Witold Gombrowicz
Encyclopedia
Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 in Małoszyce, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Congress Poland
Congress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...

, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 – July 24, 1969 in Vence
Vence
Vence is a commune set in the hills of the Alpes Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France between Nice and Antibes.-Population:-Sights:...

, near Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

) was a Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 novelist and dramatist. His works are characterized by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and an absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke is a novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, published in 1937. In this darkly humorous story, Joey Kowalski describes his transformation from a 30-year-old man into a teenage boy. Kowalski's exploits are comic and fervid -- for this is a modernism closer to Dada and the Marx...

, which presented many of his usual themes: the problems of immaturity and youth, the creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature.

Polish years

Gombrowicz was born in Małoszyce, in Congress Poland
Congress Poland
The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...

, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 to a wealthy gentry family. He was the youngest of four children of Jan and Antonina (née Kotkowska.) In 1911 his family moved to Warsaw. After completing his education at Saint Stanislaus Kostka's Gymnasium in 1922, he studied law at Warsaw University (in 1927 he obtained a master’s degree in law.) Gombrowicz spent a year in Paris where he studied at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales; although he was less than diligent in his studies his time in France brought him in constant contact with other young intellectuals. He also visited the Mediterranean.

When he returned to Poland he began applying for legal positions with little success. In the 1920s he started writing, but soon rejected the legendary novel, whose form and subject matter were supposed to manifest his 'worse' and darker side of nature. Similarly, his attempt to write a popular novel in collaboration with Tadeusz Kępiński turned out to be a failure. At the turn of the 20's and 30's he started to write short stories, which were later printed under the title Memoirs Of A Time Of Immaturity. From the moment of this literary debut, his reviews and columns started appearing in the press, mainly in the Kurier Poranny (Morning Courier). He met with other young writers and intellectuals forming an artistic café society in Zodiak and Ziemiańska
Ziemiańska
Ziemiańska or Mała Ziemiańska was a coffeehouse in Warsaw. It was notable as a meeting place of many of Poland's most prominent artists of the inter-war period....

, both in Warsaw. The publication of Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke is a novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, published in 1937. In this darkly humorous story, Joey Kowalski describes his transformation from a 30-year-old man into a teenage boy. Kowalski's exploits are comic and fervid -- for this is a modernism closer to Dada and the Marx...

, his first novel, brought him acclaim in literary circles.

Exile in Argentina

Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Gombrowicz took part in the maiden voyage of the Polish cruise liner, Chrobry
MS Chrobry
MS Chrobry was a Polish passenger ship built for the Poland - South America Line to replace the aging and the . She was named in honour of the first Polish king Bolesław I Chrobry....

, to South America. When he found out about the outbreak of war in Europe, he decided to wait in Buenos Aires till the war was over, although he reported to the Polish legation in 1941 but was considered unfit for military duties. Gombrowicz was actually to stay in Argentina until 1963 — often, especially during the war, in great poverty.

At the end of the 1940s Gombrowicz was trying to gain a position among Argentine literary circles by publishing articles, giving lectures in Fray Mocho café, and finally, by publishing in 1947 a Spanish translation of Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke is a novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, published in 1937. In this darkly humorous story, Joey Kowalski describes his transformation from a 30-year-old man into a teenage boy. Kowalski's exploits are comic and fervid -- for this is a modernism closer to Dada and the Marx...

written with the help of his friends, among them Virgilio Piñera
Virgilio Piñera
Virgilio Piñera Llera was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist.Among his most famous poems are "La isla en peso" , and "La gran puta" . He was a member of the "Origenes" literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group...

. Today, this version of the novel is considered to be a significant literary event in the history of Argentine literature; however, when published it did not bring any great renown to the author, nor did the publication of Gombrowicz's drama Ślub in Spanish (The Marriage
The Marriage (Gombrowicz play)
The Marriage is a play by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, written in Argentina after World War II. The narrative takes place in a dream, where the dreamer transforms into a king and plans to marry his fiancée in a royal wedding, only as a means to save their integrity. A Spanish translation...

, El Casamiento) in 1948. From December 1947 to May 1955 Gombrowicz worked as a bank clerk in Banco Polaco, the Argentine branch of Pekao SA Bank
Bank Pekao
Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spółka Akcyjna, commonly using the shorter name Bank Pekao S.A., is a universal bank with its headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Italian bank UniCredit owns 59% of the company....

. In 1950 he started exchanging letters with Jerzy Giedroyc
Jerzy Giedroyc
Jerzy Giedroyc was a Polish writer and political activist....

 and from 1951 he started having works published in the Parisian journal Culture, where, in 1953, fragments of Dziennik (Diaries) appeared. In the same year he published a volume of work which included the drama Ślub (The Marriage) and the novel Trans-Atlantyk, where the subject of national identity on emigration was controversially raised. After October 1956 four books written by Gombrowicz appeared in Poland and they brought him great renown despite the fact that the authorities did not allow the publication of Dziennik (Diary).

In his serialized Diary (1953–68) Gombrowicz alluded to his homosexual experiences with 'lower class' young men; a theme which he picked up again when interviewed by Dominique de Roux in A Kind of Testament (1973). In the 1960s Gombrowicz became recognized globally and many of his works were translated, including Pornografia (Pornography) and Kosmos (Cosmos). His dramas were staged in many theatres all around the world, especially in France, Germany and Sweden.

Last years in Europe

Having received a scholarship from the Ford Foundation, Gombrowicz returned to Europe in 1963. He stayed for a year in West Berlin, where he endured a slanderous campaign organized by the Polish authorities. His health had deteriorated during this stay and he was not able to go back to Argentina. Gombrowicz came back to France in 1964. He spent three months in Royaumont abbey near Paris, where he met Rita Labrosse, a Canadian from Montreal who studied contemporary literature. In 1964 he moved to the Côte d'Azur in the south of France with Rita Labrosse, whom he employed as his secretary. He spent the rest of his life in Vence
Vence
Vence is a commune set in the hills of the Alpes Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France between Nice and Antibes.-Population:-Sights:...

, near Nice. There he enjoyed the fame which culminated in May 1967 with the Prix International
Prix Formentor
The Prix Formentor was an international literary prize awarded between 1961 and 1967. The Formentor Group offered two prizes, the Prix Formentor and the Prix International, . The Prix Formentor was given to previously unpublished work and the the Prix International was given to work already in...

. However, Gombrowicz's health condition prevented him from thoroughly benefiting from this late renown. On December 28, 1968, Gombrowicz married Rita Labrosse.

Gombrowicz wrote in Polish, however, in view of his decision not to allow his works to be published in his native country until the ban on the unabridged version of Dziennik, in which he described the Polish authorities' slanderous attacks on him, was lifted he remained a largely unknown figure to the general reading public until the first half of the 1970s. Despite this, his works were printed in Polish by the Paris Literary Institute of Jerzy Giedroyc and translated into more than 30 languages. Moreover, his dramas were repeatedly staged in the most important theatres in the whole world by the prominent directors such as Jorge Lavelli, Alf Sjöberg, Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...

 along with Jerzy Jarocki and Jerzy Grzegorzewski in Poland.

Writing

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. Aesthetically, Gombrowicz's clear and precise descriptions criticise Polish Romanticism, and he once claimed he wrote in defiance of Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...

 (especially in “Trans-Atlantic”). The writing of Gombrowicz contains links with existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

 and with structuralism
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...

. Gombrowicz's work is also well-known for its playful allusions and satire, as when in "Trans-Atlantic", a section of the text takes the form of a stylized 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 links him with the intellectual heritage of Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

, Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

, Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...

, Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

, and Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

. As Gombrowicz stated, "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, with the exception of Opętani. The language of the writer includes frequent neologisms. Moreover, he created 'keywords' which 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" the author above all engages in paradoxes which control the entrance of the individual into the social world and also the repressed passions which rule human behaviour. In Ferdydurke (his first novel, published in autumn 1937, the date on the cover 1938) discusses form as a universal category which was understood both in the philosophical, sociological, and aesthetic sense. Furthermore, this form is a means of enslavement of the individual by other people and society as a whole. Famous phrases of Gombrowicz are found in the novel and became common usage in Polish, for instance the words 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 on various Polish communities: progressive bourgeoisie, rustic, conservative. Therefore, the satire of Gombrowicz presents the human being either as a member of a society or an individual who struggles with himself and the world. Stage adaptations of Ferdydurke and other works of Gombrowicz were presented by many theatres, especially prior to 1986, before the first 9 volumes of his works were published. It was the only official way of gaining access to the works of the writer.

The first dramatic text written by Gombrowicz was Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda (Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, 1938), a tragicomedy — a play that describes what the enslavement of form, custom, and ceremony brings. In 1939 he published in installments in two daily newspapers the popular novel Opętani, where he interlaced the form of the 'gothic novel' with that of sensational modern romance. In the text entitled Ślub, which was written just after the war, Gombrowicz used the form of Shakespeare’s and Calderon
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca , was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest...

’s theatre. He also critically undertook the theme of the romantic theatre (Z. Krasiński
Zygmunt Krasinski
Count Napoleon Stanisław Adam Ludwig Zygmunt Krasiński , a Polish count, is traditionally ranked with Mickiewicz and Słowacki as one of Poland's Three National Bards — the trio of great Romantic poets who influenced national consciousness during the period of Poland's political bondage.-Life and...

, J. Słowacki) and portrayed a new concept of power and a human being created by other people. In the novel Trans-Atlantyk Gombrowicz juxtaposes the traditional vision of a human that serves the values of the new vision, according to which an individual frees oneself of this service and basically fulfills oneself. The representative of such a model of humanity is the eccentric millionaire-homosexual Gonzalo.

The novel Pornografia shows Poland in times of war when the eternal order and the whole system of traditional culture, based on the faith in God, collapsed. In its place a new drastic reality appears, where the elderly and the young cooperate with each other in order to realize their cruel fascinations streaked with eroticism. Kosmos is the most complex and ambiguous work of Gombrowicz. In this text the author portrayed how human beings create a vision of the world sense, what forces, symbolic order and passion take part in this process and how the novel form organizes itself in the process of creating sense. Operetka is the last play of Gombrowicz and it uses an operetta form in order to present the changes of the world in the 20th century in a grotesque way, that is the transition to totalitarianism. At the same time, the author expresses a tentative faith in rebirth through youth. According to many scholars the most outstanding work of Gombrowicz is Dziennik (Diaries), which was published in serial form in Kultura in 1953–1969. Dziennik is not only the author’s record of life but also a philosophical essay, polemics, collection of auto-reflection on folk poetry, views on politics, national culture, religion, world of tradition, present time, and many other important issues. At the same time, the author is able to write about the most important topics in the form of an ostensibly casual anecdote and to use the whole range of literary devices.

Two novels by Gombrowicz were filmed: Pornografia directed by Jan Jakub Kolski
Jan Jakub Kolski
Jan Jakub Kolski is a Polish film director, cinematographer, and writer.-Early life and career:Kolski comes from a family closely connected to cinema. His father, Roman Kolski, and his sister, Ewa Pakulska were film editors. His brother, Włodzimierz Kolski, is a production manager. His paternal...

 (the film was completed in 2003) and Ferdydurke directed by Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol...

.

The year 2004, the centenary of his birth, was declared the Year of Gombrowicz.

Style

Gombrowicz's works are characterized by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and an absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937
1937 in literature
The year 1937 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*January 9 - The first issue of Look magazine goes on sale in the United States.*Thomas Quinn Curtiss meets Klaus Mann.-New books:*Eric Ambler - Uncommon Danger...

 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke is a novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, published in 1937. In this darkly humorous story, Joey Kowalski describes his transformation from a 30-year-old man into a teenage boy. Kowalski's exploits are comic and fervid -- for this is a modernism closer to Dada and the Marx...

, which presents many themes explored in his further writings: the problems of immaturity and youth, the masks taken on by men in front of others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture, specifically among the nobility, representatives of the Catholic Church and provincial Poles. Ferdydurke provoked sharp critical reactions and immediately divided Gombrowicz's audience into rival camps of worshipers and sworn enemies.

In his work, Gombrowicz struggled with Polish traditions and the country's difficult history. This battle was the starting point for his stories, which were deeply rooted in this tradition and history. Gombrowicz is remembered by scholars and admirers as a writer and a man unwilling to sacrifice his imagination or his originality for any price, person, god, society, or doctrine.

Translations

Gombrowicz's novels and plays have been translated into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 and 29 other languages. The recent English translation of Ferdydurke (by Danuta Borchardt) is generally considered very good, as is the interesting translation of Trans-Atlantyk (Carolyn French chose to translate it into faux 17th-century English
Early Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...

).
  • Bacacay, Bill Johnston translator, Archipelago Books, 2004, ISBN 0-9728692-9-8.
  • Cosmos, Danuta Borchardt translator, Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-300-10848-6.
  • Cosmos and Pornografia: Two Novels, Eric Mosbacher and Alastair Hamilton translators, Grove Press (reissue edition), 1994, ISBN 0-8021-5159-0.
  • Diary Volumes 1-3, Lillian Vallee translator, Northwestern University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8101-0715-5.
  • Ferdydurke, Danuta Borchardt translator, Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-300-08240-1.
  • A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes, Benjamin Ivry
    Benjamin Ivry
    Benjamin Ivry is an American writer on the arts, broadcaster and translator.Ivry is author of biographies of Francis Poulenc, Arthur Rimbaud, and Maurice Ravel, as well as a poetry collection, Paradise for the Portuguese Queen...

     translator, Yale University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-10409-X.
  • Polish Memories, Bill Johnston translator, Yale University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-10410-3.
  • Pornografia, Danuta Borchardt translator, Grove Press, 2009, ISBN, 978-0-8021-1925-4
  • Possessed: The Secret of Myslotch: A Gothic Novel, Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd. (reissue edition), 1988, ISBN 0-7145-2738-6.
  • Trans-Atlantyk, Carolyn French and Nina Karsov translators, Yale University Press (reprint edition), 1995, ISBN 0-300-06503-5.
  • A Kind of Testament, Alastair Hamilton translator, Dalkey Archive Press (reprint edition), 2007, ISBN 1-56478-476-2.

Film adaptations

  • Ferdydurke (1991) in Polish, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski
    Jerzy Skolimowski
    Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol...

    . Also known as 30 Door Key.
  • Pornografia (2003) in Polish, directed by Jan Jakub Kolski
    Jan Jakub Kolski
    Jan Jakub Kolski is a Polish film director, cinematographer, and writer.-Early life and career:Kolski comes from a family closely connected to cinema. His father, Roman Kolski, and his sister, Ewa Pakulska were film editors. His brother, Włodzimierz Kolski, is a production manager. His paternal...

    . Also known as Pornography.


Nicolas Philibert, the documentary film-maker best known in the English-speaking world for his Être et avoir, made a documentary set in the radical French psychiatric clinic La Borde entitled Every Little Thing (French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 La Moindre des choses); released in 1997, the film follows the patients and staff as they stage their production of Gombrowicz's Operette.

Opera adaptations

  • Opérette (2002) – composed by Oscar Strasnoy
    Oscar Strasnoy
    Oscar Strasnoy is a French-Argentine composer, conductor and pianist. Although primarily known for his nine stage works, the first of which Midea premiered in Spoleto in 2000, his principal compositions also include a secular cantata and several song cycles.-Career:Oscar Strasnoy was born in...

    , premiered in 2003 at Grand Théâtre de Reims, France.
  • Geschichte/History (2003) – a cappella opera composed by Oscar Strasnoy
    Oscar Strasnoy
    Oscar Strasnoy is a French-Argentine composer, conductor and pianist. Although primarily known for his nine stage works, the first of which Midea premiered in Spoleto in 2000, his principal compositions also include a secular cantata and several song cycles.-Career:Oscar Strasnoy was born in...

    , premiered in 2004 at Theaterhaus de Stuttgart.
  • Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne (2009), composed by Philippe Boesmans, premiered in at the Paris Opera.
  • Yvonne, Prinzessin von Burgund (1973), composed by Boris Blacher, in four acts, premiered in Wuppertal.

External links

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