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157th out of 338 books
—
222 voters
Cosmos
A dark, quasi-detective novel, Cosmos follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.
Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904�1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work. Two young men meet by chance in a Polish reso...more
Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904�1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work. Two young men meet by chance in a Polish reso...more
Hardcover, 208 pages
Published
October 10th 2005
by Yale University Press
(first published 1965)
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Sep 16, 2012
s.penkevich
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Bemberging berg
Recommended to s.penkevich by:
The Pupa
Shelves:
polish
‘How many sentences can one create out of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet? How many meanings can one gleam from hundreds of weeds, colds of dirt, and other trifles?’
Polish author Wiltold Gombrowicz explores the notions of order in a seemingly random, chaotic world in his 1967 novel Cosmos. Winner of the ‘International Prize for Literature’, which, as translator Danuta Borchardt asserts in her introduction, was ‘second in importance only to the Nobel Prize’, this psychological novel bomba...more
Polish author Wiltold Gombrowicz explores the notions of order in a seemingly random, chaotic world in his 1967 novel Cosmos. Winner of the ‘International Prize for Literature’, which, as translator Danuta Borchardt asserts in her introduction, was ‘second in importance only to the Nobel Prize’, this psychological novel bomba...more
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Be warned: Cosmos is a long 189 pages. It is tedious during most of the first half, then explodes with power. More tedium follows, escalating to the point that it becomes nail-biting tension. A tedious denoument follows a thrilling climax. Overall, the book offers maybe a 3:1 tedium/thrill ratio and no middle-ground. Gombrowicz's translated prose here is not near as dynamic as that found in Bacacay or Trans-Atlantyk. I expect that has to do with the translators' various weighings of the demands...more
A few years ago people started to use the phrase "mental masturbation" to describe conversations involving an Ivy League bull session-esque, punctilious analysis focused to a fault on details, or on the wildly hypothetical, such that they do not offer any use in the real world. Reading this short novel (detective story? confession?), translated from the original Polish, I am happy and relieved to report a different and better use for this phase. The main character in this book, a young man who i...more
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Lucidità e follia a braccetto nella notte, l’ultimo romanzo scritto in vita da Gombrowicz fa del mimetismo la sua arma principale.
Un passero impiccato e un impianto da giallo che con il passare delle pagine, degli indizi, scarta in direzione opposta rispetto al genere, allontanandosi sempre più dalla soluzione, senza per questo però perdere il lettore per strada, anzi.
Un romanzo suddivisibile in due parti, ben distinte, ma complementari, quasi claustrofobica la prima, quanto fantastica la secon...more
Un passero impiccato e un impianto da giallo che con il passare delle pagine, degli indizi, scarta in direzione opposta rispetto al genere, allontanandosi sempre più dalla soluzione, senza per questo però perdere il lettore per strada, anzi.
Un romanzo suddivisibile in due parti, ben distinte, ma complementari, quasi claustrofobica la prima, quanto fantastica la secon...more
Two young men show up at a bed & breakfast in the Polish countryside. They've come there to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city and have some peace and quiet, but it turns out to be anything but; not only do they find a macabre and mystifying corpse nearby, but the family they get to live with seems to have a lot of unresolved issues, which the two youngsters soon find themselves caught up in... and as always in these types of stories, somebody's going to die before it's all...more
COSMOS. (1965; this translation, 2005). Witold Gombrowicz. **.
Got insomnia? Here’s the cure. Gombrowicz has developed a following over the years, though his total output was rather small. He is primarily known for his other works, including “Pornografia,” and “Ferdydurke.” This translation by Danuta Borchardt has been praised for its accessibility and adherence to the spirit of the novel. This novel was the author’s last one. Gombrowicz’s writings have been described as “mad, breathless, someti...more
Got insomnia? Here’s the cure. Gombrowicz has developed a following over the years, though his total output was rather small. He is primarily known for his other works, including “Pornografia,” and “Ferdydurke.” This translation by Danuta Borchardt has been praised for its accessibility and adherence to the spirit of the novel. This novel was the author’s last one. Gombrowicz’s writings have been described as “mad, breathless, someti...more
bird.
stick.
cat.
mouths.
A comprehensive synopsis of Gombrowicz's masterpiece.
If one of the spirits of literary Modernism was the search for meaning in an increasingly anomic world, Cosmos answers the call and then some: anything suggests everything else. The resulting order of things is as comically absurd as it is horrific. The all too real world of Cosmos and its all too human instigator/victim/protagonist, the eponymous Witold Gombrowicz, confound any attempt at discerning whether these esoteri...more
stick.
cat.
mouths.
A comprehensive synopsis of Gombrowicz's masterpiece.
If one of the spirits of literary Modernism was the search for meaning in an increasingly anomic world, Cosmos answers the call and then some: anything suggests everything else. The resulting order of things is as comically absurd as it is horrific. The all too real world of Cosmos and its all too human instigator/victim/protagonist, the eponymous Witold Gombrowicz, confound any attempt at discerning whether these esoteri...more
The absurdism of Albert Camus mixed with a Hitchcockian psychological thriller. Cosmos fits in with the post WWII, philosophic, what-the-hell-is-the-point-of-life style of novel. Much of the staccato sounds of the novel are reminiscent of the minimalist music of the post war period too. The narrator tries to piece together occurrences and fascinations that, to the reader, would never carry relevance. Gombrowitcz seems to be saying, there's no meaning in any of this, the only meaning that life an...more
maybe more gomborwicz ... but really left me "hanging."
i certainly see his influence on Bolaño; the book ends with: "Today we had chicken fricassee for dinner." i am leaning towards labeling G guilty of gongorism (sorry) ... my only reason for refraining is because this last line does resonate with many "pieces" from earlier in the novel, mainly the emphasis on the mouth and its seemingly random associations with various other (repeated, repetitive) "elements."
this passage pretty much is the ke...more
i certainly see his influence on Bolaño; the book ends with: "Today we had chicken fricassee for dinner." i am leaning towards labeling G guilty of gongorism (sorry) ... my only reason for refraining is because this last line does resonate with many "pieces" from earlier in the novel, mainly the emphasis on the mouth and its seemingly random associations with various other (repeated, repetitive) "elements."
this passage pretty much is the ke...more
(some spoilers follow)
So here's the thing: I didn't want to read this book. It's been on my girlfriend's shelf for a while, and even though the younger me would certainly read it eagerly, the current me avoids such titles. I read it though, and even worse, I'm writing a review.
The problem with books like "Cosmos" is that you can either give 5 stars or 2 (or perhaps even 1). Giving 5 makes you a pretentious intellectual, giving 2 means you didn't understand the book and you're trying to rational...more
So here's the thing: I didn't want to read this book. It's been on my girlfriend's shelf for a while, and even though the younger me would certainly read it eagerly, the current me avoids such titles. I read it though, and even worse, I'm writing a review.
The problem with books like "Cosmos" is that you can either give 5 stars or 2 (or perhaps even 1). Giving 5 makes you a pretentious intellectual, giving 2 means you didn't understand the book and you're trying to rational...more
I am convinced that most people read novels such as this, can make neither hide nor hair of it, but are afraid that admitting as much is to admit that they are unable to grasp depth and meaning in the depthless and meaningless.
I give this two stars only because I have a rule about allowing one star for translation. Either the translating helped the novel and the translator deserves a star, or the translator hurt the book, in which case the author should be rewarded a conciliatory star.
I read o...more
I give this two stars only because I have a rule about allowing one star for translation. Either the translating helped the novel and the translator deserves a star, or the translator hurt the book, in which case the author should be rewarded a conciliatory star.
I read o...more
Perhaps the best way to summarize this book is Gombrowicz's start to the final chapter, chapter 9: "It will be difficult to continue this story of mine. I don't even know if it is a story. It is difficult to call this a story, this constant...clustering and falling apart...of elements..."
I appreciate "Kosmos" for it's search for meaning making. And there are such beautiful moments in that search for making meaning! i.e. "...nothing was important in the slow vanishing that makes up a ride, somet...more
I appreciate "Kosmos" for it's search for meaning making. And there are such beautiful moments in that search for making meaning! i.e. "...nothing was important in the slow vanishing that makes up a ride, somet...more
The copy of Cosmos that I own had been read previously by a college student who clearly wouldn't have read it otherwise. At first, his marginalia are serious and boring, like his essays no doubt. It's clear he had read a textbook, remembered a term or two from it, watched how his professer used it, waited for his chance to parrot him. It's also clear that he was also not thinking for himself.
Then, beginning on page 70(wherein a violent killing is described), he gets fed up. He stops thinking th...more
Then, beginning on page 70(wherein a violent killing is described), he gets fed up. He stops thinking th...more
Some consider a thick book a challenge but sometimes a novella can be a bitch to swallow too.
Birds, sticks, cats and mouths are not exactly the core elements of a pageturner, and if you combine it with the raving of the mildly deranged and the overemphasizing of pointless details who become important just because they're overemphasized, things are not improving. However, that just happens to be Cosmos in a nutshell.
Giving up crossed my mind more than once but in the end i'm glad i persevered, be...more
Birds, sticks, cats and mouths are not exactly the core elements of a pageturner, and if you combine it with the raving of the mildly deranged and the overemphasizing of pointless details who become important just because they're overemphasized, things are not improving. However, that just happens to be Cosmos in a nutshell.
Giving up crossed my mind more than once but in the end i'm glad i persevered, be...more
May 06, 2012
Corey Ryan
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2012,
european-lit
"I even stopped walking to give some thought to the fact that everyone, after all, wants to be himself, so I too want to be myself, for example who would love syphilis, of course no one loves syphilis, but after all, a syphilitic man also wants to be himself, namely a syphilitic, it is easy to say "I want to be well again," and yet it sounds strange, as if to say "I don't want to be who I am."
And so life passes on. Who are we in relation to whatever? What is the connection or connections or rel...more
And so life passes on. Who are we in relation to whatever? What is the connection or connections or rel...more
Un court roman très difficile à résumer. Deux adolescents qui ont fraichement fait connaissance au cours de leur fuite (l'un de sa famille, l'autre de son chef) atterrissent dans une pension. Chacun d'eux semble angoissé et en déroute, aspiré dans une fuite en avant. Dès leur arrivée, ils vont remarquer une succession de phénomènes curieux (bien que parfois anodins), prêter à leurs hôtes des mœurs bizarres, puis ils vont tenter d'agréger ce tout, de résoudre l'énigme qui se déroule sous leurs ye...more
Great translation.
Gombrowicz uses a barrage of neurotic, repetitive language that creates a sense of absolute paranoia and psychological horror.
"Did that windowpane look at me with a human eye?"
Gombrowicz uses a barrage of neurotic, repetitive language that creates a sense of absolute paranoia and psychological horror.
"Did that windowpane look at me with a human eye?"
After reading a bunch of hype for this novel, i was a bit disappointed with the execution. A "Metaphysical Thriller" called Cosmos is right up my alley but, there was some serious depth missing from this promising idea.
The Novel is written in a seeming stream of conscience, which is not bad in of itself, but Gombrowitcz takes some great liberties in expecting you to fully comprehend the way his characters think (which is completely unique to each individual). Ultimately, what is seriously missin...more
The Novel is written in a seeming stream of conscience, which is not bad in of itself, but Gombrowitcz takes some great liberties in expecting you to fully comprehend the way his characters think (which is completely unique to each individual). Ultimately, what is seriously missin...more
I'll lose cool points here, but that's okay. This book just did not work for me...and was basically a chore to read. Perhaps its thrust was lost in the translation (of the translation, as a fellow reviewer reports above). I'm all for an explication of an illness or mental disease, and I do think this book tweaks the underpinnings of something resembling OCD. But merely for irritainment rather than illumination.
Perhaps it could have been a beautiful poem, where its redundance would have felt more...more
Perhaps it could have been a beautiful poem, where its redundance would have felt more...more
As if he were hoping to scare the less dedicated students out of an overenrolled philosophy class, Kierkegaard once started off a book with something like "The self is a relation that relates itself to the self..." Gombrowicz seems to have grabbed hold of this tangle and run with it deep into the mountains of Poland, where an ever-larger succession of hanged animals and the mental intertwining of a deformed mouth with a smoother, prettier one occupy and torment the protagonist on an otherwise sl...more
El polaco Gombrowicz (1904-1969) gustaba llamar a Cosmos “una novela sobre la formación de la realidad”. Dentro de su bibliografía, que incluye las novelas Ferdydurke, Transatlántico y Pornografía, Cosmos muestra con especial claridad su obsesión por lo Imperfecto, lo Inacabado, añadiéndole un tercer elemento que echa luces sobre su particular forma de escribir: lo Improbable. Su carácter de novela policial hace que este tercer componente resalte; porque, como todos sabemos, no se puede resolver...more
A pair of students, two neurotic fetishists, rent a room in the country where they halfheartedly study for exams while hatching idiotic conspiracy notions about the house and the family that owns it.
There is a mildly appealing "Eastern European mania" element to the the narration of this book. However, it is also extremely repetitive and mundane--at least it was up till almost the midpoint, when I dropped it. I didn't care about the characters, and I'm not even convinced that Gombrowicz did.
There is a mildly appealing "Eastern European mania" element to the the narration of this book. However, it is also extremely repetitive and mundane--at least it was up till almost the midpoint, when I dropped it. I didn't care about the characters, and I'm not even convinced that Gombrowicz did.
Obsessive-compulsive, finicky, fidgety, microscopic, auto-erotic, pointless but sharp as a scratchy saw. Like a perverted Conan Doyle. Like a psychotic entomologist I knew, who was nearly blind and wore absurd thick glasses and could be seen wandering around the college campus trying to peer at bees from one inch away. He thought that car crashes happened somehow on account of him. Like Freud's idea of Dal� (as fanatic, as embarrassment to the institution). Could not be better.
What a great little find this was. It's one of the best short novels I've read. Gombrowicz's "cosmos," is a classic modernist universe: grim, alienated but full of dark humor and wild imagination. He's like an inverse Kafka--instead of giving you the total isolation of the individual, in his world everything is connected to everything else, but the connections are all toxic, creepy, and ultimately deadly. The translation seemed solid and assured--what a challenge, since the book's filled with wo...more
Does the Cosmos make sense or does it not? Can we deduce whether or not it does by putting together such apparently unrelated clues as the inexplicable crucifixion of a small bird with the random patterns created by plaster cracks in the ceiling of an Eastern European country home? Tune in as these and other suspenseful details add up to, well... I won't give it away, but let's just say this is no conventional detective story. Gombrowicz is a mad, and maddening genius of a writer and one of my f...more
It was just strange and had no real conclusion. He just goes back home and has his chicken dinner as if the summer trip never happened and he was unchanged despite there being some really crazy events, like the suicide of Ludwik. It was kind of cool how the story was written in a style similar to how people think; jumping from thought to thought as things come to us.
So according to this odd little book the universe is a pile of chaotic events we desperately try to marshal into some kind of order, which is probably the most hilaribad exercise in absurdity we can perpetrate on ourselves. Also, sparrows are what paranoia is made of.
It's clearly written by a writer in full control of his craft, and few authors can match the way Gombrowicz interweaves the bizarre with the mundane. In spite of this, or because of it, what should have been a jarring climax became,...more
It's clearly written by a writer in full control of his craft, and few authors can match the way Gombrowicz interweaves the bizarre with the mundane. In spite of this, or because of it, what should have been a jarring climax became,...more
This novel is a real labor to get through, then the final chapter greets the reader like a reward for having the patience to get there. Having high expectations from the blurbs by Ray Carver and Milan Kundera, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. As a piece of modernist fiction, it falls short of being alongside the best works of Faulkner or Ulysses for me. However, while Gombrowicz characters may struggle to find connections in the Cosmos, his narrative style connects completely with h...more
I don't think there is any other book quite like this one. It's really odd. I'm not sure why it is so strange. Something subtle. Maybe it has to do with the translation. Probably not. I lost my copy of it unfortunately. I think it fell down a light-well or a chimney or something. It's too bad. I'd really like to read it again and it's hard to find. There's just something ineffable about the writing and the way the book reads, some kind of strange disconnected feeling you get, some kind of parano...more
I started out disliking this book because of the confusing and rambling use of language and apparent lack of plot, but it started growing on me about halfway through. The narrator's world walks this strange line between reality and paranoia, sanity and craziness, and builds this sense of foreboding and tension that pulled me in. The unusual style- marked with a neurotic repetition of images, made up words, and run on sentences made me feel like I was actually inside the brain of the (perhaps men...more
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Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 in Małoszyce, near Kielce, Congress Poland, Russian Empire – July 24, 1969 in Vence, near Nice, France) was a Polish novelist and dramatist. His works are characterized by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and an absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke, which presented many of his usual themes:...more
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“Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.”
—
8 people liked it
“I even stopped walking to give some thought to the fact that everyone, after all, wants to be himself, so I too want to be myself, for example who would love syphilis, of course no one loves syphilis, but after all, a syphilitic man also wants to be himself, namely a syphilitic, it is easy to say "I want to be well again," and yet it sounds strange, as if to say "I don't want to be who I am.”
—
3 people liked it
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