On the Margins of Time The Map “A good way to the south, where the mapped land shifts – fallow from the sun, bronzed and singed by the glow of summer like a ripe pear – there it stretches like a cat in the sun, that chosen land, that peculiar province, the town unique in all the world. There is no point in speaking of this place to the profane – no point in explaining it is from that long tongue of rolling land over there lapping up breath for the countryside in the summer conflagrations, that boiling island of land facing south, that lone spur sticking up among swarthy Hungarian vine- yards, that this one particle of earth detaches out of the collective landscape, and tramping along down an untried path, attempts to be a world in itself. Sealed in a self-sufficient microcosm, the town and its countryside have boldly installed themselves at the very brink of eternity.” The Republic of Dreams [Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz] ery, the city rose and grew towards the center of the ternoon which steeped all corners and recesses in “Hung on the wall, the map covered it almost en- map, an undifferentiated mass at first, a dense com- the deep sepia of shade. The solids and prisms of tirely and opened a wide view on the valley of the plex of blocks and houses, cut by deep canyons of that shade darkly honeycombed the ravines of River Tyśmienica which wound itself like a wavy streets, to become on the first plan a group of single streets, drowning in a warm color here half a street, ribbon of pale gold, on the maze of widely spreading houses, etched with the sharp clarity of a landscape there a gap between houses. They dramatized and ponds and marshes, on the high ground rising to- seen through binoculars. In that section of the map, orchestrated in a bleak romantic chiaroscuro the wards the south, gently at first, then in ever tighter the engraver concentrated on the complicated and complex architectural polyphony.” ranges, in a chessboard of rounded hills, smaller and manifold profusion of streets and alleyways, the (The Street of Crocodiles) paler as they receded towards the misty yellow fog of sharp lines of cornices, architraves, archivolts, and the horizon. From that faded distance of the periph- pilasters, lit by the dark gold of a late and cloudy af- “From the moment I first saw it, that crumb of life Youth captured all the rapture, all the enthusiasm of a boy’s soul. From what heaven had this favorite of the gods “Such is the greatest misfortune: so unexpectedly fallen, dearer to my heart than not to live out your life” the most beautiful of toys?” (“Nimrod,” Street of Crocodiles) Boy with a Dog in the Window Bruno Schulz was born in Drohobycz in 1982. His father, Jakub Schulz, was a merchant, accountant, and owner of a mercer shop. His mother, Henrietta, came from a Jewish Drohobycz At home the family spoke Polish and German. his father appeared hunched over, ascetically thin family of small manufacturers and wood traders. When he was eight years old, Bruno’s mother read and with a gray beard that seemed to grow white in Schulz’s family home was situated on the main Goethe’s ballads to him. He was an exceptionally the dusky depths of the shop. This is how Schulz Square, in a house on the corner. The mercer shop sensitive child. Jerzy Ficowski, the most eminent would later portray his father in his drawings and took up the ground floor while the family apartment expert on Schulz’s biography, writes: “Bruno tales, endowing him with the attributes of a magus was situated on the first floor. The image of this was not only sickly and physically frail. His and rendering him the central figure in Schulzian house, which no longer exists today, can be found hypersensitivity was evidenced in his fear of mythology. Little Brunio (as he was called) made in the short stories Cinnamon Shops translated into going out without his mother onto the balcony; his visits to the dry goods shop, which enabled him to English as The Street of Crocodiles. timidity with his playmates, whom he avoided, and sense the superiority of his father’s mercantile from whom he retreated into solitude; and the rituals to his mother’s domestic bustle. Only many The Schulzs, while not Orthodox, were members inexplicable tenderness he could show the last years after the death of his father did Bruno’s of the local Jewish religious community. Bruno autumn flies that struck the window panes – by mythological consecration of him occur. The shop Schulz himself, however, spoke and wrote in Polish feeding them sugar. “ was already long gone when Bruno rendered it the and invariably considered himself Polish and spoke Jerzy Ficowski, Regions of the Great Heresy: Bruno setting for the many mythic peripeteia in his two of himself as such. Years later (in 1936), he left Schulz, A Biographical Portrait cycles of stories. the Jewish religious community and acquired The relationship with his father was of a different Jerzy Ficowski, Regions of the Great Heresy: Bruno the status of a nonbeliever. nature: “In Bruno’s earliest recollected images, Schulz, A Biographical Portrait Youth Schulz attended the Franz Josef Imperial Royal mother in 1931. “I had a hidden resentment against Gymnasium. He was a very good student but, my mother for the ease with which she had because of his shyness, had difficulty making recovered from Father’s death. She had never loved friends. He graduated with excellent grades and him, I thought, and as Father had not been rooted in began studies at the Lwów Polytechnic, in any woman’s heart, therefore he could not merge the Department of Land Building (architecture). with any reality and was therefore condemned to At that time due to the father’s illness the family’s float eternally on the periphery of life, in half-real financial situation deteriorated and they had to regions, on the margins of existence.” leave the house on the market square and move (“Cockroaches,” Street of Crocodiles) in with Bruno’s older sister Hania and her family. He never finished his studies. Between 1914 and 1918 Schulz spends time in The deteriorating financial situation confronts Vienna. He soaks up the literary and artistic Schulz with a dilemma: whether to choose his atmosphere of the city which is then considered beloved painting or a paid teaching position. He to be the cultural capital of Europe. He attends becomes a teacher of drawing and handicrafts. exhibitions. In 1917, he paints his first self-portrait This job, which begins in 1924 in the same depicting the artist in front of a drafting table. gymnasium where he had studied, will be for him The writer’s father Jakub died in 1915 and his an endless succession of trials. The Town “The essence of reality is meaning. That which has no meaning is not real for us. Every fragment of reality lives due to the fact that it partakes of some sort of universal meaning.” (“The Mythologization of Reality,” The Republic of Dreams ) Before World War II Drohobycz was a small town was an important trading center, and, after Lwów of some 30,000 inhabitants, situated within and Cracow, the third wealthiest town in Galicia. the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire near At the end of the nineteenth century, crude oil Lwów (now Ukraine). The population consisted in was discovered near Drohobycz and the town’s equal parts of Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians which is importance began to grow. why it was called “the one city and a half.” In 1931, among the 32,000 inhabitants 8,400 were Eastern Schulz was connected to Drohobycz as if with an Orthodox, 10,600 were Roman Catholics and 11,900 indestructible umbilical cord. He rarely left were followers of Judaism. the town, and when he did it was for short periods of time. As he wrote in the Republic of Dreams, The area near the town was known for its salt mines the place resembled “a self-sufficient microcosm some of which are still active today. To this day in (…) installed at the very brink of eternity “. It is Drohobycz one can purchase salt mined in the area. his “chosen land,” “the town unique in all the Until the end of the nineteenth century the town world.” The Town The town was an inspiration -- its narrow streets, significant for his creative process: they were low buildings, houses, and temples. The charm of the guarantee of authenticity for his imagined the provinces, empty streets, overgrown garbage world, in some measure certifying his vision, dumps, and suburban villas: Schulz faithfully the vision of a reconstructed mythology renders the character of Drohobycz. These are of childhood.” real streets, houses, and temples but at the same time the town appears as a labyrinth, a magical Schulz’s original house is a familiar, safe world. world. Jerzy Ficowski discusses this in his book Outside, however, there ruled an exuberant cosmos, Regions of Great Heresy: “Nevertheless the discovery forever metamorphosing itself. Somewhere therein of real elements located in actual time and space is reflected the change the town underwent after in Schulz’s mythological events is both fascinating crude oil was discovered in the area and it became and relevant. Schulz scrupulously preserved subject to the “spirit of economics.” The need to the rudimentary details that endowed his own return to what is familiar, to transform new artistic creation with a kind of verisimilitude.