Ferdydurke

“Ferdydurke” combines brood slapstick and farce with profound underlying themes of power and knowledge. Based on Witold Gombrowicz’s novel of the same name, it is an importantly provocative work of 20th-century Polish literature.

An absurdic variation on the Faust legend, “Ferdydurke” centers on the young writer who is transformed by a demonic professor into an adolescent and sent back to school to “learn to do it right.” He is forced to re-experience his school days, his fatal attraction to a fashionable college girl, his best friend’s crush on a peasant boy, and other episodes from the past he’d rather leave behind.