“Far from being a cow happy to re-chew its day-old feed, I want to be a master-rooster who makes all his cuisine with fresh butter and prepares his bouillon from the living flesh of modern times.”
Moacyr Scliar:
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“An attentive and untiring observer, he traveled through all of Argentina, from the shore to the Cordillera, from the pampa to the desert. His view is perspicacious and implacable; he describes what he sees, he says what he thinks and what he feels […]
“It is clear that Gombrowicz’s ferocious remarks (that spare no one, from the wealthy to the working class) are not the result of a political commitment, contrarily to many Latin-American novelists. “In his observations, we can discern an Olympian tone, haughty, aristocratic (impoverished aristocratic, but aristocratic all the same […]), which is extraordinarily balanced by his writer’s art. Even in Spanish—and the translations seem excellent—we understand his superb mastery of the word, capable of transforming reading into an act of enchantment. Through his observations, Gombrowicz is in line with the lineage of the great chroniclers of Latin America, from Vespucci to Humboldt. Their writings, preserved through the centuries, give an image of the continent that we will not find in official History. And Gombrowicz’s texts are indispensible for those who want to understand the ‘hidden face’ of our country.” Moacyr Scliar, “Le regard latin” (“The Latin View”) in Gombrowicz vingt ans après (Gombrowicz Twenty Years Later) [Trans. Dubowski] |