You are ugly when you love her,
you are beautiful and fresh,
vital and free,
modern and poetic when you don’t…
you are more beautiful as an orphan than as your mother’s son.
Witold Gombrowicz
Gombrowicz understood something most people spend their whole lives avoiding: silence is the ultimate obscenity in a world built on performance. Ivona doesn’t refuse to play the game; she doesn’t even acknowledge there is a game, and that’s what makes her terrifying. She’s the girl at the party who won’t mirror your bullshit back at you, won’t laugh at the right moments, won’t give you the social handholds you need to pretend you’re not completely full of shit.
The Prince drags this mute, unglamorous nobody into the palace specifically because she doesn’t belong there, because her mere existence is an insult to their immaculate choreography of meaninglessness. And what happens? The whole rotten edifice starts to crack. The courtiers can’t handle someone who won’t validate their performance, who stands there like a broken mirror reflecting nothing but their own desperate need to be seen performing.
This isn’t about royalty or medieval whatever; it’s about every room you’ve ever walked into where everyone’s agreed to pretend, and you’re the only one who forgot the script. Gombrowicz wrote it in 1935, watching Europe’s elites pirouette toward catastrophe, everyone playing their part beautifully while the theater burned.
Ivona dies choking on a fish bone because authenticity, or even just refusing to fake it, is a capital offense. The full set of photos that you can see ☞ Here ☜ capture something raw about bringing this savage little parable to life.