Sunday

The Gombrowicz’s Diary arrived in today. A voluminous book of 783 numbered pages with a preface by his wife. Critics and reviews affirm that it is Gombrowicz's most elaborated and completed of his works. I looked at the book and thought I have no patience to go reading page by page, so I have decided to read it here and there, in a random way.

Monday

I went through the Gombrowicz’s Diary index and looked up Piñera’s entries since I knew that the Cuban writer was the translator of Gombrowicz's novel, Ferdydurke, first published in 1938 in his natal Poland, during his years in Argentina. I found five entries.

The first entry regarding Piñera was written a Wednesday and Gombrowicz seems to write verbatim an argument Piñera made complaining on the scorn and arrogance of the European writers when it comes to consider even the possibility of an American literature. Gombrowicz wrote commenting on Piñera' complaint, “even the best minds here fall victims to attacks of American naïveté.” He responded with the same naiveté he accused Piñera, he wrote he said to Piñera, "everything you write leads me to believe that you don't know the word ‘we’, only 'I". What in the world was Gombrowicz thinking? What was he talking about? A man by himself in permanent confrontation with the society and the others, a man of sorrows, claiming to have a sense of community, a supportive behavior? Or was Gombrowicz reproaching Piñera a lack of sensibility?

The second entry on Piñera in Gombrowicz's Diary: "The man who took the matter to heart as his own, however, and whom I made the chairman of the 'committee' (made up of few literati), the man who worked on the final version, was Virgilio Piñera, a very talented Cuba". A few lines forward, Gombrowicz wrote “…both were Europeans [the other was Humberto Rodriguez Tomeu]...” I think Virgilio had some reason to fight Gombrowicz's arrogance. However, it is almost impossible to have an art work without a high self-esteem and a large dose of individualism. I would never have heard about Humberto Rodriguez Tomeu until I read these Piñera’s entries. I looked up in this source of sorcery that is Internet and came up a number of websites link to Humberto Rodriguez Tomeu, writer and translator, friend of Virgilio Piñera. He shared with Piñera the Argentinian years. I found this picture that shows the complete translating committee of Ferdydurke.  Piñera the third from the left and Rodriguez Tomeu next to Obieta who is next to Gombrowicz who wears a hat. Obieta was the son of Macedonio Fernandez. 

A reading takes you to another, a picture or a painting to another, a name to another, a place to another, a memory to another, and thus to the point in which things seem to be bound, flashing one over the other, shedding light and darkness alternatively.