Autobiografia Literatura Kultura Media

This article is an attempt to analyse the three modes of autobiographical writing of Witold Gombrowicz. The first of the modes is prospectively oriented and its purpose is to self-create and project into the future the successive subjective self-images created by the author. Diary, which takes a particular place between the autonomous, experimental fiction and traditional autobiographical narration, brings implementation of this strategy. The second mode is retrospective in nature and the most similar to the traditional autobiography. It is distinguished by the dominance of the reminiscent narration subordinated to the chronological sequence of events. We encounter it in Polish Memories and in A Kind of Testament. The third mode used by Gombrowicz in Kronos is implemented in the form of a specific historical calendar or inventory alluding to non-literary practical forms of personal notes and does not fit in any of the two previously mentioned autobiographical writing strategies, locating itself on the edge of both; the narrative convention of memories, as well as the diary convention subject to essayistic and self-portrait principles. Analysis of these three varieties of the autobiographical text shows that they do not make up for any coherent, multi-faceted vision of the subject. Each of them reveals in their own way the “Gombrowicz-like” autobiographical formula of discontinuity and emptiness that are discovered in the place of persistently recurring desire of a strong personal presence.