Without Lifting A Finger

     In the end a battle arises between you and the work, the same as that between a driver and the horses which are carrying him off. I cannot control the horses, but I must take care not to overturn the wagon on any of the sharp curves of the course. Where will I end up, I don't know, but I must get there in one piece. Moreover, I must, when I get the chance, recall the delicious terror of the ride.

No really set itinerary. Can't plan plan when you fly standby. Just have to get from Amsterdam to Poland and back again, so I'm thinking something like: West to East: Amsterdam, Aachen, Wurzburg, Dresden, Wroclaw; East to West: Berlin, Lubeck, Hamburg, Amsterdam. But like I say: all very fluid. And that's partly why I'm back to Gombrowicz and his Diary. * Why am I taking it out on poets? I will let you in on the reason for my benevolent cruelty: I know that the poet can bear just about anything and will not feel offended on the condition that you acknowledge that he is a poet. And here I can give them full satisfaction and can say a hundred times, yes, they are poets and even, as the Anthology will have it, the most outstanding poets (I have nothing against this).      But you, people, be on guard against their historically justified twilight. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into the little game which consists of their "singing" and your admiring. Re...

Finished Trans-Atlantyk (boombang) and am now splitting time (like an atom) between his Dziennik (Diary) and Cosmos (his last, and IMHO his best, novel). * From his Diary :      Upon meeting the young painter Eichler at the Grodzickis', I said: I don't believe in painting! (To musicians I say, I don't believe in music!) Then I found out from Zygmunt Grocholski that Eichler asked him if I make up these paradoxes for the hell of it. They can't imagine how much truth there is in them, truth that is probably truer than the truths that nourish their slavish "attachment" to art. From Cosmos : I was particularly astonished by the fact that both their mouths were now, in my imagination, in my memory, more closely linked together than then, at the table, I tried to clear my head by shaking it, but that made the connection of Lena's lips with Katasia's lips even more clear-cut, so I smirked, because truly, Katasia's twirled-up lasciviousness, he...

Really, you could open it up to any e-page and get some laughs (I'm already at 47%). But I'll put down some of the beginning:      I feel the need to convey to my Family, to my kin and friends, this the beginning of my adventures, now ten years long, in the Argentinean capital. I'm not inviting anyone to eat these old noodles of mine, the turnips that may even be raw, because they're in a common pewter bowl, Lean, Paltry, even Embarrassing withal, cooked in the oil of my Sins, of my Embarrassments, these my heavy grits, Dark, together with this black gruel of mine, oh, you better not put them in your mouth, unless 'tis for my eternal damnation and degradation, on my Life's unending road and up this arduous and wearisome Mountain of mine.

Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish novelist and dramatist. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke , which presented many of his usual themes: the problems of immaturity and youth, the creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature.

Definitely a "lighter" version of Kafka. Fewer stings and more smiles. Apparently Kafka knew and liked his work. I've been busy lately, otherwise I would've posted more (lots of "electronic" dog-ears). Am almost to the end of Jakob and am already looking ahead to revisiting Gombrowicz -- a new read: Trans-Atlantyk and an old friend: Gombrowicz's Diary . *** A few "clips" from Jakob von Gunten : They're kind out of Weltschmerz and pleasant out of fear. Can anyone console a Jakob von Gunten? As long as I have a healthy body, there can be no question of it. If I want to, if I tell myself to, I can revere everything, even bad behavior, but it must have the color of money. To be robust means not spending time on thought but quickly and quietly entering into what has to be done. Oh, you little world-conqueror, out in a profession, endeavoring, achieving things, whole seas of boredom, emptiness, loneliness will yawn at you. Is He...

Perhaps one of my favorite novels. This is just an early excerpt from the frenetic beginning of Chapter 1: [Translation by Eric Mosbacher]

Herbert reminiscing about his love for art (and his attempts to write about it) and Witold Gombrowicz in "Still Life": There were no longer stained-glass windows or columns, vaults or stone floors; only the skin of the architecture remained, as if hanging in the air. Inside the nave, fat pagan grass.     I remember this image better than the face of my interlocutor, Witold Gombrowicz, who was mocking my fondness for art. I did not even defend myself but only mumbled some nonsense, aware that I was only an object, a gymnast's bar upon which the writer was exercising his dialectical muscles. If I were an innocent stamp collector Gombrowicz would have made fun of my albums, classifiers, and sets of stamps; he would have proved that stamps are the lowest rungs of the ladder of existence, morally suspect.     "But it has absolutely no sense. How can one describe a cathedral, a sculpture, or some sort of painting," he asked me, quietly and pitilessl...