the Paris Literary Institute of Jerzy Giedroyć and translated into more than 30 languages. Moreover, his dramas were repeatedly staged around the world by prominent directors such as Jorge Lavelli, Alf Sjöberg, Ingmar Bergman, and Jerzy Jarocki and Jerzy Grzegorzewski in Poland. The salient characteristics of Gombrowicz's writing include incisive descriptions of characters' psychological entanglement with others, an acute awareness of conflicts that arise when traditional cultural values clash with contemporary values, and an exasperated yet comedic sense of the absurd. Gombrowicz's clear and precise descriptions criticise Polish Romanticism, and he once claimed he wrote in defiance of Adam Mickiewicz (especially in Trans-Atlantic). Gombrowicz's work has links with existentialism and structuralism. It is also known for its playful allusions and satire, as in a section of Trans-Atlantic written in the form of a stylised 19th-century diary, followed by a parody of a traditional fable. For many critics and theorists, the most engaging aspects of Gombrowicz's work are the connections with European thought in the second half of the 20th century, which link him with the intellectual heritage of Foucault, Barthes, Deleuze, Lacan, and Sartre. As Gombrowicz said, "Ferdydurke was published in 1937 before Sartre formulated his theory of the regard d'autrui. But it is owing to the popularization of Sartrean concepts that this aspect of my book has been better understood and assimilated." Gombrowicz uses first-person narrative in his novels, except Opętani. The language includes many neologisms. Moreover, he created "keywords" that shed their symbolic light on the sense covered under the ironic form (e.g. gęba, pupa in Ferdydurke). In the story "Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania" Gombrowicz engages in paradoxes that control the entrance of the individual into the social world and the repressed passions that rule human behaviour. In Ferdydurke he discusses form as a universal category that was understood in philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic senses, and is a means of enslavement of the individual by other people and society as a whole. Certain turns of phrase in the novel became common usage in Polish, such as upupienie (imposing on the individual the role of somebody inferior and immature) and gęba (a personality or an authentic role imposed on somebody). Ferdydurke can be read as a satire of various Polish communities: progressive bourgeoisie, rustic, conservative. The satire presents the human either as a member of a society or an individual who struggles with himself and the world. Adaptations of