“This really is a beautiful country”. The French Riviera in Witold Gombrowicz’s autobiographical narrations

Abstract

The paper analyses the way in which Witold Gombrowicz – who spent the last five years of his life near Nicea – depicts himself in relation to places, people, customs and landscapes of this part of France. The most noticeable aspect of those depictions is his position as a migrant and outsider of the literary world. Gombrowicz also plays with his image of an old genius living in the city filled with rentiers and artists; this is particularly visible in his attempts at painting different portraits of Provence to his readers and loved ones (family and friends) as well as in his personal writings. Fragments of Journal [Dziennik] and Testament, interviews and his later publications are compared and contrasted with the posthumously published Kronos. Gombrowicze’s autobiographical narrations serve as both the ways of self-creation and mythologisation of his own life and the attempt to understand his own fate. They create a literary self-portrait painted at the end of his life.