Witold Gombrowicz. Ja!

Witold Gombrowicz's biography covers four periods: 1. Childhood, youth and reaching a literary debut; 2. Debut (Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania, Ferdydurke, Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda) in interwar Warsaw; 3. Departure and emigrate to Argentina (Buenos Aires), where the novels were written Trans-Atlantyk, Pornografia i Kosmos (completed after returning to Europe), dramas Ślub, Operetka i Historia (finished after returning to Europe), (the last one was written in Argentina and despite attempts it was not finished, and the Operetka was started by Gombrowicz in Buenos Aires and finished in France) and Dziennik and Kronos; 4. The period after his return to Europe, first in West Berlin, as a consequence of the Ford Foundation scholarship, and later in France (Paris, Royaumont, Vence ‒ here Gombrowicz finished Kosmos, continued his work on the Dziennik, wrote a Testament and essays-talks Wspomnienia polskie and Wędrówki po Argentynie).

The author focuses on the issues related to the literary subject and the discourse of Polishness inscribed in Gombrowicz's work. He adopted the order of the biography in which the author of Ferdydurke wrote his „traces of presence”, which is not an obvious order, because the order of the writer's biography was consciously violated in his work and burdened - also intentional - anachronism related to the space-time space of Pornografia and, in a sense, the Ślub . Witold Gombrowicz. I! It clearly refers to earlier ‒ scientific and fictional ‒ studies of Gombrowicz's biography, written by Jerzy Jarzębski and Klementyna Suchanow.