BACACAY REVISITED

Bacacay by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polish and annotated by Christopher Makosa
 

 

Bacacay by Witold Gombrowicz is a collection of ten stories, seven of which - written between 1928 and 1933 - appeared in book form as Pamiętnik z Okresu Dojrzewania (1933) [The Memoir of a Time of Immaturity]. The other three tales (1937-1938) were published in various magazines in pre-war Poland. This website features the first five stories in their order of appearance in the 1987 Polish edition of Bakakaj (Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków), which formed the basis for my translation.

I translated Bacacay ten years ago in New York. In 1994, on Mme. Rita Gombrowicz's advice, I submitted my manuscript to Yale University Press because it was allegedly planning to publish the complete works of Witold Gombrowicz.¹ The publisher (represented by Mr. Jonathan Brent) expressed interest in the project, acknowledged receipt of the translation - and then for two years ignored my numerous calls and letters. Eventually, I persuaded a certain Polish writer to retrieve my MS from the slush pile, where it evidently reposed in a state of requiescat in pace. My attempt to get Bacacay published in 1996 was thwarted by Polish YUP reviewers on general principle. I did not belong; therefore, I was given short shrift.

At the beginning of 1999, the literary e-zine The Alsop Review invited me to publish my translation of four stories from the collection (Attorney Kraykowski's Dancer, Stefan Czarniecki's Memoir, A Premeditated Crime and A Feast at Countess von Doff's). The 1999 version went down well with on-line readers and even won praise from the distinguished American writer John Hawkes (1925-1998), the finest prose stylist of his generation. Some time ago, however, I revisited it and could not resist the temptation of changing a thing or two. The present revision or re-revision supersedes the 1999 version which, as far as I am concerned, has outlived its usefulness.

Before starting work on Gombrowicz’s stories, I had set myself three aims: textual fidelity, loyalty to the author's style and readability. Today I can honestly say that I have translated Bacacay in accordance with my self-imposed rules, save a few rare cases in which I decided to deviate from the path of fidelity. For example, I have changed almost all the characters' names in my rendering of A Feast at Countess von Doff's (literally, A Feast at Countess Kotłubay's) to make them as comical in English as they are in the original.

To conclude, I have taken the utmost care to reproduce Gombrowicz's vigorous and often intricate rhythms, his slightly archaic diction, skewed syntax, stylized dialogue, imaginative phrasing, distinctive paragraphing and colorful rhetoric.

The reader will, I hope, appreciate the hypnotic power of his prose in the translation posted below.

Prague, July 3, 2004