In human chemistry, Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) was a Polish lawyer turned dramatic novelist noted for his 1960 novel Pornografia, wherein he explores the dark limits of sexuality via a mixture of Goethe's Elective Affinities and Michael Faraday's "lines of force" reconceptualized as lines of passion, or thereabouts."Set in Nazi-occupied Poland, Pornography (Pornografia) focuses on two middle-aged men: Frederic, a theater and film director, and Witold, a writer who serves as a wry commentator. The two journey out to the country estate of Hippolyte, a friend of Witold marginally involved in the resistance. There they encounter German soldiers and partisans, young lovers and even younger murderers, patriots and Catholics. Frederic will reveal an uncanny ability to hear clearly even distant and delicate sounds. Director Jan Jakub Kolski effectively finds the cinematic means to capture Gombrowicz's abrupt changes of mood and tone and almost surreal juxtapositions, while anchoring the story in a very concrete time."
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| A shot from the 2003 film version of Gombrowicz's circa 1950s Pornografia, depicting a woman (Maria, Hippolyte's wife) seemingly in love with or fond of two men, Frederic (left) and Witold (right), who are invited to her husband's (Hippolyte) estate. [5] |
“The Pornography of Witold Gombrowicz. Rarely it was written a novel, not whose conscience was so clear - there are so many and what interest? - But the clarity was so conscious. Rarely, and perhaps not since Goethe’s Elective Affinities Goethe. We say why.”
“Regnault situates Gombrowicz’s Pornography in the tradition of Goethe’s Elective Affinities, which could be said to represent ‘a decisive break [coupure]’ from the approach to the novel found in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse. Although novels portraying ‘the transparency of consciousness’ are no longer uncommon, novels where ‘transparency itself assumes consciousness’ are rare: ‘so rare’ that Pornography could be ‘the first since Goethe’s Elective Affinities’ [3].
Both Goethe and Gombrowicz incorporate explanations of structure into their narratives, and both make references to a chemical model of combination. ‘Gombrowicz’s novelty consists in his going one step further and perfecting Goethe’s revolution’: the character of Olek Skuziak allows him to destroy the narratives completely and put himself ‘in the position of speaking to oneself alone’. Regnault writes, on Gombrowicz’s behalf: ‘My pornography is an optic of perversions, but it is also an inversion of the art of writing, a pornology of writing’. When Gombrowicz writes of ‘persevering in obscenity’, the persevering designates the rigours of the structure, which allow one to surpass the charms of obscenity and lead to their expulsion.”
As Frederick writes to Witold about his plans: “I follow the lines of force, you understand? The lines of desire” (Gombrowicz, pg. 102; emphasis added).
“Just as each thing has a connection to itself, so it must equally have a relationship [Verhaltnis] to others …. that will vary according to the the variations in the different species.” (Goethe 1976, pg. 34)
