Gombrowicz, Borges, and the Fictional Cosmos (Paperback)

Paperback. Polish author Witold Gombrowicz's famously chaotic masterpiece, Cosmos, was profoundly influenced by Jorge Luis Borgesparticularly by three key stories from Ficciones. Drawing on evidence that Gombrowicz read Ficciones in 1960, as well as handwritten marginalia in Gombrowicz's copy of Adolfo Bioy Casares's La invencion de Morel, this groundbreaking study argues that Cosmos responded to Borges's literary transformations of cartography, mathematical combinatorics, and Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote. Along the way, it introduces the concept of "immaterial bibliography" to analyze imaginary texts appearing in literary works. Finally, it examines the tension between Borges's explicit racism and the ethical and aesthetic vision suggested by his fiction, revealing how rumor, rebellion, and literary inheritance shaped Gombrowicz's reading of Borges, which in turn influenced the composition of his prizewinning last novel. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. This book shows that Witold Gombrowicz's final novel, Cosmos, was profoundly influenced by three of Jorge Luis Borges's most famous stories. It argues that after Gombrowicz read Ficciones in 1960, he responded by transforming Borges's literary references to cartography, mathematical combinatorics, and Don Quijote within his own famously chaotic masterpiece. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…