{"id":33349,"date":"2012-06-14T10:01:02","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T14:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=33349"},"modified":"2012-06-14T07:01:13","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T11:01:13","slug":"thursday-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/14\/thursday-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday: Me"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Witold and Rita Gombrowicz with their dog Psina in Vence, France, 1967.<\/p><\/div>\n

Should I tell or not? A year ago, more or less, the following happened to me. I stopped in a caf\u00e9 on Callao Street to use the bathroom \u2026 All kinds of drawings and scribblings were on the walls. Yet the unconscious urge would never have assailed me, like a poisonous dart, if I hadn\u2019t accidentally fumbled across a pencil in my pocket. The pencil turned out to be an ink pen.<\/p>\n

Enclosure, isolation, the certainty that nobody would see, some sort of stillness \u2026 and the murmur of water whispered: do it, do it, do it. I took out the pencil. I wet the tip. I wrote on the wall, high up so it would be hard to erase, I wrote something quite vulgar in Spanish like:<\/p>\n

\u201cLadies and gentlemen, please comply \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n

S\u2014 not on the toilet seat but straight in its eye!\u201d<\/p>\n

I hid the pen. Opened the door. I walked through the whole caf\u00e9 and mingled with the crowd on the street. And the graffito remained.<\/p>\n

From that time on, I exist with the awareness that my graffito is still there.<\/p>\n

I hesitated to disclose this. I hesitated not for reasons of prestige but because the written word should not serve to spread certain \u2026 manias. But I won\u2019t hide the fact that never would I have dreamed that such things could be this \u2026 electrifying \u2026 and I can hardly refrain from reproaching myself. I wasted so many years without tasting this inexpensive and risk-free delight. There is something in this \u2026 something strange and intoxicating \u2026 resulting most likely from the horrible openness of the graffito, which is there on the wall, in union with the absolute secrecy of the perpetrator who cannot be found out. And also because this is not at all on the level of my work \u2026<\/p>\n

Read previous installments here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>Diary<\/a> by Witold Gombrowicz, translated by Lillian Vallee, forthcoming from Yale University Press, part of the Margellos World Republic of Letters<\/a> series.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should I tell or not? A year ago, more or less, the following happened to me. I stopped in a caf\u00e9 on Callao Street to use the bathroom \u2026 All kinds of drawings and scribblings were on the walls. Yet the unconscious urge would never have assailed me, like a poisonous dart, if I hadn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":355,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[489],"tags":[3357,7823,6386,7822,75],"class_list":["post-33349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","tag-diary","tag-gombrowicz-week","tag-graffiti","tag-witold-gombrowicz","tag-writing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThursday: Me by Witold Gombrowicz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 14, 2012 \u2013 Should I tell or not? A year ago, more or less, the following happened to me. 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