Diary (Diary)

Rating:
Summary: best book ever!
Review: Excellent east European writer. And just as all east Europeans, deeply in love with its country. The book is an exquisite piece of style and subtlety. The suffering of living far from Poland gets mixed to the joy of discovering a new land that fits so well his Romantic vision upon life. His Romantism though is overwhelmed by Naturalism (deep introspections and microscopical descriptions of nature) and even more often by Rationalism. The latter one seems to predominate the book, which is not simply a "book": it is a sample of LIFE in its most unsophisticated and primary values. Gombrowicz questions everything: art, death, human nature. What are these? And all the answers the writer has emerge in one single core: his own personality. No prejudice, no apriorical opinion. The Diary could very well be named "Gombrowicz's main phylosophical work".

Rating:
Summary: Gombrowicz lost in translation
Review: It would be superfluous to praise Gombrowicz's Diary. It is one of the landmarks of European avangarde literature of the 20th century... The French and German translations made Gombrowicz well-known outside Poland. The Vallee perfectible translation, however, not only fails to reflect the most sensitive nuances of the original, but, also commits a lot of material mistakes, too many to quote at this place. Yet, all this could have been avoided, if the Polish-born editor had taken enough trouble to revise the galleys more thoroughly before the work was ultimately published... Even so, this unusual book, the most authentic confession of a great Polish writer, will delight everyone seeking to fathom the European thought of the elapsing century.....

Rating:
Summary: Gombrowicz lost in translation
Review: It would be superfluous to praise Gombrowicz's Diary. It is one of the landmarks of European avangarde literature of the 20th century... The French and German translations made Gombrowicz well-known outside Poland. The Vallee perfectible translation, however, not only fails to reflect the most sensitive nuances of the original, but, also commits a lot of material mistakes, too many to quote at this place. Yet, all this could have been avoided, if the Polish-born editor had taken enough trouble to revise the galleys more thoroughly before the work was ultimately published... Even so, this unusual book, the most authentic confession of a great Polish writer, will delight everyone seeking to fathom the European thought of the elapsing century.....