Category Archives: Reading Gombrowicz

Twilight, a poem inspired by Witold Gombrowicz

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Mark Kerstetter

TWILIGHTafter Witold Gombrowicz Who said art is life?It’s a set of eyeballsrolled onto a pitching deck.

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Gombrowicz on Beauty

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us.—Carl Andre, 1967 I have concluded my second tour of Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary but I don’t know how to conclude my notes. Reading the Diary was a consistent challenge, … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz on Time

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

I look out the window toward the neighbor’s house. When we moved in it was painted pink. In my mind’s eye it is always pink. How many years has it been blue? It’s one of the best passages in Gombrowicz’s … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz on Limits

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

Painting is one great resignation from what cannot be painted. It is a cry: I would like to do more, but I cannot. This cry is oppressive.—Witold Gombrowicz, Diary, Volume Two, p 49 “I would like to do more, but … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz: I & We

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

How is it that man divides himself in two and which of these persons is real?—Witold Gombrowicz, Diary, p 123 (this and all subsequent quotations from Volume Two) Is the local related to the universal? And is a person’s situation … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz and Difficulty

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

As was the case the first time I went through the Diary, I find that the journey gets difficult about halfway through. Sort of like slogging through a jungle, machete in hand, parts are nice, pleasant, even beautiful, a breeze … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz the Liar

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

… without esteeming, the nut of existence would be hollow.—Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra The individual is a nut so impossible to crack that no theoretic tooth will be able to manage it.—Gombrowicz, Diary Volume Two, p 216 For Nietzsche “to … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz on Becoming a Citizen: Allow Me to Dream!

Posted on May 27, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

I returned, but no longer as a wild man. For I had, at one time during my youth in Poland, been completely wild in relation to it, incapable of handling it with style, incapable even of speaking about it—it served … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz and Melville: Twilight

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

I’ve written about the twilight world being the liminal space where poetry flourishes in relation to the poetry of John Ashbery and Alfred Corn and to the novels of Michael Brodsky. Today I’d like to give another example, this time … Continue reading →

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Gombrowicz on “Interhumanity”

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Mark Kerstetter

Once I was explaining to someone that in order to feel the real cosmic significance of man for man, he should imagine the following: I am completely alone in a desert. I have never seen people nor do I imagine … Continue reading →

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