Gombrowicz, Rope-Walker Between Maturity and Immaturity

Gombrowicz regards art as a kind of weapon that should strengthen the author in his struggle for his superiority: by fully controlling his art and by shaping his own forms, the artist is able to fend off the restrictive forms the others and reality try to impose on him. This view seems to be contrary to his later novels: in Pornography, for example, narrator Witold seems to deliver himself voluntarily to reality's chaos, and instead of creating, he is being created – by the so-called “interhuman mechanisms”. However, by examining Pornography more closely, I will show that the “mature” Gombrowicz has not given up his Ferdydurkian view at all, and that his “new” approach is only a smart and even necessary tactic to stay loyal to the Ferdydurkian programme. I illustrate this further by showing how Gombrowicz intelligently uses his Diary (by letting Pornography resonate in it) to maintain the difficult balance between maturity and immaturity – a balance that was of main importance in Ferdydurke.