The texts of the original seven stories of Recollections of Adolescence were revised and in places shortened for Bakakaj; in some cases titles were altered. For example, “Adventures” was in the earlier book titled “Five Minutes Before Falling Asleep.” In addition, Gombrowicz added two freestanding stories from Ferdydurke —“Philidor’s Child Within” and “Philibert’s Child Within”—and also three stories which had been published separately but had never before appeared in book form—“On The Kitchen Steps,” “The Rat,” and “The Banquet.” The enlarged collection of stories was published as Bakakaj by Wydawnictwo Literackie in Kraków in 1957. This event was regarded by Gombrowicz as his postwar debut in communist Poland, but it also turned out to be the last time his work would appear in his home country in his lifetime. (His primary Polish-language publisher was the Paris-based Kultura house.)
Curiously, while Bacacay includes Gombrowicz’s first works, it is the last of his writings to be published in English. Though individual stories translated by various hands have appeared in literary journals over the years, and Bacacay has been translated into numerous other languages, the present translation (made directly from the original Polish) marks the first time the whole collection has been made available to an English-speaking audience. The translation is based on the 2002 scholarly edition of Bakakaj published, also by Wydawnictwo Literackie, as the first volume in a definitive edition of Gombrowicz’s collected works. This English version reproduces the “compromise” sequence of the 2002 edition, which broadly follows the chronological order in which the stories were written and published, with the exception of “On The Kitchen Steps,” written earlier but omitted from Recollections of Adolescence out of consideration for the author’s father, who Gombrowicz was afraid might read an allusion to himself in the story. I have chosen to include my own translations of the two stories from Ferdydurke, on the grounds of stylistic consistency, given that Gombrowicz evidently considered them to belong with the other stories in the book.
I won’t presume to suggest how these stories should be read. Over the years they have been interpreted from a psychosexual perspective as emanations of the author’s troubled mind; as exercises in literary parody (the detective story, the adventure story, the folk tale, and so on); as sociopolitical critiques of the shortcomings of the Polish gentry and aristocracy; and as attempts at innovative literary forms. Justifications for each of these readings can be found in Gombrowicz’s own statements about the stories, as well as the analysis of numerous critics. For those of my generation, in their combination of intellectual allusions and absurd yet po-faced humor they are reminiscent of nothing so much as the films of Luis Buñuel or even of Monty Python sketches. Others will no doubt find different associations and pleasures from their reading.
In this regard, it is interesting to note that in the very first copies of the first edition of Recollections of Adolescence, Gombrowicz included a “Short Explanation” addressed to his readers, in which he explicated “what the stories are about,” emphasizing that the explanations were only necessary for readers who could not figure this out for themselves. Among his “explanations,” he clarifies that in “A Premeditated Crime” the family loves the father, and he has not been murdered; and that in “Dinner at Countess Pavahoke’s” the soup is not actually made from the runaway boy, but that the association is purely linguistic, and that “the point of the story is that the hunger and suffering of poor Bolek Cauliflower make the cauliflower-vegetable taste better to the aristocrats eating it.” He also explains that both “Adventures” and “The Events on the Banbury” take place in the minds of their respective protagonists only; he describes the latter story as “the dramatic tale of a mind, written with the aid of external events.” And he warns the reader not to look for symbols: “There are no symbols here, only associations. It should be taken exactly as it is written. I am never symbolic.” The “Short Explanation” was removed from the book after only a few hundred copies had been printed; it seems clear that Gombrowicz (rightly, I would argue) came to the conclusion that interpretation was the job of the reader, not the writer.
Whatever perspective one takes, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the stories in this book are brilliantly original works that deserve a permanent place in the canon of world literature. From the very beginnings of his writing career Gombrowicz was driven by an ambition to produce literature of significance on the scale not just of Poland but of Europe and the world. The stories collected here show clearly that from his first published works this ambition was realized. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to make Bacacay available to an English-language readership.
Bill Johnst
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gombrowicz, Witold.
[Bakakaj. English]
translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-935-74414-6
I. Johnston, Bill. II. Title.
PG7158.G669B3132004
891.85373—dc22 2004012573
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BAKAKAJ
Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krakow 2002
Copyright © Rita Gombrowicz and Institut Litteraire
All rights reserved
This publication was made possible with the support
of the Lannan Foundation and the New York State
Council on the Arts, a state agency.