Kronos – Gombrowicz’s Previously Unpublished Diary Quarry @ Polish Arts and Culture around the World
I’ve read his stories, his diaries, and the novel Cosmos (over and over, essay on that coming eventually); the erotic events are mostly elided in the diaries.
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The new book lays out Gombrowicz’s meticulous monthly tabulation of concerns – his erotic ventures as lists of partners’ first names, and his health and lack thereof, are the carnal, corporeal priorities. Finances, travel, meetings, invitations, exchanges of gifts and letters are listed. Code words are pointed out in footnotes: “commisariat” when his influential cousin or embassy contacts got him out of Argentine jails, likely for soliciting sex; “Durant” for the Buenos Aires hospital where he received injections to treat syphilis. In finding a form for his unrelenting self analysis, the new book gives the writer something of a last word on his life.