Witold Gombrowicz Diary of a Playwright (original) (raw)

The Polish Review Gombrowicz's interest in Genet was apparently limited to the novels and [Jean-Paul] Sartre's critical biography Saint Genet: Comédien et martyr. Virgilio Piñera was one of Gombrowicz's closest contacts in Buenos Aires and a major presence in the Diary, and he went on to become a prolific and influential playwright in his native Cuba, but their respective interest in playwriting was apparently not a significant part of their relationship. [Henrik] Ibsen receives several respectful mentions, but functions primarily as the author of the kind of plays that Gombrowicz is not interested in writing himself. In the Diary, Gombrowicz does not make a single reference to the emergence of major Polish auteur directors at the time, such as Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor, or Konrad Swinarski. 3 This indifference was not mutual, however: we now know that both Grotowski and Kantor were intensely interested in Gombrowicz's work, and Grotowski a particularly devoted reader of the Diary. 4 Gombrowicz does take time to demolish the dramatic works of his older compatriots Stanisław Przybyszewski and Stanisław Wyspiański, but offers no opinion of the numerous plays of S.I. Witkiewicz (also known as Witkacy), his fellow traveler in Poland's interwar avant-garde, who otherwise figures prominently. Gombrowicz in performance, meanwhile, continues to flourish both in Poland and internationally, with over 900 productions in at least forty countries to dateof which the majority have been performed in languages other than Polish. The performances of Gombrowicz's work globally have spanned a wide variety of performance genres and media and include a significant number of adaptations of his nondramatic works. Along with Sławomir Mrożek, Gombrowicz over time has become Poland's most produced playwright internationally, and Gombrowicz's Ivona, Princess of Burgundia over the years has very likely been the most produced Polish play abroad. In live performance, in fact, the play has certainly been the most common first point of contact between Gombrowicz and international audiences (constituting his primary "readership" outside Poland). Before the publication of Monika Żółkoś's 2001 critical study Ciało mówiące (The speaking body), Ivona was 3. Swinarski's production of the world premiere of Peter Weiss's The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Marat/Sade) took place in West Berlin on April 24, 1964, while Gombrowicz was still in residence there. This was also roughly six months after Swinarski's wife, Barbara Witek-Swinarska, published her controversial "interview" with Gombrowicz in the Polish communist press, following a meeting with him shortly after his arrival in West Berlin. Gombrowicz and others denounced Swinarska's text as an intentional defamation, which may have been written at the prompting of Polish communist security forces. 4. See Ludwik Flaszen, Grotowski & Company, trans. Andrzej Wojtasik with Paul Allain and ed. Paul Allain (Holstebro/Malta/Wrocław: Icarus, 2010).