The author of this article analyzes the ways in which Witold Gombrowicz played with traditional culture in his play Wedding. Gombrowicz polemicizes with traditional culture by using aspects of the grotesque, reversal of traditional meanings and depreciation of symbols, as well as with its symbolic spheres, such as home, king and marriage. Gombrowicz creates a world that is deprived of a center, the eternal axis mundi. The king does not symbolize the embodiment of a cosmic tree, nor is he holy, nor powerful. His office is only a social and historical cultural convention. Home is not the foundation of a community. The fate that Gombrowicz prepared for his protagonist shows how man is helpless in the face of the reality that surrounds him, including the human one, and in the face of the void of a universe deprived of traditional (ethical and ontological) points of reference.
For Gombrowicz, drama — or more generally, art — is a place to search for cultural dimensions outside the traditional norms. This search is permeated with a sense of the tragedy of human existence, just as in all of this author’s works.
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