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Article: "Nothing but face" - "To hell with philosophy"?: Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, and the scandal of human countenance.
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- June 22, 1998
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Northern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Scene One: A Railway in Argentina
Sitting in an Argentine train compartment, seething at the press of others, the twentieth-century Polish emigre writer Witold Gombrowicz begins his Diary entry for the year 1962 this way:
That mug ten centimeters away. The teary, reddish pupils? Little hairs on this ear? I don't want this! Away! I will not go on about his chapped skin! By what right did this find itself so close that I practically have to breathe him in, yet at the same time feel his hot trickles on my ear and neck? We rest our unseeing gazes on each other from a very near distance [. . . E]ach person is curling up, rolling up, shutting, shrinking, ...