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The Rise and Fall and Rise (?) of Gombrowicz in Holland
Russian Literature LXII (2007) IV www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit
THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE (?) OF GOMBROWICZ IN HOLLAND
PAUL BEERS
Abstract Gombrowicz’s work was first noticed in Holland in 1959. In the sixties followed the first translation of his novels Ferdydurke and Pornography into Dutch. When a selection from the Diary was to be published, Gombrowicz agreed on a translation not from the Polish, but from the German and French, a task that was accomplished by the translator Paul Beers, who subsequently translated the largest part of Gombrowicz’s oeuvre into Dutch, while propagating it as an editor of the literary magazine De Revisor. Paul Beers considers Gombrowicz a writers’ writer, who addresses himself to the (intellectually) young. The history of Gombrowicz’s reception in the Netherlands reached its culmination in 1986, when the complete translation of the Diary appeared, accompanied by a special issue of De Revisor. Since that time the interest in Gombrowicz’s work gradually diminished. But just now, in 2007, a reprint appears of a somewhat shortened edition of the Diary, followed in 2008 by Ferdydurke and the Short Stories. Keywords: Gombrowicz; Translation; Reception
All Gombrowicz’s works have been translated into Dutch, not in the last few years, but already in the sixties and seventies of the previous century. The translator of all these books, the writer of this article, is now also in his seventies, but when he translated Gombrowicz between thirty and forty. He was not the first one who translated the author in Holland. For the name and
0304-3479/$ – see front matter © 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.ruslit.2007.10.002
384
Paul Beers
fame of Gombrowicz reached the country for the first time already in 1959, when the critic Elisabeth de Roos – the wife of a prominent Dutch writer between the wars – wrote a long and favourable article called ‘The Polish novel Ferdydurke in a French translation’. Three years later the Dutch translation appeared and was reviewed by the most outstanding Dutch critics. In 1963 Elisabeth de Roos again was the first to notice the French translation of Pornografia, and a year later the Dutch translation was reviewed – at the same time that Elisabeth de Roos reviewed Gombrowicz’s Journal ’53-’56. In 1965 came the moment that I (now quoting Ferdydurke) “vague and uncoordinated as I was […] crossed the unavoidable Rubicon of my thirtieth birthday”. I discovered at a critical moment of my life the German, shortened pocket edition of the Diary ’53-’56 and it struck me so deeply that I absolutely wanted to translate that incredible book, full of authenticity, originality, profundity, variety, and open air, sea air, country air. No library, no science, no epistèmè – a man after my own heart. The year before I had begun to translate books by Sartre, Karl Jaspers and Erich Fromm. I did not like these books very much; Sartre and Jaspers were very difficult for a beginning translator, and the money you got for it was too shameless for words. But then! The “shock of recognition” – to quote one of the book-titles of a well-known Dutch critic who reviewed Gombrowicz and called him “a bizarre spirit of the first class”. I translated at random the first chapter of the Diary and offered the translation to the two different publishers who had already published Ferdydurke and Pornography. The first one was interested, and because he had had big problems with the translation of Ferdydurke – in the end the work of three different translators, the first from the Polish, the second correcting from the German, the third editing the Dutch – he wrote to Gombrowicz and asked him his permission to have his Diary translated not from the Polish, but from the German and French. Gombrowicz answered: “I prefer a good Dutch translation of my work from the German and the French to a mediocre one from the Polish.” And that is how the long series of my Gombrowicz translations in Holland started, most of them very nicely reviewed in the best Dutch newspapers and weeklies. In 1967 my first translation appeared: From the Diary of Witold Gombrowicz, which I could offer him myself during my summer holiday in Vence. After the interview with him he wrote in my book: “A P.B. qui me torture avec ses questions. Très amicalement, Witold Gombrowicz.” Rita Gombrowicz consoled me afterwards with her friendship for years. We were thirty-one, thirty-two in those days. In the same year 1967 a very successful performance took place of Yvonne, just like The Marriage a year later translated by experienced and already well-known translators. In 1968 appeared my translation of Cosmos, in 1969 five of the ten stories under the title Murder with Premeditation, in
The Rise and Fall and Rise (?) of Gombrowicz in Holland
385
1970 the Conversations by Dominique de Roux (with his horrible afterword), in 1971 the other five stories under the title The Rat. And in 1972 appeared – together with a reprint of Ferdydurke – another part of the diary, Diary ParisBerlin, which was published as a single book, just as in France and Germany; what a joy to translate again a hundred pages of that vivid, sparkling, controversial book! So within ten years the Dutch public could read a large part of Gombrowicz’s work and see his plays. A few remarks about the way these books were published. Ferdydurke and the two extracts of the Diary were published by Moussault as paperbacks, Pornography and Cosmos by Polak & Van Gennep, as paperbacks too. But then Polak and Van Gennep went apart and the wealthy bibliophile Johan Polak continued his publishing house under the name Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep. This is so confusing that we call this house simply Athenaeum. Johan Polak acquired the rights for all Gombrowicz’s works, including those of Moussault after this publishing house had expired. Polak wanted to publish only famous, classical or almost classical authors in beautiful bound books. The result was that the two little books with five stories (each one 135 pages) cost twice as much as a paperback of 250 pages. And that was catastrophic. Many bookshops didn’t even take such a book, for fear they would never sell it. Gombrowicz now definitely was a writer for the upper ten, upper hundred, okay, but lost for one or two thousand readers. I am convinced that Gombrowicz will never be a writer for the general public, he surely is a writers’ writer, but he is a students’ writer too. Nearly all his fans in Holland discovered him when they were in their twenties, and when I am approached by a new fan – and every year it happens several times – it is a youngster. Youngsters, or let’s say intellectual youngsters, don’t have much money, and Gombrowicz should have been available in editions with a normal price. Yes I know, the paperbacks were sold slowly too, but finally they were sold. The hardbacks of Athenaeum were too expensive for young people. In 1973 appeared Theatre, in hardback and paperback, all three plays together in my translation now, a great deed by Polak, because theatre-books are hardly sold. Till this day I profit by it, since the companies have to stick to this translation. In the same year 1973 the literary magazine Soma devoted its last issue to Gombrowicz. I was asked as a guest editor and succeeded in making an issue so large that the glue could hardly hold it together. This success had a “little tail”, as we say in Holland, for Soma was replaced a year later by a new magazine, De Revisor, and I was asked as one of the editors. Because De Revisor soon acquired a prominent place among the literary journals and attracted many of the most talented young writers, I had full chance to promote not only Gombrowicz, but also Marian PaĔkowski, who I
386
Paul Beers
met and interviewed in Brussels for the Gombrowicz issue of Soma and whose novel Matuga and all of his more than twenty stories I translated for literary journals and a few books. After 1973 the tempo of the translations slackened. Most of Gombrowicz’s texts had been translated after all. Remained only Trans-Atlantyk and the complete Diary. De Revisor published parts of the Diary about Bruno Schulz, Criticism and Dante, and the testimonies of Gombrowicz as a person by Alejandro Rússovich and Rita Gombrowicz. I translated Trans-Atlantyk, even before the French translation was ready, so only on the basis of the German. I’m really afraid that I have made many mistakes in this book, which is the most Polish of them all and seems to be full of Polish language tricks, as Marian PaĔkowski says in his Afterword. In 1977 the translation of Trans-Atlantyk appeared, together with a reprint of Cosmos, of course not in paperback, but – I repeat – as the Bold and the Beautiful. In that year I started with the complete translation of Diary Part I. I completely revised (“revisored”) the parts of my translation of ten years before and wished to continue, when Johan Polak = Athenaeum told me that the reprint of Ferdydurke was sold out now, that he refused to reprint the old translation and that I should make a new one. I disliked that idea, it was “old stuff” for me, Ferdydurke had found its way in Holland and elsewhere, I admired above all the Diary and that would then be the end of my translating Gombrowicz. But things went differently. After Polak had implored me three times with all possible flatteries and not without difficulty I had refused three times, he asked me at least to revise the old translation. I could not decline, began to revise and… discovered so many intolerable things that I immediately started the new translation on January 2, 1979 in the midst of a very cold winter and finished – yes, it was a delivery – nine months later. How disappointing that Polak published the book not in the next spring of 1980, but only in May 1981, and in spite of my urgent request not as a paperback, but only as a very expensive hardback. Together with Ferdydurke appeared a so-called Revisorbook, more or less like the Soma special, an issue of newly written essays on Gombrowicz, with a great essay by Czesáaw Miáosz ‘Man a God or Man a Wolf?’ and with Gombrowicz and Schulz writing about their respective works. I myself wrote for the first time about the problem of translating Gombrowicz from the German and the French, but I demonstrated too which errors I had discovered, especially in the German translation and how fruitful it can be to compare two translations. I must not forget the book that Gombrowicz himself not even mentioned to De Roux, The Possessed. I even had a friend who almost detests Gombrowicz, but who likes this book. I made the translation this time only on the basis of the French translation that appeared first, and it was a pleasure to translate for the first time a not-so-difficult book that pleased me so much. I had the good fortune that the best Dutch morning paper, de Volkskrant,
The Rise and Fall and Rise (?) of Gombrowicz in Holland
387
published the book in serial form in 1981 (just like Le Monde in 1977 and later the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1987). As a book The Possessed was only published in 1990, including the end that had been lost, but was found again and published in the German edition. I have omitted the year 1986. In that year at last appeared the complete Diary 1953-1969, with a great presentation in Amsterdam, in the presence of Rita Gombrowicz, with speakers and film fragments and a special issue of De Revisor. All the important newspapers and weeklies gave large attention to the book, which – as a matter of course this time – was a beautiful bound book of more than 900 pages. It sold pretty well, and every year the stock diminished, till a few years ago the last fifty copies were offered at half the price. When we look at the names of the publishers of the Diary we not only see the name of Athenaeum, but of Ambo as well. The situation of Athenaeum at that time was so critical that the Diary was in fact produced by another publishing house, and that was Ambo, which a year later published the second reprint of Cosmos in a cheap paperback edition. When in 1987 Athenaeum was nearly bankrupt, the curator suddenly published the third printing of Pornography in a pocket edition at an absurdly low price, a third of the hardback, in the hope, I guess, that many people would buy that book because of its title. I see them gnashing their teeth while looking in vain for the promised excitement. Nevertheless, at that moment Pornography, just like Ferdydurke and Cosmos, reached its third edition. In 1988 a young and enterprising bookseller took over the Athenaeum fund and even continued with Gombrowicz. And how! In 1989 he published All Stories in one volume. The translation was revised again and completed with the little stories that had appeared in the German edition of the Collected Works. In 1990 appeared the book edition of The Possessed – both books in paperback and hardback. But one thing had remained the same – possibly a promise made to Johan Polak: the paperbacks had the price of a normal hardback and the hardbacks seemed to be meant for rich bibliophiles. – Not so for Ferdydurke. In 1992 Athenaeum brought a paperback edition at a moderate price. I was very happy, but honesty commands me to say that the sale of this edition was disappointing too. Still it was not the end. Infected by the enthusiasm of the new young director of Athenaeum I dared to ask him if I might make a new translation of Pornography. The old one had been made thirty years ago, so the translation had also “crossed the unavoidable Rubicon” and this novel, my favourite one of Gombrowicz’s novels, was now his only book that I had not translated. The publisher consented and partly on the basis of the old translation, as I wrote in my note at the end of the book, the new Pornography appeared in 1994. I have to admit that now, more than ten years after my translation of Pornography, for the general reading public Gombrowicz seems to be dead in Holland. No bookstore, not even the best, has any copy anymore. The
388
Paul Beers
second-hand stores – yes – still. But every year there are young men or women who discover his work and approach me and bear witness to their profound enthusiasm. A Flemish actress made more than one performance based on his work; a young director likes to play Yvonne with students, indeed student theatre brings this play from time to time; a female sculptor who writes as well, made a beautiful bust of Gombrowicz that now stands on Rita’s writing-table; already in 1972 a painter who is only four days older than I made four beautiful silk-screenprints that are now hanging in my studio; two young – they always seem to be young – filmmakers chose for their first short movies the stories The Dancer of Mr. Kraykowski and Murder with Premeditation. Real great authors cannot disappear. I am happy and proud to announce that just now, at the end of 2007, a reprint will appear (a somewhat shortened edition) of the Dutch translation of the Diary, next year followed by new editions of Ferdydurke and the Short Stories.
THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE (?) OF GOMBROWICZ IN HOLLAND
PAUL BEERS
Abstract Gombrowicz’s work was first noticed in Holland in 1959. In the sixties followed the first translation of his novels Ferdydurke and Pornography into Dutch. When a selection from the Diary was to be published, Gombrowicz agreed on a translation not from the Polish, but from the German and French, a task that was accomplished by the translator Paul Beers, who subsequently translated the largest part of Gombrowicz’s oeuvre into Dutch, while propagating it as an editor of the literary magazine De Revisor. Paul Beers considers Gombrowicz a writers’ writer, who addresses himself to the (intellectually) young. The history of Gombrowicz’s reception in the Netherlands reached its culmination in 1986, when the complete translation of the Diary appeared, accompanied by a special issue of De Revisor. Since that time the interest in Gombrowicz’s work gradually diminished. But just now, in 2007, a reprint appears of a somewhat shortened edition of the Diary, followed in 2008 by Ferdydurke and the Short Stories. Keywords: Gombrowicz; Translation; Reception
All Gombrowicz’s works have been translated into Dutch, not in the last few years, but already in the sixties and seventies of the previous century. The translator of all these books, the writer of this article, is now also in his seventies, but when he translated Gombrowicz between thirty and forty. He was not the first one who translated the author in Holland. For the name and
0304-3479/$ – see front matter © 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.ruslit.2007.10.002
384
Paul Beers
fame of Gombrowicz reached the country for the first time already in 1959, when the critic Elisabeth de Roos – the wife of a prominent Dutch writer between the wars – wrote a long and favourable article called ‘The Polish novel Ferdydurke in a French translation’. Three years later the Dutch translation appeared and was reviewed by the most outstanding Dutch critics. In 1963 Elisabeth de Roos again was the first to notice the French translation of Pornografia, and a year later the Dutch translation was reviewed – at the same time that Elisabeth de Roos reviewed Gombrowicz’s Journal ’53-’56. In 1965 came the moment that I (now quoting Ferdydurke) “vague and uncoordinated as I was […] crossed the unavoidable Rubicon of my thirtieth birthday”. I discovered at a critical moment of my life the German, shortened pocket edition of the Diary ’53-’56 and it struck me so deeply that I absolutely wanted to translate that incredible book, full of authenticity, originality, profundity, variety, and open air, sea air, country air. No library, no science, no epistèmè – a man after my own heart. The year before I had begun to translate books by Sartre, Karl Jaspers and Erich Fromm. I did not like these books very much; Sartre and Jaspers were very difficult for a beginning translator, and the money you got for it was too shameless for words. But then! The “shock of recognition” – to quote one of the book-titles of a well-known Dutch critic who reviewed Gombrowicz and called him “a bizarre spirit of the first class”. I translated at random the first chapter of the Diary and offered the translation to the two different publishers who had already published Ferdydurke and Pornography. The first one was interested, and because he had had big problems with the translation of Ferdydurke – in the end the work of three different translators, the first from the Polish, the second correcting from the German, the third editing the Dutch – he wrote to Gombrowicz and asked him his permission to have his Diary translated not from the Polish, but from the German and French. Gombrowicz answered: “I prefer a good Dutch translation of my work from the German and the French to a mediocre one from the Polish.” And that is how the long series of my Gombrowicz translations in Holland started, most of them very nicely reviewed in the best Dutch newspapers and weeklies. In 1967 my first translation appeared: From the Diary of Witold Gombrowicz, which I could offer him myself during my summer holiday in Vence. After the interview with him he wrote in my book: “A P.B. qui me torture avec ses questions. Très amicalement, Witold Gombrowicz.” Rita Gombrowicz consoled me afterwards with her friendship for years. We were thirty-one, thirty-two in those days. In the same year 1967 a very successful performance took place of Yvonne, just like The Marriage a year later translated by experienced and already well-known translators. In 1968 appeared my translation of Cosmos, in 1969 five of the ten stories under the title Murder with Premeditation, in
The Rise and Fall and Rise (?) of Gombrowicz in Holland
385
1970 the Conversations by Dominique de Roux (with his horrible afterword), in 1971 the other five stories under the title The Rat. And in 1972 appeared – together with a reprint of Ferdydurke – another part of the diary, Diary ParisBerlin, which was published as a single book, just as in France and Germany; what a joy to translate again a hundred pages of that vivid, sparkling, controversial book! So within ten years the Dutch public could read a large part of Gombrowicz’s work and see his plays. A few remarks about the way these books were published. Ferdydurke and the two extracts of the Diary were published by Moussault as paperbacks, Pornography and Cosmos by Polak & Van Gennep, as paperbacks too. But then Polak and Van Gennep went apart and the wealthy bibliophile Johan Polak continued his publishing house under the name Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep. This is so confusing that we call this house simply Athenaeum. Johan Polak acquired the rights for all Gombrowicz’s works, including those of Moussault after this publishing house had expired. Polak wanted to publish only famous, classical or almost classical authors in beautiful bound books. The result was that the two little books with five stories (each one 135 pages) cost twice as much as a paperback of 250 pages. And that was catastrophic. Many bookshops didn’t even take such a book, for fear they would never sell it. Gombrowicz now definitely was a writer for the upper ten, upper hundred, okay, but lost for one or two thousand readers. I am convinced that Gombrowicz will never be a writer for the general public, he surely is a writers’ writer, but he is a students’ writer too. Nearly all his fans in Holland discovered him when they were in their twenties, and when I am approached by a new fan – and every year it happens several times – it is a youngster. Youngsters, or let’s say intellectual youngsters, don’t have much money, and Gombrowicz should have been available in editions with a normal price. Yes I know, the paperbacks were sold slowly too, but finally they were sold. The hardbacks of Athenaeum were too expensive for young people. In 1973 appeared Theatre, in hardback and paperback, all three plays together in my translation now, a great deed by Polak, because theatre-books are hardly sold. Till this day I profit by it, since the companies have to stick to this translation. In the same year 1973 the literary magazine Soma devoted its last issue to Gombrowicz. I was asked as a guest editor and succeeded in making an issue so large that the glue could hardly hold it together. This success had a “little tail”, as we say in Holland, for Soma was replaced a year later by a new magazine, De Revisor, and I was asked as one of the editors. Because De Revisor soon acquired a prominent place among the literary journals and attracted many of the most talented young writers, I had full chance to promote not only Gombrowicz, but also Marian PaĔkowski, who I
386
Paul Beers
met and interviewed in Brussels for the Gombrowicz issue of Soma and whose novel Matuga and all of his more than twenty stories I translated for literary journals and a few books. After 1973 the tempo of the translations slackened. Most of Gombrowicz’s texts had been translated after all. Remained only Trans-Atlantyk and the complete Diary. De Revisor published parts of the Diary about Bruno Schulz, Criticism and Dante, and the testimonies of Gombrowicz as a person by Alejandro Rússovich and Rita Gombrowicz. I translated Trans-Atlantyk, even before the French translation was ready, so only on the basis of the German. I’m really afraid that I have made many mistakes in this book, which is the most Polish of them all and seems to be full of Polish language tricks, as Marian PaĔkowski says in his Afterword. In 1977 the translation of Trans-Atlantyk appeared, together with a reprint of Cosmos, of course not in paperback, but – I repeat – as the Bold and the Beautiful. In that year I started with the complete translation of Diary Part I. I completely revised (“revisored”) the parts of my translation of ten years before and wished to continue, when Johan Polak = Athenaeum told me that the reprint of Ferdydurke was sold out now, that he refused to reprint the old translation and that I should make a new one. I disliked that idea, it was “old stuff” for me, Ferdydurke had found its way in Holland and elsewhere, I admired above all the Diary and that would then be the end of my translating Gombrowicz. But things went differently. After Polak had implored me three times with all possible flatteries and not without difficulty I had refused three times, he asked me at least to revise the old translation. I could not decline, began to revise and… discovered so many intolerable things that I immediately started the new translation on January 2, 1979 in the midst of a very cold winter and finished – yes, it was a delivery – nine months later. How disappointing that Polak published the book not in the next spring of 1980, but only in May 1981, and in spite of my urgent request not as a paperback, but only as a very expensive hardback. Together with Ferdydurke appeared a so-called Revisorbook, more or less like the Soma special, an issue of newly written essays on Gombrowicz, with a great essay by Czesáaw Miáosz ‘Man a God or Man a Wolf?’ and with Gombrowicz and Schulz writing about their respective works. I myself wrote for the first time about the problem of translating Gombrowicz from the German and the French, but I demonstrated too which errors I had discovered, especially in the German translation and how fruitful it can be to compare two translations. I must not forget the book that Gombrowicz himself not even mentioned to De Roux, The Possessed. I even had a friend who almost detests Gombrowicz, but who likes this book. I made the translation this time only on the basis of the French translation that appeared first, and it was a pleasure to translate for the first time a not-so-difficult book that pleased me so much. I had the good fortune that the best Dutch morning paper, de Volkskrant,
The Rise and Fall and Rise (?) of Gombrowicz in Holland
387
published the book in serial form in 1981 (just like Le Monde in 1977 and later the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1987). As a book The Possessed was only published in 1990, including the end that had been lost, but was found again and published in the German edition. I have omitted the year 1986. In that year at last appeared the complete Diary 1953-1969, with a great presentation in Amsterdam, in the presence of Rita Gombrowicz, with speakers and film fragments and a special issue of De Revisor. All the important newspapers and weeklies gave large attention to the book, which – as a matter of course this time – was a beautiful bound book of more than 900 pages. It sold pretty well, and every year the stock diminished, till a few years ago the last fifty copies were offered at half the price. When we look at the names of the publishers of the Diary we not only see the name of Athenaeum, but of Ambo as well. The situation of Athenaeum at that time was so critical that the Diary was in fact produced by another publishing house, and that was Ambo, which a year later published the second reprint of Cosmos in a cheap paperback edition. When in 1987 Athenaeum was nearly bankrupt, the curator suddenly published the third printing of Pornography in a pocket edition at an absurdly low price, a third of the hardback, in the hope, I guess, that many people would buy that book because of its title. I see them gnashing their teeth while looking in vain for the promised excitement. Nevertheless, at that moment Pornography, just like Ferdydurke and Cosmos, reached its third edition. In 1988 a young and enterprising bookseller took over the Athenaeum fund and even continued with Gombrowicz. And how! In 1989 he published All Stories in one volume. The translation was revised again and completed with the little stories that had appeared in the German edition of the Collected Works. In 1990 appeared the book edition of The Possessed – both books in paperback and hardback. But one thing had remained the same – possibly a promise made to Johan Polak: the paperbacks had the price of a normal hardback and the hardbacks seemed to be meant for rich bibliophiles. – Not so for Ferdydurke. In 1992 Athenaeum brought a paperback edition at a moderate price. I was very happy, but honesty commands me to say that the sale of this edition was disappointing too. Still it was not the end. Infected by the enthusiasm of the new young director of Athenaeum I dared to ask him if I might make a new translation of Pornography. The old one had been made thirty years ago, so the translation had also “crossed the unavoidable Rubicon” and this novel, my favourite one of Gombrowicz’s novels, was now his only book that I had not translated. The publisher consented and partly on the basis of the old translation, as I wrote in my note at the end of the book, the new Pornography appeared in 1994. I have to admit that now, more than ten years after my translation of Pornography, for the general reading public Gombrowicz seems to be dead in Holland. No bookstore, not even the best, has any copy anymore. The
388
Paul Beers
second-hand stores – yes – still. But every year there are young men or women who discover his work and approach me and bear witness to their profound enthusiasm. A Flemish actress made more than one performance based on his work; a young director likes to play Yvonne with students, indeed student theatre brings this play from time to time; a female sculptor who writes as well, made a beautiful bust of Gombrowicz that now stands on Rita’s writing-table; already in 1972 a painter who is only four days older than I made four beautiful silk-screenprints that are now hanging in my studio; two young – they always seem to be young – filmmakers chose for their first short movies the stories The Dancer of Mr. Kraykowski and Murder with Premeditation. Real great authors cannot disappear. I am happy and proud to announce that just now, at the end of 2007, a reprint will appear (a somewhat shortened edition) of the Dutch translation of the Diary, next year followed by new editions of Ferdydurke and the Short Stories.