Ferdydurke

by Witold Gombrowicz; Translated by Danuta Borchardt; Foreword by Susan Sontag

• ISBN13: 9780300082395
• ISBN10: 0300082398
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2000-08-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In this bitterly funny novel by the renowned Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, a writer finds himself tossed into a chaotic world of schoolboys by a diabolical professor who wishes to reduce him to childishness. Originally published in Poland in 1937, Ferdydurke became an instant literary sensation and catapulted the young author to fame. Deemed scandalous and subversive by Nazis, Stalinists, and the Polish Communist regime in turn, the novel (as well as all of Gombrowicz's other works) was officially banned in Poland for decades. It has nonetheless remained one of the most influential works of twentieth-century European literature.

Ferdydurke is translated here directly from the Polish for the first time. Danuta Borchardt deftly captures Gombrowicz's playful and idiosyncratic style, and she allows English speakers to experience fully the masterpiece of a writer whom Milan Kundera describes as "one of the great novelists of our century".

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Susan Sontag
Translator's Note	xvii
Acknowledgments	xxiii
Abduction	1	(19)
Imprisonment and Further Belittlement	20	(28)
Caught with His Pants Down and Further Kneading	48	(20)
Preface to ``The Child Runs Deep in Filidor''	68	(19)
The Child Runs Deep in Filidor	87	(15)
Seduction and Further Driving Me into Youth	102	(16)
Love	118	(13)
Fruit Compote	131	(16)
Peeping and Further Incursion into Modernity	147	(20)
Legs on the Loose and New Entrapment	167	(26)
Preface to ``The Child Runs Deep in Filibert''	193	(6)
The Child Runs Deep in Filibert	199	(3)
The Farmhand, or Capative Again	202	(34)
Mug on the Loose and New Entrapment	236