ABSTRACT
In Jerzy Jarzębski’s article, an interrogation of Gombrowicz’s relationship to politics assumes an interrogation about his attitude toward the collective. To the “Ferdydurkean individual” or generation born at the beginning of the twentieth century, Jarzębski opposes the “wild youth” model, a generation associated with “military schools,” sports, the modern world, and the submission to a leader and acceptance of cruelty. Jarzębski traces Gombrowicz’s obsessive image of a “wild youth” in his writings, with special attention to Possessed (1939) and Pornografia (1960), connecting this image with the emergence of the new individual’s collective behavior in the interwar period (1918-1939) throughout Europe.
