The Rise and Fall and Rise (?) of Gombrowicz in Holland

Gombrowicz's work was first noticed in Holland in 1959. In the sixties followed the first translation of his novels Ferdydurke and Pornography into Dutch. When a selection from the Diary was to be published, Gombrowicz agreed on a translation not from the Polish, but from the German and French, a task that was accomplished by the translator Paul Beers, who subsequently translated the largest part of Gombrowicz's oeuvre into Dutch, while propagating it as an editor of the literary magazine De Revisor. Paul Beers considers Gombrowicz a writers' writer, who addresses himself to the (intellectually) young. The history of Gombrowicz's reception in the Netherlands reached its culmination in 1986, when the complete translation of the Diary appeared, accompanied by a special issue of De Revisor. Since that time the interest in Gombrowicz's work gradually diminished. But just now, in 2007, a reprint appears of a somewhat shortened edition of the Diary, followed in 2008 by Ferdydurke and the Short Stories.