Ferdydurke and other works of Gombrowicz were presented by many theatres, especially before 1986, when the first nine volumes of his works were published. It was the only official way to gain access to his work. Gombrowicz's first dramatic text was Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, 1938), a tragicomedy. It describes what the enslavement of form, custom, and ceremony brings. In 1939 he published in installments in two daily newspapers the popular novel Opętani, in which he interlaced the form of the Gothic novel with that of sensational modern romance. In Ślub, written just after the war, Gombrowicz used the form of Shakespeare's and Calderón’s theatre. He also critically undertook the theme of the romantic theatre (Zygmunt Krasiński, Juliusz Słowacki) and portrayed a new concept of power and a human being created by other people. In Trans-Atlantyk Gombrowicz juxtaposes the traditional vision of a human who serves values with a new vision according to which an individual frees oneself of this service and fulfills oneself. The representative of this model of humanity is the eccentric millionaire Gonzalo. The novel Pornografia shows Poland in wartime, when the eternal order traditional culture, based on faith in God, collapsed. In its place appears a new reality where the elderly and the young cooperate to realise their cruel fascinations streaked with eroticism. Kosmos is Gombrowicz's most complex and ambiguous work. In it he portrays how human beings create a vision of the world, what forces, symbolic order and passion take part in this process and how the novel form organises itself in the process of creating sense. Operetka, Gombrowicz's last play, uses operetta form to grotesquely present 20th-century totalitarianism. At the same time, he expresses a tentative faith in rebirth through youth. According to many scholars his most outstanding work is Dziennik (Diaries), not only as a literary work but also philosophical: "The affectingly cool critic of European tradition, the diagnostician of the disease afflicting contemporary thought, the great artist and moralist. If I were to designate a worthy successor to the Joyful science of Nietzschean criticism and poetry in twentieth century literature, I would answer: Gombrowicz in his Diary" (Wojciech Karpiński). Dziennik was published in serial form in Kultura from 1953 to 1969. It is not only Gombrowicz's record of life but also a philosophical essay, polemic, collection of auto-reflection on folk poetry, views on politics, national culture, religion, tradition, and