[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-143359-en":3,"doc-seo-143359-105":31,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":21,"is_downloadable":21,"audit_status":21,"page_count":22,"language":23,"language_code":24,"site_id":25,"html_lang":24,"table_of_contents":26,"faqs":27,"seo_title":28,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":29,"read_time":30},143359,549758252649,"Ivy","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/8000253669c5317157?_k=1778319167496531819",2,"Literature","Ferdydurke - A Novel of Immaturity","Ferdydurke follows a thirty-year-old whose morning crisis of meaning ends in a dreamlike abduction by a teacher, forcing him back into the humiliating world of schoolboys. The story unfolds through distortions of scale, culture, and ideals, turning adult “maturity” into a site of puerile freedom, offense, and disreputable desire. Susan Sontag’s foreword frames the book as an epic defense of immaturity rather than youth, using a manic, absurd tone to probe eros and Polish cultural forms.","Witold Gombrowicz Ferdydurke  \nTranslated from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt Foreword by Susan Sontag  \n© 1938 Translation copyright © 2000  \nContents  \nForeword Susan Sontag Translator's Note Acknowledgments  \n1 Abduction  \n2 Imprisonment and Further Belittlement  \n3 Caught with His Pants Down and Further Kneading  \n4 Preface to \"The Child Runs Deep in Filidor\"  \n5 The Child Runs Deep in Filidor  \n6 Seduction and Further Driving Me into Youth  \n7 Love  \n8 Fruit Compote  \n9 Peeping and Further Incursion into Modernity  \n10 Legs on the Loose and New Entrapment  \n11 Preface to \"The Child Runs Deep in Filibert\"  \n12 The Child Runs Deep in Filibert  \n13 The Farmhand, or Captive Again  \n14 Mug on the Loose and New Entrapment  \nForeword Susan Sontag  \nStart with the title. Which means . . . nothing. There is no character in the novel called Ferdydurke. And this is only a foretaste of insolence to come. Published in late 1937, when its author was thirty-three, Ferdydurke is the great Polish writer's second book. The title of his first, Memoirs ofa Time of Immaturity (1933), would have served beautifully for the novel. Perhaps this is why Gombrowicz opted for jabberwocky.  \nThat first book, whose title was pounced on by the Warsaw reviewers as if Gombrowicz had made a shaming confession inadvertently, was a collection of stories (he'd been publishing them in magazines since 1926); over the next two years more stories appeared, including a pair (\"The Child Runs Deep in Filidor\" and \"The Child Runs Deep in Filibert\") that he would use, with chapter-long mock prefaces, as interludes in Ferdydurke, as well as a first play, Princess Ivona; then, in early 1935, he embarked on a novel. Had the title of his volume of fanciful stories seemed—his word—\"illchosen\"? Now he would really provoke. He would write an epic in defense of immaturity. As he declared toward the end of his life:  \n\"Immaturity—what a compromising, disagreeable word!—became my war cry.\"  \nImmaturity (not youth) is the word Gombrowicz insists on, insists on because it represents something unattractive, something, to use another of his key words, inferior. The longing his novel describes, and endorses, isnot, Faust-like, to relive the glory days of youth. What happens to the thirty-year-old who, waking up one morning roiled in the conviction of the futility of his life and all his projects, is abducted by a teacher and returned to the world ofcallow schoolboys, is a humiliation, a fall.  \nFrom the start, Gombrowicz was to write, he had chosen to adopt a\"fantastic, eccentric, and bizarre tone\" bordering on \"mania, folly, absurdity.\" To irritate, Gombrowicz might have said, is to conquer. I think, therefore I contradict. A young aspirant to glory in 1930s literary Warsaw, Gombrowicz had already become legendary in the writers' cafés for his madcap grimaces and poses. On the page, he sought an equally vehement relation to the reader. Grandiose and goofy, this is a work of unrelenting address.  \nStill, it seems likely that Gombrowicz did not know where he was going when he began the novel. \"I can well remember,\" Gombrowicz declared in 1968, a year before he died (did he remember? or was he massaging his legend?), that, when I started Ferdydurke, I wanted to write no more than a biting satire that wouldput me in a superior position over my enemies. But my words were soon whirled away in a violent dance, they took the bit between their teeth and galloped towards a grotesque lunacy with such speed that I had to rewrite the first part of the book in order to give it the same grotesque intensity.  \nBut the problem was less (I suspect) that the first chapters needed a further infusion of lunatic energies than that Gombrowicz did not anticipate the freight of argument—about the nature of eros, about culture (particularly Polish culture), about ideals—his tale would carry.  \nFerdydurke starts with a dreamlike abduction to an absurd world, in which the big become small and the small monstr","cbCaipvruMZ78QXC","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaipvruMZ78QXC","pdf",1340175,7,1,250,"English","en",105,"# Foreword Susan Sontag\n# Translator's Note\n# Acknowledgments\n# Abduction\n# Imprisonment and Further Belittlement\n# Caught with His Pants Down and Further Kneading\n# Preface to \"The Child Runs Deep in Filidor\"\n# The Child Runs Deep in Filidor\n# Seduction and Further Driving Me into Youth\n# Love\n# Fruit Compote\n# Peeping and Further Incursion into Modernity\n# Legs on the Loose and New Entrapment\n# Preface to \"The Child Runs Deep in Filibert\"\n# The Child Runs Deep in Filibert\n# The Farmhand, or Captive Again\n# Mug on the Loose and New Entrapment","[{\"question\":\"What is the central premise of Ferdydurke?\",\"answer\":\"A grown man is abducted and returned to a world of schoolboys, experiencing humiliation and forced regression. The narrative repeatedly re-enters and reconfigures “maturity” through further abductions.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the novel relate immaturity to desire?\",\"answer\":\"The foreword emphasizes that immaturity—not youth—is Gombrowicz’s key concept, linked to an unattractive but provocative inferior that governs the longing of the tale. Sexual desire is treated directly through absurdity, without explicit union scenes.\"},{\"question\":\"What kind of tone and structure does the book use?\",\"answer\":\"Ferdydurke employs a fantastic, eccentric, bizarre manner bordering on mania and absurdity. It includes mock prefaces and episodes that expand, shrink, and reshape characters and cultural ideals.\"}]","Ferdydurke - A Novel of Immaturity | PDF",1787694670,385,{"code":4,"msg":32,"data":33},"ok",{"site_id":25,"language":24,"slug":34,"title":13,"keywords":35,"description":14,"schema_data":36,"social_meta":87,"head_meta":89,"extra_data":91,"updated_unix":29},"ferdydurke-a-novel-of-immaturity","",{"@graph":37,"@context":86},[38,54,69],{"@type":39,"itemListElement":40},"BreadcrumbList",[41,45,48,51],{"item":42,"name":43,"@type":44,"position":21},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":46,"name":47,"@type":44,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":49,"name":12,"@type":44,"position":50},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":52,"name":13,"@type":44,"position":53},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/ferdydurke-a-novel-of-immaturity/143359/",4,{"url":52,"name":13,"@type":55,"author":56,"headline":13,"publisher":58,"fileFormat":61,"inLanguage":24,"description":14,"dateModified":62,"datePublished":63,"encodingFormat":61,"isAccessibleForFree":64,"interactionStatistic":65},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":57},"Person",{"url":42,"name":59,"@type":60},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-05","2026-08-25",true,{"@type":66,"interactionType":67,"userInteractionCount":20},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":68},"ViewAction",{"@type":70,"mainEntity":71},"FAQPage",[72,78,82],{"name":73,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":75},"What is the central premise of Ferdydurke?","Question",{"text":76,"@type":77},"A grown man is abducted and returned to a world of schoolboys, experiencing humiliation and forced regression. The narrative repeatedly re-enters and reconfigures “maturity” through further abductions.","Answer",{"name":79,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":80},"How does the novel relate immaturity to desire?",{"text":81,"@type":77},"The foreword emphasizes that immaturity—not youth—is Gombrowicz’s key concept, linked to an unattractive but provocative inferior that governs the longing of the tale. Sexual desire is treated directly through absurdity, without explicit union scenes.",{"name":83,"@type":74,"acceptedAnswer":84},"What kind of tone and structure does the book use?",{"text":85,"@type":77},"Ferdydurke employs a fantastic, eccentric, bizarre manner bordering on mania and absurdity. It includes mock prefaces and episodes that expand, shrink, and reshape characters and cultural ideals.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":52,"og:type":88,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":59,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":90,"canonical":52},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":25},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":93},[94,98,101,105,110,115,119,124,129,132,136],{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":95,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":97},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},80,"literature",{"id":53,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":112,"show_sort_weight":113,"slug":114},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":120,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":121,"show_sort_weight":122,"slug":123},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":125,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":126,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":128},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":130,"show_sort_weight":127,"slug":131},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":133,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":134,"show_sort_weight":133,"slug":135},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":137,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":47,"category_name":138,"show_sort_weight":106,"slug":139},19,"General","general"]