Cosmos

Cosmos

A dark, quasi-detective novel, <I>Cosmos </I>follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.<BR>Published in 1965, <I>Cosmos </I>is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work. Two young men meet by chance in a Polish resort town in the Carpathian Mountains. Intending to spend their vacation relaxing, they find a secluded family-run <I>pension. </I>But the two become embroiled first in a macabre event on the way to the <I>pension, </I>then in the peculiar activities and psychological travails of the family running it. Gombrowicz offers no solution to their predicament.<BR><I>Cosmos </I>is translated here for the first time directly from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt, translator of <I>Ferdydurke.</I></P>