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Home , Alfred Schreyer, Bruno Schulz, Julian Tuwim

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 ] 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. , 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 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 . 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 ). The population consisted in was discovered near Drohobycz and the town’s equal parts of , , 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. labyrinths into a comprehensible world is one of Their traces scattered throughout his works were the main motives behind Schulz’s work. The Town

Photograph: Greetings from Drohobycz, in a theatrical gesture, as if, through pathetic the market square. inflections, they tried to display the elegance of “Market Square was empty and yellow with heat, their fans of leaves with silver lining, like the fur dust swept away by hot winds like in a biblical of noble vixens. The old houses, polished by the desert. The thorny acacias, growing out of the winds of innumerable days, played tricks with emptiness of the yellow square, boiled over it the reflections of the great atmosphere, with with their bright leaves, their bouquets of nobly echoes and memories of hues scattered in the membered green filigrees, like the trees in old depths of color weather. It seemed as if whole tapestries. It seemed that those trees took on generations of summer days, like patient the appearance of wind, rustling their crowns stonemasons chipping off the mildewed plaster of old facades, had broken off the deceptive varnish, revealing more and more clearly the true face of the houses, the physiognomy of fate and life that had Drohobycz, Stryjska Street been shaping them from the inside. Now the “Through the corridors of books, from between the cracks its imitative character. At times, one has the impression that it is only the small section windows, blinded by the glare of the empty square, long shelves filled with magazines and prints, we had fallen asleep; the balconies confessed their make our way out of the shop and find ourselves in immediately before us that falls into the expected pointillistic picture of the city thoroughfare, while emptiness to heaven, the open doorways smelled that part of the Street of Crocodiles where from the of coolness and wine.” higher level one can see almost its whole length on either side, the improvised masquerade is already disintegrating and, unable to endure, “August,” The Street of Crocodiles down to the distant, as yet unfinished buildings of [with emendations] the railway station. It is, as usual in that district, crumbles behind us into plaster and sawdust, a gray day, and the whole scene seems at times like into the storeroom of an enormous empty theater. a photograph in an illustrated magazine, so gray, so The tenseness of an artificial pose, the assumed one-dimensional are the houses, the people, and the earnestness of a mask, an ironical pathos tremble vehicles. on this façade.” Reality is as thin as paper and betrays with all its “The Street of Crocodiles,” The Street of Crocodiles Scraps of Beauty

“Thus for the first time our still very confused horoscopes crossed. They met and disentangled with indifference. We did not yet understand our fate in this early stellar aspect and we walked out matter-of-factly, ringing the glass doors.” (“Spring,” Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass)

City Fathers

“These were the gentlemen of the Great the Great Synhedrion, walked up and down in Congregation, distinguished and solemn men, dignified and serious groups, and led earnest stroking their long well-groomed beards and discussions in undertones. Having spread holding sober and diplomatic discourses. But even themselves over the whole extensive mountain in those ceremonial conversations, in the looks country, they wandered in twos and threes on which they exchanged, glimmers of smiling irony distant and circuitous roads. Their short dark could be detected. Around these groups milled the silhouettes peopled the desert plateau over which common crowd, a shapeless mob without a face hung the dark and heavy sky, full of clouds cut into or individuality. It somehow filled the gaps in the long parallel furrows, into silvery white streaks, landscape, it littered the background with the bells showing in its depth the ever more distant strata and rattles of its thoughtless chatter. of air.” “The Night of the Great Season,” (…) Meanwhile, the fathers of the city, members of The Street of Crocodiles Scraps of Beauty “All of matter undulates with infinite possibilities that pass through it with dull chills. Waiting for the living breath of the spirit, it flows into itself

endlessly, tempting with a at the Table of Nudes A Group thousand sweet curves and softnesses which it generates in a blind delirium."

"Bianca's eyes deepen, her cheeks are burning, her charming smile parts her lips. Does she want to confide in me? A most intimate confession? Bianca talks about betrayal and her face burns with ecstasy, her eyes narrowing from the flow of rapture; while writhing under the blanket like a lizard she insinuates that I have betrayed the most sacred of missions. She stubbornly fathoms my pale face with her squinting sweet eyes. – “Do it,” – she whispers insistently – “do it and you will become one of them, one of those black Negroes ...” And when, filled with despair, I put a finger to my lips in an imploring gesture, - her face suddenly turns evil and venomous."

“Spring,” Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass Scraps of Beauty

“And so those souls passed

slowly into the dark aphelion, and a Man Women Two the sunless side of life, whose shapes no one alive has ever glimpsed. They lay like the dying, wheezing terribly and weeping, while the dead weight of a black eclipse bore down on their spirits.” “A July Night,” Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

“Autumn! Autumn! The Alexandrine epoch of the year, gathering all the barren wisdom of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the solar cycle into its enormous libraries. Oh, those aged mornings, as yellow as parchment, sweet with wisdom, like late evenings! those guilefully smiling mornings, like shrewd palimpsests, many-layered, like old, yellowed books. Oh, the autumnal day, that old jester-librarian, clambering up his ladders in a slipped-down dressing gown, sampling the preserves of all ages and cultures! Each landscape is like an entrance to an old romance to him. How magnificently he plays, sending the heroes of old novels on journeys under that smoky and honey-colored sky, that cloudy and sad, late sweetness of the light! What new adventures will Don Quixote meet with in Soplicowo? How will Robinson Crusoe fare after returning to his native Bolechów?” “A Second Autumn,” Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass Letters “Isn’t this grand: to mean everything to someone?”

Nearly everything we know about Schulz comes from his correspondence. To some extent sentenced to a life in Drohobycz, he traveled little of thoughts. Out of them gradually emerged future and maintained contact with the world through novels. “ I once lived through the writing of letters,” letters. We find in them – the ones that have made it Schulz confessed in a letter to Pleśniewicz; “at the to our day and those are few – details of personal time it was my only creativity.” It was in the letters life, descriptions of emotional states, expressions of that Cinnamon Shops gradually appeared. hope and doubt, and artistic views. On the one hand Schulz’s first fantastic stories emerged in the they speak to Schulz’s need for being understood, correspondence with Debora Vogel, a writer he for overcoming loneliness and confirming the sense met in Witkacy’s studio in . of his own existence. In a letter to the Polish writer After the publication of his first writings, there Tadeusz Breza, he wrote: “I need an ally. I need the begins an exchange of letters with the luminaries closeness of a kindred spirit. I crave some affirma- of the contemporary Polish literary scene: Witold tion of the inner world whose existence I postulate. Gombrowicz (famous Polish modernist writer) , (…) I need an accomplice in exploratory ventures. Witkacy (the nickname of Stanislaw Ignacy What is for one man alone a risk, an impossibility, Witkiewicz, an avant-garde Polish writer and a caprice set on its head, becomes a reality when painter ), Artur Sandauer (Polish Jewish literary reflected in two pairs of eyes.” critic, essayist and translator), Zofia Nałkowska Elsewhere he complains to Breza: “I fail to find any (renowned Polish author), and Julian Tuwim charm in teaching. In this I differ eminently from (great Polish Jewish poet). my fellow teachers. I would like to be idle, not to do anything, to roam, to take a little joy in the In a letter to Witkacy, Schulz outlines one of his landscape, in the horizon which opens through guiding artistic principles: the reluctance to make the pre-nocturnal clouds onto the otherworld. real that which constitutes the subject of a work of Perhaps then the melody would return to me, art. “I think that the rationalization of the vision a wave of prose would flow in. My professional of things rooted in the work of art is like the duties fill me with horror and disgust, they freeze unmasking of actors. It is the end of the game, my enjoyment of life.” the impoverishment of the questions contained In a letter to the critic Andrzej Pleśniewicz, he in the work.” complains: “You overrate the advantages of my On another occasion he wrote the following Drohobycz situation. What I miss even here -- is to Witkacy: “Somehow the ‘stories’ are true, they quiet, my own musical quiet, a stilled pendulum, represent my manner of life, my particular fate. subject to its own gravitation, along a clear line of The dominant feature of this fate is a deep track, undistracted by any foreign influence.” loneliness, isolation from the affairs of everyday On the other hand, his letters sustained a flow life.” Letters

Not into the congealed mythology of people and stories, but into that, which, under the surface layer roars in our blood, which entwines in the depths of phylogenesis, branches into the metaphysical night. In those mythological depths, Most fully preserved is Schulz’s correspondence surely sir, you have a pact with Satan. Here, your with Romana Halpern, the muse of the poems become transcendent, simply immeasurable artistic world and the model of Witkacy’s portraits. as craftsmanship, surpassing all measure of She was his confidante but also helped him in accomplishments. Today, I am enjoying a great practical matters, such as taking care of official and triumphal moment. The spell is broken, and business in Warsaw. She once compared Schulz to what I have gathered up in admiration, exalted in Rainer Maria Rilke: “That I might mean to someone paroxysms of rapture, alien until now and turned what Rilke means to me seems both moving and against me — now confirms and accepts me. humbling to me, as well as unmerited,” he replied. I thank you. Romana Halpern was killed in an execution just Bruno Schulz before the liberation of Cracow where she was Drohobycz, 26th January, 1934 living at the time. Toward the end of his life, Schulz corresponded Letter to Maria Kasprowiczowa with Anna Płockier, a young painter who had “As if it were necessary to imprint expressions on escaped from Warsaw to Borysław. A handful of faces, as if they were something else than pure these letters shows the writer’s experiences in the expression, insightful appeal, ardent blinking to last period of his life. In this most difficult of times, our perspicacity. It is a wonder that those things she was to him “the only bright spot.” In the last are mute, unspeakable, at most mumbling letter to her, dated November 19, 1941, he wrote: indistinctly. To express physiognomy in words, “How sad it is to think that at 30 Mazepa Street, to convey it completely, to exhaust the world it where I had lived so many pleasurable moments, contains -- that’s what attracts me: he human face there won’t be anybody, it is all a legend now.” Anna as a starting point of a novel. Am I still within the Płockier, along with her fiancé, was murdered in framework of your idea? Please forgive me that November 1941 in the forest near Truskawiec. I presumed to disturb you with this letter but the abandoned torso of our conversation would not Letter to Julian Tuwim calm down, wanting to branch out and live…. You taught me that every state of the soul, pursued Respectfully yours, far enough into its depths, leads one through the Bruno Schulz straits and channels of the word – into mythology. Drohobycz, 25th January 1934” Here and There – Travels

“For greatness is scattered thinly over the map of the world…” (Bruno Schulz. “Formation of Legends: Commemorating the death of Józef Piłsudski, Marshall of ,” May 12 1935).

Drohobycz was the world of Bruno Schulz. This is where he was born, went to school worked, created his art, and wrote. This is where he was murdered. However, in the 1930s he made several trips outside of his native area. To some extent, those travels had an impact on his life. In 1930 Schulz went to Zakopane where he met the eminent writer and artist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (known as Witkacy) and participated in several of the artist’s happenings. Witkacy in turn became a great admirer of Schulz’s art and contributed greatly to its popularization. With time Schulz began to visit regularly the Polish artistic centers: Warsaw, Cracow, Zakopane, and Lwów. He made new acquaintances among artists and befriended Zofia Nałkowska, Witold Gombrowicz, and Artur Sandauer, gaining their support for his work. Years later, in his Diary, Gombrowicz wrote about his relationship with Schulz: “In my dismal literary life I have been subject to quite a few dirty tricks but I have also met people who have, out of the blue, bestowed upon me gifts with the generosity of a Padishah – no one, however, was more generous than Bruno. Never before or since did I swim in such pure joy because of each of my artistic achievements. Nobody agreed with me with such fervor, nobody enjoyed me to such an extent, nobody nursed every thought of mine as he did. I do not perceive, over the entire span of our acquaintance, a single moment of malice toward me on angelic Bruno’s part -- indeed, he fed me honey…” Here and There – Travels

Paris

Vienna Warsaw Meeting Zofia Nałkowska brought about a breakthrough in Schulz’s literary career. Not only did she receive with interest the manuscript of Cinnamon Shops that Schulz brought with him to the capital but she was instrumental in its Cracow publication. After the meeting with Schulz, Lwów Sambor Nałkowska noted in her Journal of January 16, Drohobycz 1934: “If not everything has been spelled out erotically, psychological ties have been tied. Long Zakopane Stryj walks and conversations in snow and sunshine, the vast luxury of thoughts exchanged among the miserable deprivation of life, which is dammed in and narrowed on all sides.” Schulz felt comfortable enough in the Warsaw Zakopane art world to request, toward the end of the 1930s At the end of the nineteenth century, the town a transfer to the capital but his request was became extremely popular in the artistic milieus. rejected by the Ministry. It was a place where people came to exchange ideas, His last long trip was to France in the summer of to create art, to build an independent national life, 1938. He took with him over a hundred drawings to promote the Polish cause among the foreigners in the hopes of organizing an exhibition. His hopes who stayed there. The latter issue was connected were not fulfilled. He returned disappointed and to the perception of the Polish mountain culture he described his impressions in a letter: “A horrible as the carrier of traits belonging to the ancient city. What women! I’m devastated. The real national culture. The main representative of this debauched Babylon!” idea was Stanisław Witkiewicz, Witkacy’s father. It was for these reasons, among others, that Zakopane was a cultural center visited (or inhabited by) such famous figures of Polish culture as Henryk Sienkiewicz, Władysław Orkan, Stefan Żeromski, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jan Kasprowicz, Mieczysław Karłowicz, , Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, and others. Prose

“… groaning, bearded porters who exuded an aura of autumnal freshness The author endowed the story of a merchant family from a small Galician town with mythical mixed with vodka” characteristics. He explained his premises in an expose written for the benefit of a potential German Cinnamon Shops was published in 1934, raising publisher: “The book is an attempt to extract the considerable interest. Some critics reacted history of a family, of a provincial household, not favorably, even enthusiastically. The following from their real elements, events, characters or real Polish writers and critics praised the stories: Zofia fate, but searching above them for a mythical Nałkowska, Witkacy, Tadeusz Breza, Leon Piwiński, content, a final sense of their history. Wacław Berent, Zenon Miriam Przesmycki, Leopold The author has the impression that the way to Staff, Józef Wittlin and Julian Tuwim. reach the deepest bottom of biography, the final Critical voices appeared mainly in the anti-Semitic shape of fate, is not through the description of right-wing and left-wing press and in publications external life events, nor through psychological condemning avant-garde literature. analysis, no matter how deeply it would penetrate. Initially, most reviewers emphasized the stylistic The ultimate data of a human life lie rather in its VillaAn Attack on Bianka’s qualities of the work. The language is unusually spiritual dimension, not in the category of facts rich and filled with rare metaphors; sentences but in their spiritual significance. A biography are compound-complex, there are many foreign that aims to explain its own meaning, sharpened of forgotten words. Tadeusz Breza noticed this: towards its own spiritual significance, is nothing “Schulz does not hesitate to use words such as else but myth. (…) analogon, telluric, sufficient, dementia, respiration, Nevertheless, what the book represents is no reparation. We have avoided such words in recent culturally established, historically sealed times. Foreign words give a taste of something mythology. Rather, the elements of this artificial. That’s how we felt about this and feel still. mythological idiom flow out of that obscure realm In Schulz’s mouth, however, foreign words of early childhood fantasies, presentiments, fears, do not sound foreign, they sound otherworldly.” anticipation of the dawn of life which constitutes Some, like Witkacy, drew attention to the the cradle of mythical thinking. It was worthwhile metaphysical layer of the stories. to thicken this mythical fog into a coherent, In 1935 he wrote: “Schulz is realizing the meaningful private mythology without losing its "Inexpressible" explicitly, with a facility born of authentic ground.” real inspiration and the simplicity and earnestness of a child. (…) The otherworldly is brought down to earth, as if found by miracle even though it had been lying under our feet, often trampled into the mud of banality, changed beyond recognition. Schulz shows the unfathomable strangeness of being, of the quotidian.” Prose

“There is so much unborn history”

With the publication of Cinnamon Shops, Bruno Schulz, until then a humble teacher from Drohobycz, almost overnight became a famous writer. In 1935 Adolf Nowaczyński , Antoni Słonimski and Julian Tuwim put up Cinnamon Shops for the yearly award of the magazine Wiadomości Literackie (Literary News). To no avail. But in November of 1938 Schulz was awarded the Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature.

Schulz’s second book, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, appeared in 1937. The author himself had mixed feelings about it. In a letter to Tadeusz Breza of May 11, Schulz writes: “Your The main protagonist and at the same time the But where seeks shocking praise is unwarranted. These are weaker pieces.” narrator is Joseph, an alter ego of the author. juxtapositions and utilizes the alogicality of the But soon thereafter, Rachela Auerbach, a Jewish The stories freely mix reality with fantasy. Objects dream vision, Schulz is a master of the visual world; writer and translator, writes to Schulz: “I am become alive, animals acquire human he sees and observes accurately and precisely. strongly convinced that your works can become characteristics, ordinary activities take on the These perceptions suggest connections and a revelation on a universal scale. So if you don’t character of myth.Myth is that which preserves and consequences to Schulz, and upon them he builds write in and don’t belong to the milieu maintains the outgoing world, giving the protagonist myth - distant from the ordinary vision of the world, from which you have sprung, then you must at support and a sense of security. That’s how Jerzy not surrealistically alogical, but in some ways least belong to the world.” Ficowski expresses it: “The phrase ‘fantastic obvious, and, to use a neologism, ruled by realism’ has been suggested for Schulz’s art. It is Schulzian mythologic.” Stories from both collections form an indivisible an imprecise description, although it possesses Regions of the Great Heresy whole, creating the image of a slow disintegration some validity in its vague suggestion of a symbiosis of the old world order. Following that order is an of phantom with realistic observation. Perhaps Both collections of short stories belong to the arid and sterile world, utterly devoid of mythology. surrealism? greatest accomplishments of the Prose he stupid flour of madmen messy, feminine ripeness of August misery of a creature, heroism of womanhood knot by knot, he loosened himself away from the rest through an empty succession of rooms that don’t exist balconies confessed their emptiness to heaven groaning, bearded old men who exuded an aura of autumnal freshness mixed with vodka

“Matter is the most passive and the most helpless being in the cosmos” Prose “the town’s blush darkened and blossomed purple” the night, murmuring like a shell two street lights hissed pensively on their poles never to arrive at any core the sky swarmed with a colorful rash when the sun will enter the thoughtfulness of clouds “Attics, full of antics of attics, were spreading out…”

shot out stupidly with height, ridiculously huged

“There is so much unborn history” Graphic Artist, Painter

„He had unbelievably blue eyes, made not for looking but for bottomless bluing in reverie.”

Dedication (Introduction)

Painting was Schulz’s greatest passion. newspapers with scrawls which attracted the their feet. Many of these subjugated male figures His oeuvre consists of self-portraits, portraits, attention of those around me.” resemble the author himself. A strong, palpable genre scenes from the life of Drohobycz Jews, book Around 1920, Schulz begins to produce cliché verre emotional charge is enveloped in a dark, mysterious illustrations, bookplates, and drawings tinted with prints which he combines into a whole entitled aura. From an interview with the Polish Jewish masochism which caused considerable controversy. The Booke of Idolatry. Twenty-eight of these images painter Joseph Nacht: “ Nacht: I noticed long ago He was self-taught. We do not know where he survive to our times. They depict a world in which that you find an outlet for your spirituality in learned painting and graphic techniques. This is women exercise full authority over men, who in writing, and for your sexuality – in drawing. what he said in an interview about his first at- turn worship them as idols. There is a strong Schulz: So it is. I could not write a masochistic tempts: “The beginnings of my drawing are lost in contrast between the images of men and women. novel. Anyway, I’d be ashamed.” the mists of mythology. Before I could even speak, The ladies are idealized beings with almost divine I covered all the scraps of paper and margins of attributes while the men are dwarves crawling at Graphic Artist, Painter

The drawings feature the streets and houses of Drohobycz, as well as the persons he knew there, friends and family. Some of the figures are well known townspeople, such as Miss Kuziw, the daughter of a Ukrainian lawyer, a woman of provocative beauty who is the heroine of several scenes with a sadomasochistic tinge. These works were highly appreciated by Witkacy who, in his interview with Schulz, called him a “demonologue” following in the footsteps of great European painters such as Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, and Matthias Grünewald, who "paint ...with a bizarre confidence and with the delight of debauchery subjects more hellish than heavenly, Garden Games relaxing in them with a clear conscience after the often tedious and probably forced holiness... “A Jewish Youth and Two Women in a Town Alley,” Schulz’s specialty in this domain is feminine containing a self-portrait of the artist as a young sadism combined with masculine masochism." Hasid, as well as drawings in pen, pencil, and The Booke of Idolatry was presented in the Warsaw crayon – portraits and self-portraits, sketches for gallery Zachęta in 1922. In 1928 the collection his own book covers, illustrations for his own short caused a local scandal in Truskawiec. The content stories and the illustrations for the first edition of of the works presented in the Spa House outraged Gombrowicz’s novel Ferdydurke. Drawings have the Christian Democratic Club senator Maksymilian been recovered which most likely were illustrations Thullie who deemed them to be pornography. to the novel The Messiah whose manuscript was lost Among his other works which have been preserved during World War II. Many other works disappeared are an oil painting from 1920 entitled “Encounter,” during the war as well. Graphic Artist, Painter

Bruno Schulz to St. I. Witkiewicz: The beginnings of my drawings are lost in a mythological mist. Before I could even speak, when I covered any piece of paper and the edges of the newspapers with scribbles that caught the

attention of those around me. These were at first Nudes with Two A Speeding Droshky only horse-drawn carriages. The actual procedure of riding a carriage seemed to me full of gravity and hidden symbolism. Around the age of six or seven there constantly recurred in my drawings the image of a carriage with its top up and lanterns lit coming out the night forest. This image belongs to the core They act as the strands in a solution around which capital of my imagination; it is a node of many crystallizes the sense of our world. Among these receding ranks. To this day I have not exhausted its images there is for me also the image of a child metaphysical content. The sight of a droshky horse being carried by his father through the spaces of has not lost to this day for me the power to fascinate a vast night, conversing with the darkness. The and to incite. Its schizoid anatomy full at all ends father embraces him, holds him close in his arms, of horns, nodes, knots, and pinnacles was as if separates him from the element that talks and suspended in development at a time when it wanted talks, but to the child the arms are transparent, to grow further and branch out. The carriage, too, the night reaches the child in them, and through is a schizoid product, the result of the same the father’s caresses the child continues to hear anatomical principle: many-membered, fantastic, the night’s terrible persuasions. Harassed, full put together from sheet metal bent like so many of fatalism, the child replies to the night’s fins, from horse-skin and giant wheels-rattles. interrogations with tragic readiness, fully I do not know how in childhood we arrive at certain enslaved by the great element from which there images which are of decisive importance to us. is no escape.” Graphic Artist, Painter

S.I. Witkiewicz, "Interview with Bruno Schulz," Encounter Illustrated Weekly, 1935

"Some of Schulz’s compositions appear to approach the ideal of Pure Form, in terms of the layout and distribution of dark and bright spots, as well as because of slight deformations, resulting in an unusually contrasting directional tension of individual masses. But it is discernible that the unity of the personality of the artist (not quite developed in the pure type) is still (and perhaps forever) overwhelmed by his powerful life content and cannot achieve self-expression in the purely artistic form. (...) I feel that with Schulz we are if not within genius (... ), then at least on its border. The same applies to his literature. " The End “Everyone knows that in the course of ordinary, normal years whimsical Time occasionally brings forth from its womb other years—odd years, degenerate years, somewhere in which, like a little sixth finger upon a hand, there sprouts up a spurious thirteenth month.” “The Night of the Great Season”

World War II is the last and the most tragic period of the new regime. It was at that time that Schulz he would sometimes shoot at the Jews who had in Bruno Schulz’s life. At first, Drohobycz was must have been working on his novel The Messiah stopped working. , a student occupied by the Germans. However, beginning which disappeared during the war. of Schultz’s, recalled years later that Landau was September 24th, i.e. after the Soviet invasion of The new authorities forced Schulz to paint a "horrible bandit." The German was in some way Poland and as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov paintings as well. It is known that he painted flattered by contact with the artist of Schulz’s pact Drohobycz came under the Soviet occupation. a “Portrait of Stalin” and “The Liberation of the caliber. He commissioned various paintings, Schulz clearly did not understand the new reality People of Western Ukraine by the Red Army.” including the fresco decoration of a nursery wall which came with the Red Army. He tried to Unaware of political realities, Schulz painted the with folk tale compositions at Landau’s villa, establish a collaboration with “New Horizons,” the latter in the national colors of Ukraine and ended decorations on the walls of a casino, and Lwów organ of the Soviet Writers’ Association led up in the custody of the NKVD. a horse riding school building. Schulz also painted by the avowed communist Wanda Wasilewska. He several portraits of his "guardian," which, however, submitted a short story about a “misshapen son After the outbreak of the German-Russian war, are not preserved. of a shoemaker who resembled a shoemaker’s Germans entered the city. Schulz found himself stool.” He was denied publication on the grounds under some kind of "care" of , that “we need no Prousts here.” Schulz’s prose was a Gestapo officer. Landau was known to torture not suitable as an indoctrinating or propaganda tool and murder Jews. From the balcony of his house The End

The frescoes in Landau children's bedrooms were discovered in the former villa of the commander in 2002. Unfortunately, a part of the frescoes, one revealed by Polish art conservationists, was unlawfully chipped off and taken to in . The remaining s are now in the Bruno Schulz Museum in . On the Death of Bruno Schulz in November’42 In 1942, Schulz and all Drohobych Jews were or a street ballad about two benefactors forced to move to the ghetto. He did not feel safe. His friends and acquaintances were dying around Downtown Drohobycz there lived two Gestapo him. Schulz began to plan an escape from the officers at odds with each other ghetto. He contacted his Warsaw friends and One had his Loew, the other one his Schulz Nałkowska came to his assistance. He received Loew had an establishment in town, he called false documents and money. himself a dentist At night his place was a brothel attended by the first He makes up his mind about the escape. It is Gestapo officer planned for 19th of November. Schulz in turn knew how to paint and how to This day was later called the "Black Thursday". lead discussions Shooting broke out in the ghetto. In retaliation And belonged to the other Gestapo officer – just for the killing of a German soldier by a Jewish human relations, nothing more pharmacist, the Germans organized a real On bad nights, on bad nights Loew made his girls bloodbath on the streets of Drohobych. Schulz available to the authorities was killed with two shots to the head by the In a sea of tears, in a sea of tears Schulz summarized SS-Scharfuhrer Karl Gunther when he was on his Petrarch to the SS way to get his allotment of bread. Gunther claimed that he killed him in retaliation for the killing of his Jacek Kleyff protégé, the Jewish dentist Loew.

Schulz died about 100 meters from his first family Joseph and Rudolph with Friends home in Market Square. We do not know where he is buried. The Return

After World War II, in the Stalinist era, Schulz's work was doomed to oblivion. It did not fit into social realist schemata. This changed after 1956. Thanks to Jerzy Ficowski and Artur Sandauer, Cinnamon Shops and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass were published in 1957. A period of " discovery" of Schulz and the growing popularity of the artist followed, not only in Poland but also in the U.S., Israel, Western Europe, Japan and the Ukraine. Schulz became the inspiration for artists around the world. In the theater, among others Tadeusz Kantor alluded to him in his Dead Class, one of the most important post-war Polish theatrical productions. the development of visual arts. The exhibition The motion picture Sanatorium Under the Sign of the In Schulz’s Circle, presented in 2004-2007 in Poland Hourglass,1973, directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has, and abroad, drew from the work of Polish artists, gained popularity worldwide. The film's success who at various stages of their life were inspired by was all the more surprising since many critics, the author of The Street of Crocodiles: Kiejstut including Jerzy Ficowski, felt that because of Bereźnicki, Roman Cieślewicz, Andrzej Dudziński, the way Schulz’s prose describes the world, and Edward Dwurnik, Stasys Eidrigevičius, Janusz because of the language of metaphors, it would be Kapusta, Franciszek Maśluszczak, Rafał Olbiński, impossible to make it into a movie or a play. The Henryk Sawka, Franciszek Starowieyski, and partly animated 1986 short film Street of Crocodiles Henryk Waniek. Outside of Poland, single works or directed by famous American artists Stephen and entire series were devoted to him by Sabine Vess, Timothy Quay was also very successful. Wolfgang Defant, Aubrey Schwartz, Vitaly Sadowski Schulz's work also significantly influences and many others. The Return

Schulzian inspirations reach all the way to the field words." I.B. Singer offered high praise for Schulz’s of music. 2005 saw the release of Sanatorium Under writings: "He wrote a little like Kafka, a bit like the Sign of the Hourglass. A tribute to Bruno Schulz Proust, and sometimes he managed to reach depths by the Cracow Klezmer Band, recorded with to which the others did not get." the American musician John Zorn. Schulz also penetrates into popular culture. A well-known In the the first mentions of Schulz Polish rock band has been named after the writer. appear in the Drohobycz press in the late 1980s. Bruno Schulz’s vocalist, Karol Stolarek, mentioned Then Cinnamon Shops are translated into in an interview that the choice of the name "is a Ukrainian for the first time and selected prose consequence of our interest in the person and work passages appear in Russian. In 1991the first Inter- of the master from Drohobych and is our small national Conference on Schulz takes place in tribute to him." independent Ukraine.

The person or the works of Schulz are the subject of books by writers such as , See Under: Love (1984), The Messiah from Stockholm (1987), Marko Ercolani Il mese dopo l’ultimo. Frammenti di un romanzo incompiuto (1999), and Ugo Ricarelli Un uomo che forse si chiamava Schulz (2000).

Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and A biennial Bruno Schulz Festival is organized in were among those who popularized Schulz in the Drohobycz. The program includes artistic events, United States. In his essay, “Bruno Schulz, Hidden promotion, and research. The first festival took Genius,” Updike wrote, "Bruno Schulz is one of place in the summer of 2004. In this way Bruno those great writers who can enchant the world in Schulz returned to his homeland.

Exhibition prepared by ARTAR Commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Concept: Antoni Rodowicz Editor: Piotr Krawczyk Project: Jacek Łach Presentation: Piotr Jakimiec : Katarzyna Jerzak

Reproductions of Bruno Schulz’s works made available by Museum of Literature, Warsaw Photographs from boards 13 and 23 are from the collections of the National Digital Archive