Of Accidental Sojourns and Immature Territories: J. Conrad, J.L. Borges, W. Gombrowicz

SILVANA NOELÍ FERNÁNDEZ

Canterbury

Conferencia; The Joseph Conrad 40th Annual Conference; 2014

University of Kent- Joseph Conrad Society UK

It is a shared fact that books cover big distances and that the circulation of literature is no less a matter of words than maps and frontiers, of some routes which take time to traverse. In 1914 Joseph Conrad initiated a trip which would take him to the land of his childhood, a time when he was Józef Teodor Konrad Nálecz Korzeniowski. War broke out and he was thus sent away from his native land for a second time. Twenty five years later in 1939 the outbreak of another war would land another Pole on a foreign shore. Witold, or Witoldo, Gombrowicz was to stay in Argentina for 24 years. In 1963 he would face his second exile, this time back to Europe but never again to Poland. Albeit in different ways, both Joseph Conrad and Witold Gombrowicz have left their imprint in Argentinian literature, one in J.L. Borges, the other in the post-Borgean generation. In this paper we want to look into the continuities and the fundamental discontinuities which make up these two writers? sojourns of the in-betweens, in-between languages, nations and literatures. Thrown into swirls of expatriation and exile, these two Poles make language their home and problematise notions of fidelity to the national cause and personal freedom.