I could add a hundred more, two hundred more shades to my personality … each one independent of the others, following a path of its own.

Of what literary expression would I be capable? How could I fend for myself in these conditions?

A Frenchman or an Englishment never experiences such lack of harmony – at least not to this extent. Whatever a Frenchman or an Englishman might feel individually, even if he is profoundly torn within himself, he will aways seek refuge in a certain national, English or French form, which has been elaborated over the centuries.

I was Polish.

Gombrowicz's Polishness, his disharmony means any beginning is an arbitrary one, and the attempt to finish a book in the same style (the same shade) is only an arbitrary effort of will.