ROSŁAW GRZEGÓRZEK Gombrowicz’s Compote for Wokulski’s Fish – On Form and Self-Presentation as Yet Another Version of the Theatrum Mundi

Abstract

Although The Doll by Prus and Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke seem to differ in almost every respect apart from their genre, an attentive reader cannot help noticing a shared element: the creative use, in both works, of the old metaphor of the world as a theatre. A comparative reading of selected scenes, combined with an analysis of the main characters’ behaviour, makes it possible to propose the thesis that both Prus and Gombrowicz, in their most famous novels, anticipated the theory of self-presentation—genetically linked to Shakespeare’s old metaphor, yet defined at the intersection of sociology and psychology only in the second half of the twentieth century.