Araştırma Makalesi
BibTex RIS Kaynak Göster

An Apprenticeship in Immaturity: Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke as an Anti-Bildungsroman

Yıl 2017, Sayı: 38, 393 - 406, 18.12.2017
https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.377435

Öz

This article argues that Ferdydurke, Witold Gombrowicz’s  novel published in 1937 in Poland, formally
and thematically subverts the classical Bildungsroman.
The seminal novel that has propagated the Bildungsroman
genre is Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s
Apprenticeship
(1795). Bildungsroman,
commonly understood as a narrative of self-formation, was conceived in Germany
in the late eighteenth century in the age of humanism and emphasizes the
harmonious integration of the individual with society. This social mission also
carries over to aesthetic idealism’s notion of form, which is modeled on the
organic unity of parts and the whole. Comparing Gombrowicz’s Ferydurke with Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, the
article contends that Ferdydurke
displaces Bildungroman’s notion of “beautiful totality” by a grotesque
aesthetics of parts that alludes to the collapse of harmonious social relations
in the aftermath of the First World War, and on the threshold of the Second.
Gombrowicz’s unique articulation of Form as the sedimentation of interpersonal
antagonism is embodied in Ferdydurke,
which, much like its protagonist, sabotages its own formal maturation through
manifestoes, theoretical reflections, narrative digressions, and prefaces to
the digressions thrown between the chapters. If the classical Bildungsroman presents us with the image
of man in the process of becoming as Bakhtin has argued, Ferdydurke enacts the dissolution of that process in its very form.

Kaynakça

  • ADORNO, Theodor (2004). Aesthetic Theory. trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • BAKHTIN, Mikhail (1986). “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism”. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • BOLECKI, Wlodzimierz (1999). “Post-Modernising Modernism”. From Norwid to Kantor: Essays on Polish Modernism. eds. Grazyna Bystydzienska and Emma Harris. Warsaw: Warsaw University Press
  • EVER, Selin (2013). The Modernist Bildungsroman: End of Forms Most Beautiful. Doctoral Dissertation. Durham: Duke University.
  • FREUD, Sigmund (1957). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14. trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press
  • GODDARD, Michael (2010). Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form. Indiana: Purdue University Press.
  • GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang Von (1995). Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. trans. Eric A. Blackall. Princeton: Princeton University Press
  • GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang Von (2009). The Metamorphosis of Plants. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • GOMBROWICZ, Witold (1973). A Kind of Testament. trans. Alastair Hamilton. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  • GOMBROWICZ, Witold (1988). Diary Volume I. trans. Lillian Vallee. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • GOMBROWICZ, Witold (2000). Ferdydurke. trans. Danuta Borchardt. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1986). Lectures on Fine Arts. trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon.
  • JAMESON, Fredric (1986). “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”. Social Text. No 15. pp.65-88.
  • JAMESON, Fredric (2007). “A Note on Literary Realism in Conclusion”. Adventures in Realism. ed. Matthew Beaumont. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
  • KANT, Immanuel (2001). Critique of the Power of Judgment. trans. Paul Guyer. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • KONTJE, Todd (1993). The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Camden House Publishing.
  • LUKACZ, Georg (1969). Goethe and His Age. trans. Robert Anchor. New York: Universal Library.
  • LUKACZ, Georg (1993). German Realists in the Nineteenth Century. trans. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
  • MORETTI, Franco (1987). The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. trans. Albert Sbragia. London: Verso.
  • MÜLLER-SIEVERS, Helmut (1997) Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature Around 1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • SCHILLER, Friedrich (2003). “Kallias or Concerning Beauty: Letters to Gottfried Körner”. Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics. ed. J. M. Bernstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • SCHILLER, Friedrich (2004). On the Aesthetic Education of Man. trans. Reginald Snell. New York: Dover Publications.

Toylukta Bir Çıraklık: Bir Anti-Bildungsroman Örneği Olarak Witold Gombrowicz’ten Ferdydurke

Yıl 2017, Sayı: 38, 393 - 406, 18.12.2017
https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.377435

Öz

Bu makale, Witold Gombrowicz’in 1937 yılında Polonya’da yayımlanmış olan
romanı Ferdydurke’ün klasik Bildungsroman türünü biçimsel ve tematik
olarak alaşağı ettiğini tartışır. Bildungsroman
türünün yayılmasını sağlayan eser, Goethe’nin çığır açıcı romanı Wilhelm Meister’in Çıraklık Yılları’dır (1795). Çoğunlukla bir öz-oluşum
anlatısı olarak değerlendirilen Bildungsroman
türü, on sekizinci yüzyıl Almanya’sında, hümanizm çağında ortaya çıkmış olup,
bireyin toplumla uyumlu bir şekilde birleşmesine vurgu yapar. Bu toplumsal
amaç, estetik idealizmin parçalar ve bütünün organik birliği üzerine
modellenmiş biçim anlayışına da taşar. Bu makale, Ferdydurke ve Wilhelm
Meister’in Çıraklık Yılları
romanlarını karşılaştırır ve Ferdydurke’ün Bildungsroman’ın “güzel bütünlük” anlayışını grotesk bir parça
estetiği aracılığıyla sarsarak, bu estetiğin 
Birinci Dünya Savaşı’nın sonrasında ve ikincisinin eşiğinde çökmüş olan
toplumsal uyumu anıştırdığını iddia eder. Gombrowicz’in insanlararası
düşmanlığın çökeltisini yansıtan özgün Biçim anlayışı, Ferdydurke’te vücut bulmuştur. Roman da kahramanı gibi bölümleri
arasına yerleştirilmiş manifestolar, kuramsal düşünüşler, anlatıdan sapmalar ve
bu sapmalara yazılmış önsözler aracılığıyla kendi biçimsel olgunluğunu sekteye
uğratır. Bakhtin’in dediği gibi, Bildungsroman,
oluşum sürecindeki insanın imgesini sunuyorsa, Ferdydurke bu sürecin çözülümünü kendi biçimi aracılığıyla
gerçekleştirir.

Kaynakça

  • ADORNO, Theodor (2004). Aesthetic Theory. trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • BAKHTIN, Mikhail (1986). “The Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism”. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • BOLECKI, Wlodzimierz (1999). “Post-Modernising Modernism”. From Norwid to Kantor: Essays on Polish Modernism. eds. Grazyna Bystydzienska and Emma Harris. Warsaw: Warsaw University Press
  • EVER, Selin (2013). The Modernist Bildungsroman: End of Forms Most Beautiful. Doctoral Dissertation. Durham: Duke University.
  • FREUD, Sigmund (1957). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14. trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press
  • GODDARD, Michael (2010). Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form. Indiana: Purdue University Press.
  • GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang Von (1995). Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. trans. Eric A. Blackall. Princeton: Princeton University Press
  • GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang Von (2009). The Metamorphosis of Plants. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • GOMBROWICZ, Witold (1973). A Kind of Testament. trans. Alastair Hamilton. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
  • GOMBROWICZ, Witold (1988). Diary Volume I. trans. Lillian Vallee. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • GOMBROWICZ, Witold (2000). Ferdydurke. trans. Danuta Borchardt. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • HEGEL, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1986). Lectures on Fine Arts. trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon.
  • JAMESON, Fredric (1986). “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”. Social Text. No 15. pp.65-88.
  • JAMESON, Fredric (2007). “A Note on Literary Realism in Conclusion”. Adventures in Realism. ed. Matthew Beaumont. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
  • KANT, Immanuel (2001). Critique of the Power of Judgment. trans. Paul Guyer. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • KONTJE, Todd (1993). The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Camden House Publishing.
  • LUKACZ, Georg (1969). Goethe and His Age. trans. Robert Anchor. New York: Universal Library.
  • LUKACZ, Georg (1993). German Realists in the Nineteenth Century. trans. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
  • MORETTI, Franco (1987). The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. trans. Albert Sbragia. London: Verso.
  • MÜLLER-SIEVERS, Helmut (1997) Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature Around 1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • SCHILLER, Friedrich (2003). “Kallias or Concerning Beauty: Letters to Gottfried Körner”. Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics. ed. J. M. Bernstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • SCHILLER, Friedrich (2004). On the Aesthetic Education of Man. trans. Reginald Snell. New York: Dover Publications.
Toplam 22 adet kaynakça vardır.

Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil İngilizce
Bölüm Makaleler
Yazarlar

Selin Ever

Yayımlanma Tarihi 18 Aralık 2017
Gönderilme Tarihi 28 Temmuz 2017
Yayımlandığı Sayı Yıl 2017 Sayı: 38

Kaynak Göster

APA Ever, S. (2017). An Apprenticeship in Immaturity: Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke as an Anti-Bildungsroman. Selçuk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi(38), 393-406. https://doi.org/10.21497/sefad.377435

Selcuk University Journal of Faculty of Letters will start accepting articles for 2025 issues on Dergipark as of September 15, 2024.