniecki" has much to do with childhood and generational conflict, but it is also a satire on things *olish. "+ *remeditated @rime" reads like a miniature murder mystery, but it is also a philosophic farce that entertains big questions like the nature of "proof" and "cause." "2inner at @ountess *avahoke&s" is another kind of farce

ostensibly preoccupied with aristocracy and taste, but it is also a story about the status of "beautiful and noble ideas." "Birginity" is a fau)(romantic love story that e)amines the relationship between innocence and reality, the ideal and the obscene. ?ther works in Bacacay read like mock adventure tales, or travel memoirs, or satires of academic life. +lthough %ombrowic" was committed to mischief and misdirection, and liked wherever possible to contradict himself, his obsession with the tyranny of form is discernible in everything he wrote. $n each of the stories collected in Bacacay, we find a carefully constructed tension in which form itself defines the boundaries of acceptable thought and behavior and seems, at the same time, an unwanted barrier to authentic self(e)pression and feeling. @an it be any wonder that %ombrowic"&s characters, immured within comforting, often suffocating, conventions, are preternaturally fearful of crime, immoderation, the eruptive and une)plainable/ *olish identity itself is e)amined, or ridiculed, in precisely these terms, in both the stories and the novels. $n one story, the narrator recalls his youth, when he first learned that *oland was "the @hrist of nations," which produced as many geniuses "as the whole of 1urope combined"! that the *olish language was "a hundred times richer than 'rench"! and that the *oles "were always la"y, for la"iness is always associated with great ability" and produces people who are "strangely likable," "good(for(nothing," and "wild." "?nly the *ole," our narrator had written in a school assignment, "does not arouse our disgust," and he had felt, even then, that the transparent "naCvet<" of those various preposterous assertions was "sweet." %ombrowic" produces these assertions of identity with nothing like an overt disclaimer. They are so clearly e)cessive, so entirely the reflection of a sublimely idiotic investment in a formally perfected nationalist mythology as to require no e)plicit repudiation. The enwombment of a people in

nationalist myths is as obvious(and appalling(as their tendency to think "charming" or "lovely" when confronted by banalities that might legitimately inspire contempt if the good citi"ens were able to cut through the fog of mystification that envelopes them. *eople see what they are disposed to see! they read the available signs as they&ve been trained or conditioned to do. Ao e)treme and unyielding is the tyranny of form as %ombrowic" understands it that revolt, where it occurs, is likely to be desperate and hysterical. $n 'erdydurke, a student is unable to accept his teacher&s assurances that the poet Alowacki was "a great poet" or that his poems "delight us because he was a great poet." ".eaven help me, sir," the schoolboy e)claims, "but how am $ to be sent into transports of delight if $ am not sent into transports of delight/" %ombrowic" is seeing to it that there is nothing especially hopeful in the student&s rebellion, the very language of which is saturated with terms that refleet a subordination to the prescribed forms and courtesies. 0hen he says, ".eaven help me, sir" and, "?n my word of honor they&re not, sir," he ratifies his own desperate relationship to authority, his inability to step entirely outside the standard decorums. The innocent, the immature, the recalcitrant, the perpetual adolescents, are as subject to habit and custom as their elders or superiors. 0orship a modern girl for her "athletic lack of knowledge" and declare defiantly that it is "only stupid poetry" that is really alluring, and you will soon be forced to acknowledge that your ideal is fatally compromised. 6ook hard enough at your e)emplary modern girl, admire the "assurance of her style" and the "stupid poetry" she embodies, and you will see that you admire merely a "magnificently finished" e)terior. +gain# form, finish, boundary. +gain# spontaneity fi)ed and obedient. $t is, $ would argue, a melancholy(though never a mournful( vision that readers of %ombrowic" are asked to accept, and the melancholy is just barely held in check by the novelist&s manic

deployments. 0e want to say, as we read, that there must be surges of authentic feeling and insight in most of us that the writer does not acknowledge. But he is so consistently brilliant and diverting that we permit him his sense of things, permit him to operate freely, on occasion even like the detective in his crime story who mistrusts not only appearances but actual evidence and won&t allow stubbornly recalcitrant facts to distract him from the conclusions he wishes to draw. ?nly in one of his books does %ombrowic"&s standard procedure fail him, and the failure is no less obvious in the brilliant new translation that 2anuta Borchardt has made of the novel @osmos than it was in an earlier edition. $n spite of its eccentric particulars and worked(up air of mystery, this is a surprisingly earnest novel in which guilt colors everything and the principal characters never seem to do anything but chase their own tails, uncovering what they already know about the origins of their guilt, confirming that they are sinful and always somehow in the wrong. +lthough the novel is built around two young men on summer vacation at a country house owned by an eccentric family, there is little that is playful in @osmos, and the mood of the book is signaled by the narrator&s casual bedtime observation one evening that "the two of us undressed like men rejected and repulsed." Throughout, whether on an e)cursion to a mountain hideaway or in a grim episode involving a hanged cat, there is an insistence on the evil design of the universe, and what is said to be mysterious or inscrutable is invariably resolved or predictably accounted for by reference to the self(loathing associated with masturbation. $n the stories and other novels there is more than a modicum of doubt and confusion about the conclusions to which things tend, whereas in @osmos we have what 1dmund 0ilson once called the "decadence of psychological fiction," in which "the subjective element is finally allowed to invade and to deteriorate even

those aspects of the story which really ought to be kept strictly objective if one is to believe that it is actually happening." +lthough the novel superficially resembles other works by %ombrowic"(the two primary characters are, after all, young men in flight from intimidating authority figures(the narrator, 0itold, is entirely accurate when he describes himself and his friend as "sick" and "unseeing apparitions," who are "not quite here." The description duly reminds us that, by contrast, the characters in %ombrowic"&s other works(in 'erdydurke, in *omografia, in Trans(+tlantik, and in Bacacay(are very much alive and in genuine conflict about the obsessions that preoccupy them. 6ike their author, they may know what they will discover once their feverish e)ertions are completed, but they continue to ask questions as if the outcomes were not already certain, and they move through the world as if reality itself might have in store for them some unforeseeable surprise. 0hat is most compelling in %ombrowic" at his best is the free play of the mind, the desperate quest to find a way through the world that will confirm not merely our subordination to the established norms but our creative agency in shaping them and, wherever possible, challenging their dominion. @osmos reminds us that it was no easy thing for %ombrowic" to fight off the determinism(the insidious tyranny of form(that threatened to incapacitate and impoverish his imagination.