Gombrowicz widow to write tell-all memoir

Rita Gombrowicz. Photo: Polish Radio

She revealed her plans on Sunday at a meeting sponsored by the ministry of culture at the Witold Gombrowicz Museum in Wsola, central Poland.

“I would like to describe these last 45 years since the death of Gombrowicz, showing the Polish reader what has happened with his legacy during this time, and how I worked on this,” she said.

Witold Gombrowicz was one of the self-appointed “Three Musketeers” of Poland's pre-war avant-garde, alongside Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) and Bruno Schulz.

He spent the Second World War in Argentina, and remained in exile during the subsequent communist era in Poland.

He met his future wife, a French Canadian, in France in 1964 during a monastic retreat. She was 30 years his junior.

Rita Gombrowicz, a writer herself, became the guardian of Gombrowicz's literary estate after his death in 1969, and his works have now been translated into 37 languages.

Earlier this year, she oversaw the Polish publication of Kronos, a diary that Gombrowicz had not ear-marked for release.

A more extensive diary, which was serialised in the Paris-based emigre journal Kultura is considered by many as Gombrowicz's finest work, offering an ironic and often scathing look at aspects of Polish culture, while simultaneously evoking the frustration of the exile. (nh)

Source: PAP