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kolorowamaja's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? No
2.75
myyu's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
madeleines's review against another edition
4.0
Kosmos można traktować jako podsumowanie twórczej drogi pisarza ze względu na fakt, że jest to jego ostatnią wydaną powieścią. Wysycenie tematyką filozoficzną prowadzi czytelnika do zbioru domysłów i metafor zamiast do otrzymania przez niego spójnej, jednoznacznej wykładni, która pozwoliła by na ułożenie się treści w logiczną całość. Jest skonstruowana w taki sposób jakby "podczas pisania tworzyła się sama" - pełna sprzeczności, osobliwości oraz nieprzewidywalności fabularnej. Wszelkie nierozwiane niejasności w otoczce przenikającej utwór czerni, grozy i przebiegłej nocy potęgują dziwaczność. Chaotyczna, lecz fascynująca lektura. Z pewnością podatna na wiele analiz, interpretacji oraz doszukiwanie się drugiego dna.
msreads's review against another edition
4.0
Kosmos można traktować jako podsumowanie twórczej drogi pisarza ze względu na fakt, że jest to jego ostatnią wydaną powieścią. Wysycenie tematyką filozoficzną prowadzi czytelnika do zbioru domysłów i metafor zamiast do otrzymania przez niego spójnej, jednoznacznej wykładni, która pozwoliła by na ułożenie się treści w logiczną całość. Jest skonstruowana w taki sposób jakby "podczas pisania tworzyła się sama" - pełna sprzeczności, osobliwości oraz nieprzewidywalności fabularnej. Wszelkie nierozwiane niejasności w otoczce przenikającej utwór czerni, grozy i przebiegłej nocy potęgują dziwaczność. Chaotyczna, lecz fascynująca lektura. Z pewnością podatna na wiele analiz, interpretacji oraz doszukiwanie się drugiego dna.
nightwater32's review against another edition
2.0
Odd book. Interesting ideas, but it also got a bit tiresome toward the end. Not my style, apparently.
bryanmyoung's review against another edition
5.0
"The valley was a fake chalice, a poisonous bouquet, filled with powerlessness, the sky was disappearing, curtains were being drawn, closing, resistance was rising, objects were refusing to join in, they were crawling into their burrows, disappearance, disintegration, finality -- even though there was still some light -- but one was affected by the malicious depravity of vision itself. I smiled because, I thought, darkness can be convenient, while not seeing one can approach, come closer, touch, enfold, embrace, and love to the point of madness, but I didn't feel like it, I didn't feel like doing anything, I had eczema, I was sick, nothing, nothing, just spit, spit into her mouth and nothing."
hey_delila's review
dark
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
bobbo49's review against another edition
4.0
A complicated mystery, with an overly observant and self-questioning narrator, filled with wonderful descriptions of people and places - all to be illustrated in the graphic novel Chris is working on.
screen_memory's review against another edition
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
There's the typical strain of thought that thinks of the cosmos as this frame in which everything's connected in some beautiful, profound relation. Gombrowicz' novel makes clear how completely idiotic this line of logic really is (while still, in a sense, nevertheless true). Logic *is* operative in this text, but it's utterly illogical. A hanged sparrow leads two characters (as if it were a signpost), Witold and Fuks, to a pension house where they board with a family for god knows how long. Within this house, they find markings on surfaces, walls and ceilings that, to them, are etched like arrows. They are pointing to something, but what?
This novel is, ultimately, a detective novel for fucking imbeciles and for idiots. What is being solved here is so insubstantial, so moronic and so stupid that anyone who follows along with any interest is as stupid as the characters. But this is the important function of this, among Gombrowicz' other texts - it disarms us of our seriousness and our search for certainty. It cleaves us clean from desiring something like development or things like meaning, character arcs, or closure. Gombrowicz, with all of his words and pages, encounters us with hands empty of anything, giving us - if he gives anything at all - a slap across the face; one whose sting we nevertheless enjoy. Because in this senseless pain we maybe learn something like humility; learning, maybe, with any luck, not to make demands on the text, letting it, instead, make its demands on us. Because this is the only way Cosmos can be read, by letting Witold and Fuks' idiocy demand that we follow along, demanding that we be duped. Tricked, leashed and led along down paths that lead nowhere and to nothing worthwhile.
In this novel, these arcane symbols - the hanged bird, the arrows - compel Witold at some point to strangle and hang a cat. He doesn't know why, and this question becomes one he must figure out, making him a detective tasked with solving his own crime, in a way, although, more broadly, what he wishes is to finally piece together this system of symbols in a way that allows them and their places and relations with one another finally make sense.
Witold of course participates in this system of symbols, producing his own by strangling then hanging the household cat, producing this symbol which is related to the hanged sparrow, although he cannot make sense of his own production, and must go on finding its relation to the symbols in the broader system. Later, one of the boarders hangs themselves - again, for no discernible reasons, especially because they were not aware of this 'cosmos' of symbols that Witold and Fuks are entangled in. Witold feels nothing for the hanged man with whom he dined every day. Because this is a piece in the puzzle he hopes to solve. While inspecting the body, he places his finger into the man's mouth, and all at once, this incomprehensible, senseless and absurd gesture that should not mean anything at all suddenly shifts the symbolic system to a tectonic degree, bringing everything into relation. Or, "a stupid corpse was becoming a logical corpse."
Because before this, there were the hangings, the arrows, as well as the mouths of the women who lived in the house (elaboration not needed for this third point because there is no possibility to make sense of this). Where before we had these loose, unconnected constellations of symbols - of hangings, of mouths - placing Witold's finger into the hanged man's mouth brings these pieces together, relating the hangings to the mouths. With all of this accomplished, after all of this searching, what does it all mean in the very end? Fuck if we know, and fuck if Witold has any hope of knowing, either.
From this encounter with the hanged man, Witold encounters an older boarder who is the most outwardly peculiar and strange, although, next to Fuks and Witold's idiot delusions, is no less odd than they are. This man, Leon's, peculiarity is with language, however, where Witold and Fuks' is with events and appearances. Leon's repeated exclamations of "Berg!" and its (de)formations function as infinitives, commands, actions, or descriptions. For example, during Witold and Leon's last conversations, Witold turns Leon's "Berg" against him, to which Leon (in surprise? defiance? anger? joy?) replies, "Bemberging with bemberg into berg!"
What does any of this mean? For us, absolutely nothing. The events and appearances Fuks and Witold are fixated on are idiotic. Similarly, Leon's language show the idiocy of language. There's a subversion happening here; one which, if you allow yourself to stoop to their dogged level and make a moron out of yourself - as we should when we buy into any text, any film, any work of art - differs vastly from most novels. So many 'high-minded' or 'deep' novels will ruminate on the failure of language to get at the 'true heart of things in the world,' conceiving of the things themselves as real and language as so skeletal and paltry. On the other hand, we have similarly stupid strains of reasoning where these worldly things are illusory, and, if language for it's part is not identically illusory, then it alone allows us access to something 'real.'
Gombrowicz here shows us that both camps are full of idiots. Both language and these worldly things/appearances are so inordinately stupid and senseless to a baffling degree. We need only look around at what orders and arranges the coordinates of our existence on the symbolic level to see the utter idiocy with which they are imputed (that is, *forced*) into relation. These symbols are, in a sense, as utterly stupid as anything we encounter in Cosmos - the novel only makes this stupidity clear, whereas we make ourselves miss this in our own lives (as we should - the point is not to wake up to the 'reality' behind the symbol, but to let ourselves be duped and buy into the symbolic perhaps more deeply. One should not abandon fiction for reality, but instead see the ways in which both are, in many segues, twists and turns, often so stupidly if not unbearably the same).
If we’re to bother ourselves with a lesson, it should be to strive to be more stupid. This intellectual urge to 'see past or through things' is an idiocy of another kind - a more debilitating kind of stupidity, one that is not the least bit productive. We should (when it matters), allow ourselves to see the symbol itself, not whatever maybe lies beyond or behind it, so as to allow the artifice its proper place and importance.
This novel is, ultimately, a detective novel for fucking imbeciles and for idiots. What is being solved here is so insubstantial, so moronic and so stupid that anyone who follows along with any interest is as stupid as the characters. But this is the important function of this, among Gombrowicz' other texts - it disarms us of our seriousness and our search for certainty. It cleaves us clean from desiring something like development or things like meaning, character arcs, or closure. Gombrowicz, with all of his words and pages, encounters us with hands empty of anything, giving us - if he gives anything at all - a slap across the face; one whose sting we nevertheless enjoy. Because in this senseless pain we maybe learn something like humility; learning, maybe, with any luck, not to make demands on the text, letting it, instead, make its demands on us. Because this is the only way Cosmos can be read, by letting Witold and Fuks' idiocy demand that we follow along, demanding that we be duped. Tricked, leashed and led along down paths that lead nowhere and to nothing worthwhile.
In this novel, these arcane symbols - the hanged bird, the arrows - compel Witold at some point to strangle and hang a cat. He doesn't know why, and this question becomes one he must figure out, making him a detective tasked with solving his own crime, in a way, although, more broadly, what he wishes is to finally piece together this system of symbols in a way that allows them and their places and relations with one another finally make sense.
Witold of course participates in this system of symbols, producing his own by strangling then hanging the household cat, producing this symbol which is related to the hanged sparrow, although he cannot make sense of his own production, and must go on finding its relation to the symbols in the broader system. Later, one of the boarders hangs themselves - again, for no discernible reasons, especially because they were not aware of this 'cosmos' of symbols that Witold and Fuks are entangled in. Witold feels nothing for the hanged man with whom he dined every day. Because this is a piece in the puzzle he hopes to solve. While inspecting the body, he places his finger into the man's mouth, and all at once, this incomprehensible, senseless and absurd gesture that should not mean anything at all suddenly shifts the symbolic system to a tectonic degree, bringing everything into relation. Or, "a stupid corpse was becoming a logical corpse."
Because before this, there were the hangings, the arrows, as well as the mouths of the women who lived in the house (elaboration not needed for this third point because there is no possibility to make sense of this). Where before we had these loose, unconnected constellations of symbols - of hangings, of mouths - placing Witold's finger into the hanged man's mouth brings these pieces together, relating the hangings to the mouths. With all of this accomplished, after all of this searching, what does it all mean in the very end? Fuck if we know, and fuck if Witold has any hope of knowing, either.
From this encounter with the hanged man, Witold encounters an older boarder who is the most outwardly peculiar and strange, although, next to Fuks and Witold's idiot delusions, is no less odd than they are. This man, Leon's, peculiarity is with language, however, where Witold and Fuks' is with events and appearances. Leon's repeated exclamations of "Berg!" and its (de)formations function as infinitives, commands, actions, or descriptions. For example, during Witold and Leon's last conversations, Witold turns Leon's "Berg" against him, to which Leon (in surprise? defiance? anger? joy?) replies, "Bemberging with bemberg into berg!"
What does any of this mean? For us, absolutely nothing. The events and appearances Fuks and Witold are fixated on are idiotic. Similarly, Leon's language show the idiocy of language. There's a subversion happening here; one which, if you allow yourself to stoop to their dogged level and make a moron out of yourself - as we should when we buy into any text, any film, any work of art - differs vastly from most novels. So many 'high-minded' or 'deep' novels will ruminate on the failure of language to get at the 'true heart of things in the world,' conceiving of the things themselves as real and language as so skeletal and paltry. On the other hand, we have similarly stupid strains of reasoning where these worldly things are illusory, and, if language for it's part is not identically illusory, then it alone allows us access to something 'real.'
Gombrowicz here shows us that both camps are full of idiots. Both language and these worldly things/appearances are so inordinately stupid and senseless to a baffling degree. We need only look around at what orders and arranges the coordinates of our existence on the symbolic level to see the utter idiocy with which they are imputed (that is, *forced*) into relation. These symbols are, in a sense, as utterly stupid as anything we encounter in Cosmos - the novel only makes this stupidity clear, whereas we make ourselves miss this in our own lives (as we should - the point is not to wake up to the 'reality' behind the symbol, but to let ourselves be duped and buy into the symbolic perhaps more deeply. One should not abandon fiction for reality, but instead see the ways in which both are, in many segues, twists and turns, often so stupidly if not unbearably the same).
If we’re to bother ourselves with a lesson, it should be to strive to be more stupid. This intellectual urge to 'see past or through things' is an idiocy of another kind - a more debilitating kind of stupidity, one that is not the least bit productive. We should (when it matters), allow ourselves to see the symbol itself, not whatever maybe lies beyond or behind it, so as to allow the artifice its proper place and importance.