Word: witold
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COSMOS by Witold Gombrowicz. 166 pages. Grove...
...more skilled practitioners of the sexual shell game was Witold Gombrowicz, a Polish writer who spent much of his adult life in Argentina, totally unknown to the world. He died at 64 in France last year, after enjoying a muffled underground explosion of fame. Cosmos won the $20,000 International Prize for Literature. It is an achingly attenuated suspense story -except that it turns out that there is no object to the chase, no rich cache of contraband drugs, no key diplomatic documents and no blondes. Just a hanged sparrow, a hanged cat, a mysterious bit of wood suspended...
...discoverer of these pitiful carcasses is Witold, a dour, perfervid student who, with an equally jittery friend, has decided to board in the country while studying for exams. They tramp along a road in stifling heat until they encounter the hanged sparrow. As if it were a signal, they check into the next house with a guest sign. There are no other guests, only a retired bank manager named Leo Wojtys, his wife, his daughter and her new husband and, for that obligatory grace note, a deformed servant...
...Combustion. The neurasthenic students sit through stultifying dinners and spend the rest of their time finding unsettling "clues." But to what? Though the final horror is forestalled, the psychic answer comes halfway through the book. Upset by noises and "arrows" that he thinks he sees in the ceiling cracks, Witold goes out at night, climbs a tree in the front yard and watches the daughter and her husband preparing for bed. On his way back to his room, he strangles and hangs...
...including four premieres. It is all part of Dartmouth's five-year-old Congregation of the Arts, which each summer invites three composers to a fortnight of per forming, reviewing and explaining a representative sample of their music. Carlos Chavez, the late Zoltan Kodaly and Witold Lutoslawski are among past composers in residence; Frank Martin and Aaron Copland are Henze's predecessor and successor this year...