Philosophical and Aesthetic Aberrations in Witold Gombrowicz's 'Ferdydurke'

This book examines Witold Gombrowicz's (1904-1969) most important novel written in Poland, Ferdydurke (1937), and its "double," the Spanish translation released a decade later in Argentina, in the context of the aesthetic of the grotesque. It focuses on three distinct trends within the practice of the grotesque: improvisation, subversion and trauma, as ways in which the author contests form. It explores moments within the novel characterized by intermixing, destabilization or destruction of parts belonging to the body, be it the physical (human) or the abstract body (school, family, the manor, the novel). It examines how trauma accompanies these moments where the "interhuman" bears responsibility for deformation and disintegration on all levels: personal, national and global. It treats the concept of the novel as a physical space or a Spielraum (playroom) where the written word entertains and battles for existence and meaning. It demonstrates how both the original text and the translation respond to their particular milieus and mimic the spectacle and farce embedded in reality.