Dieter de Bruyn and Kris Van Heuckelom-Unmasking Bruno Schulz

(UN)MASKING BRUNO SCHULZ
NEW COMBINATIONS,
FURTHER FRAGMENTATIONS,
ULTIMATE REINTEGRATIONS
STUDIES IN
SLAVIC LITERATURE
AND POETICS
VOLUME LIV
Edited by
J.J. van Baak

R. Grbel
A.G.F. van Holk
W.G. Weststeijn
(UN)MASKING BRUNO SCHULZ

NEW COMBINATIONS,
FURTHER FRAGMENTATIONS,
EDITED BY
DIETER DE BRUYN AND KRIS VAN HEUCKELOM
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2694-0
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2695-7
Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009
Printed in the Netherlands
CONTENTS
DIETER DE BRUYN & KRIS VAN HEUCKELOM
Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology
NEW COMBINATIONS: LITERATURE

KAREN UNDERHILL
Ecstasy and Heresy: Martin Buber, Bruno Schulz, and Jewish
Modernity
27
ANDREA MEYER-FRAATZ
Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Bruno Schulz and
Bolesaw Lemian
49
SAWOMIR JACEK UREK

As One Kabbalist to Another On Arnold Suckis Mystical
Visions of the World in the Poem Bruno Schulz
67
DIETER DE BRUYN
The Lie Always Rises to the Surface like Oil. Toward a
Metafictional Reading of Karol Irzykowskis Pauba and Bruno
Schulzs Fiction
83
ANNA LIWA
I Drew a Plan of an Imaginary City. The Phenomenon of the
City in Bruno Schulz and Miron Biaoszewski
135
ALFRED GALL
Mythopoetic Traditions and Inserted Treatises: Bruno Schulz
and Danilo Ki
153
DOROTA WOJDA
Bruno Schulz and the Magical Realism of Gabriel Garca
Mrquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude
173
Contents
NEW COMBINATIONS: ART

MARTA SKWARA
A (Wo)man on a Sofa in Bruno Schulzs Art and Writings.
Schulz as a Painterly and Writerly Artist
195
ARIKO KATO
The Early Graphic Works of Bruno Schulz and SacherMasochs Venus in Furs: Schulz as a Modernist
219
JAN ZIELISKI
Zuloaga (Rilke?) Schulz
251
ESTHER SNCHEZ-PARDO
Bruno Schulz and Djuna Barnes: Border-crossing and Artistic
Practice
267
DANIEL WATT
Bruno Schulzs Incomparable Realities: From Literature to
Theatricality
289
FURTHER FRAGMENTATIONS
MIECZYSAW DBROWSKI
Aesthetics of Melancholy in Bruno Schulzs Writings
307
JERZY JARZ BSKI

Bruno Schulz and Seductive Discourse
327
SHLOMIT GORIN
Thinking About Absurdity with Bruno Schulz: Paradox and
Potential
339
MARTA SUCHASKA-DRAYSKA
Jewish Mysticism A Source of Similarities Between Bruno
Schulzs Writings and Psychoanalysis
361
Contents

JRG SCHULTE
The Clepsydra of Empedocles and the Phenomena of Breath and
Wind in Bruno Schulzs Fiction
379
THOMAS ANESSI
The Great Heresy of the Varsovian Center
397
OKSANA WERETIUK
The Ukrainian Reception of Bruno Schulzs Writings: Paradox
or Norm?
419
MICHA PAWE MARKOWSKI
Text and Theater. The Ironic Imagination of Bruno Schulz
435
THEODOSIA ROBERTSON
Bruno Schulzs Intimate Communication: From the True
Viewer of Xiga bawochwalcza to the True Reader of
Ksi
ga
451
ALFRED SPROEDE
Bruno Schulz: Between Avant-Garde and Hasidic Redemption
473
JANIS AUGSBURGER
Poetical Fluidization and Intellectual Eclecticism in Bruno
Schulzs Writings
499
Index
519

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom
When the Polish artist Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) eventually managed
to publish his first collection of phantasmagoric stories in 1933, he
could not have imagined that his modest literary output would ever
lead to an accumulation of critical readings. Even more, when
working in complete privacy on his drawings and graphic works in the
1920s, he would not even have believed that someone would ever be
interested in writing an academic essay on this part of his creative
activity. When looking back to the past seven decades of
Schulzology (schulzologia in Polish), however, one can only find
that the assemblage of critical and scholarly writings has been
growing steadily, to such an extent even that the presentation of a
comprehensive state of the art appears to be almost impossible. For
those interested in an exhaustive overview of Schulzology, the only
advice is to check the online shrine for the Polish artist at
www.brunoschulz.org, where Branislava Stojanovi has gathered
virtually all available bibliographical references, together with many
other valuable sources. In this introduction to yet another collection of
Schulzological papers, then, we will limit ourselves to a more modest
critical discussion of the key figures and important currents in
Schulzology. At the same time, however, some remarks should be
made on the issue of critical and scholarly overproduction.
Few people will object if we state that what we are living
today is nothing less than some kind of Schulzomania. Indeed,
Schulz nowadays is an international literary star who is worshipped by
readers and critics alike. Looking back on the history of Schulzology,
however, we must admit that the reception of Schulzs creative output
started in the 1930s with what could be called pure Schulzophobia.
As Wodzimierz Bolecki has already demonstrated in his major study
on the poetic prose model (poetycki model prozy; 1996 [1982]) in
10
the Polish interwar period, Schulzs stories, immediately after their

publication in the 1930s, conflicted with the horizon of expectations
of many Polish critics. In many cases, this conflict could be resolved
by applying the rules for reading lyrical works: One could appreciate
the plastic or poetic values in it (the images or the metaphors), but
there was clearly the lack of a theme, a leading idea, a problem,
etc. ([m]ona byo w niej ocenia walory plastyczne (obrazy) lub
poetyckie (metafory), ale oczywisty by brak tematu, idei
przewodniej, problemu etc.; 1996 [1982]: 305). As soon as critics
tried to extract a consistent world view from Schulzs stories,
however, the strictly axiological character of their approach was
immediately exposed. As Bolecki has pertinently remarked, this
attempt at reading Schulzs literary world according to existing moral
standards led not only to accusations of antihumanism and
establishment of chaos (antyhumanizm i utwierdzanie chaosu;
Wyka and Napierski 2000 [1939]: 422) but also to the attribution of
immoral elements in Schulzs prose to the authors conduct in real
life. Whereas Kazimierz Wyka and Stefan Napierski are still rather
polite in their notorious diatribe against Schulzs prose (Dwugos o
Schulzu or Dialogue on Schulz, 1939), the most severe personal
attack against Schulz and such contemporaries as Witold Gombrowicz
and Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) was launched by the
Marxist critic Ignacy Fik in his essay on what he terms a literature of
sick maniacs (Literatura choromaniakw, 1935). In order to have
an impression of what Fik thought of Schulz and the like, we may
have a look at the following fragment of his essay:
Czy nie jest zastanawiaj ce, e pisz cy [tak literatur
] autorzy s to
ludzie, ktrzy w rozwoju zatrzymali si
na fazie dojrzewania pciowego,
e s to homoseksualici, ekshibicjonici i psychopaci, degeneraci,
narkomani, ludzie chronicznie chorzy na o dek, mieszkaj cy na stae w
szpitalach, ludzie nie rozrniaj cy jawy od snu, hipochondrycy,
neurastenicy, mizantropi? (1961 [1935]: 126)
(Isnt it striking that the authors who write such literature are people
whose development was arrested during the phase of sexual maturation,
that they are homosexuals, exhibitionists and psychopaths, degenerates,
narcomaniacs, people who chronically suffer from stomach trouble, who
permanently live in hospitals, people who dont distinguish between
sleeping and waking, hypochondriacs, neurasthenics, misanthropes?)
11

When reading such merciless tirades against Schulz and his creative
activities, one may indeed have difficulties believing that a movement
in the opposite way, toward Schulzomania, would ever take place.
It is commonly known that postwar critical interest in Schulz
was temporarily halted in the difficult years before the Polish October.
In his overview of the reception of Schulzs oeuvre between 1945 and
1976, Andrzej Sulikowski calls the period from 1945 until 1955 the
years of silence (lata milczenia; 1978: 282). From 1956 onwards,
Schulzology gradually started flourishing under the impulse of Artur
Sandauer and Jerzy Ficowski. Whereas Ficowski has mainly been
important for the collection and publication of all kinds of Schulziana
and for the reconstruction of the biographical portrait of the writer (cf.
his 1967 and 1986 monographs, published in one volume in 2002),
Sandauer was the first to map out several routes for a more academic
approach of Schulzs stories in his 1956 essay Rzeczywisto
zdegradowana (Rzecz o Brunonie Schulzu) (The Degraded Reality
(A Contribution on Bruno Schulz); 1964 [1956]). On the one hand,
his analysis of Schulzs fiction against the background of twentiethcentury socio-economic developments was continued by such critics
as Czesaw Samojlik (1965), Tomasz Burek (1966), and Wiesaw
Pawe Szymaski (1970). On the other hand, his suggestion that
Schulz should be studied in the framework of early twentieth-century
experimental currents was further elaborated in discussions about the
surrealistic (Dubowik 1971, Speina 1971, Jarz
bski 1973) and
expressionistic (Speina 1974, Wyskiel 1980) traits of his stories. In
addition to this, the reading strategy of applying the rules for reading
lyrical works was further developed in three subsequent articles by
Krzysztof Miklaszewski (1966, 1971a, 1971b).
Academic criticism of Schulzs works received its next
stimulus in 1974, when Wojciech Wyskiel organized the first
conference devoted to the writer from Drohobycz. In the wake of this
event, a structuralist turn took place in Schulzology, as exemplified in
the writings of such influential scholars as Wadysaw Panas (1974a,
1974b, 1976), Krzysztof Kosiski (1976), Wojciech Wyskiel (1977a,
1977b), Jerzy Jarz
bski (1976, 1984), and Wojciech Karkowski (1976,
1980). Their valuable thoughts on Schulzs stories were seconded by a
few of the first foreign Schulz scholars, such as Colleen Taylor Sen
(1969, 1972) and Elisabeth Golicki-Baur (1972).
12
Despite this structuralist turn, a closer look at the growing

corpus of critical accounts toward the end of the 1970s reveals two
major methodological trends that would continue to dominate
Schulzology. First, many critics proposed a mimetic reading of
Schulzs stories (focusing on the distorted literary reality they
produce) instead of a reflexive one (focusing on the process
underlying the production of this particular literary reality). In other
words, the approach many of them took was ontocentric instead of
logocentric (cf. Stala 1993 for this distinction). Second, critics tended
to treat the many seemingly self-informing comments in Schulzs
stories as authoritative clues that could be easily interpolated into their
own particular interpretation of the text. As a result, such critics were
caught in a kind of circular reasoning because discursive parts of the
text were used in order to elucidate the same text.
In the early 1980s, this ontocentric and mimetic model of
reading Schulzs stories was attacked by Wodzimierz Bolecki. In
what is undoubtedly the most valuable and comprehensive study on
the fiction of such interwar writers as Schulz, Witkacy, and
Gombrowicz, he focuses on generations of readers difficulties to
construct a consistent story world out of these very alienating and
unusually discursive narrative accounts. More specifically, Bolecki
argues that the interwar authors under scrutiny have propagated a new
poetical prose model (poetycki model prozy) as an alternative to
the prevailing vehicular prose model (wehikularny model prozy;
1996 [1982]: 14). Whereas in the latter case literary language is
overshadowed by its referential function (as in Realism), in the former
case it draws attention to its autonomy (zwraca uwag
na swoj
autonomi
) and thus takes on a reflexive character (character
samozwrotny; 12). With respect to Schulzs stories, Bolecki argues
that his literary world is the result of linguistic rather than of mimetic
processes: The narrative utterance stops being a story about what
once existed because it turns out to be itself an event in language
(Wypowied narracyjna przestaje by opowiadaniem o tym, co
niegdy zaistniao, albowiem sama okazuje si
zdarzeniem w j
zyku;
300).
Though Schulzology continued flourishing in the 1980s and
early 1990s (e.g. Steinhoff 1984, Chwin 1985, Robertson 1990, 1991,
Brown 1991), only few critics elaborated on the turn toward the
logocentric reading that had been promoted by Bolecki.
13

Characteristically, those critical accounts that addressed Schulzs
reflexive treatment of the creative possibilities of language (Rachwa
1985, van der Meer 1990, Schnle 1991) all focused on the subcycle
on tailors dummies (manekiny) in Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon
Shops, 1934) and more specifically on the rich metaphorical power of
such motives as the tailors dummy and trash (tandeta).
In the wake of the 1992 jubilee year, the popularity of Bruno
Schulz in literary and artistic criticism could not be stopped. What is
typical of this new phase in Schulzology is the heterogeneity of
critical approaches and research subjects a situation which is, of
course, completely in accordance with the typically postmodern
plurality of philosophical, literary theoretical and culturological
discourses that was gaining prominence in independent Poland (cf.
D browski 2000 for a discussion of Schulz in this context). In an everincreasing number of publications (e.g. in two influential conference
volumes: Kitowska-ysiak 1992 and Jarz
bski 1994b), scholars began
to devote attention to new topics such as the feminine element in
Schulz, the local, Galician or Habsburg background of Schulzs
works, his creative reworking of biblical, kabbalistic, and Jewish
elements, and eventually to Schulzs visual output and its relation to
his literary works.
The position of Schulzs artwork within Schulzology deserves
a separate discussion. Although his pictorial works received critical
attention in the 1920s and 1930s (Lauterbach 1929, Vogel 1930,
Dresdner 1935, Witkiewicz 1935), they remained in the shadow of his
literary works for many decades. The first steps toward rediscovering
Schulzs visual output were taken in the 1960s, with an exhibition of
Schulz drawings in the Adam Mickiewicz Literary Museum and the
subsequent publication of thirty Schulz reproductions (Schulz 1967).
Although these initiatives coincided with an increasing interest in
Schulzs pictorial oeuvre (Witz 1967, Becker 1967) and were
followed by some introductory articles in the foreign press (e.g. Kosko
1976), in-depth discussions of Schulzs graphics and drawings began
to appear only in the 1980s. Whereas Jerzy Ficowskis archaeological
approach led to the discovery and gradual publication of a wide
variety of Schulz drawings and graphics (Ficowski 1967, 1975, 1988),
the first researcher to map out a more scientific approach to Schulzs
artwork was Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak (1979, 1981, 1986). Her
exploratory research eventually amounted to the inclusion of a wide
14
range of art-related entries in the Bruno Schulz dictionary (Bolecki,

Jarz
bski and Rosiek 2003).
For a long time, critical discussions of Schulzs artwork have
tended to remain in line with some of the main ideas expressed in
Witkacys well-known written interview with Schulz (An
Interview with Bruno Schulz and An Essay for S.I. Witkiewicz,
Witkiewicz 1935). On the one hand, Schulzs bold assertion of
having expressed [him]self more fully in [his] literary works has
been an incentive for many critics to treat his graphics and drawings
as mere preliminaries to his literary works. On the other hand,
Witkacys characterization of Schulz as a demonologist has
paralleled a strong interest in the position of obsessive eroticism in
Schulzs pictorial output. From a biographical perspective, Schulzs
demonological art has tended to be linked to the artists personal
obsessions and erotic perversions. In art-historical terms, the issue of
demonic femininity and male masochism has often been discussed
within the context of fin de sicle decadence and grotesque art
(Kasjaniuk 1993, Kulig-Janarek 1994, Kitowska-ysiak 1994). Much
attention has been paid, then, to Schulzs artistic and thematic affinity
with a wide variety of predecessors such as Francisco Goya, Aubrey
Beardsley, Flicien Rops, etc.
Notwithstanding the seemingly monothematic, anachronistic
and repetitive character of Schulzs graphics and drawings, the
pictorial branch of Schulzology has gained more prominence and
relevance in recent years. First of all, it has been pointed out that his
illustrative works are more than mere illustrations and add a particular
twist to his fiction (Wysouch 1992, Shallcross 1994). Also, in line
with similar developments in the discussion of Schulzs fiction,
increasing attention has been drawn to the function of Jewish and
Judaist elements in Schulzs graphics and drawings, particularly
kabbalistic messianism (Panas 1997, 2001). Apart from that, the
repetitive character of Schulzs pencil sketches and drawings has been
increasingly differentiated from the more complex character of his
early graphics (Van Heuckelom 2006, Kato 2009). To a certain extent,
the aforementioned research currents seem to reflect the main shift
that took place in the discussion of Schulzs fiction, moving from
mimetic approaches (focusing on the reality represented) toward more
reflexive approaches (focusing on the process of representation).
Emblematic for a more balanced approach toward Schulzs artwork is
15

Sikorski (2004), whose critical discussion of Schulzs symbolical
world draws both on Schulzs literary and pictorial works. Although
Schulzs artwork will perhaps always remain in the shadow of his
fiction, there seems to be a growing consensus that his graphics are
artistic works in their own right rather than constituting a mere
backdrop to his literary works.
With regard to Schulzs fiction, another popular critical
strategy has been to compare Schulzs works to an ever-increasing
number of well- and less-known writers and literary trends. Parallel to
this, the literary historical role of Schulz had to be reconsidered. Back
in the 1980s, this issue had been already addressed by Jerzy Jarz
bski,
who proposed to locate the works of such atypical avant-gardists
(1987: 160) as Schulz, Gombrowicz, and Witkacy in either a
broadly-conceived modernism or as a particular tendency in an
equally widely-conceived avant-garde (161). A few years later, then,
Jarz
bski signaled a shift in critical attention from Schulz as a
modernist to Schulz as a postmodernist (1994a: 14) which is also a
shift from the idealism of Mityzacja rzeczywistoci (The
Mythologizing of Reality) to the ironic stance of An Essay for S.I.
Witkiewicz, and from the cycle Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on
Tailors Dummies) to the novella Wiosna (Spring). Although this
tendency to treat Schulz as a harbinger of postmodernism was soon
(and with good reason) criticized (cf. Bolecki 1999, Shallcross 1997:
255), stories such as Ksi
ga (The Book), Genialna epoka (The
Age of Genius), and Spring proved to be extremely receptive to
(more or less) poststructuralist readings (cf. Czabanowska-Wrbel
2001, Gowacka 1998, 1999 [1996], Hyde 1992, Kony 1995,
Lachmann 1992, 1999 [1996], Markowski 1994, Ritz 1993, Rybicka
2000, Schnle 1998, Stala 1993, Waszak 2002).
No matter how interesting the discussion of Schulzs literary
historical position may be, it is unclear whether or not it adds
something substantial to our understanding of Schulzs creative
output. Indeed, as the pile of Schulzological writings keeps growing
and growing, we should ask ourselves if there is any clear research
agenda behind this occasionally blind worship of Schulz. Or, in plain
words: what is it that makes us devote so much energy to the analysis
of this quantitatively modest body of stories and graphic works? In
order to gain an insight into this crucial problem of Schulzology, we
should take a look at what some other critics have said about the
16
problematic reception of Schulzs fiction. In his groundbreaking

monograph, On the Margins of Reality: the Paradoxes of
Representation in Bruno Schulzs Fiction, Krzysztof Stala comes up
with the following observation:
Why is it that these tales [] so stubbornly resist critical analysis and
interpretation? Why do these critical essays only propose some
fragmentary, marginal reading, being rather aware of the
inexhaustibleness of Schulzs prose than trying to define this
inexhaustibleness, domesticate it with some proposal richer than
expression of the inexpressible? (1993: 1)
What Stala suggests here is that Schulzs stories merely evoke

fragmentary, marginal readings which slavishly imitate the language
of their subject of research, domesticating it over and over again with
such poor proposals as expression of the inexpressible. According to
us, what is hidden behind these readings is the same methodological
fallacy which we already mentioned: more often than not, the same set
of discursive and metafictional comments uttered in Schulzs stories is
used for interpreting these stories, which inevitably leads to a kind of
circular (tautological) reasoning. Stala suggests that critics should try
more to define Schulzs literary world themselves rather than merely
accepting the unreliable interpretative clues which are offered by the
author-like first-person narrator.
Contrary to Stala, Stanislaw Eile focuses on readings in which
Schulzs linguistic world is treated as an open structure which can be
filled up with the most extraordinary content:
Despite many digressions and metafictional comments articulated by the
first-person narrator and the main character, his father, the extensive use
of figurative language renders [Schulzs] message rather confusing and
consequently open to a variety of esoteric readings, which often
demonstrate the inventiveness of critics rather than representing a
convincing explication of the text. (1996: 97)
Eile seems to signal that such readings often misuse Schulzs

equivocal message in order to impose the most far-fetched meaning on
it. Whereas the reading strategy discussed by Stala could be called
description without interpretation, we could consider the one
proposed by Eile as interpretation without description. In the former
case, we get critical accounts which describe Schulzs literary world
17

by using its inherent terminology, whereas in the latter case the critic
merely singles out what he needs from the text in order to substantiate
his interpretation. According to us, the key to the future of
Schulzology lies exactly in the liminal space between the two reading
strategies: on the one hand, we should continue to scrutinize new and
interesting influences and similarities and adopt new methodological
frameworks, but on the other hand, we must always start from a clear
description of what is actually happening in these stories or in their
graphic counterparts.
As we have seen in this brief overview of Schulzological
writings, whatever critical scalpel one selects for dissecting Schulzs
fiction, there will always be a certain degree of textual resistance
which cannot be broken, or in other words, taking off one of Schulzs
many masks, one will probably never avoid the impression that a new
mask has emerged. Being fully aware of the relativity of each
particular reading, the present volume aims to contribute to what we
believe are the three main currents in Schulzology: combinations with
other writers, trends, and traditions, fragmentations within new
historical and theoretical contexts, and reintegrations of the ultimate
sense of Schulzs artistic universe. In addition, the book sets out to
explore all of Schulzs creative output (i.e. his stories as well as his
graphic, epistolary and even literary critical works), as one of Schulzs
main goals was to cross artificially set up boundaries between, among
other things, different artistic media of expression. In this way, the
book should be seen as a continuation of the inspiring panels and
fruitful discussions at the International Conference The World of
Bruno Schulz/Bruno Schulz and the World: Influences, Similarities,
Reception (Leuven, Belgium, May 25-26, 2007), which was
organized in preparation to this volume by its editors.
The first two parts of the book, New Combinations:
Literature and New Combinations: Art, offer new comparative
approaches to Schulzs artistic legacy. Whereas some contributions
further explore the problem of concrete influences on and creative
reception of Schulzs oeuvre, other articles present authors, trends and
traditions which share typological similarities with his works. A first
selection delves into the Jewish background of Schulz and his
writings. Karen Underhills contribution sheds new light on Schulzs
ambivalent relationship with Jewish tradition by bringing into view
the artistic and intellectual currents prominent within the generation of
18
acculturated, de-racinated Jews to which Schulz belonged

(including Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and
Franz Kafka). Andrea Meyer-Fraatzs article draws on similar
premises but focuses on the problem of assimilation and acculturation
within the context of modern Polish literature. In particular, she draws
an interesting comparison between the diverging strategies of
literary assimilation embodied by Schulz and his contemporary
Bolesaw Lemian. Sawomir Jacek urek in turn discusses the
influence of Schulzs usage of kabbalistic motifs and ideas on the
writings of another Polish author of Jewish descent, Arnold Sucki.
Other chapters draw on all kinds of parallels between Schulzs
fiction and the works of twentieth-century Polish and foreign writers:
Dieter De Bruyn employs the concept of metafiction as an
interpretative tool for connecting Schulzs stories with Karol
Irzykowskis novel Pauba (1903). According to De Bruyn, both
authors demonstrate that no matter how hard literature tries to add a
third dimension (depth, signifi), the reader will always be confronted
with the two-dimensional reality of the text (surface, signifiant).
While directing our attention to the position of Schulz within postwar
Polish literature, Anna liwa puts Schulzs work next to the poetry of
Miron Biaoszewski. As her detailed analysis of Schulzs and
Biaoszewskis mythologization of the city shows, the presence of
striking (albeit superficial) convergences in the domain of urban
imagery helps to highlight the differentia specifica of Schulzs and
Biaoszewskis writings. The contributions of Alfred Gall and Dorota
Wojda, finally, venture into the domain of world literature and
combine Schulzs works with respectively Yugoslav and Latin
American literature. While Wojda compares Schulzs usage of irony
with Gabriel Garca Marquezs magical realism in One Hundred
Years of Solitude, Gall explores Schulzian echoes in the works of
Danilo Ki (in particular the Treatise on the Potatoe chapter from
Hourglass). As his analysis shows, the sophisticated intertextual play
created by Ki functions as a literary response to the Shoa.
The second, art-related series of combinations starts with
Marta Skwaras elaborate discussion of the (wo)man on a sofa motif
that often recurs in Schulzs literary and plastic output. It allows
Skwara to highlight the artists creative, unconventional, and
transgressive application of traditional schemes and motifs. Schulzs
position as a (non-)traditional artist also comes to the fore in Ariko
19

Katos contribution, which discusses the masochist and modernist
aspects of Schulzs early graphic works in relation to Leopold von
Sacher-Masochs novel Venus in Furs. Jan Zieliski, in turn, draws
some interesting thematic and formal parallels between Schulzs
works and the paintings of one of his favorite artists, the Basque
Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta. The issue of typological similarities
between Schulz and other Modernist artists (in terms of biography and
artistic practice) is central to Esther Snchez-Pardos article on the
American writer and visual artist Djuna Barnes. Daniel Watts closing
article exposes the incomparable reality of Schulzs stories by
examining theatrical and cinematic adaptations of his works (for
instance the Quay Brothers Street of Crocodiles).
In the third part of the book, Further Fragmentations,
detailed studies of single ideas or motives or of hitherto unnoticed
subtexts will demonstrate once more that Schulzs artistic universe
allows for ever new fragmentary approaches, which merely reinforce
its superficial polyvalence without ever disclosing its semantic core.
The first of these approaches, as proposed by Mieczysaw D browski,
is a discussion of Schulzs works through the prism of the aesthetics
of melancholy, which closely cooperates with the ironic aspects of
Schulzs writings. Another analytical approach is taken by Jerzy
Jarz
bski, who focuses on the seductive activities performed by the
protagonists of Schulzs stories and by the author himself. Shlomit
Gorin in turn proposes to reconsider Schulzs works from the
perspective of the absurd. A strongly psychoanalytic stance is taken in
Marta Suchaska-Drayskas contribution which relates the parallels
between Schulzs works and Freudian psychoanalysis to their
common Jewish roots. Jrg Schultes contribution reconsiders
Schulzs knowledge of Greek mythology and cosmology by focusing
on the recurrent usage of breath and wind metaphors throughout
Schulzs stories. The article by Thomas Anessi is strongly concerned
with literary sociological matters and discusses Schulzs paradoxical
position of a writer both disconnected from and connected with the
literary center of his time. While Anessis analysis focuses on
Schulzs links with Warsaw literary and cultural circles in the 1930s,
Oksana Weretiuks contribution focuses on the particular reception of
Schulzs work in its peripheral place of origin, particularly among
Ukrainian artists, writers, scholars, and the general public from the
1930s to the present.
20
The last part of the book, Ultimate Reintegrations, attempts

to gather all these bits and scraps of a unity long gone, like fragments
of a broken mirror (dixit Schulz), in order to reintegrate our picture
of Schulzs artistic world. It remains to be seen, however, whether
these final remarks conclude once and for all the ongoing discussion
on Schulzs essence, or if they bring new problematic issues into
existence. According to Micha Pawe Markowski, central to Schulzs
ironical universe is the permanent deconstruction of apparent
oppositions, such as the metaphysical dualism between essences and
appearances and the opposition between high and low culture.
Theodosia Robertson perceives a close link between Schulzs early
graphics and his later stories in the sense that they both aim to
establish a form of intimate communication between the artist and his
select audience. Alfred Sproedes contribution breaks with the
image of Schulz as a respectful propagator of Hasidic and kabbalistic
thought by relating the authors particular re-enactment of Hasidic
tales and motifs to his dispute with the avant-garde movement. Janis
Augsburger, finally, links the interpretative openness of Schulzs
fiction to the intellectual eclecticism that lies at the heart of his
writings.
The present volume would have never been completed without the
help and support of some of our colleagues. First of all, we would like
to extend our gratitude to our reviewers for their critical evaluation of
the articles considered for publication, in particular Brian Banks, Rolf
Fieguth, Theodosia Robertson, Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans, and
Krzysztof Stala who took up the role of discussants during the 2007
Schulz conference in Belgium. We are also indebted to Marek W.
Podstolski for granting permission to include reproductions of
Schulzs artwork and to Carol M. Richards for proofreading the
articles.
Bibliography
Becker, Jan. 1967. Bruno Schulz in Przegld artystyczny 5.
Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 1996 [1982]. Poetycki model prozy w dwudziestoleciu
midzywojennym. Krakw: Universitas.
. 1999. Le Postmodernisme? Ou peut-tre un modernisme mconnu?: Witkacy
Gombrowicz Schulz in Delaperrire, Maria (ed.) Modernisme en Europe
Centrale. Les avant-gardes. Paris: LHarmattan: 173-192.
21

Bolecki, Wodzimierz, Jerzy Jarz
bski and Stanisaw Rosiek (eds). 2003. Sownik
schulzowski. Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria.
Brown, Russell E. 1991. Myths and Relatives: Seven Essays on Bruno Schulz.
Mnchen: Verlag Otto Sagner.
Burek, Tomasz. 1966. Ogromny fragment. Uwagi na marginesie lektury ksi
gi
zbiorowej Z problemw literatury polskiej XX wieku in Kultura i
Spoeczestwo 10(4): 263-272.
Chwin, Stefan. 1985. Twrczo i autorytety. Bruno Schulz wobec romantycznych
dilematw tworzenia in Pamitnik Literacki 76(1): 69-93.
Czabanowska-Wrbel, Anna. 2001. Fantazmaty dziecistwa: glosa do Wiosny
Schulza in Ruch Literacki 42(1): 57-66.
D browski, Mieczysaw. 2000. Bruno Schulz w kontekcie wspczesnych
dyskursw o kulturze in Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. A.
Mickiewicza 35: 23-35.
Dresdner, Karol. 1935. Kultura i sztuka ludu ydowskiego na ziemiach polskich.
Zbiory Maksymiljana Goldsteina. Lww: M. Goldstein.
Dubowik, Henryk. 1971. Nadrealizm w polskiej literaturze wspczesnej (Prace
Wydziau Nauk Humanistycznych B5). Pozna: Bydgoskie Towarzystwo
Naukowe.
Eile, Stanisaw. 1996. Modernist Trends in Twentieth-Century Polish Fiction.
London: University of London, School of Slavonic and East European
Studies.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 1967. Regiony wielkiej herezji. Szkice o yciu i twrczoci Brunona
Schulza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1975. Regiony wielkiej herezji. Szkice o yciu i twrczoci Brunona Schulza.
(2nd ed.) Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1986. Okolice sklepw cynamonowych. Szkice, przyczynki, impresje. Krakw:
Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 2002. Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Bruno Schulz i jego mitologia. Sejny:
Pogranicze.
Fik, Ignacy. 1961 [1935]. Literatura choromaniakw in Wybr pism krytycznych.
Warszawa: Robotniczy Spdzielnia Wydawnicza: 125-134.
Gowacka, Dorota. 1998. The Heresiarchs of Form: Gombrowicz and Schulz in
Ziarek-Ponowska, Ewa (ed.) Gombrowiczs Grimaces: Modernism,
Gender, Nationality: Albany: State University of New York Press: 65-88.
. 1999 [1996]. Sublime Trash and the Simulacrum: Bruno Schulz in the
Postmodern Neighborhood in Prokopczyk, Czesaw Z. (ed.) Bruno Schulz:
New Documents and Interpretations. New York: Peter Lang: 79-134.
Golicki-Baur, Elisabeth. 1975. Die Prosa von Bruno Schulz. Bern: Lang.
Hyde, George. 1992. State of Arrest: The Short Stories of Bruno Schulz in Eile,
Stanisaw and Phillips, Ursula (eds). New Perspectives on TwentiethCentury Polish Literature: Flight from Martyrology. London: Macmillan:
47-67.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 1973. Sen o zotym wieku in Teksty 2(2): 104-121.
. 1976. Uwagi o semantyce przestrzeni i czasu w prozie Brunona Schulza in
Czaplowa, Kazimiera (ed.) Studia o prozie Brunona Schulza (Prace
naukowe Uniwersytetu l skiego w Katowicach 115). Katowice:
Uniwersytet l ski: 49-73.
22
. 1984. Czasoprzestrze mitu i marzenia w prozie Brunona Schulza in Powie

jako autokreacja. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 170-226.
. 1987. Witkacy, Schulz and Gombrowicz versus the Avant-garde in Nilsson,
Nils ke (ed.) The Slavic Literatures and Modernism: a Nobel Symposium,
August 5-8 1985. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International: 151-165.
. 1994a. Wst
p: czytanie Schulza in Jarz
bski (1994b): 5-17.
. 1994b. Czytanie Schulza. Krakw: T.I.C.
Karkowski, Czesaw. 1976. System kultury Brunona Schulza in Czaplowa,
Kazimiera (ed.) Studia o prozie Brunona Schulza (Prace naukowe Uniwersytetu l skiego w Katowicach 115). Katowice: Uniwersytet l ski: 3147.
. 1980. Kultura i krytyka inteligencji w twrczoci Brunona Schulza. Wrocaw:
Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich.
Kasjaniuk, Halina. 1993. Rodowody i symbole w grafikach Schulza in Ciechowicz
Jan and Kasjaniuk Halina (eds). Teatr Pamici Brunona Schulza. Gdynia:
s.n.: 10-25.
Kato, Ariko. 2009. Obraz i Ksi
ga. O autoreferencyjnoci w twrczoci Brunona
Schulza in Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata (ed.) Biae plamy w schulzologii.
Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL (forthcoming).
Kitowska, Magorzata. 1979. Czytaj c Xi
g
Bawochwalcz in Twrczo 3: 157160.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata. (ed.) 1981. Xiga Bawochwalcza grafiki oryginalne
(clich verre) Brunona Schulza in Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 4: 401-410.
. 1986. Brunona Schulza Xi
ga Bawochwalcza. W sprawie analogii in
Akcent 3: 154-161.
(ed.) 1992a. Bruno Schulz in memoriam. 1892-1942. Lublin: Wydawnictwo FIS.
. 1992b. Bruno Schulz Xi
ga Bawochwalcza: wizja - forma analogie in
Kitowska-ysiak (1992a): 133-151.
Kosiski, Krzysztof. 1976. Schulzowskie modele komunikacji in Czaplowa,
Kazimiera (ed.) Studia o prozie Brunona Schulza (Prace naukowe Uniwersytetu l skiego w Katowicach 115). Katowice: Uniwersytet l ski: 91102.
Kosko, Allan 1976. Luvre graphique de Bruno Schulz la Sorbonne in Opus
International 59.
Kony, Witold. 1995. Bo czyme jest wiosna, jeli nie zmartwychwstaniem
historyj. (Zu Bruno Schulz Erzhlung Wiosna) in Zeitschrift fr
Slavische Philologie 55(2): 313-322.
Kulig-Janarek, Krystyna. 1992. Erotyka groteska ironia kreacja in Kitowskaysiak (1992a): 153-177.
. 1993. Schulzowska mitologia: Motywy, w tki, inspiracje w Xidze
Bawochwalczej in Kresy 14: 37-49.
Lachmann, Renate. 1992. Dezentrierte Bilder. Die ekstatische Imagination in Bruno
Schulz Prosa in Hansen-Lve, Aage (ed.) Psychopoetik. Beitrge zur
Tagung Psychologie und Literatur Mnchen 1991 (Wiener Slawistischer
Almanach, Sonderband 31). Wien: Gesellschaft zur Frderung slawistischer
Studien: 439-461.
. 1999 [1996]. Demiurg i jego fantazmaty: spekulacje wok mitologii
stworzenia w dziele Bruno Schulza in Teksty Drugie 10(6): 103-119.
23

Lauterbach, Artur. 1929. Talent w ukryciu. O grafikach Brunona Schulza in Chwila
3740.
Markowski, Micha Pawe. 1994. Wiosna: mi
dzy retoryk a erotyk in Jarz
bski,
Jerzy (1994): 286-295.
Miklaszewski, Krzysztof. 1966. Cena wiadomoci. (Prba analizy opowiadania
Bruno Schulza pt. Pan) in Ruch Literacki 7(6): 285-295.
. 1971a. Poeta prozy. (O poetyckiej materii prozy Brunona Schulza) in Poezja
7(7): 46-51.
. 1971b. O pewnej modernistycznej waciwoci prozy B. Schulza (na
przykadzie Sklepw cynamonowych) in Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu
Jagielloskiego. Prace historycznoliterackie 21: 49-66.
Panas, Wadysaw. 1974a. Regiony czystej poezji. O koncepcji j
zyka w prozie B.
Schulza in Roczniki Humanistyczne 22: 151-173.
. 1974b. Apologia i destrukcja (Noc wielkiego sezonu Brunona Schulza) in
Bartoszyski, Kazimierz, Jasiska-Wojtkowska, Maria and Sawicki, Stefan
(eds). Nowela. Opowiadanie. Gawda. Interpretacje maych form
narracyjnych. Warszawa: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe: 191-205.
. 1976. Zst pienie w esencjonalno. O ksztatach sowa w prozie Brunona
Schulza in Czaplowa, Kazimiera (ed.) Studia o prozie Brunona Schulza
(Prace naukowe Uniwersytetu l skiego w Katowicach 115). Katowice:
Uniwersytet l ski: 75-89.
. 1997. Ksiga blasku. Traktat o kabale w prozie Brunona Schulza. Lublin:
Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL.
. 2001. Bruno od Mesjasza. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.
Rachwa, Tadeusz. 1985. Remityzacja sowa. Rzecz o manekinach w prozie Brunona
Schulza in Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu lskiego w Katowicach 668:
116-124.
Ritz, German. 1993. Die Fahrt in die Krokodilstrae als ein Verlassen des
mythischen Raums: Zu einer Erzhlung von Bruno Schulz in Zeitschrift fr
Slawistik 38(2): 207-216.
Robertson, Theodosia S. 1990. Time in Bruno Schulz in Indiana Slavic Studies 5:
181-192.
. 1991. Bruno Schulz and Comedy in The Polish Review 36(2): 119-126.
Rybicka, Elbieta. 2000. B dzi w czytaniu: proza Brunona Schulza in Rybicka,
Elbieta, Formy labiryntu w prozie polskiej XX wieku. Krakw: Universitas:
102-127.
Samojlik, Czesaw. 1965. Groteska pisarstwo wszechstronnie banalne Sprawa
prozy Brunona Schulza in Brodzka, Alina and abicki, Zbigniew (eds). Z
problemw literatury polskiej XX wieku. II: Literatura midzywojenna.
Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy: 266-296.
Sandauer, Artur. 1964 [1956]. Rzeczywisto zdegradowana (Rzecz o Brunonie
Schulzu) in Schulz, Bruno, Proza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 743.
Schnle, Andreas. 1991. Cinnamon Shops by Bruno Schulz: the Apology of Tandeta
in The Polish Review 36(2): 127-144.
. 1998. Of Sublimity, Shrinkage, and Selfhood in the Works of Bruno Schulz in
Slavic and East European Journal 42(3): 467-482.
24
Schulz, Bruno. 1967. Prace Brunona Schulza. Blok-notes Muzeum Mickiewicza 5.1.
Warszawa: Muzeum Literatury im. A. Mickiewicza.
. 1988. Xiga Bawochwalcza. (ed. J. Ficowski). Warszawa: Interpress.
Shallcross, Boena. 1994. Pencil, Pen and Ink: Bruno Schulzs Art of Interference in
Pula, James (ed.) The Heart of Nation. Proceedings of PIASA International
Congress. New York: PIASA & Columbia University Press: 57-68.
. 1997. Introduction: Bruno Schulz and Modernism in East European Politics
and Societies 11(2): 254-256.
Sikorski, Dariusz K. 2004. Symboliczny wiat Brunona Schulza. Supsk:
Wydawnictwo Pomorskiej Akademii Pedagogicznej w Supsku.
Speina, Jerzy. 1971. Bruno Schulz a nadrealizm in Hutnikiewicz, Artur and
Zaworska, Helena (eds). O prozie polskiej XX wieku (Z Dziejw Form
Artystycznych W Literaturze Polskiej 24). Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im.
Ossoliskich: 183-198.
. 1974. Bankructwo realnoci. Proza Brunona Schulza. Warszawa: PWN.
Stala, Krzysztof. 1993. On the Margins of Reality: the Paradoxes of Representation in
Bruno Schulzs Fiction. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
Steinhoff, Lutz. 1984. Rckkehr zur Kindheit als groteskes Denkspiel. Ein Beitrag
zum Motiv des dojrze do dziecistwa in den Erzhlungen von Bruno
Schulz. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.
Sulikowski, Andrzej. 1978. Twrczo Brunona Schulza w krytyce i badaniach
literackich (1934-1976) in Pamitnik Literacki 69(2): 264-303.
Szymaski, Wiesaw Pawe. 1970. O twrczoci Brunona Schulza in Ruch Literacki
11(5): 295-306.
Taylor Sen, Colleen. 1969. Childhood Revisited: The Writings of Bruno Schulz in
Slavic and East European Journal 13(4): 455-472.
. 1972. Polish Experimental Fiction 1900-1939: A Comparative Study of the
Novels of Karol Irzykowski, Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Witold
Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz. PhD thesis. Columbia University.
van der Meer, Jan Y. 1990. On Bruno Schulzs Tailors Dummies in de Haard,
Eric, Thomas Langerak and Willem G. Weststeijn (eds). Semantic Analysis
of Literary Texts. To Honour Jan van der Eng on the Occasion of his 65th
Birthday. Amsterdam: Elsevier: 385-405.
Van Heuckelom, Kris. 2006. Artistic Crossover in Polish Modernism. The Case of
Bruno Schulzs Xi
ga Bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Booke) in Image
[&] Narrative. Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative 15. On line at:
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/iconoclasm/heuckelom.htm
(consulted
18.05.2008).
Vogel, Debora. 1930. [Bruno Schulz] in Judisk tidskrift 3: 224-226.
Waszak, Tomasz. 2002. Die Republik der Texte. Bruno Schulz Das Sanatorium zur
Todesanzeige als utopisches Dokument in Orbis Linguarum 22: 37-49.
Witkiewicz, Stanisaw Ignacy. 1935. Wywiad z Brunonem Schulzem in Tygodnik
Ilustrowany 17: 321-323.
Witz, Ignacy. 1967. Obszary malarskiej wyobra
ni. Eseje. Krakw: Wyd. Literackie.
Wyka, Kazimierz and Stefan Napierski. 2000 [1939]. Dwugos o Schulzu in Wyka,
Kazimierz, Stara szuflada i inne szkice z lat 1932-1939. Krakw:
Wydawnictwo Literackie: 419-427.
25

Wyskiel, Wojciech. 1977a. Brunona Schulza porozumienie z czytelnikiem in
Bujnicki, Tadeusz and Janusz Sawiski (eds). Problemy odbioru i
odbiorcy. Wrocaw etc.: Ossolineum: 257-267.
. 1977b. wiat i j
zyk w dziele Brunona Schulza in Ruch Literacki 18(2): 119135.
. 1980. Inna twarz Hioba. Problematyka alienacyjna w dziele Brunona Schulza.
Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Wysouch, Seweryna. 1992. Ilustracja autorska casus Brunona Schulza in Teksty
Drugie 5(17): 116-122.
Ecstasy and Heresy: Martin Buber, Bruno Schulz, and

Jewish Modernity
Karen Underhill
Abstract: Bruno Schulzs complex and ambivalent relationship with Jewish tradition
and subject matter, and his use of Hasidic and kabbalistic tropes and imagery, are
viewed alongside modern intellectual and artistic currents prominent within the
Jewish community at the time he was writing. Specifically, the essay discusses the
trend dubbed fin de sicle Orientalism and the influence of Martin Bubers work on
the perception of Hasidic culture among the generation of acculturated, de-racinated
Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to which Schulz belonged. The article goes on
to explore the divergent paths through which Buber and Schulz engaged and
incorporated elements of Jewish tradition in their respective forms of
remythologization.
Introduction
By proposing a dialogue between the texts of Bruno Schulz and
Martin Buber, I would like to engage Schulz as a Jewish writer and
artist in the context of what Benjamin Harshav has called the modern
Jewish revolution (Harshav 1993). His phrase refers to the period of
a few decades from the end of the nineteenth century until World War
II in which Jews negotiated the complex paths of entry into modern
European society. Given the complex and often uneasy relationship
that Schulzs work has with Jewish heritage and the Jewish cultural
currents of his time, I would like to examine some of the motivations
and strategies for engaging that tradition which existed among
assimilating, cosmopolitan Jewish artists and thinkers in the early
twentieth century.
Schulz and his work can fruitfully be placed within a
constellation of assimilated Jewish intellectuals of his generation,
whose work reveals an attempt to incorporate Jewish philosophical
and mystical heritage into modern, often secular systems of thought:
including Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Franz Kafka, Martin
28
Karen Underhill
Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. All chose to engage that tradition in

different ways from philosophical, scientific, artistic, or theological
perspectives, respectively but all are illustrative of a certain
intellectual genealogy, a recognizable trend among assimilated Jewish
intellectuals in the early part of the twentieth century: their work and
the type of philosophical solutions they propose are influenced by,
and have incorporated into their language and imagery, elements of
Jewish mystical and messianic philosophy including attitudes
toward language drawn from kabbalah, certain elements drawn from
Hasidic philosophy, and the Hasidic storytelling tradition. My interest
in placing Schulz within this constellation is to consider his own
positioning within a range of choices made by assimilated Jewish
writers and artists, about how to engage Jewish, and in particular
Eastern European Hasidic tradition, and how to give it a vital
continuity within their modern, cosmopolitan, and broadly European
context.
In particular, I look at two members of this generation, Schulz
and Buber, who placed the idea of modern myth-making or
remythologization at the center of their work and for whom the
relationship with myth is simultaneously a relationship to Jewish
tradition of the Galician region. For both writers, the search for
authenticity and meaning in the modern world involves negotiating a
relationship with the Jewish past but one that is not only not
traditional but also entails an emphatic rejection of traditional
religious practice or belief and the construction instead of an
association of that which is truly Jewish with that which is strongly
heretical. The divergent ways in which Buber and Schulz negotiated
that relationship are as expressive of the modern Jewish experience as
is the overlap in their vocabularies and thematics.1 While for Buber
this relationship would take the form of commitment to the Zionist
cause and to Cultural Zionism, Schulzs solution takes a more
decadent modernist turn: it involves envisioning Jewish spirit and

1
Both writers were the children of assimilated Jewish parents in the AustroHungarian Empire. Both grew up near Lww, and were educated in Polish gymnasia.
A decisive difference lies in their exposure to Jewish languages and traditional
religious practice. Buber was raised at the home of his grandparents; and while Buber
wrote that it was not Hasidism alone from which I was alienated at that time, but
Judaism as a whole (Buber 1958: 47), even so his grandfather Salomon Buber was a
devoted Midrash scholar. Alongside Classical and European languages, Buber learned
Hebrew, which Schulz did not.
Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity
29

heritage as a source of marginalized or repressed inspiration and
authenticity, an underground or hidden source of vitality, more
powerful precisely for its very sublimation; fertile not despite but
because of its degradation, like the decayed material of an organic
compost which contributes to the most fertile humus. Considering the
very different models Buber and Schulz present involves engaging the
problems both of continuity and authenticity: what keeps a tradition
vital? What is the role of the heresiarch in negotiating the path from
tradition into modernity? I argue that a consideration of Bubers
influential early work with Hasidic culture can help to shed light on
the context in which Schulz himself encountered this complex
challenge. Hence, the present study will specifically highlight the
significant influence that Bubers work had on the attitudes of
assimilated Jewish intellectuals of Central Europe in the early
twentieth century toward Hasidic culture, philosophy, and storytelling.
Schulz as a Jewish Writer
Over the past decade or so, scholars of Schulz have taken a number of
different approaches in discussing Jewish themes and sources in his
work: Jan Boski (1994) emphasizes the traditional biblical culture
and the culture of the book, the late Wadysaw Panas (1997)
examines how kabbalistic tropes of creation through a process of
contraction and emanation, of repair through the recuperation of
sparks of divinity scattered in the lower world; or of the divine spirit
or Shekhinah in exile in the world are woven throughout the stories.
Eugenia Prokop-Janiec (1994) provides an important overview of the
historical background of the Galician crossroads in which Schulz
developed as a Polish Jewish writer, working amidst a melting pot of
cultures. Boena Shallcross (1997) considers Schulzs modernist
retextualization of aspects of Lurianic kabbalah, while David
Goldfarbs in-depth reading of Noc wielkiego sezonu (The Night of
the Great Season) explores Schulzs use of elements from Jewish
mythology and tradition, and more broadly his adaptation of a
Talmudic model for imagining both what it is to write the story as a
commentary or exegesis in the margins of an original text and how
Schulz encourages us to read and interact with his text (1994). Jrg
Schulte (2003) has analyzed Schulzs use of allusions to the Jewish
calendar, and Shalom Lindenbaum (1994) uncovers the extensive
30
Karen Underhill
references throughout Schulzs work to elements of Jewish mysticism

and messianism. All of these contributions testify to a complex
engagement on Schulzs part with Jewish culture, played out within
his prose writings and graphic works. Throughout his prose, this
engagement with Jewish tradition is not a sideline or simply a
recurring motif: it is closely connected, though in an uneasy dance of
push and pull, to the search for authenticity in the modern world.
It is also true that the ways that Jewish elements appear in
Schulzs texts often coded in allusive or allegorical references that
also become some of his most powerful, many-layered metaphors
reveal a simultaneous rejection of and embracing of Jewish sources
less an erasure than a sublimation of Jewish content. While the studies
I mentioned above successfully tease out a multitude of allusions to
Jewish tradition and culture in Schulzs work, he can also be seen as a
writer who goes to some length to de-ethnicize and de-contextualize
his writing, seeking its entry into a non-marked community of
European letters that shares a broadly modern, cosmopolitan
sensibility. In this sense Schulzs work reveals a tension characteristic
of the modern Jewish experience, between competing urges. One
involves negotiating a vital relationship with Jewish tradition, and
writing oneself and ones work into the literary lineage of that
tradition. As Schulz writes:
Ach, i spisuj c te nasze opowiadania, szereguj c t
histori
o moim ojcu
na zuytym marginesie jej tekstu, czy nie oddaj
si
tajnej nadziei, e
wrosn one kiedy niepostrzeenie mi
dzy zke kartki tej
najwspanialszej, rozsypuj cej si
ksi
gi, e wejd w wielki szelest jej
stronic, ktry je pochonie? (Schulz 1989: 98)2
(Ah, when writing down these tales, revising the stories about my father
on the used margins of its text, dont I, too, surrender to the secret hope
that they will merge imperceptibly with the yellowing pages of that most
splendid, mouldering book, that they will sink into the gentle rustle of its
pages and become absorbed there?; Schulz 1988: 87)3
The other involves striving both to create and to inhabit an intellectual

community and within the texts themselves, a narrative space that
transcends ethnic specificity; that escapes history or the temporary
forms into which the human mythologizing urge temporarily gels. A

2
3
All further references will be given as Op.

All further references will be given as TF.
31

hopeful striving, but also a self-effacing one: for it expresses a
yearning to belong to an intellectual and spiritual community in which
Jewishness is not a factor or in which it is something to be
overcome.
Given this ambivalence, a relevant question becomes: how can
we understand the presence and use of Jewish themes in Schulzs
work? It is far from self-evident that an assimilated Jewish intellectual
who did not receive a Jewish education or read Jewish religious texts
in their original languages would develop a poetics influenced by
kabbalistic philosophy or imagery, kabbalistic theories of language, or
the Hasidic storytelling tradition. What then is the nature of Schulzs
engagement with Jewish tradition?
According to the distinctions proposed by Benjamin Harshav
in his seminal study of the modern Jewish experience, Language in
Time of Revolution, Schulz would belong to that group of Jewish
intellectuals of his generation who reflect the extrinsic route of entry
into modern European culture. Harshav writes:
What occurred in this period [within the Jewish community] was a
multidirectional, centrifugal movement away from the old existence,
symbolized by the religious culture of the Eastern European small town,
the shtetl, as mythologized in Jewish fiction. [] [T]he movement went in
two directions, extrinsic and intrinsic. (1993: 14)
In other words: either go to the center of culture (in both the physical and
spiritual sense), master its language, literature, ideologies, behavior, and
science, and become a member of that language community (German,
Russian, English),4 or create a parallel culture in Jewish languages
[Yiddish and Modern Hebrew] that would have similar genres, norms,
ideas, institutions, and achievements. Through either of those, you join
cosmopolitan European culture as a whole. (1993: 5)
If we accept this perhaps too-easy dichotomy, then Schulz clearly

embraced the extrinsic route, choosing to write in Polish and attach
himself to the Polish literary community as opposed to joining, for
example, the Yiddishist movement, as did Debora Vogel, or actively
identifying with the young Zionist art movement that was strong in
Lww, or striving for the articulation of a space for a demonstratively
Polish-Jewish literature (cf. Prokop-Janiec 1994). This bears
mentioning because while Schulz may have been raised with Polish as
a mother tongue, as the language of the home and the school, even so

4
I will add here, Polish, which interestingly goes unmentioned in Harshavs study.
32
Karen Underhill
his decision to enter Polish letters represents a choice and not a given.
As Harshav writes, it was impossible to remain oblivious to the
debate:
The hostilities between all the intrinsic trends and the assimilationists,
between the Socialists and the Zionists, [] between Yiddish and
Hebrew, between Western Jews and Eastern Jews, were in the center of
social consciousness and public debate. No Jew in this secularized period
seemed able to live without active consciousness, and in Jewish behavior
there was no consciousness without a position in a debate. (1993: 16)
In order to help elucidate the context for Schulzs particular

engagement with Jewish and Hasidic tradition, the present article will
discuss one important element of the intellectual environment in
which Schulz was developing his artistic identity and his unusual
oeuvre: namely, the influence of Martin Bubers writings, and
charismatic speeches, on an entire generation of assimilating Jews. In
particular I will discuss some of the themes put forward in Bubers
early lectures on Judaism later published in two collections Drei
Reden ber das Judentum (Three Addresses on Judaism, 1911) and
Vom Geist des Judentums (The Spirit of Judaism, 1916) which he
was invited by the Bar Kochba Students Association of Prague to
deliver to the sizable assimilated public of Prague between 1909 and
1914. These lectures had an enormous impact on those members of
the younger generation who attended them or later read them.
Martin Buber and Fin de sicle Orientalism
Bubers early lectures on Judaism and his and his wife Paula Bubers
retellings in German of Hasidic tales appealed particularly to those
who had moved away from traditional religious practice, had been
educated in German, Polish, or Czech, and had joined, or hoped to
join, a cosmopolitan, secular European culture as citizens of their
respective countries. Estranged from their ethnic and religious
traditions, and often no longer speaking a Jewish language, whether
Hebrew or even Yiddish, many in this generation developed a more or
less-articulated longing for a revived relationship with Jewish tradition
(even as their European compatriots around them were discovering
new romanticized conceptions of traditional European folk culture)
and sought possibilities for an affirmative relationship with that
33

tradition that did not require adherence to halakhic law or the
separation of the Jew from the larger society and culture in which he
or she lived. Bubers lectures became a kind of bellwether and
inspiration for a generation of Jewish intellectuals transforming the
attitudes toward their Jewish heritage of such thinkers as Franz Kafka,
Max Brod, Georg Lukcs, Ernst Bloch, and Gustav Landauer;
individuals who, like Schulz, took an extrinsic path of participation
in European letters, and aligned themselves neither with Zionism nor
with Bubers modern religiosity. Left-wing anarchist Gustav Landauer
writing on Bubers influence said:
If I now say that [] it is precisely through the mediation of Martin Buber
that I have found Judaism, I must caution all who do not know the world
of Jewish spirit to which Buber brings us, not to conjure up a formal
religion and ritual practices. (in Mendes-Flohr 1991: 107)
What Landauer responded to in Bubers collection of Hasidic tales,

Die Legende des Baalschem (The Legend of the Baal Shem, 1908),
was rather a way of understanding his Judaism as an inalienable
spiritual sensibility (Mendes-Flohr 1991: 107) which he shared with
his fellow Jews, and which was independent of formal belief and
affiliation. Drawing on categories proposed by his teacher Georg
Simmel, Buber introduced the division between religion and
religiosity (Schaeder 1973: 51). Religion as practice, observance of
halakhic law was staunchly rejected as no longer valid for the
modern Jew. But religiosity was brought forward as a primary
value, a quality present in the individual who was open to the
perception of authenticity and wholeness or unity and who sought in
affirming this perception to restore meaning to life in modern Europe.
For Buber, this sensitivity or openness was characteristic of the Jewish
spirit, was latent in the soul of even the most deracinated modern Jew.
Of relevance to our study of Schulz, Landauer also learned from
Buber that often those Jews who were most faithful to this sensibility
were aligned with an unofficial, indeed heretical tradition (MendesFlohr 1991: 107). This idea was central to Bubers reevaluation of
Jewish tradition and his understanding of the revitalizing role
Hasidism had played in that tradition.
What Martin Buber offered, then, was a discourse and a new
way of thinking about Judaism that this assimilated generation was
looking for and it was based in a revaluing of precisely the culture of
34
Karen Underhill
the so-called Ostjuden a negative epithet which referred to

unassimilated Polish Jewry, and in particular Hasidim. Writes Paul
Mendes-Flohr:
[Buber] rendered Hasidism respectable, as it were, by integrating this
most distinctive manifestation of East European Jewish spirituality into
the general discourse and idiom of the New Romanticism (and later, of
Expressionism). By virtue of Bubers inspired presentation, Hasidism
and the millenial Jewish tradition from whence it emerged was deemed
relevant to the concerns of the educated individual involved in the
spiritual quest of the fin de sicle. (1991: 14)
As Mendes-Flohr points out, the call that Buber made to his

contemporaries, in these lectures and in his early writings on Hasidic
culture, represents a specifically Jewish manifestation of a wider
trend, or movement at the fin de sicle, and on into the interwar
period, then dubbed the New Romanticism. The name was coined
by German publisher Eugen Diederichs, who published Bubers
collection entitled Ekstatische Konfessionen (Ecstatic Confessions) in
1909, and whose publishing house sought to promote a return to a
higher transcendent reality (Mendes-Flohr 1991: 80). For Jews and
non-Jews, this was a period of vigorous interest in mysticism, and,
under the strong influence of Schopenhauer, particularly in many
forms of Eastern or Oriental spirituality, including Hinduism and
Buddhism and, as a result of Bubers efforts, later Hasidism hence
the term fin de sicle Orientalism. Adherents of the New
Romanticism sought, and found in the teachings of the Orient,
material and language for a revived spirituality, while at the same time
vehemently rejecting organized religion, whether Christian or Jewish.
They turned for inspiration, both spiritual and artistic, to mysticism,
folklore, and the occult, and sought meaning and even potential
salvation in art, poetry, theater, music in forms of cultural
expression that were based on a return to myth and reconnecting with
mythic consciousness.
Almost paradoxically, within the Jewish world, this new
interest in Oriental spirituality and culture offered an opportunity to
radically transform the relationship of assimilated Jewish intellectuals
to their own past to Jewish tradition. For within European discourse
Judaism itself had been considered an Oriental religion and culture
with all the negative connotations that that had previously carried. By
35

the turn of the century, and since the Jewish Enlightenment or
Haskalah and the entry of Jews into wider European society in
Western Europe, the relationship of assimilated Jews to their
unenlightened neighbors to the East had become a strongly
conflicted and even pained one. Assimilating Jews, particularly in
Germany and the West but also in Poland and Russia, had internalized
Europes negative image of the Jew as Oriental and transformed their
own discomfort with Jewishness into a fear and scorn for the
Orthodox and Hasidic Jewry of Poland and Eastern Europe. Viennese
writer Karl Emil Franzos, also born in Galicia, referred to this Polish
region in his very popular novels as Halb-Asien an exotic world
characterized by squalor, ignorance, and superstition, and ruled by a
fanatic mystical sect known as Hasidim (in Mendes-Flohr 1991: 83).
In the climate of fin de sicle Orientalism, however, with the
rise of interest in Eastern religions and the new respect for eastern
spirituality and mysticism, it became possible for Buber to effect a
complete turn-around of this attitude among many members of his
generation and the generations to follow. He was able to appropriate
the image of the Jew as Oriental, to make it a sign of how Jews had in
themselves and in their tradition a source of deep spirituality that
modern European intellectuals and artists were now seeking. Hasidic
culture and tradition, reexamined and repackaged as Oriental
spirituality in the positive sense, could be seen as a source of living
spirituality and still vital myth and legend, which should be an
inspiration not only to modern Jews but to European culture. In his
speech The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism, Judaism in particular
Hasidism becomes, in fact, the highest expression of the Oriental
spirit, and modern, secular Jews as the inheritors of this tradition are
invested with a world-historical mission; they are a promise of
spiritual hope to all nations. He concluded his lecture by saying:
For this world-historical mission, Europe has at its disposal a mediating
people that has acquired all the wisdom and the skills of the Occident
without losing its original Oriental character, a people called to link Orient
and Occident in fruitful reciprocity, just as it is perhaps called to fuse the
spirit of the East and the West in a new teaching. (Buber 1967: 78)
As part of this shift in perception, Hasidic legends and

mythology drawn from popular kabbalah and the Hasidic oral
storytelling tradition, could also become a rich source of inspiration
36
Karen Underhill
for modern and modernist literature, in its many incarnations in

several languages. The Bubers German-language renditions of
Hasidic legends, and Martin Bubers essays which introduced Hasidic
philosophy and basic principles of the kabbalah, opened the tradition
up to assimilated Jewish writers and artists, who would not have had
access to this tradition in any Jewish language. Bubers translations
were certainly not the only work on Jewish mysticism available in
German; there were numerous scholarly studies on the kabbalah
published in German, including work by Marcus Ehrenpreis, the uncle
of Debora Vogel. But they reached an incomparably larger audience
of secular, assimilated Jews who likely would not have expected to be
drawn to this material in a way, at the time, and with a message that
many of them wanted to hear.
It is also true that Polish-Jewish readers from Galicia would
have brought a different perspective to Bubers Hasidic tales and
essays than their German and Austrian neighbors. For them the
Hasidic culture that Buber was re-presenting was neither foreign nor
exotic but a part of everyday life in Galician cities, and Hasidim were
a sizable portion of the Jewish population of the region. Bubers
revaluation, then, could instead have served to complement and
complicate their own exposure to the Hasidic world and to its
philosophy and storytelling traditions and to change their intellectual
and artistic engagement with the heritage of that culture, which
thrived in the towns and cities of Galicia, like Drohobycz. As David
Goldfarb writes:
Schulz probably did not have intimate direct knowledge of Zohar or
Talmud or Maimonides in Hebrew and Aramaic, but he could have read
them in German, and it would have been difficult to avoid absorbing their
style and fragments of their substance from the conversation of Orthodox
and Hasidic Jews in Galicia at the time of Schulzs youth. (1997: 265)
Indeed, Schulzs exposure to Hasidic culture, and to the Hasidic oral

storytelling tradition, would have begun in childhood as it did for
Buber. It is neither possible nor necessary to our study to establish
whether and which titles by Martin Buber Schulz himself may have
read though it is likely that he would have read Die Geschichten des
37

Rabbi Nachman (Tales of Rabbi Nachman, 1906)5 or discussions in
periodicals concerning Bubers presentation of Hasidic philosophy, as
so many of his generation did. More importantly, however, in
negotiating his relationship to Hasidic culture and choosing to build
his poetics and many of the most powerful images in his stories
around a re-working of aspects of Hasidic culture, Schulz reveals
sympathy with the wider trend within the Jewish intellectual
community that Buber pioneered.
It is my conviction, then, that this context of fin de sicle
Orientalism in particular the positive reinterpretation of Jewish
mysticism, Hasidic legend and myth, and a perception of the vital and
heretical elements of the Jewish spirit can help us to situate Schulzs
uses of elements from these Jewish traditions. As I will suggest,
Schulzs prose works and poetic theory can be read as a modernist at
times irreverent literary answer to the call that Buber made to his
generation.
Ecstasy and Heresy: Making the World God-Real
What were the specific elements of that call, as Buber formulated
them in his early lectures, and in the introductions to his two most
widely-read collections of Hasidic tales? I will summarize here a
number of key elements and also suggest points of overlap between
Bubers discussion and Schulzs poetics. Essentially, Buber identifies
the need for a revived perception of unity in the world and connects
the search for authentic life with an innate striving to restore a lost
unity, or original state of wholeness. He understands this striving for
unity as the most elemental drive in mankind and that which
connects him to the Divine. Schulzs poetics also adopts this basic
premise but mapped onto the field of language and the Word. If for
Buber being is in a state of duality, for Schulz it is language that is
splintered, in shards, and longs to be restored to its home in myth.

5
Also influential and widely read were the three essays on Hasidic thought which
were published in this edition (Buber 1906) and provide an introduction to the Tales:
Die jdische Mystik, Rabbi Nachman von Bratzlaw and Worte des Rabbi
Nachman. Numerous other editions of Bubers works on Hasidism were also
available before the mid-1930s, including Buber 1908, 1918, 1930 and 1935. In a
1903 album profiling a number of modern Jewish artists that was edited by Buber, he
already makes reference to the significance of Hasidic tradition for the modern or
new Jewish artist.
38
Karen Underhill
Buber writes: The Orient perceives that [] the primally intended

unity is split and distorted; [] Man is called upon to change being
from duality to unity. The world is waiting for man, to be unified by
him (1967: 62). And Schulz writes, in Mityzacja rzeczywistoci
(The Mythologizing of Reality):
Sowo w potocznym dziesiejszym znaczeniu jest ju tylko fragmentem,
rudymentem jakiej dawnej wszechobejmuj cej, integralnej mitologii.
Dlatego jest w nim d no do odrastania, do regeneracji, do uzupeniania
si
w peny sens. [] Poezja odpoznaje te sensy stracone, przywraca
sowom ich miejsce, czy je wedug dawnych znacze. U poety sowo
opami
tuje si
niejako na swj sens istotny, rozkwita i rozwija si
spontanicznie [] odzyskuje sw integralno. (Op 385)

(The word in its common usage today is only a fragment, remnant of some
former all-embracing, integral mythology. That is why it possesses a
tendency to grow back, to regenerate and complete itself in full meaning.
[] Poetry recognizes these lost meanings, restores words to their places,
connects them by the old semantics. In the poets mind, the word
remembers, so to speak, its essential meaning, blossoms, unfolds
spontaneously [] regains its wholeness; Schulz 1998: 372)
Buber describes a particular type of individual (variously described as

the Oriental, the Jew, the mystic) who is open and susceptible to the
perception of that authenticity and wholeness. Such an individual
experiences a call or command, in the form of an ecstatic revelation
that manifests itself viscerally, as light, color, and a sense of the
intense interconnectedness of all things in the physical world. He is a
person in one of his stranger formulations Buber calls him the
motorischer-mensch or motor-type man for whom all of the senses
are interconnected. Schulzs particular poetics, so full of synaesthesia,
rich layers of metaphor and metonymy, and the permanent mutability
of forms, offers an excellent corollary in prose of the type of
perception that Buber discusses. For Buber, the individual who is
gifted with such perception experiences it as a demand: he takes on
the burden, as a life task, of working to express his perception of that
unity and divine presence. Similarly, young Joseph in Ksi
ga (The
Book) states: I knew then that The Book [the Authentic] is a
postulate, that it is a goal. I carried upon my shoulders the burden of a
great mission (TF 129; Wiedziaem, e Ksi
ga jest postulatem, e
jest zadaniem. Czuem na barkach ci
ar wielkiego posannictwa; Op
118). For Buber, the revelation experienced by the ecstatic can be
39

described as a God image; and it is this that is captured in true myth.
He writes:
Myth, where it really is myth and therefore different from and greater than
fable, is an account not imagined by man but impressed upon him,
impressed, that is, upon that human being who is alive with a burning
sense of color and shape. (1967: 6)
Schulzs The Book, together with the story Genialna Epoka (The
Age of Genius), in which the protagonist experiences his ecstatic
initiation into the life of the artist, again provides a modernist poetic
rendition of these elements of Bubers discussion. In his ecstatic state
of heightened perception, the young Joseph experiences an intensity of
color and shape, an invasion of brightness literally, he has a
burning sense of color and shape:
[W]skazuj c na sup ognisty, na zot belk
, ktra tkwia ukonie w
powietrzu, jak zadra, i nie daa si
zepchn pena blasku i kr cych w
niej pyw krzyczaem: Wydrzyj j , wyrwij! [] wyci gni
tymi,
wyduonymi palcami pokazywaem [] wypr
ony jak drogowskaz i
dr cy w ekstazie. (Op 131)
(Pointing to the column of fire, a golden bar that shot through the air like a
splinter and would not disappear full of brightness and spiraling dust
specks I cried: Tear it out, tear it out! [] I stood rigid like a signpost,
with outstretched, elongated fingers [] hand trembling in ecstasy; TF
141)
Buber presents the heritage of Jewish myth and legend as a

powerful expression of the unitary spirit. Myth for him is the living
force of God-consciousness (1967). But crucially, Buber emphasizes
that true, living myth is that which has always escaped as heresy,
mysticism, or oral, folk tradition from the calcifying and deadening
effects of organized religion and institutions. It exists in the margins,
as it were, of the tradition and of the texts. In one paean to the power
of subterranean myth in Judaism, he writes:
To be sure, rabbinism, in its blind zeal to build a fence around Judaism,
endeavored to restore a faith in God that was purified of myth; but the
result of this endeavor was a miserable homunculus. And this homunculus
was the eternal exilarch: it held sway over the galut generations; under its
tyranny the living force of Jewish God-consciousness, myth, had to lock
itself in the tower of the Kabbalah, or hide behind the womens distaff, or
40
Karen Underhill
flee from the walls of the ghetto into the world. It was tolerated as an
esoteric doctrine, or scorned as superstition, or banished as heresy, until
Hasidism established it on a throne, a throne of a short days duration,
from which it was pushed down to slink around, like a beggar, in our
melancholy dreams. (1967: 100)
We are reminded of Schulzs principle question: Where is Truth to

shelter, where is it it to find asylum if not in a place where nobody is
looking for it: in fairground calendars and almanacs, in the canticles of
beggars and tramps (TF 189; Gdzie ma schroni si
wykl
ta,
gdzie znale asylum, jeli nie tam, gdzie jej nikt nie szuka w
jarmarcznych kalendarzach i komeniuszach, w tych ebraczych i
dziadowskich kantyczkach; Op 189). Bubers tirade against
rabbinism is strongly reminiscent of Schulzs opposition in Wiosna
(Spring), between the prosaic world of Franz Joseph, and the Divine
and heretical power of the stamp album. Where Buber speaks in
religious categories, Schulz maps this ostensibly Jewish tradition of
heretical mythmaking onto the realm of secular, modernist and
Polish literature. Whereas Buber sets the vital regenerative power of
Hasidic myth and legend in opposition to the rabbinic authorities, in
Spring it is the appearance of the stamp album on the scene an
incarnation of Schulzs authentic that offers Joseph escape from
the suffocating domination of Franz Josephs world of prose:
Ale gdy ju wi
zienie zamyka si
nieodwoalnie, gdy ostatni otwr jest
zamurowany, gdy wszystko sprzysi
go si
, aeby ci
przemilcze, o
Boe, gdy Franciszek Jzef I zatarasowa, zalepi ostatni szpar
, aeby
ci
nie dojrzano, wtedy powstae w szumi cym paszczu mrz i
kontynentw i kam mu zadae. Ty, Boe, wzi e wtedy na siebie odium
herezji i wybuchn e na wiat tym ogromnym kolorowym i wspaniaym
blunierstwem. O herezjarcho wspaniay! Uderzye wtedy we mnie t
pon c ksi
g [] (Op 156)
(But when the prison seemed irrevocably shut, when the last bolt-hole was
bricked up, when everything had conspired to keep silent about You, Oh
God, when Franz Joseph had barred and sealed even the last chink so that
one should not be able to see You, then You rose wearing a flowing cloak
of seas and continents and gave him the lie. You, God, took upon yourself
the odium of heresy and revealed this enormous, magnificent, colourful
blasphemy to the world. Oh splendid Heresiarch! You struck me with the
burning book []; TF 159-60)
41

The heretic, for Buber (the Baal Shem Tov, eighteenthcentury founder of Hasidism being the best example) is privileged as
the true purveyor of what is vital in the tradition, as the true prophet.
Schulzs prophet, too, may be a madman, a criminal, a child, but he
speaks from the margins, from outside of power. Buber also
emphasizes the concept, drawn from Hasidic philosophy, that truth is
to be found in the low places: Revelation, he writes, does not flash
from the cloud, but from the lowly things themselves; it whispers to us
in the course of the ordinary every day, and it is alive quite near us,
quite close (1967: 6). Summarizing his call in the Preface to the 1923
edition of collected essays Reden ber das Judentum (Essays on
Judaism), Buber writes:
We ought to understand that to realize God means to prepare the world
for God, as a place for His reality to help the world become God-real
(gottwirklich); it means, in other and sacred words, to make reality one.
This is our service in the Kingdoms becoming.
Are we capable of that much? (1967: 9)
In the sense that Buber uses it, participating in the work of making the
world God-real means participating, through ones deeds, in the
repair of a broken or divided universe. For Buber, this means not only
to be open to the perception of the unity of all being, but also most
importantly to strive to make that unity a reality in the world. He
writes, the unified world must not only be conceived, it must be
realized. It is not merely given to man, it is given to him as a task; he
is charged with making the true world an actual world (1967: 60;
emphasis mine). For Schulz, working in the realm of literature, the
task of the poet is likewise to make the true world exist again, to
bring it into being through his act of poetry. This is precisely what he
calls for in The Mythologizing of Reality: a reconnection with the
authentic and originary state of language and myth sens meaning
through a poetic transformation of the everyday into timeless myth; a
bringing of the divine or primordial world, of mythic perception, into
experience in time, in the modern world. If the concept of an actual
divine or of God has ceded its place in Schulzs work to the spirit that
lies in the Authentic, or in true myth, then this poetic practice is
precisely the writers enactment of the call to make the world Godreal.
42
Karen Underhill
Remythologization and Modernity: Divergent Paths

As we have seen, both Buber and Schulz see the remythologization of
reality as central to their literary and philosophical work; and they
both undertake a modern revival and transformation of Jewish myth,
particularly drawn from Hasidic lore and kabbalah. However, their
work represents two opposed poles with regard to the final form that
the movement of Jewishness into modernity will take: a centripetal vs.
a centrifugal motion, respectively; the concentration of ethnically and
nationally-determined mythic elements (Buber) vs. (Schulz) their
dispersal into a universalist narrative landscape filled with remnants
from the myths of many, disparate cultures.
Within Jewish art and letters of Eastern and Central Europe,
the connection between mythical consciousness and nationalism (the
embracing of myth as part of the construction of ethnic and national
self-consciousnesses) also had its place in the imagery and cultural
expressions of Zionism. Indeed, Martin Bubers own turn to Cultural
Zionism, his work to rehabilitate Jewish myth and symbolism and
employ their power in attracting others to the Zionist movement,
represents a participation in neo-romantic, myth-based affirmations of
ethnic identity taking place throughout Central Europe. Schulz,
however, engages myth in a very different way. He uses the
revaluation of myth and mythic consciousness specifically not to
reaffirm connection to or identification with a specific ethnic or
national tradition, or to show the continuity of that tradition from the
historical present to a time in the past on the same soil, for example.
On the contrary, in Schulzs work the move to mythologize reflects
the desire, the will, to step out of ethnic and historical bonds and
boundaries. It becomes a strategy, or a dream, to escape ethnic
identification, to build a space narrative, artistic, philosophical of
meaning in the modern world that precisely transcends ethnic
divisions and historical realities. As Schulz wrote of his first book,
Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops), This book, however, is not a
repository of a mythology culturally grounded in res gestae, bearing
the stamp of history (Schulz 1998a: 412-413). This mythic space is
instead a narrative space of belonging in language; it is a textual
homeland that eschews historical or political realities, or materials, or
operates alongside them. Schulzs prose exists in an oneiric
borderland of its own creation, which not unlike the narrative spaces
43

of Franz Kafka also depends for its mythic resonance on the erasure
of any one culture. In a line from Schulzs Republika marze (The
Republic of Dreams), the countryside of his narrators childhood, or
of his dreams, becomes no mans land, or Gods land (Op 329; kraj
ju niczyj i boy; Schulz 1998b: 269):6
W tych dniach dalekich powzi
limy po raz pierwszy z kolegami ow
myl niemoliw i absurdaln , aeby pow
drowa jeszcze dalej, poza
zdrojowisko, w kraj ju niczyj i boy, w pogranicze sporne i neutralne,
gdzie gubiy si
rubiee pastw, a ra wiatrw wirowaa b
dnie pod
niebem wysokim i spi
trzonym. (Op 329)
(In those far-off days our gang of boys hit on the outlandish and
impossible notion of straying even further, beyond that inn, into no mans
or Gods land, of patrolling borders both neutral and disputed, where
boundary-lines petered out and the compass role of the winds skittered
erratically under a high-arching sky; CW 269)
Where it diverges from Bubers, I suggest that Schulzs conception of

myth accords closely with that of Thomas Mann, whose work, in
particular his mythic novel Joseph und seine Brder (Joseph and His
Brothers, 1933-43), had a great influence on Schulz.7 It is in Spring
that Schulz most fully develops the idea of a genealogy that
circumvents history, ethnicity, and cultural specificity by invoking the
idea of a universally accessible realm of myth. In his essay for
Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz he writes:
Do jakiego rodzaju nale Sklepy cynamonowe [] S one autobiografi
albo raczej genealogi duchow , genealogi kat exochen, gdy ukazuj
rodowd duchowy a do tej g
bi, gdzie uchodzi on w mitologi
, gdzie
gubi si
w mitologicznym majaczeniu. Zawsze czuem, e korzenie
indywidualnego ducha, dostatecznie daleko w g b cigane, gubi si
w
mitycznym jakim mateczniku. To jest dno ostateczne, poza ktre
niepodobna juz wyj. (Op 446)
(To what genre does Cinnamon Shops belong? The work is [] a spiritual
genealogy, a genealogy par excellence in that it follows the spiritual
family tree down to those depths where it merges into mythology, to be

6
All further references will be given as CW.

As Ficowski writes, Schulzs admiration for Manns Joseph und seine Brder
(1933-43) knew no bounds, and tributes to it occurred frequently in his conversations
and letters. Schulz regarded Mann as the greatest writer among his contemporaries
and knew his works from many readings in the original (in Schulz 1998a: 475).
7
44
Karen Underhill
lost in the mutterings of mythological delirium. I have always felt that the
roots of the individual spirit, traced far enough down, would be lost in
some matrix of myth. This is the ultimate depth; it is impossible to reach
further down; CW 370)
What Schulz seeks in this line of thought is to affirm a genealogy of

the spirit and of creative energy or ferment a storytellers and poets
genealogy that draws on a timeless magma or humus of human
culture that is otherwise envisioned as a perpetual eating of the dead, a
journey into the underworld:
Teraz dopiero widzimy na czym wiosna ronie [] oto s ciepe jeszcze
groby, prchno i mierzwa. Prastare historie. [] Tu s te kolumbaria, te
szuflady na umarych, w ktrych le zaschni
ci, czarni jak korzenie i
czekaj na swj czas. (Op 158-159)
(It is only now we realize what the soil is on which Spring thrives []
Here are graves that are still warm, the litter, and the rot. Age-old tales.
[] Here are columbaria, the drawers for the dead, in which they lie
dessicated, blackened like roots, awaiting their moment.; TF 168)
These references to the underworld resonate strongly with Thomas

Manns invitation into the underworld that prefaces his revisitation of
the biblical story of Joseph und seine Brder (Joseph and His
Brothers, 1934). Very deep is the well of the past, he writes in the
opening to the first volume, entitled Vorspiel: Hllenfahrt (Prelude:
Descent into Hell):
Shall we not call it bottomless? [] For the deeper we sound, the further
down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we
find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture,
reveal themselves unfathomable. No matter to what hazardous lengths we
let out our line they still withdraw again, and further, into the depths.
(1999: 3)
Once again, Schulzs concerted attempts to articulate this prehistorical genealogy also say something about his complex and uneasy
relationship with Jewishness. They represent a choice as an artist to
openly distance himself from his own real, historical, and culturally
specific genealogy. In his 1935 essay for S.I. Witkiewicz, cited above,
Schulz continues:
45

Mann pokazuje, jak na dnie wszystkich zdarze ludzkich, gdy wyuska je
z plewy czasu i wieloci, ukazuj si
pewne praschematy, historie, na
ktrych te zdarzenia formuj si
w wielkich powtrzeniach. U Manna s
to historie biblijne, odwieczne mity Babilonii i Egiptu. Ja staraem si
w
skromniejszej mej skali odnale wasn , prywatn mitologi
, wasne
historie, wasny mityczny rodowd. Tak jak staroytni wyprowadzali
swych przodkw z mitologicznych maestw z bogami, tak uczyniem
prb
statuowania dla siebie jakiej mitycznej generacji antenatw,
fikcyjnej rodziny, z ktrej wywodz mj rd prawdziwy. (Op 446; italics
mine)
(Mann shows that beneath all human events, when the chaff of time and
individual variation is blown away, certain primeval patterns, stories,
are found, by which these events form and re-form in great repeating
pulses. For Mann, these are the biblical tales, the timeless myths of
Babylon and Egypt. On my more modest scale I have attempted to
uncover my own private mythology, my own stories, my own mythic
family tree. Just as the ancients traced their ancestry from mythical unions
with gods, so I undertook to establish for myself some mythical
generation of forebears, a fictitious family from which I trace my true
descent; Schulz 1998a: 370; italics mine)
Conclusion
This last is a complex and dense statement of confession. Far from
reflecting a simple movement away from Jewish identification, which
the above testimony and others seem to imply, Schulzs specific form
of deracinated, de-historicized myth reflects an unexpected
reaffirmation and recuperation of Jewish identification, a vital
sublimation of Jewish content and of Jewish genealogy. In negotiating
this relationship with tradition Schulz can be seen to engage in a
storytellers sleight-of-hand, producing a storytelling mechanism not
unlike the chess-playing puppet described by Walter Benjamin in his
Theses on the Philosophy of History (also: On the Concept of
History, ber den Begriff der Geschichte, 1939, published
posthumously). In Benjamins allegory, a mechanical figure dressed in
Turkish attire, at a chess table, consistently plays a winning game,
operated from within by a hunchbacked dwarf who is hidden from the
sight of the audience. For Benjamin, the successful chess-player,
which represents historical materialism, is triumphant only because it
enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened
and has to keep out of sight (1968: 253). I would suggest that in
Schulzs breathtakingly original literary performance, Jewishness
46
Karen Underhill
functions similarly to the hunchback, theology, in Benjamins parable.

On the one hand, Schulz pushes Jewishness to the margins and
proclaims it dead, banishing direct discussion of it from the body of
the text. On the other hand, his entire oeuvre works to enshrine
precisely marginality, and the Underworld the land of the dead.
Thus, in Schulzs work we confront both the subtle identification of
Jewishness with death, marginality and misshapenness, and the
constant recuperation of that which is marginal of the scrapheap or
the shards and of that which is dead, abandoned, or decayed, lying in
the tomb awaiting its own Spring (waiting for the living, hungry poet
to digest it and make it part of his present). Schulzs hope for poetic
and artistic relevance, and for authenticity of perception and
expression, centers around adoration of the Underworld and the
margin as the sources of creative energy and, indeed, of life energy.
We are reminded once again of Bubers claim that true myth, in the
Jewish tradition, has always been pushed to the margins, to slink
around, like a beggar, in our melancholy dreams. I would like to
conclude by suggesting that in an unexpected fashion, Schulzs prose
bolsters this claim and even adds itself to Bubers noble lineage of
heretics perhaps precisely there, where his use of myth diverges
most strongly from Bubers own.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Theses on the Philosophy of History in Sontag, Susan (ed.)
Illuminations. New York: Schocken: 253-264.
Boski, Jan. 1994. wiat jako ksi
ga i komentarz in Jarz
bski 1994: 68-84.
Buber, Martin. 1906. Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman. Frankfurt am Main:
Rtten & Loening.
. 1908. Die Legende des Baalschem. Frankfurt am Main: Rtten & Loening.
. 1918. Mein Weg zum Chassidismus. Irinnerungen. Frankfurt am Main: Rtten
& Loening.
. 1930. Hundert chassidische Geschichten. Berlin: Schocken Verlag.
. 1935. Deutung des Chassidismus. Berlin: Schocken Verlag.
. 1967. On Judaism (ed. N.M. Glatzer). New York: Schocken Books.
Buber, Martin (ed.) 1903. Juedische Kuenstler. Berlin: Juedischer Verlag.
Goldfarb, David A. 1994. A Living Schulz: Noc Wielkiego Sezonu (The Night of
the Great Season) in Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History
14(1): 25-48.
. 1997. The Vortex and the Labyrinth: Bruno Schulz and the Objective
Correlative in East European Politics and Societies 11(1): 257-269.
Harshav, Benjamin. 1993. Language in Time of Revolution. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
47

Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) 1994. Czytanie Schulza: Materiay midzynarodowej sesji
naukowej Bruno Schulz w stulecie urodzin i w pidziesiciolecie mierci,
Instytut Filologii Polskiej Uniwersytetu Jagielloskiego, Krakw, 8-10
czerwca 1992. Krakw: T.I.C.
Lindenbaum, Shalom. 1994. Wizja mesjanistyczna Schulza i jej podoe mistyczne
in Jarz
bski (1994): 33-67.
Mann, Thomas. 1999. Joseph and His Brothers (tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter). London:
Vintage.
Mendes-Flohr, Paul. 1991. Divided Passions: Jewish Intellectuals and the Experience
of Modernity. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Panas, Wadysaw. 1997. Ksiga Blasku: traktat o kabale w prozie Brunona Schulza.
Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.
Prokop-Janiec, Eugenia. 1994. Schulz a galicyjski tygiel kultur in Jarz
bski (1994):
95-107.
Schaeder, Grete. 1973. The Hebrew Humanism of Martin Buber (tr. N. J. Jacobs).
Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Schulte, Jrg. 2003. Wielka Kronika Kalendarza in Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata
and Wadysaw Panas (eds). W uamkach zwierciadaBruno Schulz w 110
rocznic urodzin i 60 rocznic mierci. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe
KUL: 163-172.
Schulz, Bruno. 1988. The Fictions of Bruno Schulz (tr. C. Wieniewska). London:
Picador.
. 1989. Opowiadania, wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
bski). Wrocaw: Zakad
Narodowy im. Ossolinskich.
. 1998a. A Description of the Book Cinnamon Shops in Schulz (1998b): 412414.
. 1998b. The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). London:
Picador.
Shallcross, Bozena. 1997. Fragments of a Broken Mirror: Bruno Schulzs
Retextualization of the Kabbalah in East European Politics and Societies
11(2): 270-285.
Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Bruno Schulz

and Bolesaw Lemian
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
Abstract: Bruno Schulz and Bolesaw Lemian are two Polish writers of Jewish origin
who deal differently with that fact in their works. Lemian only implicitly reflects his
double identity of an assimilated Polish poet by referring to oriental themes. Hiding
behind his texts, he represents a typically modernist author. Schulz exposes his Jewish
origin, and as an avant-garde author he creates a recognizable alter ego in his texts.
Creating an esoteric layer, he writes for a Jewish in-group while at the same time
representing a Jewish avant-garde for a broader public.
Introduction
Bruno Schulz has been compared more than once to his older
contemporary Bolesaw Lemian. Besides many differences, there are
plenty of parallels in their poetics and philosophical background, some
of which have already been analyzed by various researchers. Czesaw
Karkowski (1978), for example, discussed Lemians and Schulzs
reference to Bergson. Herta Schmid (1998) compared their theories on
poetic language and their relationship to myth, pointing out the
differences, whereas Jerzy Jarz
bski (1999: 119-120) underlined the
similarity of their mythopoetics due to their teacher-disciple
relationship, hinting at the fact that Schulz as a young man became
acquainted with Lemians poetry and poetic writings in the bookshop
of his colleagues father, Mundek Pilpel (Jarz
bski 1999: 33). Both
Lemian and Schulz developed similar poetics: they are inclined to
use bold metaphors; typical for both of them is the grotesque. They
share common themes, such as depicting an abundant nature, fantastic
or erotic motifs, and create worlds and myths of their own. Stefan
Chwin (1994) worked out the similarities and differences in
poetological and ontological respect when comparing Schulz and
50
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
Lemian with regard to the motif of metamorphosis and the theme of

creating worlds.
Moreover, both of them are of Jewish origin and specifically
deal with that fact in their works. This common biographical fact,
however, forms at the same time a difference between the two authors.
Whereas on the one hand Lemian created an assimilated poetry, saturated with motifs of Polish folk poetry, the depiction of Polish (or
East European) landscapes and Christian themes, and did not expose
any specific elements of Jewish culture or religion, in this way concealing his Jewish origin, Schulz on the other hand not only exposes
Jewish themes but also creates a poetics which is based on Talmudic
exegesis in a heretical way. This poetics of revelation (Schulte
2004), however, is only recognized by those who are familiar with
Jewish tradition.
My thesis is that Schulz on the one hand avoids the open
treatment of Jewishness when he uses motifs (such as nature,
outsiders, or eroticism) that he shares with Lemian, who concealed
his Jewish origin. (Although such motifs in Schulzs stories often
contain hidden references to Jewish religious writings, they are known
only to those who are acquainted with them). Schulz, on the other
hand, exposes Jewish themes with regard to the father, calling him, for
example, an Old Testament prophet on more than one occasion. In this
last respect he differs from Lemian. In their disparate attitudes
toward dealing with their Jewish origin in their texts, both of them
stand for two different models of authorship. The following investigation will demonstrate this and at the end will attempt to explain the
younger authors relationship to the older one. Each authors
relationship to his Jewish origin and its treatment in their texts will be
related to the problem of authorship, which in Lemians case is
linked with orientalism, identity, and alterity and their correlation to
modernism, and in Schulzs case is linked to the positioning of his
work in contemporary Polish literature in general.
Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian
51

Bolesaw Lemian: Oriental Motifs as a Concealed Reflection of
Jewishness
Bolesaw Lemian was the first assimilated Polish poet of Jewish
Origin writing for a Polish public in general.1 He was baptized and
grew up in an assimilated family of the Warsaw bourgeoisie. During
his lifetime he published, besides his theoretical writings and his fairy
tales, three books of poetry: Sad rozstajny (Crossroads Orchard,
1912), ka (Meadow, 1920), and Napj cienisty (Shadowy Drink,
1936). The fourth volume, Dziejba lena (Forest Happenings) was
published posthumously in 1938. His first book was published
seventeen years after the first publication of a poem in a journal.
Whereas other poets and a handful of critics appreciated his work,
literary critics in general faulted it for nominally containing too many
foreign influences; for example, one anonymous critic pointed out the
similarity of Lemians poetry to the works of Baudelaire and
Verlaine (cf. opuszaski 2000: 105). A rejection of the poets works
as strange to the Polish public can be interpreted as a hidden form of
anti-Semitism: ignoring the fact that there are many references to
Polish romanticism and contemporary Polish poetry, Lemians work
is suggested to be French rather than Polish, i.e. not to be rooted in
Polish culture.2 Rochelle Stone (1976: 22-27) notes other critical
harassments against Lemian: for example, Brzozowskis attacks
against Lemians nominally epigonic modernism. Obviously, the
critics transfer a biographical fact to the author and thus to a literary
fact, so the assimilated poet who wrote assimilated poetry is
actually judged by his origin and not by his work. In a certain sense,
Lemian himself transfers the problem of his twofold identity as a

1
Although there have been minor poets of Jewish origin since the nineteenth century,
the presence of these authors in the Polish literature of the 19th century is only of
documental significance. Outstanding Polish writers of Jewish origin appear only in
the 20th century (obecno tych pisarzy w literaturze polskiej XIX wieku ma
znaczenie jedynie dokumentalne. Wybitni pisarze polscy pochodzenia ydowskiego
pojawiaj si
dopiero w XX wieku ; Panas 1996: 18). Interestingly enough, Panas
investigates only Jewish authors who deal with Jewish themes and consequently does
not mention Lemian at all in his monograph on the problems of Jewishness.
2
Rochelle Stone (1976: 147-181) thoroughly demonstrates the relationship of
Lemians poetry to contemporary Russian symbolism and thus explains his
strangeness to Polish readers.
52
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
baptized Jew to his work, to his double (sobowtr, cf. Przybylski

1987), the implied author.
In general, references to Jewish culture or religion can hardly
be identified in Lemians poetry. An exception might be found in the
heretical long poem Eliasz (Eliah) in Shadowy Drink, but the
prophet Eliah is not only important for Jewish messianism but also in
Christian tradition and folklore. The title Kabaa (Fortune-Telling)
in Crossroads Orchard does not directly refer to Jewish mysticism.
The word means fortune-telling, and the text does not support a link
to Jewish tradition. All other texts refer to Polish or Ukrainian
folklore, to myths of various origins, and to the New Testament, first
and foremost the Birth of Christ as in ka (Meadow) or Betleem
(Bethlehem), though in both cases it is in a syncretistic and heretical
way.
A reflection of the authors own double identity can be
established only implicitly. This problem is related to motifs of
metamorphosis, doubling, and to oriental themes; the motif of
doubling and oriental themes appear to be related.
In Lemians first book of poems there are two texts referring
to the tales of the Arabian Nights Sidi-Numan and Nieznana
podr Sindbada-eglarza (Sindbad the Sailors Unknown
Journey); in the following year Lemian published his adaptations of
tales of the Arabian Nights for children: Przygody Sindbada-eglarza
(Sindbad the Sailors Adventures, 1913) and Klechdy Sezamowe (Old
Tales of Sesame, 1913). In several respects these texts can be
understood as a sublimation of the authors dual identity. On the one
hand, there are thematic elements: for example, the question of the
equality of all religions in Rybak i geniusz (The Fisher and the
Genius) and Opowiadanie krla Wysp Hebanowych (The Story of
the King of the Ebony Islands). Uncle Tarabuk in Sindbad the
Sailors Adventures, Lemians own invention which does not
correspond with the tales of Sindbad in the original of Arabian Nights,
can be understood as the authors ironic self-portrait: like the real author who for many years had not been able to publish a book, his
character discovers various unconventional methods of saving his
graphomaniacal verse, one after the other turning out to be useless, but
does not publish them as a book. Moreover, Uncle Tarabuks
calembours and neologisms are typical for Lemians own poetic
language.
53

On the other hand, characters with a dualistic conception
represent the authors dual identity: for example, the girl in Sindbad
the Sailors Unknown Journey, the last long narrative poem of Crossroads Orchard. Every morning and every evening she changes the
colour of her hair and her eyes, representing thus an oriental and an
occidental identity, which is underlined by the paraphrase of East,
od wschodu soca (from sunrise; 1965: 103). When the lyrical
subject kills her at the end of the poem, only her black hair continues
growing. The poem can be understood as a nightmare in which the
implied author tries to kill one part of his identity and to expose the
other, namely the oriental one. The whole poem does not share
much more than the title with the oriental tales of the Arabian Nights.
The depicted landscape is more similar to East and Middle European
landscapes than to oriental ones. Exposing typical traits of Lemians
work in general, Sindbad the Sailors Unknown Journey represents
the Orient as something familiar rather than as something strange. The
same applies to the poem Sidi-Numan of the cycle Poematy
zazdrosne (Jealous poems). The underlying narrative is based on the
Arabian Nights, but Lemian added significant changes which
integrate the story and the poem into his own work. Traits which
could be interpreted as orientalistic in the notion of Edward Said
(1978), for example, cruelty, sensuality, sexual mania, abundance, are
at the same time typical of movements such as symbolism and decadence, to which Lemians poetry belongs. Ironic, self-conscious
phrases at the same time create a personal distance and are a means of
overcoming the modernist tendencies of Young Poland literature.
Oriental themes in the first book of poems and in the fairy
tales for children are indebted to a current tendency of the time.
Lemian, however, does not represent the Orient as something strange
but as something of his own; he identifies with the oriental traits of his
work and represents himself as something exotic, thus subverting a
common anti-Semitic clich. Parallels can be found in Polish culture
as well as in other European cultures. The Polish painter of Jewish
origin Maurycy Gottlieb, for example, in 1876 created a self-portrait
titled Ahasver, showing an oriental-looking man. The German poet
of Jewish origin Else Lasker-Schler created a fantastic Orient in her
novels Die Nchte der Tino von Bagdad (Tino of Bagdads Nights,
1907) or Der Prinz von Theben (The Prince of Thebes, 1914) which
serve as an expression of her Jewish identity in the German literary
54
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
scene.3 Last but not least, in 1948, Marc Chagall illustrated the
Arabian Nights and chose texts mainly of Jewish origin (cf. Chagall
1999). This aesthetic practice corresponds to a discourse founded by
Martin Buber and other Prague Jews, who appealed against assimilation and postulated an oriental way of life around 1910 (cf. Berman
1996: 281-286). Although Lemian lived in Poland where unassimilated Hasidism dominated, he belonged to an assimilated family and
tried to conceal his Jewish origin. The identification with oriental
themes can be understood as a means of concealed reflection with the
dual identity which was imposed on him by his origin and by the
society in which he lived.
The oriental texts belong to the first book of poems, which
was published almost at the same time as the oriental fairy tales. In the
first and last book of poems, the texts containing a sublimed
discussion of the authors dual identity are positioned at the end and
therefore in an exposed position. Lemian who carefully conceived his
books of poems as meta-cycles cannot have done this by chance. The
first book of poems was published long after the authors debut as a
poet. Dual oppositions that are overcome by a third element are
characteristic of the second book of poems, Meadow, which seems to
present the possibility of overcoming the problem of dual identity.
The book finds the resolution in poetry which lasts forever and
triumphs over the dualism of soul and body (cf. Meyer-Fraatz 2000).
The dualistic motifs, however, are again insurmountable in the third
book of poems, Shadowy Drink, which is dominated by a pessimistic,
melancholic tone. The motif of death is implicitly expressed by the
adjective cienisty shadowy in the title and is reinforced in the
ultimate poem which is about the doubling of a man who is unable to
eradicate his doppelganger until his own death. This poem is preceded
by Eliah, the only text with an identifiable Jewish (but also Christian) subject, even though it is treated in a heretical way because Eliah
wants to eliminate God.
Similarly the motif of metamorphosis represents the changing
of identity. This is best shown in the poem Akteon from the cycle
Postacie (Characters) in Shadowy Drink. Akteon is the only poem
referring to Greek mythology. In the first stanza, the story of Akteons
metamorphosis into a stag is narrated in the third person, whereas the

3
Cf. Berman (1996: 291-345) for a detailed analysis of Else Lasker-Schlers

oriental works as an expression of Jewish identity.
55

second stanza represents the words of the stag himself who feels like a
human. In both stanzas it is stated that it is awful to die in a shape
other than the primordial one. In this way, the motif of metamorphosis
is another way of concealing the consciousness of Lemians dual
identity.4
Despite both Lemians election to the Literary Academy and
the Golden Laurel the Academy conferred to him, his situation in
the mid-thirties when his third book of poems was published had not
really improved. The circumstances of his death in 1937 confirm this
judgement: although as a member of the Academy he should have
received a national funeral and have been represented in the Alley of
Honor, this was not the case. A number of documents prove that the
act of disrespecting his rights as a Member of the Academy was
motivated by anti-Semitism.5
As an author Lemian reacted to his complicated situation
implicitly through his work. Reflecting his dual identity by using
oriental motifs and by creating dual characters, he hides behind his
texts. This is typical for modernist authors, as the Swiss Slavicist Felix
Philipp Ingold (1992) has demonstrated. In a certain sense, Lemians
situation is comparable to that of the Russian poet Pasternak: both of
them are poets of Jewish origin but baptized, and both of them hide
behind their texts as modernist authors.6 Moreover, it is typical that
the modernist author does not live on his poetry (cf. Ingold 1989).
Lemian was not able to earn his living by writing poetry; he was
forced to work as a lawyer. Another proof that he separated poetry
from ordinary life is his choice to adopt the phonetically similar
Polish surname Lemian for the poet, whereas the man and lawyer
until the end of his life bore the original name Lesman (cf.
Rymkiewicz 2001: 238-239). Lemians concealment of his Jewish
identity thus coheres with the modernist authors attitude to his own
work.

4
Chwin (1994: 114) names Lemians poem Przemiany (Changes) as a model for
Schulz.
5
Stone (1976: 11) even mentions that Lemians body lay unburied for weeks because
the Academy denied him the funeral honours.
6
As for Pasternak, however, his Jewishness does not form a part of the relation
between author and text (cf. Ingold 1992: 175-194).
56
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
Bruno Schulz: Exposing Jewishness as Avant-Garde

Although Bruno Schulz, like Lemian, grew up in an assimilated,
Polish-speaking family, he in no way conceals his Jewish origin in his
texts. On the contrary, there are many details in his texts which expose
this fact. Unlike Lemian, Schulz did not live in the capital but on the
Galician periphery in the small town of Drohobycz, where Hasidic
traditions were dominant. Although it is doubtful that Schulz spoke
Yiddish, he understood the language because of his profound
knowledge of German, and he was familiar with the Jewish tradition.
He learnt Hebrew and even met a Zaddik in the 1930s. Although he
was not religious, his literary work proves his knowledge of the
rabbinic tradition (cf. Schulte 2004).
Plenty of books and articles deal with the Jewish element in
Schulzs prose: first and foremost literary critics are concerned with
Hasidism, messianism, mysticism, gnosis, kabbalah (Lewi 1989;
Kakw 1992; Lachmann 1992, 1999, 2002; Goldfarb 1993; Shallcross 1997; Panas 1997, 2001; Sproede 2000). Stala (1993) links
Schulzs creation of various realities to Jewish philosophers; MeyerFraatz (2001, 2005) and with profound judaistic knowledge, Schulte
(2004) interpret Schulzs cycles by means of traditional Talmudic exegesis. As for Schulzs graphical works, Jewish elements have been
discussed by Panas (2001) and Sikorski (2004) and by Van
Heuckelom (2006) with regard to iconoclasm.
As previously mentioned, there are two ways of representing
Jewish elements in Schulzs texts. On the one hand, they exhibit
Jewish motifs as prophets and the Messiah; on the other hand, there
are hidden hints toward Jewish religious texts and exegetic practices,
which are recognizable only to those who are acquainted with them.
Unlike the explicit thematizations of Jewishness, they are present
throughout his prose; one example, is the underlying principle of the
calendar described by Schulte (2004). This article does not intend to
continue this kind of analysis, but instead tries to determine the
function of Jewish elements in Bruno Schulzs prose with regard to
the implied as well as the real author. By understanding the exposition
of Jewish origin as related to Schulzs position in literary history, it
will be possible to explain his attitude to Jewishness in his texts as
contrary to Lemians.
57

When Schulz started writing, poets of Jewish origin were no
longer something special in Polish literature: Julian Tuwim, Antoni
Lange, Aleksander Wat, Jzef Wittlin, and others had followed
Lemian into Polish literary life although as Henri Lewi points out,
anti-Semitism was a crucial force in new independent Poland (1989:
54). Schulz was being promoted by Zofia Nakowska, one of the most
influential Polish writers in the 1930s, and he had a close relationship
with Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz and Witold Gombrowicz, the most
outstanding avant-garde writers at that time. Although Schulz became
a writer more or less by chance, encouraged by his friend Debora Vogel to whom he sent his stories accompanying his letters, he was
quickly accepted by the literary scene.7 His friend Romana Halpern,
who lived in Warsaw, introduced him to people such as Witkacy, who
became of great importance for him.
In his study on Hasidism and avant-gardism in Schulzs prose,
Alfred Sproede (2000) states that Schulz is sceptical toward the avantgarde and uses Jewish elements in order to ridicule avant-garde
literature. He understands Schulzs stories, even though they show the
authors familiarity with avant-garde devices, as embodied in
Hasidism and as a continuation of this tradition. My aim is to
demonstrate that it is the opposite: Schulz uses Hasidic elements to
expose or rather stage himself as a Jewish avant-garde author. This
can be illustrated by the status of the real and the implied author in his
texts.
The implied author is the one who conceives the represented
world of the narrative; using Ryszard Przybylskis term (as I
previously mentioned), the implied author is the authors
doppelganger in the text and is responsible for the occurrence of
Jewish motifs such as prophets or the Messiah as well as for the esoteric references to the rabbinic tradition. Whereas the esoteric layer
extends throughout the two cycles Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon
Shops, 1934) and Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium Under the
Sign of the Hourglass, 1937) as well as the stories which are not included in the cycles, it is not comprehensible for those who are not
familiar with the Jewish tradition; Jewish motifs recognizable to
everyone are mostly confined to the depiction of the father who is
frequently characterized as weak, moribund, and eccentric at the same

7
This does not imply that he was accepted by all critics. Jarz
bski (1999: 52)
mentions anti-Semitic attacks by the right-wing critics of the 1930s.
58
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
time. The most outstanding example seems to be the following:

straddling the chamber pot, he is blasphemously compared to an Old
Testament prophet as in Nawiedzenie (Visitation). The noises of
emptying his bladder and his gestures are interpreted as Mosess
dialogue with God on Sinai, culminating in the emptying of the
chamber pot through the window. The heretical Traktat o
manekinach (Treatise on Tailors Dummies), consisting of three
parts, is called Wtra Ksi
ga Rodzaju (The Second Book of
Genesis), and the father who plays the role of a demiurge is defeated
each time by Adela, a character who has much in common with Lilith,
Adams first wife who later becomes the wife of Satan (cf. Lachmann
1999: 142). In the last story of Cinnamon Shops, the father, once more
compared to Moses on Sinai, creates an ephemeral world out of bales
of cloth, a fantastic Canaan (Schulz 1989b: 91; fantastyczny
Kanaan; Schulz 1989a: 99) containing wise Jews and prophets:
Gdzie indziej stay grupy ydw w kolorowych chaatach, w wielkich futrzanych kopakach przed wysokimi wodospadami jasnych materyj. Byli
to m
owie Wielkiego Zgromadzenia, dostojni i peni namaszczenia panowie, piel
gnowane brody i prowadz cy wstrzemi
liwe i dyplomatyczne
rozmowy. (1989a: 101)
(In other places in front of the waterfalls of light fabric stood groups of
Jews in coloured gabardines and tall fur hats. These were the gentlemen of
the Great Congregation, distinguished and solemn men, striking their long
well-groomed beards and holding sober and diplomatic discourse; 1989b:
92)
But at the end of the story, after the return of the birds, which the
father bred under his roof and which Adela expelled in the story Ptaki (Birds), and their sudden death, the landscape vanishes and the
father returns early in the morning to the kitchen where Adela is
already perhaps even triumphantly grinding coffee. The father is
characterized once more as a broken and defeated man who must
capitulate in front of his satanic housekeeper and his subjects.
Thus combining Jewish motifs with the world of the dying
father, which is often depicted comically, this manner of exposing
Jewishness attains an ironic touch. The esoteric layer of Jewish elements confirms an ironic treatment of the Jewish tradition: the
underlying structure of an achronological calendar (cf. Schulte 2004),
the structuring of the cycle after the principle of the Talmudic
59

interpretation of the Book of Genesis, in which a Pentateuch is
positioned at the end of the cycle (cf. Meyer-Fraatz 2005: 331). Also,
the grotesque comparison between the father sitting on the chamber
pot and Moses who communicates with God and other grotesque
depictions of the father (for example, in Traktat o manekinach, ci g
dalszy (Treatise on Tailors Dummies. Continuation) which are
identified with the world of Jewish tradition, demonstrate a certain
irony on behalf of Hasidism. The episode of aunt Perasia, from the
story Wichura (The Gale), who burns together with the paper she
used to make a fire and whose family does not care for her as well as
the fathers metamorphosis into a crab which is served at the table, yet
nobody can decide to eat it, belong to the esoteric layer of Jewish injokes,8 and thus represent further examples of the comic treatment of
Hasidic elements. Such a self-ironic attitude toward tradition is part of
the Jewish tradition. Walter Benjamin (1985: 293) once said about
Kafka that to understand him properly, it is necessary to discover the
comical side of Jewish theology. This is at the same time a key to the
Jewish element in the prose of Schulz, who commented that Kafka
wrote in the conventional language of certain esoteric communities
and schools (w j
zyku umownym pewnych gmin i szk
ezoterycznych; 1989a: 413), thus recognizing a common method.
Another proof for the ironic treatment of Jewish traditions is
the fact that the son hardly communicates with his father in Sklepy
cynamonowe; mostly he watches his fathers grotesque behavior like a
spectator in the theatre, fascinated by the fathers strange show.9 The
son is outside of the fathers world. In the second cycle, Sanatorium
Under the Sign of the Hourglass, the son speaks with his father in
several stories and shares the bed with him for one night in the title
story. At the end of the cycle, in Ostatnia wycieczka ojca (Fathers
Last Escape), when the father is cooked and served as a crab, the son
comes close to incorporating the father when he nearly eats him.

8
As Sproede (2000: 150) pointed out, the episode of the burning aunt can be
interpreted as a comical allusion to Jewish meditation, whereas the fathers various
metamorphoses can be explained as gilgul, the Hasidic transmigration of souls (cf.
Sproede 2000: 154; Meyer-Fraatz 2004: 361-362).
9
The intrinsic theatrality of Schulzs prose has been described and interpreted by such
critics as Wyskiel (1977, 1980), Robertson (1994), Sproede (2000), Meyer-Fraatz
(2001, 2004, 2005). Nonetheless, it is related to the Jewish tradition (cf. Sproede
2000) and of importance with regard to the relationship of father and son (cf. MeyerFraatz 2004).
60
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
Nevertheless, the son is also watching him as a spectator, for example,

when the father is sitting in a caf and is ordering a plethora of food
while flirting with the waitress and other women around him. The
sons attitude toward the father is best symbolized in an Ex-Libris for
Stanisaw Weingarten: a Harlequin or a Pierrot is looking at a
frivolous scene, in which he does not take part, but because of his
disguise, he is a potential actor as well.10 The question is whether he
has stopped playing or still participates. At any rate, the presentation
of the father as an actor in a grotesque tragicomedy implies his
distance from the son who does not always take part in the play. By
confining those Jewish motifs which are discernable by readers who
are unfamiliar with the Talmudic tradition to the father and excluding
the son from the fathers world, the implied author underlines his
ironic attitude toward the Jewish tradition, at least in the first book.
Schulz himself pointed out the authenticity of his personal
myth depicted in the cycle Cinnamon shops (cf. Schulz 1992a: 326).
This specific authenticity is underscored by the fact that the father
bears the same name as Schulzs father, whereas the son is called
Jzef, referring to Jacobs son in the Book of Genesis and thus
highlighting the mythological aspect of the stories. Although the son
bears a name other than that of Jakub Schulzs real-life third son, he is
nevertheless recognizable as the real authors alter ego. In this way,
the author has not only an implied but also a fictionalized presence in
the texts. This fact is confirmed by the illustrations to his stories in
which Jzef is always represented by the authors self-portrait. In his
graphic cycle Xiga bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book), Schulz
presents himself as a masochist male surrounded by or facing female
nudes. The title is a citation of a Jewish book of the Hasidic tradition,
directly translated into Polish (cf. Schulte 2004). Referring idolatry to
the masochist adoration of women means an even higher degree of
idolatry. The topic of the The Idolatrous Book is not only highly
heretical but also shocking for the mostly catholic public because of
the depicted nudes and situations among which the painter depicts
himself (though the pictures were actually known to only a few
10
The Ex-Libris is reproduced in Jarz
bski (1999: 179) and in Panas (2001). Panas (970) describes and interprets the Ex-Libris very thoroughly, pointing out its position in
the whole history of arts on the one hand and the importance for Schulzs whole work
on the other, drawn and written later. My own interpretation reduces the picture to the
mere aspect of spectator and scene.
61

people). Additionally, even the Jewish theme itself was most unusual
for an author who wrote for a Polish-speaking public. In the stories
erotic themes are either less exposed or restricted to characters other
than Jacob and Joseph (except Manekiny (Mannequins), where the
father examines Paulines knee and the Sanatorium Under the Sign of
the Hourglass, in which the father flirts with waitresses and the son
waits for the pornographic books that he ordered by mail); however,
both the illustrations and The Idolatrous Book (to an even greater
degree) expose erotic themes. This attitude toward shocking the petite
bourgeoisie is typical for the avant-garde, as well as the exposition of
the authorial I. Van Heuckelom (2006) pointed out the aspect of
iconoclasm with regard to the prohibition of pictures by the Ten
Commandments.
A prototype of an avant-gardist author exposing his own
identity is the Russian poet Vladimir Maiakovskii who wrote an
autobiography titled Ia sam (I Myself) and a tragedy titled Vladimir
Maiakovskii. Felix Philipp Ingold points out that Maiakovskii exposes
his own identity in order to dissolve it, fragment it in the collective
crowd while at the same time identifying his fictional self in his literary text with his real self in the text of his life (1992: 145-174).
Although Maiakovskii and Schulz do not have much in common,
there is a parallel in the exposition of the authorial subject. Similarly,
Schulzs fictional identity is partly identical to his real identity. In
spite of all the differences between the two authors, the model of fictionalising ones self and thus combining literature and life is valid for
both of them. Witkacy, Schulzs literary and artistic companion, also
created a great number of self-portraits.
By fictionalizing himself and depicting the father as
representing the dying Jewish world, Schulz exposes his Jewish origin
but at the same time demonstrates his own estrangement from his
roots by means of irony. He paradoxically demonstrates that he
belongs to the literary avant-garde by referring to traditional Hasidic
methods. Panas (2001: 191) points out that on Schulzs drawing
Przyjcie Mesjasza (The Coming of the Messiah) there is no
Messiah, but due to the happy faces of the people in the picture, he
supposes that the Messiah must be near. Although Panas negates Isaac
Bashevis Singers cited words Death is the Messiah (Panas 2001:
121), I am inclined to apply them to the case of Schulz; such a
comprehension of a major Jewish theologeme would fit to his ironic
62
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
and heretical treatment of Jewish tradition. Similarly, his novel on the

Messiah, which was announced more than once and has been missing
since Schulzs death, might have been a metaphor for something
which will never come. Thus the exposition of his Jewish origin is
tightly knitted to the real author Bruno Schulz.
Conclusion
Both authors, Bolesaw Lemian and Bruno Schulz, were Polish
authors of Jewish origin who contributed works of hitherto unknown
poetic qualities to Polish literature. Besides important differences,
they shared central traits in their poetic practices, such as the use of
the grotesque, the depiction of an abundant nature, and bold, complex
metaphors. Both of them were confronted with anti-Semitic
harassment by literary critics. However, one main difference between
them is the treatment and reflection of Jewish origin in their work.
Interestingly, this difference manifests itself in the common motif of
metamorphosis. Whereas Lemians metamorphoses focus on the
mourning over a double identity (for example in Akteon, see above),
Schulzs metamorphoses are related to the esoteric layer of his prose,
representing his Jewish identity. At the same time, the different
treatment of their Jewish origin as a literary fact makes it evident that
they belong to different phases of modernism. Lemian only implicitly
reflects his dual identity through the use of oriental motifs, motifs of
double identity or metamorphosis, and thus hides behind the text,
represents a typically modernist author of the turn of the century.
Although some motifs can be recognized as autobiographical,
Lemian by no means exposes his own personality in his texts. Schulz,
on the other hand, exposes his Jewish origin by using motifs of
prophets and the Messiah and creating a poetics of revelation based on
the rabbinic tradition of Thora exegesis in the Talmud and the Midrashim. Although the latter is comprehensible only to insiders, Schulzs
illustrations to his stories and his other drawings showing Hasidic
Jews underline the Jewish theme which ultimately refers back to the
Jewish identity of their author. In his prose he created a recognizable
alter ego and thus fictionalized himself and obscured the border
between fiction and reality, literature and life. This is typical of the
avant-garde. Neither Schulz nor Lemian belonged to any literary
group, but Schulz, unlike Lemian, was lucky to have influential
63

friends, for example, Zofia Nakowska, in the literary scene. Forming
a trio with Witkacy and Gombrowicz, he soon belonged to the most
important newcomers of Polish literature in the 1930s. In these
circumstances, Schulz exposes his Jewish origin in his work as a
specific form of avant-garde.11
Some of Schulzs stories thematically recall the motifs of
Lemians poetry: the abundant nature of Sierpie (August) or
Pan, Wiosna (Spring) and other stories are depicted with a similar metaphorical expression. Gabriel Moked (1994: 88-89) speaks
of Lemianesque landscapes (krajobrazy Lemianowskie) in
Schulzs prose. Some of his outsider characters as Touya, Pan, or
Dodo evoke respective outsiders in Lemians poetry (cf. Karkowski
1978: 64). Chwin (1994: 119) mentions the theme of cosmic creation
as the most common trait shared between the two poets and relates
them both to fantastic romanticism. Schulz appreciated Lemian and
read his poems repeatedly. In 1938, he wrote to his friend Romana
Halpern that he just received Lemians Meadow (2002: 170), which
suggests that Lemian was important for him throughout his life.
Outlining a model of writing strategies of Jewish writers in
Poland in the 1930s, Eugenia Prokop-Janiec (1994: 97) confirms that
Lemian was a fully assimilated Polish poet of Jewish origin. According to her model, Schulz was a semi-assimilated author, using
Jewish themes and motifs only in certain situations and contexts. She
concludes that Schulzs strategy of assimilation was moderate: he
chose a private Jewishness with Polish or European aspirations
(prywatn ydowsko z polskimi czy europejskimi aspiracjami;
1994: 98) and functioned in a twofold way, in a Jewish and in a
Polish surrounding. His treatment of Jewish elements in his texts as
outlined in this article can explain this assertion in more detail.
Whereas the esoteric layer of his texts is understandable only for a
Jewish in-group for whom he is a Jewish author, the unconventional
poetics which are a result of his in-jokes turn him into an avantgardistic author for a wider audience.12
11
Herta Schmid (1998: 57) comes to the conclusion that Schulz is stylistically rooted
in the Krakow avant-garde and futurism but surpasses both of them by creating a
poetics of his own.
12
The question of whether or not the ridiculing of avant-garde manifests in the
Treatise on Tailors Dummies by the father can be referred to the author himself.
64
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
Nonetheless, Schulzs Lemianesque landscapes seem to be

more than a typological similarity, no less than his heretical and
blasphemous treatment of biblical motifs and his presentation of outsiders. When Schulz confines openly Jewish motifs mostly to the world
of the father and composes those stories in which he seems to be an
adept of Lemian but with hidden Jewish elements, he obviously in a
certain sense surpasses his older contemporary. Schulzs twofold
authorial strategy represented by the two layers of Jewish elements in
his prose corresponds to Lemians treatment of his Jewish identity in
his poems. Whereas Lemian conceals his Jewishness behind motifs
of dual identity or metamorphosis by staying on the level of the implied author, Schulz acts out his dual identity on the levels of both the
real and the implied author. One might speculate whether or not this is
a case of Blooms anxiety of influence.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. 1985. W. Benjamin, G. Scholem. Briefwechsel 1933-1940.
Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Berman, Nina. 1996. Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne. Zum Bild des
Orients in der deutschsprachigen Kultur um 1900. Stuttgart Weimar:
Metzler.
Chagall, Marc. 1999. Arabische Nchte. Vier Erzhlungen aus 1001 Nacht. Mnchen
London New York: Prestel.
Chwin, Stefan. 1994. Schulz a Lemian in Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) Czytanie Schulza.
Materiay midzynarodowej sesji naukowej Bruno Schulz w stulecie
urodzin i w pi
dziesi
ciolecie mierci. Krakw: T.I.C.: 108-126.
Goldfarb, David A. 1993. Czytaj c Schulza: Noc wielkiego sezonu in Kresy 13:
15-21.
Ingold, Felix Philipp. 1989. Schpfertum und Fhrungskraft. Zum Wandel der
Funktion Autor in der Moderne in Wunderlich, Werner (ed.) Der
literarische Homo Oeconomicus. Vom Mrchenhelden zum Manager. Beitrge zum konomieverstndnis in der Literatur. Bern Stuttgart: Haupt:
171-195.
Ingold, Felix Philipp. 1992. Der Autor am Werk. Versuche ber literarische
Kreativitt. Mnchen: Hanser.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 1999. Schulz. Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnol skie.
Karkowski, Czesaw. 1978. Poezja na mietniku in Poezja. 13(6): 64-68.
Kakw, Robert. 1992. Wielki teatr paschy. O akcentach ydowskich w twrczoci
Brunona Schulza in NaGos 7: 34-47.
Schulz Prosa in Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. Sonderband 31: 439-461.
. 1999. Der Demiurg und seine Phantasmen. Schpfungsmythologische Spekulation im Werk von Bruno Schulz in Kosta, Peter, Holt Meyer and
65

Natascha Drubek-Meyer (eds). Juden und Judentum in Literatur und Film
des slavischen Sprachraums. Die geniale Epoche (Jdische Kultur 5). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 131-153.
. 2002. Erzhlte Phantastik. Zu Phantasiegeschichte und Semantik phantastischer Texte. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Lemian, Bolesaw. 1965. Poezje (ed. J. Trznadel). Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy.
Lewi, Henri. 1989. Bruno Schulz et les stratgies messianiques. Paris: La Table
Ronde.
opuszaski, Piotr. 2000. Lemian. Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnol skie.
Meyer-Fraatz, Andrea. 2000. Das Rtsel der dritten Rose. Bolesaw Lemians Zyklus
Trzy re im Kontext des Gedichtbands ka in Ibler, Reinhard (ed.)
Zyklusdichtung in den slavischen Literaturen. Frankfurt/M. etc.: Lang: 367379.
. 2001. Zasady cyklizacji w prozie Brunona Schulza in Jakowska, Krystyna,
Olech, Barbara and Sokoowska, Katarzyna (eds). Cykl literacki w Polsce.
Biaystok: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Biaymstoku: 283-299.
. 2004. Shne und Vter: berlegungen zu einer thematischen Konstante bei
Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz und Danilo Ki in Hansen-Kokoru, Renate and
Richter Angela (eds). Mundus narratus. Festschrift fr Dagmar Burkhart
zum 65. Geburtstag. Frankfurt/M. etc.: Lang: 359-374.
. 2005. Zasady cyklizacji w twrczoci narracyjnej Brunona Schulza (ci g
dalszy) in Demska-Tr
bacz, Mieczysawa, Jakowska, Krystyna and Sioma,
Radosaw (eds). Semiotyka cyklu. Cykl w muzyce, plastyce i literaturze.
Biaystok: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Biaymstoku: 327-336.
Moked, Gabriel. 1994. Dwie galaktyki pnego modernizmu. wiat przeszoci i
modernizm w twrczoci dwch ydowskich pisarzy z Galicji Brunona
Schulza i Samuela Josefa Agnona in Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) Czytanie
Schulza. Krakw: T.I.C.: 85-94.
Panas, Wadysaw. 1996. Pismo i rana. Szkice o problematyce ydowskiej w
literaturze polskiej (Critice literaturae judaicae). Lublin: Dabar.
Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.
. 2001. Bruno od Mesjasza. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii CurieSkodowskiej.
Prokop-Janiec, Eugenia. 1994. Schulz a galicyjski tygiel kultur in Jarz
bski, Jerzy
(ed.) Czytanie Schulza. Krakw: T.I.C.: 95-107.
Przybylski, Ryszard K. 1987. Autor i jego sobowtr. Wrocaw: Ossolineum.
Robertson, Theodosia. 1994. Bruno Schulz i komedia in Kitowska-ysiak,
Magorzata (ed.) Bruno Schulz. In memoriam. 1892-1942. Lublin:
Wydawnictwo FIS: 101-109.
Rymkiewicz, Jarosaw Marek. 2001. Lemian. Encyklopedia. Warszawa: Sic!
Schmid, Herta. 1998. Sprachursprungstheorien bei Bolesaw Lemian und Bruno
Schulz in Grzinger, Karl Erich (ed.) Sprache und Identitt im Judentum
(Jdische Kultur 4). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 43-57.
Schulz, Bruno. 1989a. Opowiadania. Wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
bski).
Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich.
66
Andrea Meyer-Fraatz
. 1989b. The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz. New York: Walker and
Company.
. 1992a. Expos ber das Buch Zimtlden von Bruno Schulz. Die
Wirklichkeit ist Schatten des Wortes. Aufstze und Briefe (ed. J. Ficowski).
Mnchen: Hanser: 325-328.
. 1992b. Ilustracje do wasnych utworw (ed. J. Ficowski). Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Reprint.
. 2002. Ksiga listw (ed. J. Ficowski). Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria.
Schulte, Jrg. 2004. Eine Poetik der Offenbarung. Isaak Babel, Bruno Schulz, Danilo
Ki (Jdische Kultur 12). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Shallcross, Boena. 1997. Fragments of a Broken Mirror: Bruno Schulzs
Retextualization of the Kabbalah in East European Politics and Societies.
11(2): 270-281.
Sikorski, Dariusz K. 2004. Symboliczny wiat Brunona Schulza. Supsk:
Wydawnictwo Pomorskiej Akademii Pedagogicznej w Supsku.
Sproede, Alfred. 2000. Exprimentations narratives aprs la fin de lavantgarde:
notes sur Bruno Schulz, ses lecteurs et ses incantations in Konicka, Hanna
and Hlne Wodarczyk (eds). La littrature polonaise du XXe sicle:
textes, styles et voix. Paris: Institut dEtudes Slaves: 135-165.
Stone, Rochelle. 1976. Bolesaw Lemian. The Poet and his Poetry. Berkeley Los
Angeles London: University of California Press.
Bruno Schulzs Xi
(consulted
18.05.2008).
Wyskiel, Wojciech. 1977. Brunona Schulza porozumienie z czytelnikiem in
Bujnicki, Tadeusz and Janusz Sawiski (eds). Problemy odbioru i
odbiorcy. Wrocaw: Ossolineum: 257-267.
. 1980. Inna twarz Hioba. Problematyka alienacyjna w dziele Brunona Schulza.
As One Kabbalist to Another On Arnold Suckis

Mystical Visions in the Poem Bruno Schulz
Sawomir Jacek urek
Abstract: Bruno Schulz and Arnold Sucki (1920-1972) have several things in
common: their place of birth (shtetl), their Jewish origin (Polish-Jewish roots), their
assimilation to Polish culture, their attachment to the history of Polish literature, and
their fascination with Jewish mysticism and philosophy, primarily with
medieval kabbalistic thought. They are not only writers, but also Jewish philosophers
and kabbalistic thinkers. This article is a hermeneutic effort to show influences of
Schulzs output on Suckis poetry in the context of Judaism and first of all
kabbalah. It analyzes one of Arnold Suckis poems, entitled Bruno Schulz.
Introduction
Two distinguished Polish writers, Bruno Schulz and Arnold Sucki
(1920-1972), have several things in common. Both came from a shtetl
a small Jewish town Schulz from Drohobycz, Sucki from
Tyszowce on the Huczwa river; both were born into Jewish families;
both were assimilated into Polish culture; and today they are both
famous as Polish writers. There is also one other connection between
them, namely their fascination with Jewish mysticism and philosophy,
primarily with medieval kabbalah.1 Looking at their output, one could
call these two writers Jewish philosophers and kabbalistic thinkers
because one can find in their poems and novels not only inspirations
from Jewish philosophy but also connections with its mystical vision
of worlds and cosmic ideas. One Polish mystic literally talks to
another, as one kabbalist to another

1
Cf. Panas (1997) and urek (1999) for a discussion of connections between the
works of Polish writers and Jewish mystical tradition.
68
Sawomir Jacek urek
The Constant Temptation of Matter

The basic philosophical category operating in Arnold Suckis poetic
text Bruno Schulz is the principium individuationis. The term
originates in the Middle Ages. Like many other modern terms, it
harkens back to Thomas Aquinas, who in Summa Theologica
(Question 75: Of Man Who is Composed of a Spiritual and a
Corporeal Substance: And in the First Place, Concerning What
Belongs to the Essence of the Soul (Seven Articles), Fourth Article:
Whether the Soul is Man?) describes a human being in the following
way:
The assertion the soul is man can be taken in two senses. First, that man is
a soul; though this particular man, Socrates, for instance, is not a soul, but
composed of soul and body. I say this, forasmuch as some held that the
form alone belongs to the species; while matter is part of the individual,
and not the species. This cannot be true; for to the nature of the species
belongs what the definition signifies; and in natural things the definition
does not signify the form only, but the form and the matter. Hence in
natural things the matter is part of the species; not, indeed, signate matter,
which is the principle of individuality; but the common matter. For as it
belongs to the notion of this particular man to be composed of this soul, of
this flesh, and of these bones; so it belongs to the notion of man to be
composed of soul, flesh, and bones; for whatever belongs in common to
the substance of all the individuals contained under a given species, must
belong to the substance of the species. (1981)
Aquinas points to a certain tension between individuality and

universality, and between the subjective and objective aspects of their
perception. Stefan Swieawski comments on the above fragment of
the medieval thinkers ontological argument in this way:
W okrelenie rzeczy materialnych wchodzi materia wspna, nie za
materia ilociowo oznaczona, stanowi ca o ujednostkowieniu,
indywidualizacji, czyli o rozdrobnieniu na jednostki. Zasad , czynnikiem
jednostkowienia (principium individuationis) jest to, co sprawia, e dany
byt nie jest tylko jedynym w gatunku, lecz e na gatunek tego bytu
skadaj si
liczne jednostki. Zasad t jest materia, ktra podobnie jak
kada mono jest rdem mnogoci. Materia pierwsza jest czyst
monoci , ale monoci stania si
ciaem; i dlatego tym, do czego jest
ona w pierwszym rz
dzie w monoci, jest rozci go i wszelkie
okrelenia ilociowe (quantitas). Tote zasad jednostkowienia dla w.
Tomasza nie jest materia pierwsza bez adnych bliszych wyjanie, ale
materia uj
ta jako pozostaj ca w monoci do okrele ilociowych:
As One Kabbalist to Another Schulz and Sucki
69

quantitate signata. Jest to ta materia, ktra po czywszy si
z form
substancjaln wyst
puje w danym jednostkowym bycie, ukonstytuowanym przez po czenie si
tej formy substancjalnej z materi pierwsz .
Czym zupenie innym jest materia wsplna czy powszechna (materia
communis); oznacza ona ten element materialny, ktry jest istotny nie dla
danej jednostki, ale dla gatunku, gdy istoty jestestw cielesnych nie
stanowi nigdy sama forma, lecz zespolenie formy i wanie owej materii
wsplnej. (in z Akwinu 1956: 726).
(Material entities are determined by the common matter rather than by
matter circumscribed qualitatively. The common matter individuates
particular entities. The principle of individuation (principium
individuationis) makes it possible for many particulars to share the same
species. Matter constitutes the principle of individuation, which like
other possibilities is the source of variety. Primary matter is the pure
possibility of acquiring a body. Thus, extension and quantity (quantitas)
constitute its primary potential. Therefore, Aquinas considers primary
matter to be the principle of individuation only insofar as it encompasses
the possibility of quantitative determination (quantitate signata). It is a
type of matter that occurs in a particular in combination with the
substantial form, and the particular is constituted by this combination. The
common matter (materia communis) is totally different, as it refers to the
material component, which is not essential to a particular, but only to the
species. For the essence of material entities is never constituted by form
alone, but by its combination with the common matter.)2
Beginning his lyrical philosophical treatise, pointedly entitled Bruno

Schulz, Sucki writes:
Tak urealnia si
principium individuationis:
kuszenie substancji ci ge, upynniony ar
pogardy sennej, mioci (1966)
(It is in this way that principium individuationis becomes real:
the constant temptation of matter, the fluid heat of
dreamy disdain, of love)
Considering Schulzs way of understanding reality and his

metaphysical and ontological vision, it appears that Sucki is trying to
indicate at the beginning of his poetic argument the principle that both
orders Schulzs vision and provides a means for understanding it
cosmologically and anthropologically. Following Aquinas (and, as we
will see shortly, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Jung), Sucki seeks the

2
Translation into English by P. Kawalec.
70
Sawomir Jacek urek
central axis of all the processes to which both cosmos and man (and
all beings) are subject in the category of the principium
individuationis: that is, in the category of the principle of
individuation mentioned by Aquinas, and in its natural objectives,
understood in Schopenhauers sense as the objectification of the
transcendental will, conceived as the thing in itself. In his poetry,
Schulz asks an important question about the universal principle that
would explain all the processes of transformation and becoming for
both the human being and, more broadly, the world. According to
Sucki, in Schulzs system, this principium applies to both the
individual and human community or nature. Man and the world
become actual not through the process of having their being
objectively confirmed by a number of other individuals, but through
individuation, which takes place in an individual and subjective
manner, somewhere in the human ego, where the hidden principle of
life is being discovered. According to Jungs theory
wszystko wi e si
zarwno z aspektem procesualnym zmian w obr
bie
bytu (zarwno bytu jako takiego, jak i bytu psychicznego w szczeglnoci), ale nade wszystko z wymiarem teleologicznym (celowociowym)
tego. Prawo to wyraa wi
c bezporednio d enie jednostki jako caoci
do wyraenia siebie jako niepowtarzalnej, jedynej w swoim rodzaju
indywidualnoci, kieruj cej si
wasnym cho powszechnym
wewn
trznym prawem apriorycznie dan , potencjalnie w nim tkwi c
struktur . Na gruncie psychologii analitycznej zasada ta oznacza przede
wszystkim proces wyodr
bniania si
, rnicowania bytu wiadomego z
wszechogarniaj cej macierzy niewiadomoci. (Kumicki 2006)
(everything is linked to the process of changes in being (both being itself
and as a particular mental state of being), and above all to its teleological
(design) dimension. This principle therefore expresses the aspirations of
the individual as a whole for expressing oneself as a unique
individuality, guided by internal laws that are ones own yet also universal
an a priori structure, a potential lying deep within. At the basis of
analytical psychology, this principle denotes first of all a process of
separating, of differentiating a conscious being from the all-embracing
mother of unconsciousness.)
Jungs understanding of the principium individuationis seems closer to

Schulzs ontological conception than to Schopenhauers understanding of individuation as a source of human suffering (as it is in
Buddhism). In both Schulzs and Jungs conceptions, it is above all
the principle responsible for the creative transformations of the
71

individual, for the individuals development toward higher goals,
namely, wholeness, the uniqueness of existence, and higher forms of
order (Kumicki 2006).
We should give some attention here to the historical context,
pointed out by Stefan Chwin (1994) in his article Grzeszne
manipulacje. Historia sztuki, a historia medycyny (Sinful
Manipulations: the History of Art and the History of Medicine). We
have to remember that Schulzs lifetime (1920s and 1930s) was
marked by very intensive development of the sciences. In his essay,
Chwin shows the extent of Schulzs fascination with biology and
medicine. According to Chwin, the artist from Drohobycz was deeply
interested in discoveries made by Alexis Carrel in the area of
transplantation, which had changed the understanding of the human
body (the shift of the border between life and death) and of human
identity (the transcendence of sexual differences). These discoveries
were accompanied by unusually rapid at least for that time
development of other medical sciences, especially the creation of
genetics and the emergence of eugenics. For Chwin, the description of
these fascinations in Schulzs case can be found in the dreams that the
hero of Schulzs prose has about creating a human being in the form
of a tailors dummy, about experiments consisting of the exclusion of
the principium individuationis from an ontological (and, consequently,
axiological) perspective, and then reversing the order and trying to
turn the principium individuationis into the primary principle of the
cosmic order, which also pertains to inanimate objects. All of this
acquires a new form within the aesthetic domain where the artist
attempts to create new textual worlds without paying attention to the
limitations of matter because such limitations have been overcome.
For this reason, some critics have opted for the theory that this
principium individuationis (a term which appears only once in
Schulzs work, in the story Kometa (The Comet)) has a
Nietzschean genealogy in the case of the author of Traktat o
manekinach (Treatise on Tailors Dummies), or as Jerzy Jarz
bski
(1998a: c-cv) suggests, it is deployed parodically by Schulz. As
Wodzimierz Bolecki forcefully asserts:
[P]rincipum individuationis [] funkcjonuje w schulzowskiej koncepcji
literatury niew tpliwie w takim sensie, w jakim uywa jej Nietzsche w
Narodzinach tragedii, tzn. jako kryterium podziau na sztuk
apollisk i
dionizyjsk . (2003: 20)
Sawomir Jacek urek
72
(Principium individuationis undoubtedly works in Schulzs conception of

literature in the sense in which Nietzsche used it in The Birth of Tragedy,
that is, as the criterion for dividing art into Apollonian and Dionysian.)
According to Nietzsche,
kategoria ta implikuje podzia bytu na odizolowane, indywidualne
elementy. [J]est [] wyznacznikiem sztuki apolliskiej. A sam Apollo
zosta nazwany [] boskim obrazem principium individuationis,
ubstwieniem i geniuszem tej zasady. [Z]asada [ta] stanowi
fundament sztuki, ktra ten ywio [istnienie, byt] zasania i ktra zatem
nie jest przedstawieniem istnienia, lecz jego pozorem. [] eby rozerwa
zason
zasaniaj c rzeczywisto, aby dotrze do istoty bytu, trzeba
przede wszystkim unicestwi zasad
principium individuationis. [T]ej
destrukcji dokonuje wanie Dionizos. (Bolecki 2003: 21-22)
(this category implies the division of being into isolated, individual
elements. This is the determinant of Apollonian art. Apollo himself was
called the divine image of principium individuationis, its divinization
and the genius of this principle. This principle constitutes the basis of
art, art which covers up this element [existence] and which therefore does
not depict existence but rather its illusion. To tear this veil covering
reality, to reach the core of being, one must first of all destroy the
principle of principium individuationis. This destruction is carried out by
Dionysus.)
In this approach, the breaking of this principle is an artistic

phenomenon, which is not wholly negative since it is connected with a
return to the sources of culture. As Bolecki further observes:
Tymczasem Schulz si
gaj c do tych samych nietzscheaskich rde
nadawa amoralizmowi sens ontologiczny. Dla Schulza bowiem aetyczny
jest nie artysta (kapan sztuki w terminologii Przybyszewskiego), lecz
byt samo istnienie. [] Schulz rozwija w nim koncepcj
, zgodnie z
ktr dawna jedno sowa zostaa rozerwana na izolowane fragmenty.
Jedno tym elementom moe przywrci jedynie sztuka, a dokadniej
zabieg zwany przez Schulza mityzacj . Celem mityzacji jest odzyskanie
utraconej jednoci, mit jest bowiem w koncepcji Schulza rzeczywistoci
pierwotn . W pierwotnej rzeczywistoci ukryty jest sens istnienia, ktrego
nie ma w sztuce wspczesnej, zbudowanej na odizolowanych od siebie
fragmentach dawnych kultur i mitw. [] Poezja, czyli sztuka pisa
Schulz to regeneracja pierwotnych mitw. (Bolecki 2003: 23-27)
(Meanwhile Schulz, using Nietzschean sources, gives an ontological sense
to amoralism. This is because for Schulz it is not the artist who is ethical
(the artist who was called the priest of art by Stanisaw Przybyszewski)
73

but being, existence itself. Schulz develops the concept according to
which the old unity of the word has been broken into isolated elements.
The unity of these elements can be restored only by art, and, more
precisely, by the operation which Schulz called the mythologizing of
reality. The goal of this mythologizing is the restitution of lost unity, as
myth, for Schulz, constitutes original reality. In this original reality, there
is hidden the sense of existence, which no longer exists in modern art,
which is created from the isolated fragments of old cultures and myths.
Poetry, that is, art Schulz wrote is the regeneration of the original
myths.)
This is not the first or only case of the existence of the motif of the
principium individuationis in Polish literature. This term appears, for
example, in Czesaw Mioszs poetry: What happened and when to
the principium individuationis? Where is the smell of ajer3 near the
river bank, for me only and nobody else? (O, co si
stao i kiedy z
principium individuationis? Gdzie zapach ajeru nad rzek , mj tylko i
dla nikogo?; 1980: 124). The poet as Jan Boski wrote
musi nazwa matk
dawnym, jedynym imieniem, inaczej zostanie
policzony w tum, zmierzony, zapomniany Bo imi
nowe, pospolicie
stosowane, uoglnia i str ca w abstrakcj
, pozbawiaj c jednostkowoci,
ktr ocali moe tylko poezja. Jak ocali principium individuationis? Za
spraw ajeru nad rzek , ktry by mj tylko i dla nikogo Zgodnie
ze wi
tym Tomaszem, wanie materialno funduje principium
individuationis. (2008)
(must call his mother by the old, the only name, or else he will become
part of the crowd, calculated, forgotten Because the new name,
colloquially used, generalizes and turns into an abstraction, depriving one
of his or her individuality, which can be saved only by poetry. How can
one save the principium individuationis? Thanks to the ajer on the river
bank, which was only mine and no one elses According to Thomas
Aquinas, it is materiality that is at the core of the principium
individuationis.)
This Migration of Forms is the Essence of Life

How does Schulz himself understand the meaning of individuality or
individualization of beings? In a letter to Witkiewicz, he wrote:

3
Ajer is a liquor, also known as advocaat.
74
Sawomir Jacek urek

Wszystko dyfunduje poza swoje granice, trwa tylko na chwil
w pewnym
ksztacie, aeby go przy pierwszej sposobnoci opuci. [] Rzeczywisto przybiera pewne ksztaty tylko dla pozoru, dla artu, dla zabawy.
Kto jest czowiekiem, a kto karakonem, ale ten ksztat nie si
ga istoty,
jest tylko rol na chwil
przyj
t , tylko naskrkiem, ktry za chwil
zostanie zrzucony. Statuowany tu jest pewien skrajny monizm substancji,

dla ktrej poszczeglne przedmioty s jedynie maskami. ycie substancji
polega na zuywaniu niezmiernej iloci masek. Ta w
drwka form jest
istot ycia. (Schulz 1998a: 444-445).4
(Everything diffuses beyond its borders, remains in a given shape only
momentarily, leaving this shape behind at the first opportunity. []
Reality takes on certain shapes merely for the sake of appearance, as a
joke or form of play. One person is a human, another is a cockroach, but
shape does not penetrate essence, is only a role adopted for the moment,
an outer skin soon to be shed. A certain extreme monism of the life
substance is assumed here, for which specific objects are nothing more
than masks. This migration of forms is the essence of life; Schulz 1990:
113)
This migration of forms is the essence of life seems to be the key to

Schulzs ontology. Beings only exist in their essence deep beneath the
epidermis, which peels off periodically. Everything is only a mask
under which one can find the essence. Beings are in constant
motion; they mutate but only in their external forms, while their inner
essence remains unchanged. Should this ontological understanding of
reality be treated as a distant echo of gilgu neshamot, the Jewish
mystical conception of a regenerated, post-mortem incarnation of the
essence of each being (in Hebrew gilgulim means a turn, a circle, a
wheel), that is, of its soul (or spirit, in Hebrew, neshama) into another
physical form or human figure, which would happen thanks to the
energy stored in each being?5 Initially, this concept was popular only
in circles close to the Karaits (it was popularized by Anan ben David),
who had taken it from Indian thought (samsara the circle of forms;
cf. Ochman 1995: 31-32). This teaching later infiltrated the kabbalah,
but it was not which must be stressed here in agreement with
Orthodox Judaism. Some kabbalists searched for the model of gilgul
neshema in the history of Moses, who led the Jewish people out of

4

Wadysaw Panas (2001: 120) signalized the presence of this motif in Schulzs
prose.
75

Egypt.6 In the kabbalah, the concept of gilgul neshamot appeared for
the first time in a treatise entitled Sefer ha-Bahir. Later, it was
popularized by Isaac Luria,7 who, according to Panas, strongly
influenced Schulz.8 According to the Lurian notion, the souls of the
dead could be reincarnated into animals, and those who did not find a
place in the world of animate nature took their place in stones. Luria
liberated the souls imprisoned in stones and ordered them to continue
the restitution and repair of the world (Hebr. tikkun) because liberating
souls from these inanimate forms and sending them on to develop
further were the role of a mystic-kabbalist. In kabbalistic visions,
stones, thanks to the souls hidden in them, behave like live bodies to
such an extent that they themselves can become a source of light (cf.
Unterman 1994: 294-295).
In the kabbalah, the entire cosmos is understood as the realm
of forms, where all beings undergo development from a mineral state,
to vegetal and animal states, and toward the stage of incarnate
humanity. In the Jewish tradition, man occupies a special place in the
hierarchy of created beings: higher than angels. This position is a
result of two features. First, man has a second soul, which guarantees
him eternity, and second, thanks to this soul, man is a mirror of the
Absolute (En-Sof). Does Sucki also point to such a kabbalistic
interpretation of Schulzs ontology and cosmogony?

6
Cf., for example, Halevi (1994: 19).

Gershom Scholem (1996: 128) claims that after Lurias death the theory of the
wandering of souls, known as the banishment of souls, achieved an important place in
the worldview of the subsequent generations of Jews.
8
Cf. Panas (1997: 99-100): We are sure that there exists an intellectual and
conceptual context for interpretation, which helps us to explain the mystery of
Schulzs vision of cosmogony. We see it in the kabbalistic doctrine cimcum, which
was created by the Palestinian mystic Isaac Luria (1534-1572). In our opinion, this is
the only possible link, because in all known systems of cosmogonic ideas
mythological, religious, philosophical there is nothing analogical to this collection
of ideas and the pictures accompanying it, which we have discovered in Schulzs
world (S dzimy, e istnieje pewien intelektualny i wyobraeniowy kontekst
interpretacyjny, ktry pomoe wyjani tajemnic
Schulzowskiej wizji
kosmogonicznej. Dostrzeemy go w kabalistycznej doktrynie cimcum, ktr
wykreowa palestyski mistyk Izaak Luria (1534-1572). W naszym przekonaniu to
jedyne moliwe odniesienie, poniewa we wszystkich znanych systemach myli
kosmogonicznej mitologicznych, religijnych, filozoficznych nie znajdujemy
praktycznie adnej analogii dla tego zespou idei i towarzysz cych im obrazw, jaki
wykrylimy u Schulza).
7
76
Sawomir Jacek urek
At the Blind Spot of its Circumference

It is interesting that in his interpretation of Schulzs works, Sucki
instantly moves from ontological matters to the figure of the father,
directly addressed with the words Father, father:
Ojcze, ojcze,
kondor pi, przelatuje soce nad Drohobyczem
i przejrzyst machinacj
szykuj na niebie oboki
w lepym punkcie obwodu. Blask: Pantha rei,
Alleluja woa ruchem r k Bg guchoniemy
(Father, father,
the condor is sleeping, the sun flies above Drohobycz
and the clouds prepare a transparent machination in the sky
at the blind spot of its circumference. A brilliance: Pantha rei,
Hallelujah cries the deaf-and-dumb God with a waving of his hands)
The father is invoked as a concrete person, the hero of the prose

written by Schulz, addressed as a sleeping condor (the father is
reincarnated as the condor in another story, Ptaki (Birds)). He
flies together with the sun above Drohobycz, which becomes very
important with regard to my discussion earlier, specifically in the
cosmic context evoked by the poem and, as we will see in a moment,
in the context of cosmogonist speculation. This cosmogony is a
mysterious act, a physically unusual action (clouds prepare a
transparent machination in the sky), which is connected to some
cycle (at the blind point of its circumference), in which the
movement takes place along a circular trajectory (the sun is circling,
flying along a circumference). It is at this very moment that the
cosmogonist elements start to appear in the text: light (shine) and
visualized sound (Hallelujah he cries with a waving of his
hands). From this point forward, everything starts moving: panta
rhei.
In his story Kometa (The Comet), Schulz puts the words of
Heraclitus into the fathers mouth, which is most interesting precisely
in the context of principium individuationis:
Panta rei! woa i zaznacza ruchem r k wieczne kr enie substancji.
Od dawna pragn zmobilizowa kr ce w niej utajone siy, upynni jej
sztywno, torowa jej drogi do wszechprzenikania, do transfuzji, do
wszechcyrkulacji, jedynie waciwej jej naturze. Principium individua-
77

tionis furda mwi i wyraa tym sw bezgraniczn pogard
dla tej
naczelnej ludzkiej zasady. (Op 339-340)
(Panta rhei! he exclaimed, and indicated with a movement of his hands
the eternal circling of substance. For a long time he had wanted to
mobilize the forces hidden in it, to make its stiffness melt, to pave its way
to universal penetration, to transfusion, to universal circulation in
accordance with its true nature. Principium individuationis my foot,
he used to say, thus expressing his limitless contempt for that guiding
human principle; Schulz 1998b: 88)
The essence of being here is movement and ceaseless change, while

its matter is light and sound, as in the kabbalah. A silent and closed
deaf-and-dumb God enters history, a God who lost some of His
divine attributes to man, a God who performs an act of self-limitation
through his creative gesture, as Luria and Schulz claim.
This is the way in which Sucki introduces the reader to his
lyric treatise on Schulz, on a great philosopher who wrote down his
ontological and cosmological discoveries in literary texts. Bruno
Schulz, a writer and kabbalistic philosopher, is described by Arnold
Sucki, a poet and kabbalist.
A Shy Philosopher
Toward the end of his poem, Sucki writes:
wstydliwy filozof incognito szmacian tog
rozwija
na wszechwiat, na miasteczko, jak wdowi pantofel
rzucony w zorz
za ogrody
i ju jest za drzwiami
(a shy philosopher incognito unfolds
a rag toga
over the universe, over the little town, like a widows slipper,
thrown into the dawn beyond the gardens
and it is already beyond the door)
At precisely this moment in the poem, the eponymous hero appears,

entering history in Gods footsteps. Sucki defines him as a shy
philosopher incognito. This modest, emotionally marked thinker
makes an important gesture by covering with the flaps of his coat both
the macro reality (the universe) and the microcosm (little town). It
78
Sawomir Jacek urek
is a quick and unique movement, which one can understand in two

ways: on the one hand, he covers reality, but on the other hand, he
tries to join it in a kind of material unity.
A moment later, Sucki compares this act to the gesture of
throwing away the widows slipper toward the source of light
(dawn) coming from mythical gardens. These poetic acts can be
understood as the process of uncovering the womans feet, a very
important gesture in the iconography of Bruno Schulz. The entire role
of a shy philosopher, who appears in the room (on stage?), is
reduced to this symbolic manifestation of his cosmic unity with all
beings because immediately he is already beyond the door:
i ju jest za drzwiami,
gdzie rozwi ze szmery traw i teksty dosowne
kwiatw przepoczwarzaj si
w ruchomy telegram stamt d,
stamt d a dochodziy nas fale snu
w rytmicznych pulsach.
(and it is already behind the door,
where the lustful whispers of grass and literal texts
of flowers metamorphose into a mobile telegram from there,
from where the waves of dream came to us
in rhythmical pulses.)
The cosmos (beyond the door) consists of a mysterious system of

signs, a code. In Schulzs story Wiosna (Spring), there are
mysterious worlds beyond the glass-fronted door (szklane drzwi;
Op 138). In Suckis text, outside of this caesura, there is hidden a
textual code, that is, the literary world and Bruno Schulzs world.
There are wanton whispers of grass, literal texts / of flowers there,
and everything has taken on an ontological meaning; this world, as
Sucki states following Schulz, is a mobile telegram from over there
into which these biological-textual charades have metamorphosed.
This juxtaposition of biological and textual orders, exploited by the
author, appears at the beginning of Schulzs Spring:
Oto jest historia pewnej wiosny, wiosny, ktra bya prawdziwsza, bardziej
olniewaj ca i jaskrawsza od innych wiosen, wiosna, ktra po prostu
wzi
a serio swj tekst dosowny, ten manifest natchniony, pisany
najjaniejsz , wi teczn czerwieni , czerwieni laku pocztowego i
kalendarza, czerwieni owka kolorowego i czerwieni entuzjazmu,
amarantem szcz
liwych telegramw stamt d (Op 133-134)
79

(This is the story of a certain spring that was more real, more dazzling and
brighter than any other spring; a spring that took its text seriously, an
inspired script, written in the festive red of a sealing wax and of calendar
print, the red of coloured pencils and of enthusiasm, the amaranth of
happy telegrams from far away; Schulz 2008: 141)
The metaphysical substance of these worlds in Schulzs text and

Suckis text are, like in the Book of Zohar, sounds (whisper
Sucki), signs (literal text Schulz), and nature (spring Sucki and
Schulz). The hero of the poem is walled up in his meaning; he
knock[s] everywhere, and transmits from over there through
waves of dream [] in rhythmical pulses. In Schulzs text
(Spring), we can find a similar interpretation of these events:
Bo tekst wiosny znaczony jest cay w domylnikach, w niedomwieniach,
w elipsach, wykropkowany bez liter w pustym b
kicie, i w wolne luki
mi
dzy sylabami ptaki wstawiaj kaprynie swe domysy i swe
odgadnienia. Dlatego b
dzie ta historia, wzorem tego tekstu, ci gn
a si
na wielu rozga
zionych torach i caa przetykana b
dzie wiosennymi
mylnikami, westchnieniami i wielokropkami. (Op 138)
(Because the text of spring is marked by hints, ellipses, lines dotted on an
empty azure, and because the gaps between the syllables are filled by the
frivolous guesses and surmises of birds, my story, like that text, will
follow many different tracks and will be punctuated by springlike dashes,
sighs, and dots; Schulz 2008: 142)
In Suckis poem, the vision of resurrection directly accompanies the

cosmic visions:
trumny wiate otwieraj si
, jak antyki
na wiosn
(coffins of light open up like antiques

in spring)
And what can we see? In the open coffins of light, let us recall, the
treasures of our questions (skarby naszych pyta), shining bank
drafts (weksle olniewaj ce), blind piles / in a panic full of
explosions and breakneck hopes (olepe pliki / w panice, pene
eksplozji i karkoomnych nadziei) are lying ready to be resurrected.
In the coffins, there are different sources of light, a kind of energy
which makes it possible to see the potential for resurrection in the man
80
Sawomir Jacek urek
sleeping in the grave. This light indicates the double nature of

humanity: humanity belongs to the order of nature (there our
herbarium / tam zielniki nasze) and, at the same time, to the order
of revelation (cardboard rolled up into scrolls / w roda zwini
te
brystole). But the yellow flame (ty promie) has changed this
situation of division, once again reuniting both orders. First, this
bracing light (flame) destroys: it bites (zagryza), threatens
(wygraa, kills like a virus, but it can also regenerate
(regeneruje) like a medium from far away (jak medium z
daleka). All creatures undergo this process of destruction and
regeneration: seeds which sharpen their genes (geny swoje ostrz )
in glass cases, as well as human beings (sisters shine in bed linens
there with the particles of their bodies / siostry wiec w pocieli
drobinami ciaa). And everything takes place in a universe open like
a dolphins wound (we wszechwiecie otwartym, jak rana delfina)
and tight like an astral cake of angels after a slaughter (jak astralne
ciasto aniow po rzezi).
Conclusion
The poem Bruno Schulz is a story about various worlds in which we
must live. It is a story about worlds with unusual structures,
multifariously reflected in each being, so that it can finally bring hope
to man that the very composition of our being is marked by the
perspective of resurrection. This is a very beautiful and joyful vision,
like the stories and myths that Jewish parents tell their children in the
spring during Seder.
Bibliography
z Akwinu, Tomasz. 1956. Traktat o czowieku Suma teologiczna 1, 75-89. Pozna:
Pallottinum.
Aquinas, Thomas. 1981. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (5 Vols) (tr.
Fathers of the English Dominican Province). Westminster, MD: Christian
Classics.
Boski, Jan. 2008. Epifanie Miosza. On line at: http://www.milosz.pl/o_jb_em.php
(consulted 17.08.2008).
Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 2003. Principium individuationis. Motywy nietzscheaskie w
twrczoci Brunona Schulza in Teksty Drugie 14(5): 17-33.
Chwin, Stefan. 1994. Grzeszne manipulacje. Historia sztuki, a historia medycyny
in Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) Czytanie Schulza. Krakw: T.I.C.: 278-285.
81

Halevi, Zev Ben Shimon. 1994. Kabaa. Tradycja wiedzy tajemnej (tr. B. Kos).
Warszawa: Artes.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 1998. Wst
p in Schulz, Bruno. Opowiadania. Wybr esejw i
listw. Wrocaw: Ossolineum: C-CV.
Kumicki, Andrzej. 2006. C.G. Jung i A. Schopenhauer Niewiadomo. On line
at: http://www.jungpoland.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view
&id=57&Itemid=86 (consulted 17.08.2008).
Miosz, Czesaw. 1980. Nad miastami in Gdzie wschodzi soce i kdy zapada.
Krakw: Znak: 124.
Ochman, Jerzy. 1995. redniowieczna filozofia ydowska. Krakw: Universitas.
Panas, Wadysaw. 1997. Ksiga blasku. Traktat o kabale w prozie Brunona Schulza.
Lublin: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego KUL.
. 2001. Bruno od Mesjasza. Rzecz o dwch ekslibrisach oraz jednym obrazie i
kilkudziesiciu rysunkach Brunona Schulza. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.
Scholem, Gershom. 1996. Kabaa i jej symbolika (tr. R. Wojnakowski). Krakw:
Znak.
Schulz, Bruno. 1990. Bruno Schulz: An Essay for S.I. Witkiewicz in Letters and
Drawings of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). New York: Fromm
International: 110-114.
. 1998a. Opowiadania, wybr esejw i listw. Wrocaw: Ossolineum.
. 1998b. The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). London:
Picador.
. 2008. The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (tr. C. Wieniewska). New
York: Penguin.
Sucki, Arnold. 1966. Bruno Schulz in Eklogi i psalmodie. Warsaw: Czytelnik: 5960.
Unterman, Alan. 1994. Encyklopedia tradycji i legend ydowskich (tr. O.
Zienkiewicz). Warszawa: Ksi ka i Wiedza.
urek, Sawomir Jacek. 1999. lotny trud pistnienia. O motywach judaistycznych w
poezji Arnolda Suckiego. Krakw: Ksi
garnia Akademicka.
The Lie Always Rises to the Surface like Oil.

Toward a Metafictional Reading of Karol Irzykowskis
Pauba and Bruno Schulzs Fiction
Dieter De Bruyn
Abstract: In this article, Karol Irzykowskis canonical autothematic novel Pauba
(1903) is confronted with Bruno Schulzs multifaceted fiction. Whereas Pauba, with
its dominant discursive layer, has been systematically received as an autothematic
novel, Schulzs stories, with their manifold form, keep resisting any similar
interpretative model. However, free of the yoke of their seemingly univocal selfinforming tendency (Irzykowski) or of their supposed ultimate inexhaustibility
(Schulz), these texts emerge as representations of a similar literary critical discourse.
On this metafictional level, they incessantly display a significant interaction between
the conventional illusion of a third dimension (depth, signifi) and the reflexive
consciousness of the inevitable two-dimensionality of the text (surface, signifiant).
Introduction: From Autotematyzm To Metafiction

In almost every national tradition one can find literary works whose
titles are referred to all the time, but which are hardly ever read from
cover to cover. It goes without saying that Joyces Ulysses is the
classic example of such most unread novels. One of the most
obvious Polish specimens, however, is undoubtedly Karol
Irzykowskis highly experimental novel Pauba (1903). Although
Pauba has been referred to as an important literary composition by
generations of critics and readers alike, one could posit that only few
people actually know what the novel is all about. Even those critics
who have tried to grasp the novels main ideas seem to have difficulty
getting to its very core. The same certainly holds true for both of
Bruno Schulzs collections of stories, Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon
Shops, 1934) and Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium Under the
84
Dieter De Bruyn
Sign of the Hourglass; 1937),1 of which Stanislaw Eile has correctly

remarked that the extensive use of figurative language renders [the]
message rather confusing and consequently open to a variety of
esoteric readings, which often demonstrate the inventiveness of critics
rather than representing a convincing explication of the text (1996:
97). It seems that both Pauba and Schulzs complete fiction,
notwithstanding their many differences in form and content, at least
share one particular feature: in both cases, the reader is faced with a
certain formal residue, some kind of narrative distortion, which causes
a continual postponement of the texts explication.
Despite this common characteristic, hardly any attempt has
been made to propose a similar reading of both Irzykowski and
Schulz. This is all the more surprising if one takes into consideration
the many literary critical accounts, in which both authors are treated as
belonging to the same experimental or avant-garde vein of Polish
Modernism (e.g. Taylor Sen 1972, Nycz 1997, Bolecki 1999). The
main reason for the absence of one single approach to both Irzykowski
and Schulz (apart from the aforementioned general literary historical
categories) is of course the completely different impression which
these authors texts make at first glance. For many years, due to its
heterogeneous structure and its peremptory self-informing layer,2
Pauba could only be naturalized with recourse to the concept of
autotematyzm or, more specifically, to the genre of the powie
autotematyczna (autothematic novel). Since it was first introduced

1
All further references to these collections will be given as SC and SpK. Quotations
of the original Polish text are taken from Schulz 1964, the English translations are
from Schulz 1989 (hereafter referred to as CF).
2
The novel consists of five different parts: the introductory novella Sny Marii Dunin
(palimpsest) (The Dreams of Maria Dunin (A Palimpsest)), in which an anonymous
archaeologist reports how he was initiated into the hidden Brotherhood of the Great
Bell (Bractwo Wielkiego Dzwonu), then fell in love with the leaders daughter
Maria, and eventually married her sister Hermina, after which the narrator admits that
the entire story is a falsification; the actual novel Pauba (studium biograficzne)
(Pauba (A Biographical Study)), which tells the story of Piotr Strumieskis
married life with Angelika and, after her suicide, with Ola; and three explanatory
essays, respectively entitled Uwagi do Pauby (Remarks to Pauba), Wyjanienie
Snw Marii Dunin i zwi zek ich z Paub (An Explanation of The Dreams of Maria
Dunin and Its Connection with Pauba), and Szaniec Pauby (The Rampart of
Pauba). The point to note is that even the actual novel consists mainly of
explanatory digressions, discussing, for example, the protagonists psychology and
most prominently the form of the novel which is being written.
Toward a Metafictional Reading of Irzykowskis Pauba and Schulzs Fiction 85

by the famous literary critic Artur Sandauer, the concept of
autotematyzm has made a stunning career in Polish criticism, which
eventually led to its complete exhaustion (cf. De Bruyn 2007a). The
problem with this term is that it mainly focuses on explicit
thematizations of the artistic genesis and the textual process, thus
excluding more implicit techniques of literary reflexivity.
Furthermore, by treating such self-informing tendencies in literary
texts as fully reliable approaches to the same literary texts,
propagators of autotematyzm usually end up in a kind of circular
reasoning: discursive parts of a certain text are used in order to
elucidate the same text. Due to this methodological fallacy, for
instance, Irzykowskis truly equivocal anti-Modernist3 commentaries
were interpolated rather unequivocally into many literary critical
accounts, so that Pauba started functioning as a univocal, more or
less novelistic critique of conventional literary techniques and reading
habits, rather than as an extraordinary artistic representation of the
highly sophisticated literary critical self-consciousness of the author.4
Schulzs fiction, on the other hand, even though it contains a
similar but less dominant and univocal self-informing layer, has
hardly ever been read as an example of autothematic writing. At the
same time, however, this most enigmatic collection of narrative pieces
has posed even larger interpretative problems. Immediately after its
publication in the 1930s, as Wodzimierz Bolecki has sufficiently
proved, Schulzs prose conflicted with the horizon of expectations of
most Polish critics in two particular ways: First, it urged to violate
the generally accepted rules for reading epic literature, and second it
aroused such readerly reactions which were reserved for reading
lyrical works (Po pierwsze, zmuszaa do pogwacenia spoecznie
zaakceptowanych regu czytania epiki, po drugie wywoywaa takie
reakcje czytelnicze, jakie zrezerwowano dla lektury utworw
lirycznych; 1996 [1982]: 304). It could be argued that this twofold
orientation holds true to a certain extent for the majority of critical
readings of Schulzs fiction up to now. Whereas poetic or

3
In this case, anti-Modernist refers to the traditional Polish interpretation of literary

Modernism, according to which this current is limited to the early, 1890-1900 period
of Moda Polska, instead of encompassing the entire 1890-1930 period.
4
This tradition includes such postwar critical works as Wyka 1977 [1948], Lipiski
1949, Zengel 1958, D browska 1963, Werner 1965, Gowiski 1969, St
pnik 1973,
Taylor Sen 1972, Budrecka 1981, Drozdowski 1987, and Eile 1996: 42-45.
86
Dieter De Bruyn
logocentric readings of this prose generally do injustice to its

narrative core, any approach starting from the rules and conventions
of traditional epic literature will always struggle with the many
narrative inconsistencies in the stories under scrutiny.5 Consequently,
as Krzysztof Stala has argued, too many critics limit themselves to
some fragmentary, marginal reading, being rather aware of the
inexhaustibleness of Schulzs prose than trying to define this
inexhaustibleness, domesticate it with some proposal richer than
expression of the inexpressible (1993: 1). One of the main reasons
for this difficult critical reception is that many of these interpretations
are methodologically fallacious in much the same way as the already
mentioned autothematic readings of Pauba. Again, discursive parts
of the text are interpolated rather recklessly in the critics account as
reliable sources for interpreting the same text. As a result, many of
these readings are, indeed, merely marginal commentaries on the
texts discursive dimension rather than thorough analyses of the text
as a literary representation.
In recent years, some scholars have tried to establish new
ways of interpreting the formal or nonnarrative residue which both
authors texts clearly display. In one way or another, all these attempts
build on an earlier interpretative model by Wodzimierz Bolecki. In
what is undoubtedly the most valuable and comprehensive study on
the narrative prose of such interwar writers as Bruno Schulz,
Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), and Witold Gombrowicz,
Bolecki (1996 [1982]) for the first time focuses on generations of
readers difficulties to construct a consistent story world out of these
most alienating and unusually discursive narrative accounts rather
than repeating once more the texts main philosophical ideas,
presenting themselves in the ready-made form of unequivocal selfcommentaries. More specifically, Bolecki argues that the interwar
authors under scrutiny have propagated a new poetical prose model
(poetycki model prozy) as an alternative to the prevailing vehicular
prose model (wehikularny model prozy; 14). Whereas in the latter
case literary language is overshadowed by its referential function (as
in Realism), in the former case it draws attention to its autonomy
(zwraca uwag
na swoj autonomi
) and thus takes on a reflexive
character (character samozwrotny; 12). What the critic is aiming at

5
Cf. the introduction to this volume for a critical discussion of the key figures and
important currents in Schulzology.

is not necessarily the numerous metapoetic utterances in many of
these works but first and foremost a manifest semiotic overorganization (nadorganizacja znakowa; 13) on all narrative levels
i.e., including the lexical (stylistic) as well as the compositional,
fabular, or semantic structure of the text. Although Bolecki explicitly
excludes Pauba from his poetical prose model for reasons of
periodization and because of the alleged cognitive uniformity of the
narration (jednolito poznawcza narracji; 92), the novel will later
return in his critical writings as an important predecessor of this
poetical vein of Polish Modernist fiction because of its reflexive,
parodic and grotesque attitude toward literary conventions (cf. Bolecki
1999, 2003).
The idea of a parodic-grotesque current (nurt parodystyczno-groteskowy) that connects Pauba with the fiction of Schulz,
Witkacy and Gombrowicz was further developed by Brygida
Pawowska-J drzyk (1995: 155). According to her, the autothematic
character of Irzykowskis novel has always overshadowed its parodic
and grotesque effects. In order to restore the balance, PawowskaJ drzyk draws attention to the parodic evocation of existing literary
conventions in all kinds of (either literally or figuratively) inserted
texts (i.e., both Strumieskis and Gasztolds literary projects
Ksiga mioci (The Book of Love) and Chora mio (A Sick Love),
and the introductory novella The Dreams of Maria Dunin) as well as
to the eventual self-parodic attitude toward the evolving novelistic
product itself. More important, though, is the use of the grotesque as a
parodic device. Whereas most critics had focused predominantly on
the discursive (or the narrators) level of the text, Pawowska-J drzyk
for the first time stresses the (less overtly) parodic function of its
narrative and stylistic structure. On the level of the story, for instance,
she perceives a recurrent grotesque transformation of sublimity
(wznioso) into stupidity (mieszno; 156), as in the scene
where Piotr Strumieski kisses Berestajka while observing a centipede
on the wall (cf. Irzykowski 1976 [1903]: 339).6 Furthermore, both on
the discursive and the narrative level of the text, the critic observes a
grotesque deformation of conventional literary language, e.g. through
the use of awkward neologisms and strained metaphors, through the
deliberate combination of different stylistic registers, or more simply

6
All further references will be given as P.
88
Dieter De Bruyn
by incessantly putting typical phrases between ironic quotation marks

(161-163). According to Pawowska-J drzyk, it is exactly this
particular combination of grotesque scenes with a systematic use of
the linguistic grotesque (groteska lingwistyczna; 161) which
makes Pauba similar to Schulzs fiction. Indeed, whereas the
presence of grotesque situations in the latters stories is self-evident,
his baroque style reaches a comparable degree of semiotic overorganization through a continuous flow of metaphors.
In a book-length study on the entire parodic-grotesque
current in Polish Modernism, Pawowska-J drzyk further develops
her initial findings on Irzykowskis novel. More specifically, she
introduces the concept of mediocrity (bylejako) as a new
interpretative tool. Mediocrity (in a descriptive, and not in an
axiological sense), she argues, is a term which is used for denoting
the specificity of the poetics of works which stand out with a
deliberate carelessness of their artistic execution (Bylejako (w
znaczeniu opisowym, a nie oceniaj cym) to termin stosowany [] dla
okrelenia swoistoci poetyki utworw wyrniaj cych si
celow
niedbaoci wykonania artystycznego; 2002: 89). In her
classification of devices of mediocrity, Pawowska-J drzyk makes a
distinction between static motives (motywy statyczne), such as
the representation of shoddy objects or physical deficiencies, and
dynamic motives (motywy dynamiczne), such as inadequacies in
the narrative structure of the text (90-91). Whereas the static version
of the poetics of mediocrity brings to mind Schulzs fascination with
tandeta (trash), a more dynamic approach can be discerned in
Pauba. More specifically, Pawowska-J drzyk stresses the central
role of the anti-aesthetic word-symbol (antyestetyczne sowosymbol; 105) pauba in Irzykowskis poetics.7 Unlike tandeta, she
argues, the concept of pauba induces a dynamics of mediocrity on

7
Pauba is a dialectal form in Polish, which may take on a lot of meanings.

Irzykowski continuously plays with this polysemy in his novel (cf. infra). Quite
surprisingly, the enormous poetical relevance of the word has been underestimated by
virtually all earlier critics. Moreover, as we have seen, critics tend to limit themselves
to some kind of critical repetition of those discursive parts of the texts in which the
meaning of pauba is discussed by the narrating author (i.e. the author-like
narrator who incessantly comments on the story told). One of the few exceptions can
be found in Ewa Szary-Matywieckas brilliant, though quite idiosyncratic, monograph
on the Polish autothematic novel, in which this symbolic keyword is even
considered to be a forerunner of Sandauers concept of autotematyzm (1979: 13-18).

several levels of the text of the novel.8 Of course, Pauba as a whole,
with its intricate heterogeneous structure, is already a shoddy
artifact in itself, but what Pawowska-J drzyk is particularly aiming at
is the interplay between the level of the story and the level of the
narration. On the level of the story, Piotr Strumieski and the other
protagonists cannot but accept that their conventional ideals (of love,
fidelity, etc.) are constantly compromised by the very nature of
everyday reality. On the level of the narration, this conflict is
described as the clash between the constructive element
(pierwiastek konstrukcyjny) and the palubic element
(pierwiastek paubiczny). As a result, a dual dynamics of
mediocrity is generated:
Demaskowanie stereotypw i zafaszowa odbywa si
w utworze na
drodze dyskursywnej rewizji fantazmatw (metoda wiwisekcji), a take
poprzez fabularne sprowadzanie ich ad absurdum, w czym nieocenione
usugi oddaj pisarzowi parodia i groteska. Obydwie wymienione
paszczyzny dziea narracyjna i fabularna stanowi domen
swoicie
poj
tej bylejakoci. (106)
(In the work, the unmasking of stereotypes and imitations is implemented
not only through the discursive revision of the phantasms (method of
vivisection) but also by leading them ad absurdum on the level of the
story, in which the writer receives valuable support of the devices of
parody and grotesque. On both the levels mentioned above of the
narration and of the story a specifically conceived mediocrity comes
to the surface.)
In other words, by introducing the idea of a poetics of mediocrity,

Pawowska-J drzyk now gives a more particular interpretation of the
parodic-grotesque clash between the ideal (sense) and reality
(chaos) in such novels as Pauba a problem which she had already
touched upon in her earlier writings.
No matter how valuable Pawowska-J drzyks notion of the
poetics of mediocrity might be for the critical reassessment of the
fiction of such writers as Irzykowski, Schulz, Gombrowicz, and
Witkacy, the focus of her analysis is predominantly on these works
predisposition to the extra-discursive evocation of philosophical
contents (predyspozycja do pozadyskursywnego ewokowania treci

8
As I will demonstrate in the last section of this article, the concept of tandeta in fact
lies at the basis of an intricate semiotic dynamics as well.
90
Dieter De Bruyn
filozoficznych; 5), or, more specifically, on their search for some

ultimate signifi that is behind the represented chaos of reality. What
she seems to overlook, however, is that these works protest against
any schematic rendering of reality is eventually directed against the
evolving literary product itself. In other words, the represented
migration of forms (w
drwka form; Schulz 1964: 682) the
chaos of reality is strongly interrelated with the representing
dispersion of signifiants the chaos of language. As we have seen,
in order to go behind this problematic signifying form, Bolecki
proposes a poetic reading of these narrative works. As Krzysztof
Kosiski has argued, however, by introducing this new, alternative
readability (nowa [], alternatywna czytelno), Bolecki in fact
tactfully evades the often indicated problem of the unreadability
(nieczytelno) and the subsequent incomprehensibility
(niezrozumialstwo) of these extraordinary fictions (2000: 20).
According to Kosiski, these texts are never completely unreadable
or incomprehensible. What should be done, then, is exactly to
define this complicating factor, this paradoxical growth (narost;
21) or formal residue (cf. supra). In his paper, Kosiski proposes to
use the notion of stylization (stylizacja; 21).
What makes Kosiskis analysis particularly interesting, is
that it points at Pauba as the first Polish novel which explicitly
discusses its own stylized character (stylizacyjny charakter; 24).
On the second last page, more exactly, one can read as follows:
A teraz gdy si
wie, jak Pauba nie jest, pojmie si
te, czym ona jest:
Jest ona monstrualn ruin a i to tylko stylizowan. Czy tak jak j
powinno si
pisa kade dzieo? Czy to jest program poezji, poezji
przyszoci? I znw mamy b
dne koo. Wszake program Pauby dotyczy
tylko jej samej, znika razem z ni . W kadym dziele autor na nowo bierze
rozmach i na nowo stosunkuje si
do kwestii poezji [], dzieo jest
tylko ladem tego stosunkowania si
. (P 586; italics mine)
(So, now that we know what Pauba is not like, it should also be clear
what it is: it is a monstrous ruin be it merely a stylized one. Should
every work be written like this one? Is this the program of poetry, of the
poetry of the future? And again we have a vicious circle. Indeed, the
program of Pauba only touches the work itself it expires together with
it. In each work the author gathers momentum again and once more
determines his position about the question of poetry the work is
merely a trace of this act of positioning.)

In this fragment, Irzykowski not only puts into perspective his own
destructive literary practice (it is a monstrous ruin be it merely a
stylized one) but also clearly describes the technique of stylization:
its function is to somehow put into words what in fact cannot be put
into words, to show what precedes its verbal phase, to reveal its own
usurping nature (ujawni swoje uzurpatorstwo; Kosiski 2000:
24). In this way, stylization mediates between what the literary work
eventually conveys (a text which is merely a trace) and the creative
process by which it is preceded (the positioning of the author
toward the question of poetry). Whereas the majority of literary texts
tend to create the illusion of a particular reality or a particular meaning
thus concealing their own usurping nature (toward reality, toward
meaning), the technique of stylization makes this lie to come to
the surface.9
In my opinion, what all these approaches of the specificity of
the experimental vein of twentieth-century Polish fiction share is, in
fact, a particular sensitivity to these texts reflexivity. More
specifically, each particular approach focuses on certain textual
signals which to a larger extent than in more conventional works of
fiction refer to their own literary (linguistic, fictional) form: to their
own poetics (poetycko), to their own deformity (groteskowo), to
the carelessness of their own artistic execution (bylejako), or to
the usurping nature of their own language (stylizacja). At the same
time, critics have always been conscious of the presence of explicit
autothematic statements in the majority of these texts. Due to the
conceptual rigidity of the notion of autotematyzm, however, no
attempts have been made to link together both these reflexive
techniques, i.e. the inclusion of autothematic comments and the
more implicit device of foregrounding certain literary conventions.
Of course, one could quite simply treat all these works within the
framework of literary reflexivity, but due to the wide variety and
omnipresence of reflexive devices in all of them, it seems better to
introduce the concept of metafiction as a new literary critical tool.
Unlike autotematyzm (which suggests a thematic subgenre) and
reflexivity (which primarily denotes the general device), metafiction

9
As Kosiski correctly remarks, the stylistic over-organization to use a variant of

Boleckis notion of semiotic over-organization is not limited to the narrative level
of Pauba because on the discursive level one may come across many passages in
which the narrating author loses himself in a mixture of various discursive styles.
92
Dieter De Bruyn
emphasizes the permanent bifurcation of the fictional discourse into a

referential and a reflexive level (cf. Waughs definition of metafiction
as the construction of a fictional illusion [] and the laying bare of
that illusion; 1984: 6). More exactly, whereas autotematyzm
manifests itself in the form of a separate metalinguistic discourse
beside the common discourse of the object language, metafiction can
best be defined as a specific borderline discourse [] between
fiction and criticism (Currie 1995: 2) that is represented in the text in
ever varying manners. In fact, these different textual devices (either
forms of foregrounding or forms of commentary) are merely
representations of a discourse that, on the other side of the borderline
between fiction and criticism, should be answered with a similarly
self-conscious literary critical discourse.
With regard to Irzykowski and Schulz, the question is whether
the metafictional discourse that their respective texts represent in a
different way bears certain resemblances. Do both metafictional
projects stem from a (more or less) similar attitude toward the essence
of literary practice? In order to answer this question, one could start
from Pawowska-J drzyks hypothesis that what is behind the
grotesque strategies of both authors is the philosophical ambition to
grasp the sense (sens) of the chaos of reality. Applied to literary
practice, one could posit that both authors show a specific interest in
the dynamics between surface (the text) and depth (meaning, sense).
What they seem to diagnose is that no matter how hard literature, by
analogy with reality itself, tries to add a third dimension (depth,
signifi), the reader will always be confronted with the twodimensional reality of the text (surface, signifiant). In order to
substantiate my hypothesis, I will first focus on those textual features
which expose the search for depth, for illusion or representation, and
then on the various ways in which this pursuit is disillusioned by a
foregrounding of the textual surface, of the materiality of the text. In
the concluding section, I will argue that this metafictional dynamics
between depth and surface crystallizes, as it were, into such reflexive
metaphors as pauba, manekin, and tandeta.
Irzykowski and Schulz between Surface and Depth
In their respective works, both Schulz and Irzykowski push forward
the absolute truth as an almost unattainable ideal. More specifically,

the ill-fated ambition to get to the core or the essence of things is
characteristic of the tragicomic fate of several of their protagonists. In
Schulzs stories, the search for truth is the main preoccupation of both
Jacob and Joseph; whereas the former is often busy with carrying out
the most subversive experiments, the latter is repeatedly depicted
when undertaking bizarre nightly quests. Examples of Jacobs
experiments can be found in such stories as Ptaki (Birds) and
Kometa (The Comet); characteristic of his endeavours is that they
are systematically thwarted by Adela, who represents the conventional
order of everyday reality. Joseph, on the other hand, is struggling with
the labyrinthine quality of (nocturnal) reality in such oft-discussed
stories as Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops), Ulica
krokodyli (The Street of Crocodiles), Wiosna (Spring), and
Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the
Hourglass). During these journeys, the world reveals itself to the
young Joseph as an arbitrary configuration of signs which misleads
him again and again. In Cinnamon Shops, for instance, the boy is
incessantly led away from his initial goal to visit the cinnamon
shops with their exotic goods. His journey brings him to a series of
imaginary places (dark streets, a gymnasium, an art room, the
principals private rooms, etc.) that momentarily seem to materialize,
after which they merge into something new. After a final ride in a
carriage, the boy ends up somewhere on the countryside while being
completely under the spell of the mystery of the night.
Whereas Cinnamon Shops comes to an end with a timid
prostration for the nocturnal element, the novella Spring leads
Joseph into a complete fiasco due to the protagonists usurping
attitude toward fictional reality. Though he wanted to win Bianca for
himself, Joseph cannot but come to the conclusion that his
manipulation of the course of events has eventually lead to the
successful seduction of Bianca by Rudolph:
W zalepieniu moim podj em si
wykadu pisma, chciaem by
tumaczem woli boskiej, w faszywym natchieniu chwytaem
przemykaj ce przez markownik lepe poszlaki i kontury. czyem je
niestety tylko w dowoln figur
. Narzuciem tej wionie moj reyseri
,
podoyem pod jej nie obj
ty rozkwit wasny program i chciaem j
nagi , pokierowa wedug wasnych planw. (SpK 264)
(In my blindness, I undertook to comment on the text, to be the interpreter
of Gods will; I misunderstood the scanty traces and indications I believed
94
Dieter De Bruyn
I found in the pages of the stamp album. Unfortunately, I wove them into
a fabric of my own making. I have imposed [] my own direction upon
this spring, I devised my own program to explain its immense flourishing
and wanted to harness it, to direct it according to my own ideas; TCF 202)
Similar tragic attempts to grasp reality and lay bare its truth appear
in numerous variants in Pauba, too. The most striking examples are,
of course, the subsequent prby w g b (attempts to get to the
core) that are undertaken by Piotr Strumieski in order to get to the
bottom of the mystery of his first marriage (the so-called Angelika
case or sprawa Angeliki). While trying to sort out the past and to
uphold the ideal of absolute, platonic love, however, he is
permanently thwarted by the sensual aspect of love, which
systematically leads him away from his underground life
(podziemne ycie) and incites him to have sexual relations.
Irzykowski represents this conflict discursively by means of the
dialectics between the constructive element (pierwiastek
konstrukcyny) and the palubic element (pierwiastek paubiczny),
which in fact refers to the struggle between nature and culture in
man.10 The same dynamics of delving in search of a particular core
without eventually disclosing it reappears in the introductory novella
The Dreams of Maria Dunin in the form of the allegorical digging
for the Great Bell. In this case, the victim is Maria Dunin, who comes
so close to the ideal of platonic love, that the Brotherhood of the Great
Bell has no other option than to sentence her to death, since its
paradoxical task is exactly to suggest the existence of the ideal (by
digging for the Great Bell) while simultaneously hiding its secret (that
is, the nonexistence of the Great Bell) for humanity.
By repeatedly representing the tragedy of striving for the
ideal, both Irzykowski and Schulz appear to be conscious of the
inevitable fiasco of the enterprise. The same consciousness of this
striving being eventually led away by other motives manifests itself
even more distinctly on the discursive level of the respective texts.
Toward the end of Schulzs story Manekiny (Tailors Dummies),
for example, the narrator reports that
10
This kind of oppositions is, of course, particularly important in Schulzs stories as
well (cf. the struggle between Jacob and Adela). Cf. Bolecki 2005 and Ritz 2005 for
recent discussions of gender aspects in Irzykowski and Schulz.

[j]est godne uwagi, jak w zetkni
ciu z niezwykym tym czowiekiem
rzeczy wszystkie cofay si
niejako do korzenia swego bytu,
odbudowyway swe zjawisko a do metafizycznego j dra, wracay niejako
do pierwotnej idei, aeby w tym punkcie sprzeniewierzy si
jej i
przechyli w te w tpliwe, ryzykowne i dwuznaczne regiony, ktre
nazwiemy tu krtko regionami wielkiej herezji. (SC 79)
([i]t is worth noting how, in contact with that strange man, all things
reverted, as it were, to the roots of their existence, rebuilt their outward
appearance anew from their metaphysical core, returned to the primary
idea, in order to betray it at some point and to turn into the doubtful, risky,
and equivocal regions which we shall call for short the Regions of the
Great Heresy; CF 30)
In other words, any attempt at getting to the core is presented as

some kind of heresy, as an improper usurpation that must necessarily
lead to deviations. In Pauba this same idea is depicted as a selfregulating mechanism in man. In The Dreams of Maria Dunin the
principle of self-regulation is represented in an allegorical way in the
form of the Hall of the Manometers (Hala Manometrw) where
Acheronta Movebo, the leader of the Brotherhood, monitors a series
of manometers that are connected with reality in order to check
whether the pressure of mankind on the ideal is still under control.
As soon as the pressure starts to be threatening, the Brotherhood
disposes of the principle of the Safety Valve (Klapa
Bezpieczestwa) in order to keep the secret of the Great Bell. Maria
Dunin could be called the most prominent victim of this principle:
eliminating her should rescue the rest of mankind.
Whereas the mechanism is merely suggested in guarded terms
in the mysterious novella, its functioning is described at large in An
Explanation of The Dreams of Maria Dunin and Its Connection with
Pauba. The starting point is the theory that certain ideals, as well as
the sciences and finally also love and poetry, contain a centrifugal
element; if they would be taken seriously and carried through to the
end, they would have to destroy man (teoria, e niektre ideay,
dalej nauki, wreszcie mio i poezja maj w sobie pierwiastek
odrodkowy, bo wzi
te na serio i przeprowadzone a do koca,
musiayby zniszczy czowieka; P 565). This theory can be linked
with the old manuscript from The Dreams of Maria Dunin, which
contains the warning that earth is covered with a certain fluid, the
existence of which existence nobody knows but which will ignite
once, on some small point, shaken up by the tones of the awoken Bell
96
Dieter De Bruyn
and blow up the world (w wiecie rozlane jest pewne fluidum, o

ktrego istnieniu nikt nie wie, ktre jednak kiedy na jakim maym
punkcie, wstrz ni
te dwi
kami zbudzonego Dzwonu, zaponie i
wiat rozsadzi; P 28). This is exactly what makes Maria Dunins
behavior so threatening: by taking the ideal of platonic love so
seriously, she is drawn apart from her human core by a centrifugal
element. Her death is a safety valve that should save the rest of
mankind. In order to counter their own disintegration, however, real
human beings have their own safety valve at their disposal:
Z pierwiastkiem odrodkowym walczy jednak pierwiastek dorodkowy,
instynkt samozachowawczy ludzi i wiata. wiat wytrzymuje tylko pewne
maximum brania rzeczy na serio, w ostatecznej bowiem chwili dziaa
wentyl, ktry nadmiar wyrzuca, a idea redukuje do przyzwoitej miary
[] Naturalnie w wiecie psychicznym odbywa si
funkcjonowanie
wentyla mniej lub wi
cej niewiadomie. Bractwo WD za jest jakby
uwiadomionym dziaaniem tego instynktu samozachowawczego natury
ludzkiej, jego hipostaz , najwyszym centralnym urz
dem. (P 565-566)
(The centrifugal element, however, is counteracted by a centripetal
element, that is, the instinct for self-preservation of people and the world.
The world tolerates only a certain maximum of taking things seriously,
since at the very last moment a valve is put into operation, which allows
the surplus to escape and reduces the ideal to acceptable dimensions.
Obviously, in the psychic world this valve operates more or less
unconsciously. The Brotherhood of the GB, then, could be considered the
conscious operation of the instinct for self-preservation of human nature,
its hypostasis, its highest central body.)
What this passage illustrates is that Piotr Strumieski and the other
protagonists from Pauba are conditioned by the same mechanism as
Maria Dunin. What is demonstrated in The Dreams of Maria Dunin
on the level of the story, by means of the allegorical activities of the
Brotherhood, reappears in the actual novel on the level of the
narrators psychoanalytical comments.
In fact, by repeatedly compromising the human pursuit of the
ideal, Irzykowski primarily wants to elucidate the complexity of the
psychological motives that lie at the basis of all human deeds. In the
Trio autora (Authors Trio) chapter, which seems to be crucial for
understanding the poetical principles that govern Pauba, this
ambition to probe into the subterranean psychic life (podziemne
ycie psychiczne; P 447) of man is expressed as follows:

Dotychczasowym b
dem byo, e si
gano albo za pytko, albo
przeskakuj c cae ycie nast
pcze za g
boko, tj. tam, gdzie ju nic by
nie moe, i robiono rzekome wizje kosmiczne zamiast uprawia
introspekcj
. Mnie si
zdaje, e zbada warstw
na kilkaset metrw pod
tzw. powierzchni duszy to moe wystarczy, nie trzeba szuka nadiru.
(P 447)
(Until now, the mistake has been made of probing either not deeply
enough, or while skipping the entire secondary life too deeply, that is,
where nothing can be found anymore, and of producing so-called cosmic
visions instead of doing an introspection. In my opinion, it is probably
sufficient to probe into the layer a few hundred metres below the so-called
surface of the soul to search for the nadir is rather unnecessary.)
What is suggested here is that by confining oneself to an examination

of the human psyche on a relative depth, one can gain insight into
the problem of secondary life that is, the human habit of
organizing life by means of a number of absolute concepts (love,
truth, faithfulness, etc.) which separate us from real life without
bringing us closer to the ideals we strive for. The only way, then, to
represent the problematic mental life of mankind in literature, or in
any verbal form at all, is by continually exposing the relativity of its
representation, which can never escape the tension between surface
and depth, lie and truth, or signifiant and signifi.
In their attempt to reveal a certain truth, whether it is the
soul (Irzykowski) or myth (Schulz), both authors are aware of the
inevitable defeat right from the very start. Schulz explains this
awareness in his essay for Witkacy:
W
ze, na ktry dusza zostaa zasupana, nie jest faszywym w
zem,
rozchodz cym si
za poci gni
ciem koca. Przeciwnie, coraz cianiej si
zw
la. Manipulujemy przy nim, ledzimy bieg nici, szukamy koca i z
tych manipulacyj powstaje sztuka. (1964: 681)
(The knot the soul got itself tied up in is not a false one that comes undone
when you pull the ends. On the contrary, it draws tighter. We handle it,
trace the path of the separate threads, look for the end of the string, and
out of these manipulations comes art; 1990: 111)
To put it another way, striving for the unattainable ideal while being
fully conscious of the inevitable failure of such an attempt, manifests
itself most prominently in (or rather as) art. A similar thought is
98
Dieter De Bruyn
expressed in the continuation of An Explanation of The Dreams of

Maria Dunin:
[Z]waszcza ludzie, ktrzy najwi
cej bij we Wielki Dzwon, wi
c
myliciele (tacy jak Nietzsche, Ibsen, Schopenhauer) i poeci u tych
funkcjonuje klapa bezpieczestwa najwybitniej. W rozstrzygaj cej chwili
cofaj si
oni przed konsekwencj i morduj Mari
Dunin w sobie. (P
566)
(In particular people who ring the Great Bell most often, that is, thinkers
(such as Nietzsche, Ibsen, Schopenhauer) and poets in such people the
safety valve functions best. At the critical moment they shrink from the
consequences and kill Maria Dunin in themselves.)
What Irzykowski suggests, is that every literary or philosophical work

is a construction to the second power, as it additionally renders the
ideal, whose representation in man is already problematic, in a closed
linguistic form. Although both Schulz and Irzykowski reveal this
mechanism in different ways, they continually display the awareness
that even their own apparently open or self-conscious texts are
merely constructions; this is why Schulz refers to his own artistic
manipulations and why the narrating author in Pauba confesses
without hesitation that he also belongs to the Brotherhood, from
which escape is simply impossible ([naley] do Bractwa, przed
ktrym w ogle nie ma ucieczki; P 568).11
From all this, the question arises why both authors, despite
their awareness of the inevitable secondariness of every literary
operation, have decided to produce their texts at all. When even the
most self-ironical literary form appears to be a construction, and if
every attempt to get to the truth eventually exposes its own
deceitfulness, is it then not more authentic to simply refuse to create
such constructions? In order to find a way out of this tautological
circle, it seems important to stress the role of the reader. More
specifically, opposed to the tragedy of the (stable, definitive)
literary product is always the pleasure of the three-dimensional
(unstable, provisional) reading process. By exposing in various ways
their own two-dimensionality (or grafemiczno graphemicity as

11
In another part of Pauba, Irzykowski summarizes the dynamics of the entire novel
in the following oft-quoted aphorism: The lie always rises to the surface like oil,
while the truth sinks to the bottom because it is hard and heavy (Kamstwo
wypywa na wierzch jak oliwa, prawda opada, bo jest cieka i trudna; P 289).

Szary-Matywiecka (1979: 6) would call it), both authors texts incite
the reader to become aware of his/her own role in the textual
game, or of his/her own pose which is merely a comedy.12
Both authors have explicitly stressed the constructive
dimension of their destructive literary practices. As to Irzykowski, the
following striking self-commentary from Beniaminek (Little
Benjamin; 1933) could be mentioned:
[D]emaskuj c i wymiewaj c bohatera, zsolidaryzowaem si
z nim
[] prawie na caej linii, a zasad
swoj wypowiedziaem nawi zuj c do
sw Mignon Goethego (ktra to mwi, gdy j przebrano za anioa): So
lat mich scheinen, bis ich werde! [] to znaczy e tzw. komedia,
gest, pozr, obuda itp. maj swoje g
bokie uprawnienie. (1976c: 447)
(While demasking and making fun of the hero, I had almost complete
solidarity with him, and I expressed my point of view by repeating the
words of Goethes Mignon (who is saying this as she is being dressed up
as an angel): So lat mich scheinen, bis ich werde! [] which means
that the so-called comedy, gesture, appearance, hypocrisy and the like are
entirely legitimate.)
In his essay for Witkacy, Schulz in a similar way draws on the

legitimacy of his destructive practices and on the possibility of
deriving some indeterminate kind of pleasure from it:
Jaki jest sens tej uniwersalnej deziluzji rzeczywistoci, nie potrafi
powiedzie. Twierdz
tylko, e byaby ona nie do zniesienia, gdyby nie
doznawaa odszkodowania w jakiej innej dymensji. W jaki sposb
doznajemy g
bokiej satysfakcji z tego rozlunienia tkanki rzeczywistoci,
jestemy zainteresowani w tym bankructwie realnoci. (1964: 683)
(What the meaning of this universal disillusioning reality is I am not able
to say. I maintain only that it would be unbearable unless it was
compensated for in some other dimension In some sense we derive a
profound satisfaction from the loosening of the web of reality; we feel an
interest in witnessing the bankruptcy of reality; 1990: 113)
Although neither Irzykowski nor Schulz mention the actual reader in

these passages, they are clearly behaving as readers of their own
literary world. Only on this level (or in this dimension) of literary
12
Quite remarkably, such concepts as comedy (komedia), role (rola), and pose
(poza) are omnipresent in Irzykowskis and (to a lesser extent) Schulzs character
descriptions.
100
Dieter De Bruyn
communication does it seem possible to escape from the finiteness of

the two-dimensional text and to enter into the infinity of the threedimensional act of reading. Particularly when the text presents itself as
a game, as a finite repertory of rules (conventions) and signs
(words), the reader may partake in it as a player, repeating his act of
reading over and over again as he pleases. Just like a player in a game
is forced to play a particular, provisional role, Schulzs and
Irzykowskis readers are made aware of their temporary task as
readers. When determining the most dominant signals by which
these texts stress their two-dimensionality, the dynamics of surface
and depth once more proves extremely useful: after the texts have
revealed themselves as the result of a recursive graphic activity (in the
form of palimpsests, cryptograms, or arabesques) in order to break the
illusion of the ultimate depth, the horizontal orientation of their
literary reality is semantically embedded in two specific metaphors of
maximal arbitrariness (pauba and tandeta). In this way, the (vertical)
search for the unique, authentic truth is transformed into the
(horizontal) reality of the recursive, inauthentic act of reading.
Palimpsests, Cryptograms,
Unattainable Original
Arabesques.
Exegesis
of
the
As has already been sufficiently demonstrated, Schulzs prose in many

ways vegetates on the repertory of existing stories or on the
primeval myth, revealing itself, as it were, as a palimpsest or as
the book of arabesques.13 In both cases the text appears to be the
result of a particular graphic activity: either it conceals a number of
underlying texts of which certain traces can still be discerned, or it
behaves as mere commentary or ornamentation in the margin of the
actual yet invisible text. Whatever the case may be, the text always
13
At the center of the discussion of this particular characteristic of Schulzs prose is,
of course, the story triptych Ksi
ga (The Book), Genialna epoka (The Age of
Genius), and Spring. Cf. Lachmann (1992) for the concept of the book of
arabesques (So wie das Sinnzentrum, das das Urbuch zu verheien scheint, im
Aufschub bleibt, befinden sich die Bildphantasmen, in denen die Suche nach dem
Buch inszeniert wird, in einem Sinnschwebezustand. Da sie in wuchernder,
metamorphotischer Bewegung nich auf einen Sinnkern orientiert sind, strzen sie
zentrifugal auseinander. Aber in dieser metamorphotischen, zentrifugalen Bewegung,
die ihre punktuelle Identitt stndig aufkndigt, schreiben sie selbst ein Buch, das
Buch der Arabesken; 454).

manifests itself as a mere text, that is, as a horizontal configuration
of signs which does not pretend to carry within itself a particular
semantic core or essence, which is explicitly situated outside (or
rather, next to) itself. The palimpsest, on the one hand, conceals a
more important text (the Original) of which it is merely a
superscription or yet another superscription of a single Original. In
the case of the arabesque, on the other hand, the text suggests a
particular mythic core around which it incessantly circles but which
itself is unattainable. The text, which explicitly is a text (the result
of a graphic activity), urges the reader to the active exegesis of its
deeper meaning, though it already carries the unavoidable fiasco of
this exegetic act within itself; the actual, (more) authentic text is
always elsewhere. As the exegetic act must be repeated over and over
again, it is itself foregrounded, as it were, as a process.
A similar situation appears in Pauba. Due to its multilayered
structure and heterogeneous composition, critics have always
questioned the textual and generic status of the novel. More
particularly, they had the impression that the actual work (the artistic
core) had been overshadowed by the abundant commentary.
Immediately after its publication, for instance, Wadysaw
Jabonowski called Pauba an unusual commentary, a great and
masterly scaffold for a work which is almost invisible apart from this
(niepospolity komentarz, wielkie i misterne rusztowanie do dziea,
ktrego po za nim prawie nie wida; 1903: 407-408). What such
critical commentaries suggest is that Irzykowski was mainly interested
in contextualizing the actual novel or adding ever new points of view
on its rather lame story. In the terminology of this section, one could
posit that these critics received the novel as arabesques of
commentary in the margins of an absent masterpiece.
Furthermore, such early critics as Kazimierz Wyka also
mentioned the palimpsestic structure of the novel, stressing, for
example, that it was a true interlacement of a couple of novels being
written simultaneously, without, however, containing one single novel
that was fully completed (istna plecionka kilku powieci naraz
pisanych, ale nie zawiera ani jednej powieci naprawd
dopenionej;
Wyka 1977 [1948]: 184). The interpretation of Pauba as some kind
of palimpsest that had been written over the actual text or novel in
various layers or versions could easily be legitimized by referring to
the following metapoetical utterance in the novel:
102
Dieter De Bruyn
Tzw. dzieo sztuki, o ile robione jest pod naporem wewn
trznej potrzeby,
a nie z myl obdarzenia ojczystej literatury nowym arcydzieem, o tyle
jest tylko ladem, echem przeomw w duszy twrcy. lad moe by
niezupeny, nie dopowiedziany, bo to, co jest dla autora najwaniejsze,
najciekawsze, rozegrao si
poza utworem. (P 559)
(As far as the so-called work of art is made under the pressure of an inner
need, and not with the intention of offering a new masterpiece to national
literature, it is merely a trace, an echo of the changes in the soul of the
creator. The trace can be incomplete, unfinished, for that which is the
most important and interesting for the author is what happened outside the
work.)
In other words, beside or under the realized text there is always an

eternally absent text that is completely consistent with the inner
feelings of the author.
As Szary-Matywiecka has demonstrated, the dynamics of
rewriting and overwriting in Pauba is more complex than can be
concluded from the texts discursive layer. According to her, the novel
is characterized by a different functional application of fiction
(inne funkcjonalne zuytkowanie fikcji; 1979: 23), because the text
is not, as is usually the case, producing a story, but it is the other way
round: the story is a prefabrication that generates a series of textual
variants. As a result, the storys semantic core is always absent,
whereas the texts that keep emerging are merely attempts at reading
its unattainable essence. What this continual exegesis of the story
through an accumulation of provisional readings (texts) eventually
demonstrates is that every concretization of a text (every reading),
including that of the actual reader, is dubious and provisional. In other
words, by textually dramatizing the readers unstable position,
Irzykowskis novel effectuates a foregrounding of the specific role of
the reader in any form of literary communication.
Whereas Szary-Matywiecka mainly focuses on the possible
(both realized and merely suggested) textual incarnations of the story
of Strumieskis platonic love for Angelika,14 I (as a reader of the only
existing text of the novel) would like to draw attention to the more
subtle signals by which the text either directly or indirectly discloses

14
As the critic demonstrates, both Strumieski (in the biography Ksiga mioci/The
Book of Love) and his rival Gasztold (in the novel Chora mio/A Sick Love) at a
certain point seek to evade the palubic element by producing real (semi-)autobiographic texts in which they can easily construct their high ideals of love.

its deficient, provisional, or palimpsestic character. On many
occasions, for instance, the narrating author, who pretends to be in the
middle of writing a novel with the same title, suggests that the present
version is but one possibility in a long chain of textual representations
of his novelistic concept: Pauba already not only has a prehistory (cf.
the account of an evening gathering at which the author reads an
earlier version of his novel to a circle of invited literators/grono
zaproszonych literatw; P573), but also anticipates such future
versions as a popular edition (popularne wydanie; P362), a
school edition (szkolne wydanie; P 419, P 533), and even the
ideal Pauba, the one that should have been written (idealna Pauba,
taka, jak si
powinno byo napisa; P 569).
The question of the possibility of a definitive version of the
novel and its relation to the text at hand is further complicated by the
addition of the novella The Dreams of Maria Dunin. Again,
notwithstanding the presence of the unifying discursive layer (and,
more specifically, the explanatory essay An Explanation of The
Dreams of Maria Dunin and Its Connection with Pauba), the
position of the novella in the complete textual reality is far from
stable. First of all, in chapter XII of the actual novel the novella
ironically enters the fictional reality of Strumieski and Ola. Being
some kind of allegorical mirror text of Strumieskis story (cf. supra),
it immediately starts to influence both him and Ola. The latter, for
instance, plans to write a new Maria Dunin ([napisa] now
Mari
Dunin) and even calls Strumieski in passing the male
Maria Dunin (m
ska Maria Dunin; P 237). For his part,
Strumieski, who is used to devising all kinds of symmetries or
constructions in any given situation, immediately discovers certain
parallels between Maria Dunin and himself. His reading of the
novella is, however, far from unequivocal, and his attitude toward its
author similarly hesitates between praise and attempts to denigrate
him as a romantic, a decadent, a neurasthenic who worships an
erotomaniac, and suchlike (poniy [] jako romantyka, dekadenta,
neurastenika, ktry uwietnia erotomank
itp.; P 238). What this
example once more illustrates is that as soon as a text serves as a
function of the unstable position of the reader, it may incarnate in
ever new versions.
The presence of the novella and its author in the fictional
framework of the actual novel also causes a fundamental ontological
104
Dieter De Bruyn
distortion. Not only does it unsettle the conventional closedness of the

novelistic text (as the novella is both part of and prior to Pauba), but
it also puts into question the authors authority (as the novellas author
is both said to have passed away and identified with the narrating
author). Few critics have noted that the novella itself in a similar
way distorts the convention of the text as a closed structure and of the
narrating author as a reliable mediator of the story. The opening
lines already hint at this in many ways:
Wskutek oywionej i serdecznej pogadanki, ktr a do pnej nocy
toczylimy w salonie pastwa X-w, oproszono mnie, abym w mojej
formie, formie szkicu z podry, opisa pewien wypadek z swego ycia,
maj cy zwi zek ze sferami idealnymi, mistycznymi. [] Rzeczywicie
mam co takiego w bibliotece swoich wspomnie [] (P 7)
(On the occasion of an animated and warm conversation I had well into
the night in the salon of Mr and Ms X, I was asked to describe in my form,
in the form of a travel account, one of my personal adventures having a
connection with the ideal, mystical spheres. I indeed carry something like
that in the library of my memories.)
Although this passage suggests a classical story within a story,

expressions such as travel account and library of my memories
indicate that the narrative situation might be more stylized than
expected. When the narrator occasionally interrupts his account in the
following chapters, the initial situation even appears to have
disappeared. In the beginning of chapter IV a certain guy to whom I
[the narrator] have read the hitherto collected memories ([p]ewien
jegomo, ktremu przeczytaem dot d spisane wspomnienia; P 29)
is mentioned. A bit further this same clever guy who has read the
beginning of these sheets (bystry jegomo, ktry czyta pocz tek
tych lunych kartek; P 34) reappears. Both examples stress the
textual character of what is narrated, thus problematizing the initial
narrative situation. This situation is similar to what happens in the
actual novel: the storys essence is read in various ways and turned
into provisional texts. As a result, the readers attention is
temporarily distracted from the content of the story to the form in
which it is passed on. At the same time, the narrator appears to be
unreliable and loses his authorial status.
The novella ends with a true coup de thtre when it appears
that all that preceded was but a mystification. It turns out that the

narrator (the archaelogist who pretended to have discovered the secret
Brotherhood) has become a royal librarian who likes to produce
artifical palimpsests (sztuczne palimpsesty), which he renders
more authentic by inserting them into rumpled originals. His
surprising conclusion is that of all these palimpsests this one is the
most sophisticated, since I am one of the most excellent members of
the Brotherhood of the Great Bell myself! (z owych palimpsestw
ten wanie celuje wyrafinowaniem, bo ja sam jestem
najznakomitszym z Bractwa Wielkiego Dzwonu!; P 51). This is why
the novella carries the subtitle A Palimpsest; the supposedly
authentic story of Maria Dunin is an ingenious construction whose
artificiality is disclosed at the end. In An Explanation, the author
explains the subtitle as follows:
Maria Dunin jest palimpsestem, to znaczy tyle co mistyfikacj . []
Autor wypowiada oficjalnie przekonania, pod ktrymi naley dopatrywa
si
innych jego przekona, wr
cz przeciwnych tamtym. Poniewa za
przy kocu autor nawet i te drugie przekonania ujmuje w cudzysw,
przeto mona powiedzie, e Maria Dunin jest palimpsestem do
kwadratu. (P 560)
(Maria Dunin is a palimpsest, or in other words, a mystification. The
author officially expresses his beliefs, under which one ought to detect his
other beliefs, which are diametrically opposed to the former. Given that at
the end of the novella even these other beliefs are put in quotation marks
by the author, one could state that Maria Dunin is a palimpsest to the
second power.)
It should be clear that the complex structure of The Dreams of Maria

Dunin is treated here as a palimpsest only in a symbolic or allegorical
way; indeed, having betrayed himself on several occasions in the
course of the story (e.g. when reading part of the manuscript or when
adding fake spiritological texts to existing documents in order to
manipulate Maria), the narrator eventually relativizes the entire text
by presenting it as a mystification.
According to Aleksandra Budrecka, the importance of the
novellas last sentence cannot be underestimated. When read as a
logical paradox of the Epimenides type (All Cretans are liars), it
simply suggests that in language nothing can be stated either on the
actual or on the represented reality (niczego nie da si
orzec o
rzeczywistoci, tak realnej jak i przedstawionej; 1981: XV) because
every statement on the truth inevitably calls forth its antithesis (the
106
Dieter De Bruyn
lie). When the closing sentence is separated from the rest of the
novella, however, then it may reveal itself as the only truthful
statement, of which the linguistic reality (rzeczywisto
j
zykowa; XIX) is brought to the surface. As a result, attention is
diverted from the false world of the archaeologist and Maria Dunin
to the real world of the narrator, someone who utters sentences and
who establishes their falseness (kto, kto wypowiada zdania i kto
konstatuje ich faszywo; XIX). According to Budrecka, the
function of this sentence is identical to the many comments in the
actual novel; in both cases the inauthentic or linguistic nature of what
is narrated is reflexively brought to the surface.
What both Budrecka and the narrator in An Explanation
seem to overlook is that the creative use of the principle of the
palimpsest also results in a foregrounding of the textual character of
Pauba. The act of overwriting other texts confronts the reader with
the finiteness of the visible text as opposed to the infinity of all
possible texts. As soon as the reader is aware of the (partial) absence
of a text that is potentially richer than the text that is before him, the
latter may transform before his eyes into an insufficient ornament (an
arabesque) that merely represents the absence of a more original
text that has become unattainable. The idea that a text may hide more
than it actually discloses is thematized in The Dreams of Maria
Dunin through the appearance of a mysterious manuscript. Although
its content plays an essential role in the further development of the
story, the narrator signals that it lacks a lot of pages, probably the
most important ones, as well as the complete conclusion (brak byo
wielu kartek, prawdopodobnie najwaniejszych, oraz caego koca; P
28). The motive of an incomplete document that nevertheless is
considered to be highly significant also appears in Schulzs story The
Age of Genius in the form of the famous szparga or script.
The resultant readerly tendency to fill in a texts blank
spaces (that is, the textual options that could have been rendered but
were erased from the textual surface as in a palimpsest) has also been
dramatized in Pauba in a particular way. Indeed, both in the novella
and, to a lesser extent, in the actual novel certain textual elements are
explicitly suppressed, as a result of which the reader is invited to
actively bridge the gaps. This strategy ranges from simple omissions
cf. references to Mr and Ms X (cf. supra) or to the vicinity of N
Q. (okolice N Q.; P 9) to a more general narratorial attitude of

openly concealing certain (often embarrassing) details. This strategy is
also present in Schulzs stories (e.g. in Josephs descriptions of his
fathers behavior in Traktat o manekinach/Treatise on Tailors
Dummies), and it seems to have its prehistory in The Dreams of
Maria Dunin, in which the narrator, for instance, quotes a letter he
received from the Brotherhood leaving out the words that could be
misunderstood (z opuszczeniem sw, ktre by mona faszywie
zrozumie; P 32). Quite ironically, what is left after this act of
censorship is completely incomprehensible.
Since many of the novellas lacunae are filled in An
Explanation (where, for example, the full text of the letter from the
Brotherhood is rendered), critics have never questioned this narrative
technique. Because the inaccuracies in the account of the novellas
narrator are adjusted by the narrating author through whom the rest
of the novel is mediated, the latter is considered to be fully reliable.
When taking a closer look at this narrators account, however, one
may discover similar reservations toward what is told. The narrator
not only constantly puts his own language between quotation marks or
suggests that he might have rendered certain passages in a more poetic
way, but also is responsible for the kind of omissions for which he
blames the novellas narrator. In a passage that strikingly resembles
the novellas narration, Strumieski discovers a farewell letter on
Angelikas chest after her suicidal fall in a well: Part of it was
illegible, since the ink had dissolved in the water, but the part that he
could decipher it ended with the question: All right? deeply
touched him (Cz
jego bya nieczytelna, bo atrament rozpuci si
w wodzie, lecz to, co odczyta, zakoczone pytaniem: czy dobrze?,

przej
o go do g
bi; P 93). Once again, the reader is confronted with
the existence of an important text of which the narrator knows the full
content, the protagonist merely the outlines, and the reader nothing but
an unimportant detail. In The Rampart of Pauba the idea of the
complete novel as a text that is deliberately left incomplete for the
reader (in other words, as a palimpsest that is merely an echo or
trace of an unattainable essence) is commented on as follows:
Ja [] nie troszcz
si
o miny, wygody i kaprysy czytaj cego, nie gram
na strunach jego duszy, lecz urz dzam mu wykady o Paubie, tej, ktra
gdzie tam napisana cakiem inaczej spoczywa w mojej gowie, a
wykadam mu jak profesor, ktry cz
prelekcji mwi gono i
108
Dieter De Bruyn
przyst
pnie, a druga cz
, o ktrej w tpi, czy j kto zrozumie, mwi
obrcony do ciany, czasem mrucz c pod nosem. (P 579)
(I dont care about the grimaces, the conveniences, and the whims of the
reader; I dont pluck his hearts strings, but Im giving him lectures on
Pauba, on the version that rests somewhere in my head in a completely
different form, and I teach him just like a professor who reads part of his
lecture aloud and clearly; the other part, however, of which he doubts that
someone will understand it, he utters with his face turned to the wall, just
muttering something every now and then.)
As the reader is confronted with a text that openly omits

essential information, he might feel tempted to look for certain hidden
connections himself. This inevitable reaction will manifest itself
particularly when reading those parts in which the cryptographic
character of the novel is revealed. As soon as the text manifests itself
as a cryptogram, it explicitly becomes a text to be deciphered by a
reader in order to lay bare the connections underlying the visible
signs. In many cases, this typically readerly attitude is further
influenced by the behavior of the protagonists, who constantly tend to
look for hidden meanings themselves. The first target of both readers
and protagonists seems to be the choice of proper names. In what is
perhaps the most striking example of this characteristic, Piotr (Piotru)
Strumieski (born Wosek) draws a parallel between his surname and
the stream (strumie) in which his future lover Berestajka has just
dropped a ring by accident; his conclusion is that Berestajka is now
symbolically engaged with him. On the one hand, this association
seems to be a quite ironical attempt by Strumieski to (once more)
take advantage of certain symmetries between the signs that surround
him ironical, as he got his surname only after having been adopted
by a nobleman named Adam Strumieski. On the other hand,
however, the parallel between the surname and the concept of a
stream could be interpreted as more than just a coincidence, as
Strumieskis impulse to organize reality by means of all kinds of
constructions does indeed seem to be an attempt at escaping the
(palubic) stream of life. A similar manipulation of proper names
can also be found a bit earlier in the novel, where Strumieski names
his son Pawe/Paweek (Paul) after the name of the apostle who did
not like women (od imienia apostoa, ktry nie lubi kobiet; P 180).
What is suggested here is that Strumieski once more tries to impose a
certain scheme on reality; more specifically, by establishing a

connection with the apostle, he hopes that Paweek will stay away
from his mother Ola, who in Strumieskis model represents physical
(as opposed to platonic) love. Moreover, in a way that reminds of the
situation in Schulzs stories (in which the narrator and his father are
named Joseph and Jacob respectively), Strumieski also seems to
want to connect his sons fate with his own ambitions (Piotr-Pawe, or
Peter-Paul). As we will later see, all these aspirations will eventually
prove a failure.
It should be clear that this focus on the practice of manipulating and wrongly interpreting names is part of a more general strategy
in the novel of mocking the typically human tendency to impose all
kinds of constructions (words, names, forms, concepts, symbols) on
the world. The narrator seems to be particularly aiming at those
moments in which such errors in reasoning (b
dy mylowe; P
519 and passim) result in a complete fiasco. Most of these errors go
back to the idyllic ideal love between Strumieski and Angelika,
who are reported to be completely obsessed with the conviction that
love is a problem, a cryptogram of the world that has to be solved
(przekonanie, e mio jest problemem, kryptogramem wiata, ktry
naley rozwi za; P 80; italics mine). As we have seen, in his pursuit
of the ideal of posthumous love, Strumieski is permanently thwarted
by the chaos of life. Until now, critics of Pauba have mainly
discussed this clash between the ideal and reality as a psychological
problem, much in the same way as it is commented on in the novels
discursive layer, that is, by means of the dialectics between the
constructive element and the palubic element (cf. supra).
However, what has too often been overlooked is that Irzykowskis
protagonists, as they experience the world explicitly as a text (a
cryptogram, a selection of signs), confront the reader with the
inevitable fiasco of his own reading.
As a matter of fact, the text abounds in examples of
(mis)readings, thus stressing the problematic nature of any exegetic
practice. First of all, both the narrator (in his many comments) and the
protagonists (e.g. when a copy of the novella falls into their hands)
often use literary models in order to model their thoughts and behavior. In the novella, then, one of the crucial texts to be read by both
the protagonists and the reader is the mysterious configuration of three
small islands in a local pond, each of which stands for a letter (B, W,
and D). This acronym a mysterious monogram (tajemniczy
110
Dieter De Bruyn
monogram; P 14) in the narrators words of course refers to the

Brotherhoods full name (Bractwo Wielkiego Dzwonu). Both the
archaeologist (when visiting the islands) and the reader (when
confronted with a schematic presentation of the three islands),
however, are invited to find out the truth of this cryptogram
themselves, of reading its hidden meaning. In the course of the
story, the archaeologist reveals himself as a detective-like figure who
attempts to make every insinuation, every detail, and every noise fit
into the scheme of his exegesis.
In the actual novel the situation is more comparable than is
generally assumed. First of all, by adding a map depicting the scene of
the action and commenting on it on the opening pages of the novel,
Irzykowski seems to want to stress the two-dimensionality of the story
world, which is presented as a closed configuration of lines, dots, and
letters (A, B, C, D for indicating the main places) rather than as an
illusion of a three-dimensional, real reality. Not surprisingly, during
his frequent attempts to get to the core (cf. supra), Piotr Strumieski
approaches this reality primarily as a text of which the essence may
be revealed through intensive exegesis. Immediately after Angelikas
suicide, for instance, Strumieski starts exploring the estates vicinity
in search of signs that could help him to unravel the mystery of
Angelikas death:
Nieraz [], kiedy si
[] intensywnie wpatrywa w kontury, ksztaty i
barwy naokoo siebie, [] wwczas zakulisowym ruchem fantazji
wywoywa w sobie wraenie, e ksztaty te i barwy poruszaj si
na
swych kraw
dziach, jakby maszerowa chciay, zmieniaj si
,
przepywaj w siebie, e cay wiat chwieje si
, dry i mruga na niego
tajemniczo, jakby mu dawa znaki, jakby w nim byo co zakl
tego, co si
chce zdradzi, e nie jest takim, jakim si

by wydaje. (P 99-100)
(Sometimes, when he looked intensively at the contours, the shapes, and
the colors around him, he then furtively activated his fantasy in order to
evoke the impression in himself that these shapes and colors were set in
motion at their edges, as if they wanted to march, to change, to merge into
each other, that the entire world was staggering, trembling and secretly
winking at him, as if it was giving him signs, as if a curse rested on him
that wanted to reveal itself, in brief, that the world was different than it
seemed.)
This trembling and winking of nature reminds us, of course, of

the way in which Schulzs narrator experiences reality. One of the

most striking examples of this may be found in the opening pages of
Spring, in which this most inspiring season is represented as a whirl
of signs, as a loose configuration of signifiers still to be read by the
narrator.15 In a similar way, Strumieski imposes his constructions
on the open text of reality to such an extent even that he
experiences these constructions as if he was reading a book (jakby
ksi k
czyta; P 385).
Another striking characteristic is that Strumieskis attempts
to get to the core, which are, after all, attempts to grasp nature in
cultural schemes, at a certain point start to manifest themselves in the
form of artistic activities. In a similar way as Jacob in Schulzs story
Birds wants to maintain his ideals of poetry by setting up a colorful
colony of birds in the attic of his house, Strumieski attempts to
construct an ideal picture of his matrimonial life with Angelika by
means of a series of creative experiments. He not only sets up a cult of
Angelika in the museum which he has created to her memory, but
also, in the course of time, tries to initiate his son Paweek into this
cult through the most diverse creative activities. One of these
activities consists of writing Angelikas artistic biography (The Book
of Love) an undertaking which ends in a complete fiasco. Just like
his ideal of platonic love is permanently thwarted by the sensual
aspect of love (cf. supra), Strumieski now cannot but conclude that
he must constantly suppress all kinds of (mainly sexual) details when
writing down the ideal history of Angelika. In the concluding
chapter the deforming effect of the palubic element on his creativity is
expressed as follows: What else was this entire history of Angelika
than arabesques around the most ordinary obscenities (Czyme bya
caa historia Angeliki, jeeli nie arabeskami naokoo cakiem prostych
wistw?; P 474).
After having broken off his biographical project and having
devoted himself to the study of the sexless relations of plants
(bezpciowe stosunki rolin; P 285), Strumieskis impulse to
express himself in some work of art (wypowiedzenie si
w jakim
dziele sztuki; P 290) soon resurfaces. After a double and once more
disappointing architectural enterprise, however, Strumieski starts to
concentrate his artistic ambitions on living material, that is, on his son
Paweek. As the boy functions as some kind of incarnation of

15
Cf. De Bruyn (2008a) for an analysis of Schulzs narrator as a reader of the text
of reality.
112
Dieter De Bruyn
Angelika, Strumieski expects him to be predestined to be a painter

(just like Angelika) and therefore is tempted to sow artistic
impressions in him (zasiewanie w nim wrae artystycznych; P
299). In the conviction that nature is abundant in allusions
([n]atura jest obfita w aluzje; P 302), he takes Paweek to a forest
and confronts him with the reflection of the palace that he has ordered
to be built:
[W] wodzie widzieli [] drugi daleko pi
kniejszy paac, [] zbudowany
[] przez tajemnicze duchy podziemne, na przekr budowlom
nadziemnym tu pod nimi wanie, przez duchy, ktre swoj czynno
kryj zazdronie przed okiem ludzkim za pomoc zudzenia, i to jest
tylko zwyky fenomen optyczny. (P 302-303)
(In the water they saw another, far more beautiful palace, which had been
built by mysterious ghosts of the underground in spite of the aboveground
buildings right below by ghosts that kept their activity hidden from sight
by means of the illusion that it was merely an ordinary optical
phenomenon.)
Having roused Paweeks interest in this kind of mystification,

Strumieski can now proceed to his main objective: projecting the
ideal image of Angelika onto her spiritual son. To this end, he sets
up a sophisticated construction in the museum in which Angelikas
paintings are exhibited. Each time Paweek secretly enters the
building, he sees a three-dimensional image of a woman through an
optical illusion. Instead of making Paweek partake in the cult of
Angelika, however, a completely unexpected, nearly grotesque turn
(cakiem niespodziewany, groteskowy niemal obrt; P 427) takes
place: after his father has closed down the museum, Paweek, who has
gradually and completely arbitrarily started to refer to the phantom
with the name Pauba (cf. P 317, 458-459), associates the anonymous
effigy which he adores (his ideal woman) with the loose village idiot
Kseka (whom the shepherds nickname Pauba). As soon as the
licentious Kseka has initiated him into the physical (instead of the
platonic or cultural) aspects of love, the image of Angelika is
transformed, as it were, into its dialectical negation.
This grotesque turn appears to have a lot in common with a
similar event in Cinnamon Shops. As has already been mentioned, one
of Jacobs most remarkable attempts to get to the core is the
establishment of a colony of birds in the attic of his house. At the peak

of the experiment, however, the by then extensive collection of all
kinds of breeds is chased away by Adela. When the birds eventually
return to their spiritual father in the final story of the cycle (Noc
wielkiego sezonu/The Night of the Great Season), they appear to
have developed into an brood of freaks (sztuczne potomstwo) that
is degenerated and overgrown (zwyrodniae i wybujae), a
malformed, wasted tribe of birds (CF 93; zdegenerowane plemi
ptasie, zmarniae wewn

trznie; SC 157). After the birds have been
knocked down with stones thrown by a bunch of jesters Jacob cannot
but notice the wretchedness of that wasted generation, the nonsense
of its second-rate anatomy (CF 94; obserwowa ca lichot
tej
zuboaej generacji, ca mieszno jej tandetnej anatomii; SC 158;
italics mine). In spite of its high aspirations, the experiment turns out
to have yielded nothing but tandeta (trash), that is, defective copies
of the birds that he had intended to create:
Byy to ogromne wiechcie pir, wypchane byle jak starym cierwem. U
wielu nie mona byo wyrni gowy, gdy pakowata ta cz
ciaa nie
nosia adnych znamion duszy. Niektre pokryte byy kudat , zlepion
sierci , jak ubry, i mierdziay wstr
tnie. Inne przypominay garbate,
yse, zdeche wielb dy. Inne wreszcie byy najwidoczniej z pewnego
rodzaju papieru, puste w rodku, a wietnie kolorowe na zewn trz.
Niektre okazyway si
z bliska niczym innym jak wielkimi pawimi
ogonami, kolorowymi wachlarzami, w ktre niepoj
tym sposobem
tchni
to jaki pozr ycia. (SC 158)
(They had been nothing but enormous bunches of feathers, stuffed
carelessly with old carrion. In many of them, one could not recognise
where the heads had been, for that misshapen part of their bodies was
unmarked by the presence of a soul. Some were covered with a curly
matted fur, like bison, and stank horribly. Others reminded one of
hunchbacked, bald, dead camels. Others still must have been made of a
kind of cardboard, empty inside but splendidly coloured on the outside.
Some of them proved at close quarters to be nothing more than large
peacocks tails, colourful fans, into which by some obscure process a
semblance of life had been breathed; CF 94)
The analogy with Pauba could be expressed as follows: just like

Strumieski sets up a complex construction in order to mould
Paweek into something that he is not in reality, Jacob attempts to
impose his will on matter and bring it to life. Both creative projects,
however, take revenge on their creators: Paweek shatters the ideal his
father was aiming at and shows his human instincts, while Jacobs
114
Dieter De Bruyn
birds shake off the illusion and disclose their trashy nature. The
ambition to get to the core that Strumieski and Jacob share collides
in a grotesque way with reality, with pauba and tandeta; the illusory
symmetry between the idea and its representation has to give way to
the asymmetry of the final result. Moreover, the fiasco of both
protagonists experiments had already been hinted at beforehand:
Jacobs birds might have been merely the result of his reading of
large ornithological textbooks (wielkie ornitologiczne compendia)
from whose pages these feathery phantasms seemed to rise (Cf 21;
zdaway si
ulatywa [] te pierzaste fantazmaty; SC 69), while
Strumieski already knew from his personal experiences that man will
always be thwarted in his higher aspirations by the physical aspects of
love.
Although both grotesque turns in some way result in a defeat,
both protagonists stubbornly continue their illusory activities. In
Jacobs case, this continuation is mainly the effect of the cyclic nature
of Schulzs literary reality. As has been sufficiently demonstrated by
many critics, Schulzs stories are characterized by a circular rather
than a chronological temporal structure, as a result of which each
motive may be perpetually repeated. A striking example of this is
exactly Jacobs constant struggle with the grayness and stability of
everyday reality, which is perhaps best revealed in his repeated yet
each time provisional metamorphoses.
Strumieski, for his part, does not seem to calm down either
in the wake of the clash between his construction and the palubic
element; after he has shot Kseka (who had come to visit Paweek at
his sickbed), he is convinced he has averted the sensual branch of the
myth of Angelika. At once the Angelika case starts with a new
cycle: Strumieski experienced a moment in life at which he, after
having passed through a particular cycle, had reached the same point
for the second time ([Strumieski mia] chwil
w yciu, w ktrej
niejako po przebyciu pewnego koa drugi raz by w tym samym
punkcie; P 481). After Paweeks death in particular, he cannot
restrain himself from linking all he experiences in life to one single
scheme: Seduced by the extraordinary, though in fact only
superficial, symmetry of the events, he connected their peaks with
lines, created a historiosophy of his own life, searched for
pseudoconnections in it and drinked in these (Uwiedziony
nadzwyczajn , chocia pozorn tylko symetrycznoci zdarze, czy

ich punkty szczytowe liniami, tworzy historiozofi
wasnego ycia,
doszukiwa si
w nim pseudozwi zkw, ktrymi si
upaja; P 489).
On the very last page of the novel, Strumieskis mythologizing of
reality finally seems to have reached its apogee: The Angelika case
entered the stadium of the highest, already unattainable
spiritualization (Sprawa Angelika wst pia w stadium najwyszego,
nienaruszalnego ju uduchowienia; P 490). The spiral in which
Strumieski seems to be caught, however, cannot even be broken by
his own death, as he will then enter into that land, where he will
eventually find out how things really are at the other side of the
canvas (w ten kraj, gdzie wreszcie zobaczy, jak to tam jest po
drugiej stronie kanwy; P 490). It should be clear that the choice of
the symbolically charged kanwa (canvas) as the last word of the
novel once more strengthens the hypothesis of the horizontal
orientation of Strumieskis reality.
Strumieskis tragedy is in fact identical to what happens to
Joseph in such stories as Spring (cf. supra). Both protagonists
attempt to impose a particular scenario on their realities, even though
they are (to a different extent) aware of the inevitable fiasco. Their
tragedy is first and foremost the result of the exegetic paradox:
reality is perceived as a text from which a certain meaning should
be drawn, which nonetheless slips through their fingers again and
again. As a matter of fact, this is exactly what eventually affects the
actual reader of their texts. In Pauba the reader is even made aware of
his inclination to chase blindly after some ultimate signifi by devising
illusory symmetries between the signs of a given text: I know that my
sober protest against Strumieskis behavior will be some kind of
humiliation for three-fourths of my readers, who, while being equally
influenced by the suggestion of the facts, might feel exactly the same
as Strumieski (Wiem, e ten mj trzewy protest przeciw
zachowaniu si
Strumieskiego b
dzie rodzajem upokorzenia dla
trzech czwartych moich czytelnikw, ktrzy, ulegaj c rwnie
sugestii faktw, ewentualnie tak samo by czuli jak Strumieski; P
477). In other words, Pauba does everything to thwart a traditional
reading toward some kind of closure. Although it is possible to
distinguish particular connections as the act of reading proceeds, these
eventually turn out to be pseudoconnections that are as deceitful as
provisional.
116
Dieter De Bruyn
What we can learn from Irzykowski and Schulz is that the

asymmetric, three-dimensional, and infinite reality cannot be grasped
in an inevitably symmetric, two-dimensional, and finite text. In their
respective works this conflict is dramatized by laying bare the
horizontal, textual character of the literary reality in question, after
which the characters are exposed to the tragedy of the circular,
recursive exegesis of their own textual reality. Eventually, the
narrating author himself has to admit that his own text is but a
trace of an unattainable original:
Po analizie przedmiotu przychodzi kolej na mikroskop. Speni to, co w
wiecie fizycznym rwnaoby si
widzeniu wasnych oczu. Sprawa
Strumieskiego tkwi we mnie samym [] Miaebym wi
c pisa swoj
wasn Paub? Zdaje mi si
, e zapomniaem na chwil
, w jakim si
towarzystwie znajduj
. Czy mam sam jeden w literaturze gra w
otwarte karty? tam gdzie si
gra nawet faszywymi? (P 450-451)
(Now the object has been analyzed, let us focus on the microscope. Let us
fulfill what in the physical world would be equal to looking at ones own
eyes. The Strumieski case is inside myself. Do I have to write my own
Pauba then? Apparently I have forgotten for a moment in which
company I am. Do I have to be the only person in literature who shows
his cards? While others even play with false ones?)
What this passage suggests is that it is impossible to fully show ones

cards: when looking at our own eyes in a mirror, all we can see is
but a representation that confronts us with the limits of our own visual
range. The illusion that reality can be fully grasped dashes against the
surface of the mirror; the own eye is a residue whose ultimate
signifi will remain concealed forever. Even the metafictional text,
which looks at itself as in a mirror, cannot possibly pass this limit; just
like any other text, it will always remain an inauthentic construction
pauba or tandeta.
Pauba, Manekin, Tandeta. Apology of the Inauthentic Art
As has been suggested earlier, the constructive dimension of both
Irzykowskis and Schulzs destructive literary practices cannot be
denied. After the illusion of an attainable semantic core has been
shattered, the reader is offered the perspective of an active, recursive,
and reflexive reading of the respective texts transformativity
(transformacyjno; cf. Szary-Matywiecka 1979: 36). More specifi-

cally, the reader may feel challenged by the text to a complex game,
an alternative series of rules (conventions) and signs (words), in which
one has to play a particular role that may offer a certain pleasure.
Indeed, between the reader and his illusion of a three-dimensional
reality a two-dimensional text is placed, like a chessboard on which
the reader may freely arrange all kinds of temporary constructions.
The reader becomes a player who is well aware of his exceptional
role.
What the reader may learn from all this is that this game is
the only kind of authenticity that literature has to offer. In Authors
Trio this positive value of the role and the comedy each human
being inevitably has to play in life is underscored as follows:
Mame wyranie powiedzie, e jestem po stronie Strumieskiego?
Gdyby taki czowiek y [], rad bym si
z nim spotka i pomwi.
Powiedziabym mu moe: Panie Strumieski, ty, ktry chciae
urzeczywistni frazes, w jaki to wpade chaos! Dlaczego ci nie przyszo
na myl, e nie ty skompromitowae ide
, ale e idea skompromitowaa
si
przed tob ! [] Widziaem np., jak odkrywszy w sobie pewn
warstw
komedii, zuytkowae to odkrycie i wycofae si
. Mame ci
bra to za ze? Potkn e si
tylko na wasnej szczeroci. Bo c to znaczy
komedia? Pokazuje si
, e jest ona niezb
dn cz
ci dziaania ludzkiego;
a jeeli czowiek wybiera sobie wysze formy ycia, ma jakie wzory lub
plany przed oczyma, wwczas musi mu towarzyszy uczucie roli. [] W
ogle zanadto si
ulega rozrnianiu dwch kontrastw: pozoru i istoty
rzeczy, a tylko Goethe mia pomys powiedzie: So, lat mich scheinen,
bis ich werde. (P 428-430)
(Do I have to state explicitly that I sympathize with Strumieski? If such a
person would exist, I would be happy to meet him and talk to him. I would
probably tell him: Mr. Strumieski, you who wanted to execute a clich,
in which chaos have you ended up! Why havent you realized that it was
not you who has compromised the idea, but the idea which has
compromised itself in front of you! I have noticed, for instance, how you,
after you had discovered a certain layer of comedy in yourself, took
advantage of this discovery and then withdrew. Should I hold this against
you? You have only stumbled over your own sincerity. For what does that
mean, comedy? Apparently, it is inextricably part of human conduct; so, if
someone chooses higher forms of life for himself or has certain models or
plans in mind, then he must be accompanied by a sense of role. In general,
we reconcile ourselves too easily to the distinction between these two
opposites the appearance and the essence of things and only Goethe
came up with the idea to state: So lasst mich scheinen, bis ich werde.)
118
Dieter De Bruyn
In other words, those who take their ideals too seriously and ignore
the sense of role will inevitably end up in chaos. Only those who are
aware of the relativity of every human act, of the comedy that lies at
the basis of every human aspiration, may experience a certain degree
of authenticity.
A similar stress on the playful dimension of being, on the
undermining of seriousness, can be found in Schulzs work. In his
essay for Witkacy, the writer describes his literary reality as follows:
Obecna tam jest nieustannie atmosfera kulis, tylnej strony sceny, gdzie
aktorzy po zrzuczeniu kostiumw zamiewaj si
z patosu swych rl. W
samym fakcie istnienia poszczeglnego zawarta jest ironia, nabieranie,
j
zyk po bazesku wystawiony. (682-683)
(Thus an all-pervading aura of irony emanates from this substance. There
is an ever-present atmosphere of the stage, of sets viewed from behind,
where the actors make fun of the pathos of their parts after stripping out
their costumes. The bare fact of separate individual existence holds an
irony, a hoax, a clowns stuck-out tongue; 1990: 113)
In other words, both authors explicitly stress that the exposure of the
characters tragedy causes a turn that reveals the positive, playful, and
comical side of their tragic roles. The awareness that all seriousness is
but a provisional costume (a form) that can be stripped off
without any problem, reduces their drama to reasonable proportions.
Even the cyclical repetition of the drama in ever new forms is not
disadvantageous, as the laugh and the stuck-out tongue will always
function as safety valves through which the surplus of seriousness
can be temporarily reduced. The last issue to be addressed, then, is in
which ways Irzykowski and Schulz have embedded this awareness of
the eventual superficiality of each human act (and, as a
consequence, also of their own literary practice) into their texts.
It should be clear that characters such as Maria, Strumieski,
and Jacob are not so much responsible for their fortunes, as they are
victims of a specific (literary) role. Therefore, ons should also pay
some attention to the reliability of the narrator of their stories.
Schulzs stories are characterized by a type of narration that Alfred
Sproede, because of its dialectic of seduction and deception, has
appropriately called a kind of humbug (une espce de boniment;
2000: 148). Indeed, on numerous occasions, the characters and their
reality (the merchandise) as well as the reader (the potential buyer) are

explicitly twisted around the finger of the humbugging narrator (the
seller). Irzykowskis narrator too is not as balanced as many critics
have thought he was.16 In Authors Trio the narrator even openly
confronts himself as author:
Bo c s dzisz ty sam, szanowny autorze? [] Czy jeste jednym z tych
autorw, ktrzy wyszydzaj , wydrwiwaj swe postacie, aby przez to
narzuci czytelnikowi opini
, e oni sami wi
cej wiedz , e s m drzejsi?
Czy nie przerzucasz wanie swego wasnego chaosu na Strumieskiego?
(P 428)
(Now whats your opinion, dear author? Are you one of those writers who
make fun of their characters and ridicule them in order to force the reader
to believe that they know more themselves, that they are more intelligent?
Arent you in fact shifting your own chaos onto Strumieski?)
In other words, the narrator is clearly aware of the relativity of his

own narrative construction. He even doubts if the use of reflexive
devices will offer a way out of this aporia: Until now, there were
certain accents in your story that made me hope that you would lead
me behind the coulisses of the coulisses of your art ([W] twym
opowiadaniu byy takie akcenty, ktre mi si
ka spodziewa, e
wprowadzisz mnie za kulisy kulis swej sztuki; P 429). What the
narrator suggests here is that even the exposure of his own narrative
procedures is no guarantee for a stable, reliable, and ordered
account, as new coulisses will continue to turn up behind the coulisses
that have already been exposed.
The reason why both Schulzs and Irzykowskis narrators also
eventually undermine their own stability is that they are convinced
that any attempt at ordering their world or making essentialist
statements will inevitably lead them into chaos and that only the
appearance and the game are legitimate. For similar reasons, both
authors not only seem to have reconciled themselves in advance to the
provisional and defective nature of their literary constructions, but
also deliberately stick to an aesthetics for which Pawowska-J drzyk
has coined the term mediocrity (bylejako) a term which is
used for denoting the specificity of the poetics of works which stand
out with a deliberate carelessness of their artistic execution (cf.

16
Cf. De Bruyn (2007b, 2008) for more detailed analyses on narrative unreliability in
Irzykowski and Schulz.
120
Dieter De Bruyn
supra). Pawowska-J drzyk pertinently remarks that this aesthetic

attitude in both authors works has crystallized, as it were, into two
anti-aesthetic concepts: tandeta and pauba. Whereas tandeta
manifests itself in Schulzs stories primarily in the form of all kinds of
shoddy characters and objects, Irzykowskis concept of pauba
seems to be the driving force behind the exposure of all usurping
constructions of the various protagonists. What Pawowska-J drzyk
seems to overlook, however, is that both symbols have much more
in common than merely their shared emphasis on the mediocrity of
the literary construction in which they have found themselves.
In a revealing article, Andreas Schnle (1991) has already
shed light on the ambiguity and wide range of applications of the
concept of tandeta. The word and its derivatives as well as the idea of
cheap and shoddy form are indeed omnipresent in Schulzs stories:
tandeta appears as parasitic vegetation (e.g. in Sierpie (August)
and Pan), as shoddy goods (e.g. in Cinnamon Shops and The
Street of Crocodiles), as disabled characters (e.g. in Emeryt (The
Old-Age Pensioner), Edzio (Eddie) and Dodo), as
metamorphoses of humans into lower or marginal forms of life (e.g.
not only Jacobs transformations but also the dog-man in Sanatorium
Under the Sign of the Hourglass, the transsexual seller in The Street
of Crocodiles, and uncle Edward as a doorbell in The Comet), etc.
The most perfect form in which tandeta manifests itself, however, is
the manekin or (tailors) dummy. More specifically, due to the
incongruity between what is represented (a human being) and the
inadequacy of the image, the manekin draws some attention on its own
material quality of sign (cf. Schnle 1991: 132). Quite interestingly,
in this same conceptual framework of the poorly executed doll, Schulz
also employs the rarely used pauba not only with reference to the
less suitable (for apparently more perfect) figury panopticum
(figures in the panopticum) or pauby woskowe (waxworks),
but also for designating the quality of shoddy matter, its paubiasta
niezgrabno (dummy-like clumsiness). Because Schulz was
familiar with Pauba (cf. his mention of it in his review of
Gombrowiczs novel Ferdydurke), it is not unlikely that he wanted to
insert Irzykowskis text into his own literary reality.
A similarly significant connection between tandeta and
pauba can be found in the following description of luxuriant
vegetation in August:

Na tych barach ogrodu niechlujna, babska bujno sierpnia wyolbrzymiaa
w guche zapadliska ogromnych opuchw, rozpanoszya si
patami
wochatych blach listnych, wybujaymi ozorami mi
sistej zieleni. Tam te
wyupiaste pauby opuchw wybauszyy si
jak babska szeroko
rozsiade, na wp poarte przez wasne oszalae spdnice. Tam
sprzedawa ogrd za darmo najtasze krupy dzikiego bzu, mierdz c
mydem, grub kasz
babek, dzik okowit
mi
ty i wszelk najgorsz
tandet sierpniow . (SC 50-51; italics mine)
([On the back of the garden] the untidy, feminine ripeness of August had
expanded into enormous, impenetrable, clumps of burdock spreading their
sheets of leafy tin, their luxuriant tongues of fleshy greenery. There, those
protuberant bur clumps spread themselves, like resting peasant women,
half enveloped in their own swirling skirts. There, the garden offered free
of charge the cheapest fruits of wild lilac, the heady aquavit of mint and
all kinds of August trash; CF 6; italics mine)
Whereas tandeta in this fragment stresses the cheapness and

shoddiness of the parasitic vegetation in the periphery of the garden,
pauba (which in this case rather stands for an old and ugly woman,
a hag; cf. infra) links up with those expressions (e.g. the various
variations on baba) that designate the impudent femininity and
fertility of the plants in question. Apart from this, the word was most
probably also chosen for its alliteration (cf. te wyupiaste pauby
opuchw wybauszyy si
), which in a way causes an overgrowth
of the texts meaning by its poetic sound.
In Pauba the sound of the word plays an important role, too.
When pauba is mentioned for the first time on the occasion of the
projection of Angelikas image on one of her paintings, it even seems
to represent mere sound without meaning:
Paweek mwi c o kobiecie na obrazie nazywa j czasem [] paub ,
nasz paub . Dwi
k tego sowa przypomina Strumieskiemu co
ohydnego i ordynarnego zarazem, co by to jednak byo, nie pami
ta.
Wprawdzie jeszcze dawniej dowiedzia si
Strumieski od Paweka, e on
to sowo pauba zasysza od parobkw i pastuchw wiejskich, w jakim
jednak sensie tego sowa uywano, Paweek wytumaczy nie umia. (P
317-318)
(When Paweek talked about the woman on the painting, he sometimes
called her pauba, our pauba. The sound of this word reminded
Strumieski of something disgusting and ordinary at the same time, but he
could not remember what it was. Admittedly, he had already learned from
Paweek that he had heard the word pauba from the servants and the
122
Dieter De Bruyn
shepherds from the village, but Paweek had not managed to explain in
what sense the word was used.)
Although it is clear that Paweek had taken over the popular word
from the villagers in order to designate in a completely arbitrary way
the phantom for which he could not find a name on his own, it now
appeals to Strumieski as if it were a cryptogram. As a result, he starts
interpreting the word in his own way. In a remarkable scene in
Angelikas museum, Strumieski responds in the following way to
Olas accusation that he may have killed Angelika himself:
Patrz na ten martwy manekin (tu przypomniao mu si
sowo Paweka), na
t
paub
za tym szkem, ona ust nie otworzy i nic ci nie powie, jeeli si
to nie przecinie samo na moje usta, jak przeeraj cy wyrzut sumienia, bo
tego nikt nie wie na wiecie prcz mnie i tej tu niemej pauby, ktra
skoczya samobjstwem ha ha pyszne samobjstwo! (P 374; italics
mine)
(Look at this dead dummy (now he remembered Paweeks word), at this
pauba behind the glass, she will not open her mouth and she will not tell
you anything, unless it escapes from my mouth itself, just like devastating
remorse, for nobody on earth knows this except for me and this stupid
pauba, who has committed suicide ha ha a marvelous suicide!)
As soon as Strumieski imitates Paweek in connecting the word

pauba with Angelika, his late wife transforms, as it were, into an
imperfect image of her, into a dead and dumb dummy, a pauba or (by
analogy with Schulz) manekin. By associating Angelika with
something ordinary and shoddy, he apparently wants to close the
Angelika case in language, too. Some time later, however, he will
also consider this innocent association to be one of the main causes of
Paweeks fatal relationship with Kseka Pauba.
Unlike Strumieski, Paweek does not seem to want to express
something specific when using the word pauba:
Paweek nie zna dokadnie zastosowa sowa pauba, nie oznaczao te
ono dla zrazu nic wstr
tnego ani ohydnego, tak e niemal tylko
przypadkiem przenis je ywcem na obraz Angeliki. Latao mu ono w
gowie samopas bez odpowiedniego wyobraenia, a poniewa wydawao
mu si
sowem b d co b d niezwykym, wi
c sczepi je z tym, co byo
dla bezimiennym i rwnie niezwykym, tj. z obrazem Angeliki. (P 458459)

(Paweek did not know the uses of the word pauba, and it did not
immediately mean anything horrible or disgusting for him, so he almost
only accidentally and integrally applied it to Angelikas image. It flew
around in his head unguardedly and without any corresponding
representation, and since it seemed to him to be an unusual word after all,
he connected it with something that for him was anonymous and unusual
at the same time, that is, with Angelikas image.)
After the museum has been closed down by Strumieski and mainly
under the influence of his fathers hinting at the Angelika case,
Paweek increasingly starts to associate the word with all kinds of
inappropriate meanings, as a result of which his positive memory of
the image in the museum transforms into something mysterious and
disgusting against his will. As he gets in touch with Kseka, whom the
shepherds also use to nickname pauba (in the sense of shrew,
hag), a huge cataclysm (wielki kataklizm) takes place inside
him, after which he concludes that this is not another, but the same
Pauba (i to jest ta sama a nie inna Pauba; P 466). Although both
of Paweeks fascinations (for Angelikas image and for Kseka) seem
to have something in common through the association with one single
word, their respective objects are completely different: while Kseka
quite simply is responsible for Paweeks sexual initiation, Angelika is
but a phantom who haunts his imagination. Or as the narrator stresses,
in fact this was not the same case anymore, but a new one, a new
piece of reality with its own autonomy, so Paweeks history, which is
entitled Angelika-Pauba on the outside, only superficially radiates
uniformity ([w]aciwie nie bya to ju ta sama sprawa, ale nowa,
nowy pat rzeczywistoci, o wasnej autonomii, [] a historia
Paweka, zatytuowana na zewn trz Angelika-Pauba, byszczy
tylko pozorn jednolitoci ; P 468).
What Irzykowski suggests is that both Strumieski and
Paweek establish the pseudoconnections between Angelika and
Kseka merely on acoustic facts (the unusual sound of pauba).
Hence, all additional emotions and meanings that are subsequently
associated with (the complex surrounding) this word are merely
artificial constructions that do not correspond with reality. What the
reader can learn from this is that he should not put a particular
meaning on the word pauba. In an important passage in which the
choice of the title of the novel is explained, the narrating author
stresses that the only criterion was to drum into the reader the matter
124
Dieter De Bruyn
that he wanted to raise (wbi w pami

czytelnika to, co chcia
wyuszczy; P 482). As the novels theme is the absence of any
theme (the disintegration of any thematicity / rozchwianie si
tematowoci), the author opts for pauba because something

which itself is different from anything else should also have a name
which is different from anything else (to, co samo nie jest do
niczego podobne, powinno mie take nazw
do niczego
niepodobn ; P483). In other words, the author acts in exactly the
same way as Paweek: he arbitrarily selects a name for his case (the
novel he is writing), which is as unusual as what it is supposed to
designate. However, because he is merely an actor who plays a
role in his text, he cannot prevent himself from making illusory
associations as well.
At a certain point, for instance, the narrating author reduces
the numerous meanings (up to ten according to Kak 1976: 123) of
pauba to only three: a pile driving ram, a tailors dummy (manekin),
and a hag (P 458). Although these meanings seem to be selected
completely at random from the ones in the dictionaries, they appear to
be less accidentally chosen upon closer examination. As we have seen,
pauba is used both as a synonym for manekin and as a nickname for
the loose village idiot Kseka. Furthermore, the association with the
pile driving ram is suggested by the narrator when stating that he
wishes to drum into the reader the matter that he wanted to raise. In
other words, the choice of pauba is not arbitrary at all. One could
argue that the novel did not necessarily need a title but that the title
needed a novel: the word pauba has produced a heterogeneous novel
of the same name. Due to its polysemy, the word lends itself to ever
new variations and, as a consequence, to the intended disintegration
of any thematicity. As a result of every subsequent variation by the
narrator or interpretation by the reader, however, the meaning of the
word becomes more complete (it reintegrates, as Schulz would have
it), which makes it comparable to the original word (pierwotne
sowo; 1964: 443) at which Schulz is aiming.
By analogy with Schnles analysis of Schulzs use of tandeta
and manekin, therefore, one could argue that pauba represents a sign
only partially oriented towards its signified, remains vaguely
motivated, while already including some conventionality, and thus
draws some attention on its signifying shape as such (1991: 132). In

his article on the technique of stylizacja (cf. supra), Kosiski
interprets the function of pauba in a similar way:
Funkcja tego sowa, ktre jest przezw , staje si
imieniem, w kocu
tytuem ksi ki, od ktrego pochodzi kluczowa kategoria podmiotu
(pierwiastek paubiczny), pozostaje funkcj czystego signifiant. [] W
symbolice przestrzennej charakteryzuje go ruch z dou do gry, od
chopw do Paweka [], od Paweka do Strumieskiego [], od
Strumieskiego do autora, od autora do sownikw [], jakby od natury
do kultury. (2000: 35-36)
(The function of this word, which begins as a nickname, then becomes a
name, and eventually the title of the work, of which even the narrators
key concept (the palubic element) is derived, continues to be the function
of a pure signifiant. In the spatial symbolics it is characterized by a
bottom-up movement, from the peasants to Paweek, from Paweek to
Strumieski, from Strumieski to the author, from the author to the
dictionaries, as it were from nature to culture.)
According to Kosiski, Irzykowskis novel also illustrates

how each word originates from acoustic stimuli (in this case from the
succession of a and u), and in this way, it even offers some kind
of meticulous reconstruction of the fortunes of the word and its
changing meanings (dokadna rekonstrukcja losw sowa i jego
zmiennych znacze; 2000: 36). One of these meanings a hood of
a carriage even turns pauba into a symbol of the word itself,
which is also some kind of covering or mould with a variable
content. Just like tandeta imposes a loose and provisional form upon
matter, pauba symbolizes the formative word, the word that has not
yet fossilized into a fixed meaning. Instead of conventionally referring
to the final product of (literary) communication, both deliberately
unconventional concepts apparently focus on the semantic process
itself. Within the respective texts, they function as metaphors of
maximal arbitrariness: by constantly postponing their final signifis,
they reveal themselves as pure signifiants. In their role of a covering
or loose form for ever new but equally provisional contents, they
initiate a complex textual process. The provisional texts that result
from this process (the actual works of both authors) may be merely
read in their transformacyjno (cf. supra), as a migration of forms
(cf. supra) or infinite dissemination of signifiers that refer to anything
and nothing at the same time. Without the metaphors that have
initiated the entire process, the reader would be lost. In other words,
126
Dieter De Bruyn
after pauba and tandeta have played their metaphorical role, they
reflexively start focusing attention on themselves. By exposing their
maximal arbitrariness they have transformed (in the readers eyes)
from meaningless coverings into a powerful experience of reality, or
as Stala puts it with reference to Schulzs metaphors: The word,
returning to reality from its metaphorical journey is no longer the
same word; it is the liberated, forming and creative word, full of
energy (1993: 92).
The role that pauba and tandeta perform in their respective
literary realities is indeed thoroughly ambivalent. Although both
words continually aim at concretization, at mimesis and semiosis, they
eventually always withdraw from this ill-fated mission. In this way,
they implicitly criticize any construction of meaning that does pretend
to bring this circle to a closure. This critical function is, of course,
primarily directed against any literary text and its concretization by
the reader. Against the illusion of an authentic reality which the reader
of a narrative is traditionally pursuing, both concepts oppose their plea
in favour of an art that is as inauthentic as possible, an art that does
not aspire to coincide with the object to which it refers and evokes this
illusion only to immediately expose it. This attitude not only reveals
itself in these works own artificial and shoddy form (for both
words are part of a subcultural, ordinary and even vulgar dimension
of language), but also even more in their most striking incarnation: the
manekin or (tailors) dummy.
In his illuminating article on the concept of tandeta in
Schulzs fiction, Schnle has convincingly determined the semiotic
value of the trashy or carelessly executed tailors dummy as
opposed to the waxwork figure, which is supposed to be nearly
identical to its model. As Jacob argues in Treatise on Tailors
Dummies, the waxworks are fairground parodies of dummies (CF
35; kalwaryjskie parodie manekinw; SC 87) because they are
forced to be fully similar to an unattainable model. In other words,
whereas the waxwork tries to conceal at any cost the inevitable
dissimilarities from its model, the tailors dummy continuously
displays its mere referential task. According to Schnle (cf. supra), the
reflexive dimension of the latter way of representing man should be
clear:
Put into the vocabulary of semiotics, the waxwork is a sign transparent
towards its signified, since it is motivated by a full visual similarity,

whereas the dummy represents a sign only partially oriented towards its
signified, remains vaguely motivated, while already including some
conventionality, and thus draws some attention on its signifying shape as
such. (1991: 132; italics mine)
Undoubtedly, many readers will be tempted to interpret Jacobs

preference for the tailors dummy as an unequivocal plea for
antimimetic or abstract forms of art because the manekin could be
considered an abstract representation of man. Upon closer
examination, however, fathers argument appears to be more subtle.
More specifically, Jacob seeks not the (supposedly artistic) creation of
tailors dummies in the image and likeness of man but just the
opposite viz., the establishment of a generatio aequivoca (SC 89)
by re-creating man in the image and likeness of a tailors dummy
(na obraz i podobiestwo manekina; SC 83). Hence, what he seems
to be attacking is not so much the faithful depiction of man (as in
traditional mimesis) but any artistic depiction of man, which is always
but an artificial copy of a (mental) picture of real man of a
provisional abstraction for one gesture, for one word alone (CF 32;
dla jednego gestu, dla jednego sowa; SC 82). In Jacobs opinion,
when compared to Gods first creation, any kind of human creation
is secondary and inauthentic, and the best man can do is to reveal the
inauthenticity of his creation as much as possible.
It should be clear that Schulz rejects the conventional creation
of illusions of humans (that is, of puppets) in favor of the creation of
illusions of illusions of humans (that is, of copies of puppets). In
other words, instead of modeling his literary world and its inhabitants
after the real world, he prefers to use artistic (man-made) products as a
model. Moreover, by choosing the explicitly artificial tailors dummy
as a model (instead of the more perfect waxwork figure, as the
realistic writer unconsciously does), it is more likely that the reader
will perceive the intended illusion of an illusion of man than some
new illusion (of an authentic puppet). Obviously, Schulzs approach is
also more subtly reflexive when compared, for instance, to a painting
which directly depicts both another painting and a painters easel or a
novel which includes not only the representation of a fictional reality
but also a description of the artistic genesis of this literary
construction (as Irzykowski has done). In all these examples, however,
the same artistic principle is at work: instead of denying that what has
been portrayed is merely a construction of reality (as in Realism),
128
Dieter De Bruyn
reflexive forms of art expose their delusive practices in one way or

another.
In Schulzs fiction, the technique of creating in the image
and likeness of a tailors dummy reveals itself most prominently in
the exposure of the inadequacies of reality, of its tandetno. As for
the characters inhabiting his literary world, their artificiality and
defectiveness is almost complete; some of them (e.g. father, aunt
Perasia, uncle Edward) are ruled by what Schulz himself (in his essay
for Witkiewicz) has called the principle of panmasquerade
(panmaskarada; 1964: 682), which makes them assume new masks
again and again, whereas others clearly display physical deficiencies
(e.g., Edzio, Dodo) or even explicit mannequinesque traits: in
August (Sierpie), for instance, the narrator reports of his cousin
ucja that [s]he stretched out to [him] a small doll-like hand (CF 9;
[p]odaa [mu] r czk
lalkowat ; SC 55).
Similar conclusions can be drawn regarding the material side
of Schulzs literary world. The illusoriness and defectiveness of the
setting in which the subsequent stories take place can best be observed
in the periphery, on the margins of the represented world. Indeed, like
a painting which betrays its own construction the most at its margins
(where the frame begins and the order of the work merges with the
chaos of reality), Schulzs fictional settings display their shoddiness
particularly on the outskirts. In The Street of Crocodiles, for
example, the narrator offers a description of a peripheral city district
on the basis of an old map of his hometown. In this part of town, the
degree of imitativeness is almost unlimited:
Jest to szary dzie, jak zawsze w tej okolicy, i caa sceneria wydaje si
chwilami fotografi z ilustrowanej gazety, tak szare, tak paskie s domy,

ludzie i pojazdy. Ta rzeczywisto jest cienka jak papier i wszystkimi
szparami zdradza sw imitatywno. Chwilami ma si
wraenie, e tylko
na maym skrawku przed nami ukada si
wszystko przykadnie w ten
pointowany obraz bulwaru wielkomiejskiego, gdy tymczasem ju na
bokach rozwi zuje si
i rozprz
ga ta zaimprowizowana maskarada i,
niezdolna wytrwa w swej roli, rozpada si
za nami w gips i pakuy, w
rupieciarni
jakiego ogromnego pustego teatru. Napi
cie pozy, sztuczna
powaga maski, ironiczny patos dry na tym naskrku. (SC 127)
(It is, as usual in that district, a grey day, and the whole scene seems at
times like a photograph in an illustrated magazine, so grey, so onedimensional are the houses, the people and the vehicles. Reality is as thin
as paper and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character. At times

one has the impression that it is only the small section immediately before
us that falls into the expected pointillistic picture of a city thoroughfare,
while on either side, the improvised masquerade is already disintegrating
and, unable to endure, crumbles behind us into plaster and sawdust, into
the lumber room of an enormous, empty theatre. The tenseness of an
artificial pose, the assumed earnestness of a mask, an ironical pathos
tremble on this faade; CF 67-68)
Such descriptions perfectly illustrate Schulzs method of using a

trashy (tandetny), explicitly artificial version of reality as a model
for literary mimesis rather than reality itself. Moreover, in much the
same way as the tailors dummy, this kind of setting may evoke a
double perception: on the one hand, the temporary illusion of a human
being (in the case of the dummy) or a real (big) city thoroughfare (in
the case of the Street of Crocodiles district), and on the other hand, the
enduring reality of a shoddy artifact made of plaster and sawdust.
Although Irzykowskis techniques are often less subtle, his
novel does not pretend to be more than merely an inauthentic image of
the construction that rests somewhere in [his] head in a completely
different form (cf. supra). By analogy with Schulzs stories the
monstrous ruin (cf. supra) entitled Pauba incessantly exposes its
own secondary, derivative character. First of all, the narrating
author regularly betrays his literary sources of inspiration, from
which he now and then directly quotes. Furthermore, many of the
works of art that turn up in the novel appear to be thoroughly
shoddy. This is certainly the case for the literary works that
Gasztold and Strumieski produce, both of which are based on
second-rate models from the popular circuit and which the narrator
criticizes as worthless efforts that would better not be published. The
Dreams of Maria Dunin, then, abounds in inconsequences and
eventually turns out to be a mystification. Angelika, who shares both
her first and surname with the historical painter Angelika Kauffmann
(1741-1807) and as such is already some kind of copy, is openly
accused of plagiarism at a certain point. Angelikas museum appears
to contain for the most part all kinds of trash and kitsch. Apart from
the exotic knickknacks and Angelikas pathological portraits and
landscapes it also accommodates a remarkable plaster moulding
representing a man who was sculpturing himself in stone (odlew
gipsowy, ktry przedstawia czowieka wykuwaj cego samego siebie
w kamieniu; P 167). What makes this example so worth mentioning
130
Dieter De Bruyn
is not only its imitative and kitschy nature but also most of all its
reflexive dimension, as if Irzykowski wished to evoke some kind of
plastic equivalent of his own novel.
The most striking manifestation of manekinowato
(dummy-likeness) is the image of Angelika that Strumieski creates
through an optical illusion. Whereas the image of his dead wife until
then had only existed as an ideal construction in his head, he now
transforms it into an inferior, overtly artificial variant:
Tumaczy Oli cay mechanizm optyczny. e rzecz nie polega wcale na
jakich wynalazkach, ktre maj by dopiero wynalezione, jak
cudownoci Poego lub Vernego, ale na znanych ju fenomenach, na
interferencji wiata i na sekretnych farbach profesora Lipmanna, i wcale
nie wymaga koncesji prawdopodobiestwa. Ola niewiele z tego
rozumiaa, ale rozumiaa przecie tyle, e cudowno nie odgrywa tu
adnej roli, i jej oczekiwania zawiody j nieco, zwaszcza gdy
Strumieski kad nacisk na t
naturalno, tj. tak zwan sztuczno
zjawiska. (P 364-365)
(He explained the complete optical mechanism to Ola. That it had nothing
to do with any particular inventions that still had to be discovered, like the
curiosities of Poe and Verne, but with existing phenomena, with the
interference of light and with the secret colors of professor Lipmann, and
that it did not require any concessions to probability. Ola did not
understand a lot of this, but she did nonetheless understand that it had
nothing to do with illusionism, and she was slightly disappointed,
particularly when Strumieski emphasized this naturalness, that is, the socalled artificiality of the phenomenon.)
After this explanation, the confusion turns out to be almost complete.

Although the image is characterized as completely natural and
authentic, it actually is a visualization of Strumieskis ideal image of
his wife and as such should be considered an inauthentic construction
to the second power when compared to the real Angelika. In fact,
both interpretations of the optical illusion are correct: either one
ignores the underlying construction and perceives an authentic optical
effect or one becomes aware of the double defectiveness of the image
with regard to its original (cf. the manekin as an illusion of an
illusion of man). Strumieski initially still defends the authenticity
and mimetic power of the spectacle, but by renaming the image into a
dead dummy and a stupid pauba (cf. supra), he exposes his work
as a mystification and once again yields to the power of the palubic
element.

Conclusion
As we have seen, although the works of Irzykowski and Schulz do not
seem to have a lot in common, both authors in a similar way put into
perspective all possible cultural constructions and stylizations
(words, ideas, texts, etc.) As the relativistic and cultural critical
discourse of both authors is represented in the form of a narrative, this
critique is primarily directed against all actors that play a role in
the game, which this literary construction appears to be: the author
and his text, the narrator and his story, the characters and their reality.
Because the text continually displays its own artificiality and its own
two-dimensional nature, the reader may realize that his reading of this
text, of every text, and by extension of every cultural construction is
merely a temporary pose or a necessary comedy. Unable to trace
back the horizontal orientation of the text (its palimpsests,
cryptograms, and arabesques) to a stable semantic core, he cannot but
activate, for the duration of his reading, the mediocre, shoddy,
and inauthentic artifact at hand as an aesthetic object. Or as
Irzykowski almost casually puts it in his novel: Do you feel the
poetry of this apoetry after all? (Czy jednak czujecie poezj
tej
apoezji?; P 435).
Bibliography
Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 1996 [1982]. Poetycki model prozy w dwudziestoleciu
midzywojennym. Krakw: Universitas.
. 1999. Le Postmodernisme? Ou peut-tre un modernisme mconnu?: Witkacy
Gombrowicz Schulz in Delaperrire, Maria (ed.) Modernisme en Europe
Centrale. Les avant-gardes. Paris: LHarmattan: 173-192.
. 2003. Metaliteratura wczesnego modernizmu. Pauba Karola Irzykowskiego
in Arkusz 2, 3: 4-5, 13.
. 2005. Gender and Sex in Early Modernist Polish Fiction: Przybyszewski,
Irzykowski, Witkacy, Schulz in Grimstad, Knut Andreas and Ursula
Phillips (eds). Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context. Ten Essays on
Polish Prose (Slavica Bergensia 5). Bergen: University of Bergen,
Department of Russian Studies, IKRR: 98-123.
Budrecka, Aleksandra. 1981. Wst
p in Irzykowski, Karol, Pauba. Sny Marii Dunin.
Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich: III-XC.
Currie, Mark (ed. and intr.) 1995. Metafiction. New York: Longman.
D browska, Krystyna. 1963. Struktura artystyczna Pauby Irzykowskiego in Zeszyty
Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikoaja Kopernika w Toruniu (Nauki
Humanistyczno-Spoeczne 9, Filologia Polska IV): 159-197.
132
Dieter De Bruyn
De Bruyn, Dieter. 2007a. The Problem of Autotematyzm in Polish Literary Criticism,

or How to Immobilize a Perpetuum Mobile of Nothingness in Danaher,
David S. and Van Heuckelom, Kris (eds). Perspectives on Slavic
Literatures. Proceedings of the First International Perspectives on
Slavistics Conference (Leuven, September 17-19, 2004) (Pegasus OostEuropese Studies 6). Amsterdam: Pegasus: 127-139.
. 2007b. The Janus-Faced Author: Narrative Unreliability and Metafiction in
Karol Irzykowskis Pauba and Witold Gombrowiczs Ferdydurke in
Russian Literature 62(4): 401-422.
. 2008. An Eye for an I. Telling as Reading in Bruno Schulzs Fiction in
D'hoker, Elke and Gunther Martens (eds). Narrative Unreliability in the
Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel (Narratologia 14). Berlin: de
Gruyter: 209-227.
Drozdowski, Piotr Joran. 1987. Arcydzieo graniczne: Pauba Karola Irzykowskiego
na tle Pozytywizmu i Modej Polski. PhD Thesis. The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Eile, Stanisaw. 1996. Modernist Trends in Twentieth-Century Polish Fiction.
London: University of London, School of Slavonic and East European
Studies.
Gowiski, Micha. 1969. Powie modopolska: Studium z poetyki historycznej.
Wrocaw, Warszawa: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich, Wydawnictwo
Polskiej Akademii Nauk.
Irzykowski, Karol. 1976 [1903]. Pauba. Sny Marii Dunin. Krakw: Wydawnictwo
Literackie.
Jabonowski, Wadysaw. Karol Irzykowski. Pauba in Ksika 3(11): 406-408.
Kak, Zofia. 1976. O filozoficznych i psychologicznych koncepcjach w Paubie
Karola Irzykowskiego in Materiay midzynarodowej sesji naukowej
zorganizowanej przez Koo Polonistw IFP UJ z okazji jubileusza 75-lecia
istnienia Koa w dniach 20-24 maja 1974. Krakw: Uniwersytet
Jagielloski, Instytut Filologii Polskiej: 121-145.
Kosiski, Krzysztof. 2000. Prolog. Przemiany prozy XX wieku in Kosiski,
Krzysztof, Eros. Dekonstrukcja. Polityka. Katowice: l sk: 15-37.
Schulz Prosa in Hansen-Lve, Aage (ed.) Psychopoetik. Beitrge zur
Tagung Psychologie und Literatur Mnchen 1991 (Wiener Slawistischer
Almanach Sonderband 31). Wien: Gesellschaft zur Frderung slawistischer
Studien: 439-461.
Lipiski, Jacek. 1949. Pauba jako program literacki Karola Irzykowskiego in Prace
polonistyczne 7: 137-157.
Nycz, Ryszard. 1997. Jzyk modernizmu. Prolegomena historycznoliterackie.
Wrocaw: Fundacja na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej.
Pawowska(-J drzyk), Brygida. 1995. Parodia i groteska w Paubie Karola
Irzykowskiego in Przegld Humanistyczny 39(5): 153-168.
. 2002. Sens i chaos w grotesce literackiej. Krakw: Universitas.
Ritz, German. 2005. Does Paluba Have a Sex? Irzykowskis Paluba in the Light of
Gender Studies in Grimstad, Knut Andreas and Ursula Phillips (eds).
Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context. Ten Essays on Polish Prose

(Slavica Bergensia 5). Bergen: University of Bergen, Department of Russian
Studies, IKRR: 124-154.
Schnle, Andreas. 1991. Cinnamon Shops by Bruno Schulz: the Apology of Tandeta
in The Polish Review 36(2): 127-144.
Schulz, Bruno. 1964. Proza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1989. The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz (tr. C. Wieniewska). New York:
Walker and Company.
. 1990. Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). New York:
Fromm International Publishing Corporation.
Sproede, Alfred. 2000. Exprimentations narratives aprs la fin de lAvant-garde:
notes sur Bruno Schulz, son lecteur et ses Incantations in Konicka,
Hanna and Hlne Wodarczyk (eds). La littrature polonaise du XXe sicle.
Textes, styles et voix. Paris: Institut dtudes slaves: 135-165.
St
pnik, Krzysztof. 1973. Oglne wyznaczniki paradygmatu literackiego Pauby i
jego organizacja estetyczna in Studia Estetyczne 10: 215-238.
Szary-Matywiecka, Ewa. 1979. Ksika, powie, autotematyzm: od Pauby do
Jedynego wyjcia. Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich.
Taylor Sen, Colleen. 1972. Polish Experimental Fiction 1900-1939: A Comparative
Study of the Novels of Karol Irzykowski, Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz,
Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz. PhD Thesis. Columbia University.
Waugh, Patricia. 1984. Metafiction. The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious
Fiction. London & New York: Methuen.
Werner, Andrzej. 1965. Czowiek, literatura i konwencje: refleksja teoretycznoliteracka w Paubie Karola Irzykowskiego in Kwiatkowski, Jerzy and
Zbigniew abicki (eds). Z problemw literatury polskiej XX wieku. I: Moda
Polska. Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy: 327-369.
Wyka, Kazimierz. 1977 [1948]. Wst
p do Pauby in Wyka, Kazimierz, Moda
Polska. II: Szkice z problematyki epoki. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie:
175-204.
Zengel, Ryszard. 1958. Pauba po latach in Twrczo 14(11): 126-133.
I Drew a Plan of an Imaginary City.

The Phenomenon of the City in Bruno Schulz and
Miron Biaoszewski
Anna liwa
Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate the degree of similarity between
Bruno Schulzs and Miron Biaoszewskis writing. The problem will be researched by
comparing both writers spatial imagery using a method of close-reading. When
thinking about the spatiality in Schulzs and Biaoszewskis literary works, we have to
admit that it is almost impossible to imagine without the city. Their writing is strongly
filled with urban space, and the status of the civilian plays an important role in
forming the identity of the subject. Particular attention will be paid to the aspect of
mythologizing the city.
Introduction
The comparison of Bruno Schulzs prose and Miron Biaoszewskis
poetry may seem risky considering that these two writers never met.
In the year of Schulzs tragic death (1942), Biaoszewski was twenty
years old. He never mentioned Schulz in his writing, but it is hard to
avoid the impression that the imagery in his debut volume Obroty
rzeczy (The Revolution of Things, 1956) contains something
Schulzian. Critics such as Artur Sandauer (1981) and Kazimierz Wyka
(1959) pointed at similarities between Schulzs prose and some of
Biaoszewskis poems, but they did not expand on the subject. The
main aim of this article is to critically revise this observation and
investigate the real degree of similarity between Schulzs and
Biaoszewskis writing. The problem will be researched on the field of
spatial imagery the theme of a city. The analysis of the city in
Schulzs prose will be mainly limited to the story Ulica krokodyli
(The Street of Crocodiles).
The question about similarity in Schulzs and Biaoszewskis
imagery may be posed more directly and ironically: is there something
136
Anna liwa
that links the literary works of Schulz and Biaoszewski other than the
Polish literary historian Artur Sandauer? Or is it only a coincidence
that Sandauer, who gained his status as a literary critic on interpreting
Schulzs and Gombrowiczs prose, promoted Biaoszewski and helped
him to publish the debut volume? Of course, the questions formulated
in this way sound provocative, but they are worth consideration,
especially because the possible answers seem ambivalent.
Even if we agree that Sandauers presence in the critical
reception of Schulzs and Biaoszewskis writings cannot be a
satisfactory, serious, and above all, scientific argument for these
writers similarity, there still remains a matter of literary taste that
cannot be omitted. Schulzs prose and Biaoszewskis early poetry
must have suited Sadauers individual taste; otherwise he would not
assume the role of Biaoszewskis promoter. It is important to repeat
and emphasize the reference here to Biaoszewskis early work
because his next volumes Rachunek zachciankowy (An Account of
Whims, 1959) and Mylne wzruszenia (Deceptive Emotions, 1961)
met with rejection by Sandauer.
During the period of Sandauers fascination with The
Revolution of Things, he characterized Schulz as Biaoszewskis main
predecessor which was the first critical comparison between Schulz
and Biaoszewski. The aspects that allowed Sandauer to compare both
writers were the chosen literary space the world of underculture
(wiat podkultury; Sandauer 1981: 372) and the mythologizing
of reality (mityzacja rzeczywistoci; Sandauer 1981: 372-375)
present in Schulzs prose as well as in some of Biaoszewskis poems.
Unfortunately, the critics article remains rather casual and superficial.
Sandauer limits his analysis to the repetition of some Schulzian
mechanisms (e.g. connection between naturalistic observation and
mythologizing) in Biaoszewskis poems without investigating
further.
The same situation may be observed in Wykas article. The
comparison of Schulz and Biaoszewski appears as a polemic with
Sandauer. According to Wyka, the main difference between both
writers is Schulzs deadly serious (Wyka 1959: 186) approach to
myths contrasted with Biaoszewskis humor; however, Wyka does
not develop his suggestions. It is quite interesting that in this article
Biaoszewski is not only the successor of Schulz but also of Cyprian
Kamil Norwid, Tadeusz Peiper, Julian Przybo, Jzef Czechowicz,
The Phenomenon of the City in Schulz and Biaoszewski
137

Julian Tuwim, Bolesaw Lemian, Stanisaw Ciesielczuk, and Albin
Dziekoski. Despite his extensive literary inheritance, Biaoszewski
remains isolated.1
The main problem is that the question about similarities
between Schulzs and Biaoszewskis literary works has been posed
but not answered. As we have already noticed, Sandauers and
Wykas texts might be classified as reviews, quick first-drafts rather
than comprehensive research. That is why some critics ideas are only
mentioned but not explored. To formulate a satisfactory answer, we
should look at more recent studies into the authors poetic imagery
and ways of perceiving reality. The territory on which we can
compare these two imageries and artistic creations is the theme of city
space. First, however, we must find some similarities between the two
writers in other fields, such as critical reception and biography.
The critical reception of Schulz and Biaoszewski has much in
common. Their debut volumes, published after years of writing for
themselves (in Polish we would say do szuflady for the drawer),
obtained very good reviews. While interpreting their writing, many
critics used autobiographical information, provoked by the
autobiographical quality of Schulzs prose and Biaoszewskis
realistic writing. Similarities in Schulzs and Biaoszewskis attitudes
toward life make our comparison even more interesting. Their youth
was disturbed by world wars (in the case of Schulz, World War I and
in the case of Biaoszewski, World War II), and both had to quit their
studies, but this did not stop their interests and passions. Both writers
were fascinated by film and dreams and both were individualists. As
such they were not accepted by the communist regime and had to wait
until 1956 for public recognition Biaoszewski for his debut and
Schulz for post-war and posthumous mementos.
When we approach the role of the city in both writers
biographies, spatial imagery, and literary works, we can find as many
similarities as differences. Biaoszewski, like Schulz, lived in the city,
specifically Warsaw, throughout his entire life, unlike his provincial
predecessor from Drohobycz. Biaoszewski had extremely welldeveloped orientation skills, and all cities seemed familiar to him.

1
Marian Kisiel (1999: 100-103) links this mix of tradition with the change in literary
consciousness characteristic for the period 1955-1959. After Stalins death and the
end of Socialist Realism, critics tried to show the continuity of Polish literature and
look for analogies.
138
Anna liwa
Sandauer, to his surprise, discovered that Biaoszewski knew Paris

better than he did after only a few days even though the critic had
lived in the capital of France for over a year (Biaoszewski 1976: 60).
Schulz, on the contrary, felt safe and familiar only in his native
Drohobycz. He easily got lost in other cities, even in Warsaw.
Some interesting differences also can be found with regard to
the city in their literary works. In spite of the fact that both writers
placed a stimulus for their imagery in the real urban space, only
Biaoszewski kept original names of districts, streets, and squares. All
the topographical names in his poetry refer to real locations. Schulz
never used the name Drohobycz in his prose and always protested
against the simple identification between reality and fiction. Of
course, that did not change the fact that to the majority of his readers,
the city described in Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops)
resembles Drohobycz and Crocodile Street seems to be an artistic
recreation of Stryjska Street, the main street in Drohobycz. It is worth
adding that Schulzs imagery only focuses on a Drohobycz-like city,
whereas Biaoszewski found inspiration also in little towns located
near Warsaw (Kobyka, Woomin, Otwock, Misk Mazowiecki,
Garwolin, etc.) as well as in the Southeast region of Poland,
Rzeszowszczyzna (Binarowa, Biecz, Krosno, Dukla, etc.).
Despite the aforementioned differences, there cannot be any
doubt about the importance of city space in Schulzs prose and
Biaoszewskis poetry. Both writers artistic inspiration came not from
the lime tree branches or idyllic rural landscapes but directly from the
daily life: a street, a house, or a town square. When thinking about the
spatiality in Schulzs and Biaoszewskis literary works, we have to
admit that it is almost impossible to imagine them without the city.2
Their writing is so strongly filled with urban space, and the status of
the civilian plays an important role in forming the identity of the
subject. According to Bohdan Budurowicz (1994: 10), Schulz was in
love with Drohobycz since his early childhood, and the city never
stopped fascinating him. Biaoszewski also never tried to hide his
2
It is interesting that the authors of Sownik schulzowski or The Schulz Dictionary
(Bolecki, Jarz
bski and Rosiek 2003) decided to omit the entry city, especially
since there is an entry for home. Instead of city, they placed real, geographical
names as entries: Drohobycz and Ulica Stryjska (Stryjska Street). The theme of
the city in Bruno Schulzs prose was interpreted by Jarz
bski (2005: 88-108).
139

attachment to the city. In one of his narratives entitled Szumy, zlepy,
cigi (Noises, Conglomerates, Sequels) he even wrote:
Nie jestem dzieckiem natury. Mam w sobie jeszcze t
siedemnastowieczn niech
do marszczonego od wiatru bota i do
podjedaj cego na zimnie zawiewu zielska, mam tak jak mj Ojciec, a
Ojciec po Dziadku, p
d do miasta, do haasu i toku. (1976: 177).
(I am not a child of nature. I have inside me this seventeenth-century
aversion to the mud wrinkled by the wind and the smell of weeds brought
by cold wind, I have, just like my Father and Father just like Grandfather,
an urge for the city, for noise and crowd.)3
Although we accept all of the similarities mentioned above

and remember the differences, there remains an unanswered question:
can Schulz really be seen as Biaoszewskis forerunner? I will use
close-readings to investigate the degree of similarity between Schulzs
and Biaoszewskis spatial imagery. First, I will explain how both
writers understood the term city. Second, I will analyze the spatial
differentiation between the centre and the peripheries, which seems to
be crucial. Special attention will also be paid to the aspect of
mythologizing the city.
The City-Creative Factors
Biaoszewski wrote I Drew a Plan of an Imaginary City
(Rysowaem plan miasta wymylonego) when recalling his
childhood in his prose piece Rozkurz (Pulverization, 1980). The plan
or a map, as a visual, schematic representation of a city, has always
been a form of controlling space. The childish game of drawing a map
can be understood as the equivalent to the act of founding a city, a
repetition of cosmogony. Since the main role of a map is to provide
orientation and help in finding the proper way, the elements placed on
it must be well-chosen in order to avoid disorientation. A glance at
city maps allows one to enumerate elements which define a city: a
market with a church and town hall, a main street, particular districts
and possibly even city walls. Mircea Eliade concludes that it is

3
All translations of Miron Biaoszewskis works are mine, except for the poems
Garwolin miastko wieczne (Garwolin A Little Town For Ever) and Rozprawa
o stolikowych baranach (An Essay on Bazaar Rams), which were translated in
Biaoszewski (1974: 17-19).
140
Anna liwa
impossible to live in the chaos of homogeneity and uniformity

characteristic of profane space (Eliade 1991: 15). Man needs the
sacred that brings hierarchy, sets a centre, and demarcates borders.
The city plan shows an effect of such divisions.
The map which Schulz extensively describes in the beginning
of his story The Street of Crocodiles is also the result of (in this case
artistic) differentiation and transformation. It is an extraordinary map
precise and detailed in the centre and vanishing as it depicts suburbs.
In Schulzs story, the real city exists only in the centre, the sacred
sphere; everything placed outside of or distant from the centre remains
a poor imitation. Jerzy Jarz
bski (2005: 91-92) interpreted this process
as a confusion of values and noticed that it has an equivalent in the
language in which it is described more elaborate while portraying the
city-centre and modest in presentation of suburbs.
But the truth is that even while depicting the centre, the author
does not mention any typical city-creative factors, such as presence of
a temple or a location, such as the town hall, of city authorities. The
city is seen as a sum of streets and houses. Differences between them
are limited only to external architectonic polyphony4 (polifonia
architektoniczna; Schulz 1989: 71)5 in Schulzs words. So it is not
the real city that attracts Schulzs attention, but an imaginary one
where Crocodile Street is scarcely marked on a map. What is
interesting is that the paperlike nature of the city spreads also on the
labyrinth-like Crocodile Street: grey windows cross-ruled many
times like sheets of chancellory paper (szare okna, kratkowane
wielokrotnie, jak arkusze papieru kancelaryjnego; Op 73); grey and
parchment-like salesgirls (szare i papierowe, jak ryciny; Op 74);
reality [] as thin as a sheet of paper (rzeczywisto [] cienka
jak papier; Op 76); and trams made of papier-mch with sides
battered and crumpled after many years of use (wozy, zrobione z
papier-mch, o cianach powyginanych i zmi
tych od wielokrotnego
uytku; Op 77). Crocodile Street seems to be a paper imitation, as in
a photomontage made up of cuttings from last years mouldered
newspapers (papierowa imitacja, jak na fotomonta zoony z
wycinkw zleaych, zeszorocznych gazet; Op 80).
4
All quotations from The Street of Crocodiles are taken from John Curran Daviss
translation (Schulz 2007).
5
141

In Biaoszewskis debut volume, we do not find a poem
related to a city plan in such an explicit manner as is found in The
Street of Crocodiles, but there is one poem that can be compared with
Schulzs story. redniowieczny gobelin o Bieczu (A Medieval
Tapestry about Biecz) begins like Schulzs prose with the
presentation of a city panorama. While in The Street of Crocodiles
the role of vocabulary was to create an impression of paper-like
imitation, the key to Biaoszewskis poem can be found in its title. The
tapestry may be understood as an extraordinary genre created by the
author to emphasize correspondence between a decorative weave and
literature. One may suppose that the choice of a medieval background
was influenced by Bieczs reception of city rights in the Middle Ages
(1363) as well as by the preserved medieval urban structure of the city
(city walls, a market square with an originally Gothic town hall rebuilt
in Renaissance style in the sixteenth century, and a Gothic parish
church). The most splendid days of Biecz may be traced back to the
second half of the fourteenth century, the period of Queen Jadwigas
patronage. In the poem, Biaoszewski depicts the moment the keys to
the city are handed to King Wadysaw Jagieo and Queen Jadwiga;
this moment seems to summarize best the history of Biecz, and the
form of tapestry best commemorates the city, which is famous for
weaving.
The tapestry described in the poem is fictional (Dan-Bruzda
1961: 426), just like the map in The Street of Crocodiles. The poem
does not refer to any real object of art, as may be thought at first,
especially since all metaphors seem to try to convince us of its
actuality. By drawing a parallel between spinning and the story that is
spun, the poem itself becomes a decorative tapestry woven from
words instead of colorful wool. It becomes a contemporary tapestry
presenting medieval Biecz.
Following the sequence of events presented in the poetic
tapestry, it is hard to dismiss the impression that the main character of
this atypical story is the city of Biecz. The structure of a phrase
included in the title A Medieval Tapestry about Biecz recalls
titles of numerous medieval hagiographies or chansons de geste
(songs/stories/legends about a saint/knight, etc.), which were
constructed in the same way.
Critics have observed the influence of painting techniques
(Cubism, Impressionism) in the way the author presents the world in
142
Anna liwa
the poem (Wyka 1959: 173-176; Dan-Bruzda 1961: 428). Although I

do not deny this fact, I also want to suggest that more attention should
be paid to the tapestry-like qualities of the poem. It is a fictional
tapestry (rather than a Cubist painting) that becomes the object of
poetic description. Of course, geometrical tendencies in poetic
imagination are clearly visible and cannot be omitted roofs
(triangles), towers (circles), even whole quarters (squares) were
transformed into geometric figures. But at the same time it may be
interpreted as evidence of simplifications characterizing a tapestry a
woven painting rather than of Cubist curiosity leading to an
objects deconstruction into basic elements.
The lexis of the poem incessantly reminds us that it is the
tapestry that is the main focus. For example, instead of they built in
Gothic style, we read they wove Gothic (utkali gotykiem;
Biaoszewski 1987: 20). The elements of a real world are transferred
to a context of forms presented on the tapestry. Let us take a look at
the following example: [] livid threads of a wood / sewed to the
sky / into a peak crown ([] sine nici lasu / przyszyte do nieba / w
koron
spiczast ; 21). In other lines of the poem we read about
skys threads (nici nieba; 23) and Peter and Paul [who are made]
from shiny thread (Piotr i Pawe z byszcz cych nici; 28).
Metaphors are also used to emphasize the structure of a tapestry, e.g.
a rough / texture of a pavement (szorstka / tkanina bruku; 23).
Beginning from the Gothic miracle (gotyckie cudo), which
inclined the whole city / on a green hill / although it stayed flat
(przechylio si
cae miasto / w zielonym wzgrzu, / cho pozostao
paskie; 21), we can find throughout the poem many signals that
remind us about simplifications which are an effect of transforming
the scenes of life into a tapestry. The members of a particular guild
seem to be portraits of one face (portrety jednej twarzy; 25), and
their steady moving procession became one tower of movement
(na jednej wiey porusze; 24). The metaphorical image of the
tower of movement is completed by a synecdoche, in which
proceeding lines of guild members are named black hats stories
(pi
trami czarnych kapeluszy; 24). Uniformity and loss of
individuality are strongly marked by a comparison with the
descending representatives of a guild, a monotonous ring of a bell, or
a flowing stream. Steadiness of rhythmical motion permeates the
poem.
143

The precision in portraying the city is due to numerous
adjectives, especially those in superlative degree, and an extremely
extended scale of colours that does not omit even one particular tint.
The Sownik terminologiczny sztuk piknych (Terminological
Dictionary of Fine Arts) explains that tapestries from the period of
fifteenth century to seventeenth century differed in range of colors
(twenty-five) in comparison to later ones (Kozakiewicz 1969: 126).
The number of colors with their tints that are mentioned in the poem
also fluctuates around twenty-five. The color red has the highest
number of tints and thus dominates the poem, perhaps because it is the
color of tiles and because the executioners guild played an important
role in medieval Biecz.
As previously noted, the colorful tapestry presents medieval
Biecz. The first lines of the poem offer information about localization
of the city: On the green hill / they wove Gothic / city (W zielonym
wzgrzu / utkali gotykiem / grd; Biaoszewski 1987: 20). The
choice of localization of the city was dictated by the need of selfdefense. City walls with towers and gates function similarly. Directly
behind them the dominant space is created by the guilds seat gables
and towers, with the highest one belonging to the city hall. The first
sight of the city seems to be taken from the birds-eye view and this
perhaps explains why the shapes of city walls, towers, and quarters
become geometrical or even similar to a chessboard. Indeed, medieval
cities, following the example of Roman camps, usually chose a
chessboard plan, in which streets crossed at a right angle and created
rectangular plots around a market square (Kozakiewicz 1969: 232).
But Biaoszewski takes this comparison a bit further. It is not
individuals who go up on the most spectacular city walls (na
najznamienitsze mury) but red figures (czerwone figury; 20).
After a general sketch of Biecz, a series of close-ups follow,
beginning from a parish church, through a city hall and a market
square with a well and figure of Saint Florian (a patron of firemen).
These images mark the city centre with its main buildings representing
the sacred (a parish church) and profane (a city hall) power. Although
there will be no representatives of the clergy in the procession
proceeding to meet the royal couple, the parish church catches the first
sight and the poem ends with a recollection of Bieczs arms that
present Peter and Paul [] / with the second keys to the city (Piotr
i Pawe [] / z drugimi kluczami do miasta; Biaoszewski 1987: 28).
144
Anna liwa
Placing the city into a sacral perspective seems obvious in the context
of a medieval spirituality. Homo religiosus feels a need to build his
own city by orienting it toward the sacred, to a constant point, a
centre. From this perspective, the act of locating a city is tantamount
to the act of world creation and becomes similar to cosmogony insofar
as it reveals and resets the centre. Therefore, a line in which we read
that a parish churchs roof falls each triangle / on four sides (spada
trjk tem / na strony cztery; 22) does not seem to appear here by
chance and could not be only a result of geometrical tendencies in a
presented world. It emphasizes the centre as creating the role of a
church an indispensable point in any medieval city.
The space beyond the city centre is divided into squares and
quarters that belong to every guild. There is a Jewish square, an
executioners square and a painters square. The space provided for
each guild seems to reflect citizens occupations, and so the specificity
of Jewish traders left imprints on their quarter. Even a shadow takes
the shape of Jewish side curls. The mobility and activity of Jewish
merchants are expressed by dynamic verbs.
In the medieval Biecz, which is presented as a tapestry,
nothing is lacking, not even the lanes and blind alleys. Sunken
windows and thatched roofs or a black rectangle of gate / knotted by
a hunched old woman (bramy czarny prostok t / zasupany staruch
zgarbion ; 23) also appear. Thanks to the variety of presented space
from city centre to bystreets the city on a green hill appears to be
truly complete and ready to be imagined in all its detail. Even the
sounds and colors are precisely described. The medieval city seems to
become immortalized on a tapestry woven from words.
As we may observe, even though Schulz and Biaoszewski
used similar techniques in presenting a city both began with a city
panorama and then focused on specific spaces (Schulz on Crocodile
Street and Biaoszewski on particular districts) the final effect is
completely different. Crocodile Street as an open addition is a
contradiction of Biecz as a complete and enclosed space. Schulzs
colorless, illusive, labyrinth-like city contrasts with Biaoszewskis
colorful and well-ordered one. This is perhaps a consequence of the
fact that both authors tried to transfer the material of visual
representation of a city into language: for Schulz, a paper map and for
Biaoszewski, a tapestry.
145

Periphery Centre
The next issue with regard to Schulzs and Biaoszewskis perceptions
of the city, and at the same time further similarities and differences
between both writers poetic imagery, is the problem of the periphery
and the centre. In recalling Schulzs story The Street of Crocodiles
we could recognize how seemingly unattractive, illusive suburbs
became interesting for the author, how trashy items appealed to him
(cf. Schnle 1994). The same fascination with rubbish and crippled or
deficient things may be found in Biaoszewskis debut volume. That is
why Sandauer (1981) called The Revolution of Things the poetry of
oddments. Agnieszka Karpowicz (2006) compared the function of
objects in Biaoszewskis prose with ready-made and environment in
twentieth-century art.
With regard to city space, the abode of trash and shoddy
goods is a bazaar. In Biaoszewskis debut volume, between poems
about Warsaw, we can also find one about this special place. What is
significant is that Warsaw was always the most important space for
Biaoszewski. It was the place of his birth. He lived there almost his
entire life and survived the difficult days of the Warsaw Uprising
during World War II. Recalling the pre-war appearance of his city, the
poet observed with a reporters flair every detail of the changing
capital. Biaoszewskis inspiration, taken from reality and concrete
space, can also be easily seen in his poem Rozprawa o stolikowych
baranach (An Essay on Bazaar Rams). Praga, Warsaws district
mentioned in the poem, really is famous for bazaar folklore and a
prototype of bazaar rams the golden Easter Ram was bought in
that district (Chabowska-Brykalska 1996: 97). According to
Biaoszewskis friends recollections, the author was fascinated by the
world of local markets and church fairs (Chotomska 1996: 107, 109;
Prudil 1996: 78).
However, the fact that a bazaar and bazaar rams became an
inspiration, a poetic topic, means much more than following memories
and being interested in shoddy, trashy goods. It seems to be an answer
to a socialist cultures centralism, especially because in Stalins
period, when this poem was written, markets existed but only in a very
restricted way (some change was brought by the government of
Gomuka). The author indicates that a real urban life is hidden in all
places that are marginalized and rejected by an official culture.
146
Anna liwa
The choice of this poetic topic may be explained in another

way. Biaoszewski a city connoisseur would not have forgotten
about such an essential place, a market, and its role as a city creator. It
is not accidental that huge metropolises were built along main trade
routes because the trade of commodities guaranteed the citizens
prosperity and safety as well as the citys economic development.
The title of the poem An Essay on Bazaar Rams includes
two pieces of information. It mentions a genre (an essay) typical for
scientific theses and a subject of analysis bazaar rams. The title
strongly suggests that the poem should be taken seriously. However,
an opening apostrophe addressed to a bazaar of left-bank Warsaw
(fantazjo warszawskiej Pragi; Biaoszewski 1987: 44) warns us that
the poem is much closer to a bazaars bunkum than to an essay that
requires seriousness. The reader receives in that way a signal that he
enters a poetic market where everything is possible. The bazaar is a
game in which you must be aware all of the time and not let anyone
trick you.
In order to produce an image of Warsaws bazaar in poetic
words, Biaoszewski made use of an interesting trick: he split a poetic
subject into two persons, each having different points of view on a
location presented in the poem. For the first person, the bazaar is a
centre of interest, attracts attention as a new, colorful, fascinating
microcosm; the first person is an outsider observing the markets
customs with both interest and distance. At the same time, the second
person, who is a tradesman and insider, offers his articles for sale. As
an effect of this division, we are given not only two different yet
complementary points of view but also an opportunity to hear this
difference. The bazaars explorer uses long, extensive sentences and
tries to formulate general conclusions. In contrast, the tradesman an
integral part of the bazaar world prefers abridgement and detail.
Thus his statements are limited only to information about his products
bazaar rams and seem to be characteristic of a negligent
tradesmans language with false etymology or borrowings repeated
without understanding.
In a metaphorical apostrophe to Praga, Biaoszewski names
another object of the bazaar reality: a table on one leg / varnished /
red (masz assyryjskie rogi / i jedn nog
/ czerwono /
lakierowan ). Both the table, which is said to have Assyrian horns,
and the rams put on it equivalents of a bazaars trash and junk are
147

placed in the context of an ancient art and are at the same time
ennobled by this comparison. Cultural references, mainly to
prehistoric (palaeolithic) and ancient art, did not appear here by
chance. In some ways, the Praga bazaar, preserved somewhere in the
Warsaw suburbs despite the centralized economy and nationalized
shops, seems to belong more to remote antiquity than to the
communist present. Drawing a comparison between a bazaar and an
ancient excavation appears quite reasonable. Both spaces give their
explorer a chance to discover something sensational (in terms of price
or artistic and historical value) and worth attention. Both demand from
the explorer some special qualities, like quick wits and intuition. As
archeology provides information about ways of living and occupations
of ancient people, so a market an institution as old as human history
preserves customs and local folklore that have completely
disappeared in other areas of contemporary life.
The bazaars articles Easter rams appear to be not so
different or distant from ancient statuettes and cults sculptures. For
example we can recall Neolithic clay figures representing rams that
have served in magical practices as a guarantee of wealth. In ancient
Egypt a ram was considered to be a saintly animal of the god of the air
and harvest, Amon, who was later identified with the god of the sun,
Re. Thus a temple of Amon in Karnak is preceded by an alley of
sphinxes with rams heads.
Ancient analogies of bazaar rams widen the context of the
poem. It refers not only to Warsaws market but also to a mechanism
that forms human civilization. The poems subject the bazaars
explorer surprised by this permeation of past and present and of
cultural values, asks: What tropic is it? / Which epoch? What
time? (Jaki zwrotnik? / Wiek ktry? Czas ktry?). This
question, in which we can recognize a slightly modified text
borrowing from a Norwid poem entitled List do Bronisawa Z. (A
letter to Bronislaw Z.), seems to concern the two most important
aspects organizing the human condition space and time. However,
what is most interesting is that the passage of time does not change
much. Religions rituals and magic (Magie religie rytuay)
are situated outside time or more precisely, become part of a cyclical,
sacral time, and this is why they seem eternal. Paradoxically, the
bazaar located in the outskirts of Warsaw may at the same time be in
the centre of existence; it is where civilization is being born, inside a
148
Anna liwa
crucible of mixed products, offers, and cultural values,. The bazaar

obtains the status of a chosen space, one appropriate for the fulfillment
of timeless ritual, in which various people and elements meet with
each other and mutual contact between human thought and experience
is possible.
At this point, the fundamental difference between Schulzs
and Biaoszewskis way of perceiving the periphery and the centre
appears. In Schulzs prose, the choice of Crocodile Street as a literary
topic does not change the traditional hierarchy and order of values.
The centre of the town remains central as a possessor and dispatcher
of values, and Crocodile Street, though appealing, must be seen as an
inferior, secondary, and imitative space. Biaoszewski decentralizes
the centre. He suggests the peripheral bazaar as a city origin and
centre not a communist House of Party or the Palace of Culture to
emphasize that the pulse of civilization can be felt right there on the
market.
Mythologizing the City
The main aspect of Schulzs prose is the mythologizing of reality
(mityzacja rzeczywistoci), the conviction that reality is a shadow
of the word (rzeczywisto jest cieniem sowa; Schulz 1989: 368).
The city space actively participates in this process. It is the power of
language that changes provincial Drohobycz into wschodni Bagdad,
[] egzotyczne miasto jak z Bani tysica i jednej nocy (an oriental
Bagdad, the exotic city from One Thousand and One Nights) as
Adam Zagajewski (1994: 21) accurately observed. The consequences
of mythologizing might be seen especially in the description of
Crocodile Street a mysterious and tempting metamorphosis of
Stryjska Street. The paper-centric, book-like or newspaper-like
existence of this street is closer to dream or imagination than to
reality.
Biaoszewski did not use the term mityzacja in The Revolution
of Things, but rather wrote about undetermined reality
(rzeczywisto nieustalona; Biaoszewski 1987: 69) or doubtful
presence (obecno niepewna; 46-47). In many poems, however,
he transformed reality into myth through his ability to perceive
uniqueness in everyday life not only in Warsaw but also in Warsaws
surroundings. He changed the ordinariness of daily duties into
149

mysterious rituals and extolled their repetition as mythical ceremony.
From Warsaws surroundings, it was Garwolin that appeared in poems
most frequently. This small city situated southeast of the capital
became an inspiration for two separate poetical cycles and other
narrative ones.
Biaoszewski often visited Garwolin a city where his mother
had lived since her second marriage. The poets mother always seems
to be present in his Garwolin poems. As a result, if we appeal to a
conception of Gaston Bachelard, Garwolin can be viewed as the
archetypal Mothers Home (Legeyska 1996: 73). Even preparations
for the journey and the route to Garwolin were marked by positive
emotions. The coziness of home was guaranteed by not only the poets
mother but also the proximity of Stefa and aunt Wacka. It was also
more visible because it is contrasted with Garwolins cold and frosty
landscape. It is interesting that we become acquainted with Garwolin
mainly at winter time.
Winter was also chosen for a background in the first poem
dedicated to Garwolin entitled Garwolin miastko wieczne
(Garwolin A Little Town For Ever). A little town for ever, a
phrase included in the title of the poem, brings to mind cultural
references connected with ancient Rome. Of course, in comparison to
Rome the Eternal City of European civilization everlasting
Garwolin can only be a little town and not a city. But it is not the
comparison with Rome that provides Garwolin with prestige. Its main
advantage and quality is its provincial identity. A key to this
explanation was hidden in a motto placed under the title: garlic like a
pearl why? garlic is garlic (czosnek jak pera dlaczego?
czosnek jak czosnek; Biaoszewski 1987: 121).
The truth about garlic is told by its own shape. No
sophisticated comparisons are needed. The variety of associations can
be found in garlic itself. Peeling garlic brings to mind Roman legions
(it is believed that legionaries ate a lot of garlic, which protected them
against infections) and Spain (garlic is commonly used in Spanish
cuisine) which means the subject can pose a question: dont you
[also] feel by any chance (nie czujecie przypadkiem Biaoszewski
1987: 121) this civilizations pulse in the European continent?
Garlics route to Garwolin became identified with the route of
European culture: from East (Greece), through the South of Europe
and Spain, then to the North, and to Garwolin as well. The question is
150
Anna liwa
also a bit ironical considering garlics strong smell. Although ordinary

days in little towns seem to be similar to each other like a garlics
plait, commonplaceness appears archetypal. Peeling garlic recalls a
ceremony in which Garwolin becomes included into a community of
cultures history.
In the end, we should return to the poets mother Garwolins
inhabitant. It could be thought that this poem completely forgets to
mention her. The title, like the rest of the poem, does not even
mention her name. Similarly, the reason for designating Garwolin as
a little town forever and the poetic comparison between Garwolin
and Rome still stays unresolved. The answer for both conundrums
surprisingly combines and complements them. We can find it in a
proverb: all roads lead to Rome, which was slightly modified by
Biaoszewski. In his poem, all roads lead to mother to Garwolin, and
that is the reason for Garwolins eternity, for becoming a little Rome.
The role of Mother in Biaoszewskis poetry may be
compared with the role of Father in Schulzs prose. The similarity
between them is only superficial. It should be emphasized that Father
in Schulzs prose is someone special, an artist, a demigod creating
new worlds as well as becoming an object of metamorphoses. Mother
in Biaoszewskis poetry never claimed such a role. However, there is
something that links those two characters in the analyzed literary
works. Their presence can be perceived as a stimulus to
mythologizing. In The Street of Crocodiles Father is absent, but
the map belongs to him it is the starting point to the whole story. In
Garwolin A Little Town For Ever, garlic braids, presumably
hanging in Mothers kitchen, play a similar role.
Conclusion
During three stages of research into Schulzs and Biaoszewskis
spatial imagery we tried to answer the question of whether or not
and to what degree Schulz can be thought of as Biaoszewskis
forerunner. Of course, the answer is ambivalent and far from simple.
We observed some similarities as well as differences in both writers
perception of the city. In-depth analysis shows that even striking
convergences of both writers imageries or artistic means do not
confirm Biaoszewskis subordination to Schulz and may appear
superficial. Biaoszewski was an original and innovative writer. He
151

usually took his own paths, as shown in his debut volume; however;
reading of The Revolution of Things with Schulzs prose as a context
seems productive and fruitful. It calls our attention to some topics of
his writing that might be less appealing without this comparison and
less investigated by critics. It also allows one to recognize the
specificity of Biaoszewski in terms of poetic language as well as the
emphases each writer highlights and the artistic choices he makes.
Bibliography
Biaoszewski, Miron. 1974. The Revolution of Things. Selected Poems of Miron
Bialoszewski (tr. A. Busza and B. Czaykowski). Washington: Charioteer
Press.
. 1976. Szumy, zlepy, cigi. Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
. 1980. Rozkurz. Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
. 1987. Utwory zebrane, vol. 1. Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
Budurowicz, Bohdan. 1994. Galicja w twrczoci Brunona Schulza (tr. M.
Adamczyk-Grabowska) in Kitowska-ysiak (1994): 9-17.
Chabowska-Brykalska, Teresa. 1996. 34 lata bliskiego znania si
in Kirchner
(1996): 95-106.
Chotomska, Wanda. 1996. Pan Mironczewski in Kirchner (1996): 107-120.
Dan-Bruzda, Stanisaw. 1961. O obrotach rzeczy Mirona Bialoszewskiego in
Pamitnik Literacki 52(4): 425-476.
Eliade, Mircea. 1991. wiat miasto dom (tr. I. Kania) in Znak 12: 12-22.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 2002. Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Bruno Schulz i jego
mitologia. Sejny: Pogranicze.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 2005. Miasto Schulza in Jarz
bski, Jerzy. Prowincja centrum.
Przypisy do Schulza, Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 88-108.
Karpowicz, Agnieszka. 2006. Ready made. Przedmiot w prozach Mirona
Biaoszewskiego in Pamitnik Literacki 97(1): 125-139.
Kirchner, Hanna (ed.) 1996. Miron wspomnienia o poecie. Warszawa: TENTEN.
Kisiel, Marian. 1999. Lektury Kazimierza Wyki in Zmiana. Z problemw
wiadomoci literackiej przeomu 19551959 w Polsce. Katowice:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu l skiego: 100-103.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata (ed.) 1994. Bruno Schulz. In memoriam. 18921942.
Lublin: Wydawnictwo FIS.
Kozakiewicz, Stanisaw (ed.) 1969. Sownik terminologiczny sztuk piknych.
Warszawa: Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Legeyska, Anna. 1996. Dom Mirona Biaoszewskiego in Dom i poetyka
bezdomnoci w liryce wspczesnej, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe
PWN: 71-94.
Prudil, Irena. 1996. Znaam kiedy chopca in Kirchner (1996): 59-86.
152
Anna liwa
Sandauer, Artur. 1981. Poezja rupieci (Rzecz o Mironie Biaoszewskim) in Zebrane

prace krytyczne, vol. 1. Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy: 358392.
Schnle, Andreas. 1994. Sklepy cynamonowe Brunona Schulza: apologia tandety (tr.
J. Szpyra) in Kitowska-ysiak (1994): 59-77.
Schulz, Bruno. 1989. Opowiadania. Wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
bski).
Wrocaw: Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich.
. 2007. Ulica krokodyli (tr. J.C. Davis). On line at: http://www.schulzian.
net/translation/shops/krokodyli.htm (consulted 12.02.2007).
Wyka, Kazimierz. 1959. Na odpust poezji in Rzecz wyobra
ni. Warszawa:
Pastwowy Instytut Wydawniczy: 173-194.
Zagajewski, Adam. 1994. Drohobycz i wiat in Kitowska-ysiak (1994): 19-24.
Mythopoetic Traditions and Inserted Treatises:

Bruno Schulz and Danilo Ki
Alfred Gall
Abstract: The article focuses on the reception of Bruno Schulzs fiction in Danilo
Kis novel Pe anik (Hourglass, 1972). It deals with the complex patterns of
intertextual relationship one can observe in this novel, where the Traktat o krompiru
(Treatise on the Potato) alludes to Schulzs Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on
Tailors Dummies). Comparative inquiry into the functions of these striking textual
echoes has seldom been undertaken. This essay tries to cast light upon the way in
which Ki refers to Schulzs text. In summary, the sophisticated intertextual play is
considered to be a mode of literary response to the Shoah.
Introduction
The mythopoetic literary practice of Bruno Schulz has been the focus
of critical studies including comparative approaches (e.g. Koschmal
1987: 193-214). Among the authors usually considered to be
influenced by Bruno Schulz, the Yugoslav writer Danilo Ki he
declared himself to be the only Yugoslav writer must certainly be
mentioned. This influence is especially strong in Kis
autobiographical trilogy. The trilogy (also called the family trilogy,
or the family circus) is composed of the volumes Rani jadi (Early
Sorrows, 1969), Bata, pepeo (Garden, Ashes, 1965) and Pe anik
(Hourglass, 1972) all reflecting, though in very different ways, the
experience of the authors family during the Second World War and
focusing on Kis father, who fell victim to Nazi genocide.1 The
similar cultural contexts of these two outstanding writers, both
situated in Jewish traditions as well as in the culture of Habsburg
Central Europe, delineate a common frame of reference for literary
study that focuses on a comparative approach (e.g. Bukwalt 2003: 5
ff.; Fiut 1999: 279-302). However, one must remember the gap that

1
Cf. Deli (1997: 65 ff., 143 ff., 227 ff.) for a general orientation.
154
Alfred Gall
separates these two writers. It is hardly appropriate to merge Schulzs

experience of the Habsburg cultural background with Kis
experience, bearing in mind the latter lived from 1935 to 1989, long
after the breakdown of the Habsburg Monarchy; nevertheless, as far as
Kis novel is concerned, it certainly makes sense to consider different
forms of notable intertextual references to Bruno Schulzs texts.
Furthermore, any attempt to trace the complex pattern of Kis literary
practice (at least in his famous family trilogy) will inevitably lead to
the conclusion that his texts are made from elements found among
others in Schulzs stories. Of course, Ki is definitely not an epigone.
He instead pays homage to the Polish writer by referring to his literary
work.
The point to note here is that the broader context of a similar
cultural background and the Jewish origin of both writers mark a
certain affinity. In addition, the fact that Bruno Schulz was gunned
down by a German officer in the ghetto of Drohobycz immediately
refers to the Shoah, a break in civilization that also deeply affected
Kis family. Hence, cultural affinity, biographical correlation and the
impact of the Shoah appear to have led Danilo Ki to pay special
attention to the Polish writer, for he actually constructs his textual
world in Hourglass from elements found in Schulzs stories. Thus, the
aim of this study is to examine certain aspects of this intertextual
dimension.
Studies that have recently appeared cover a wide range of
questions arising from the comparison between the two authors
although descriptions and literary criticism prevail and far-reaching
conclusions are still to be drawn.2 In order to confirm a comparative
approach, most authors refer to Kis alleged remark Schulz is my
God in a conversation with John Updike (1988: 3),3 yet there is no
evidence in Kis legacy that he actually said this.
In recent times the affinities between Ki and Schulz have
been analyzed in different studies which focus on key topics appearing
in texts of both writers (and thereby establishing a common
framework for comparative study), such as the idea that reality is a

2
Cf., for instance, Bukwalt (2003) for a comparison of the literary creation of Jewish
fathers, a motif equally crucial for Danilo Ki and Bruno Schulz. A comparative
approach based on key motifs is offered by Pijanovi (1992: 80-96).
3
Cf. Schulz (1988: 120) and Brown (1990: 234) for a mention of the remark and
Stojanovi (2002: 171-183) for a discussion of this issue.
Mythopoetic Traditions and Inserted Treatises: Schulz and Ki
155

book, subsequently the idea that reality can be understood as a
peculiar textual configuration or even as labyrinth where one has to
orientate oneself which is sometimes linked to the influence of
Gnostic traditions (cf. Lachmann 2002: 344 ff.). But attention is also
paid to the fact that literary texts resemble a palimpsest, and of course,
the all-embracing role of the father in the literary imagination of both
writers has attracted interest (Olchanowski 2001: passim), just as the
mythopoetic traits as well as the palaeontological and archaeological
imagery at work in their texts has (Pijanovi 1992: 80-96; Fiut 1999:
279-281, 287-298).
Danuta irli-Straszyska stressed the fact that Ki was not
immediately influenced by Bruno Schulz.4 However, Branislava
Stojanovi casts a different light on this matter (2002: 171-183). In her
seminal article concerning the reception of Schulzs texts in former
Yugoslavia, she convincingly presents concrete sources of literary
reception, which clearly indicate that Danilo Ki must have known
Bruno Schulzs works at least to some extent. For instance, Sklepy
cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934) appeared in 1961 in Belgrade
in a Serbian translation.5 In the discussion whether Ki was influenced
by authors like Schulz, Borges, Joyce, Proust or Nabokov, it should be
kept in mind that influence is too meagre a concept. Instead of naively
searching presupposed sources, we must face the question of
reflexivity in a literary text. Ki can be understood as an author who
relies on other texts which are then transformed in a subtle intertextual
play; hence, the emerging textual configuration cannot be deduced
from the evoked texts. They instead serve as a multi-layered
background for literary applications and adaptations that create new
semantic schemes by inscribing one text in a variety of others. To put
it bluntly, there is no way to accuse Ki of plagiarism.6 Writing with
the consciousness to be part of a self-chosen tradition is not
comparable to writing as an epigone.7 Instead it alludes to the
evermore actual idea (Ingold 1992: 11 ff., 345 ff.) that creativity and

4
Danuta irli-Straszyskas opinion is expressed in her afterword to the Polish

translation of Hourglass (cf. Ki 1978: 244).
5
A translation of parts of Cinnamon Shops appeared in Subotin (1969: 187-241).
6
Cf. the affair aroused after the publication of Grobnica za Borisa Davidovi a (A
Tomb for Boris Davidovich, 1976); cf. Krivokapi (1980: passim) for statements in
this campaign against Ki.
7
Danuta irli-Straszyska (1988: 259) seems to identify these two notions.
156
Alfred Gall
innovations are realized in a constant application and simultaneous

transformation of given and chosen texts of reference and are thus
emerging qualities that occur in a basically dialogical process
(Wierzbycki 1988: 240 ff).8 This dialogue is not necessarily bound to
a similar cultural background, but in our case the relationship between
Bruno Schulz and Danilo Ki can be identified as such a literary
dialogue.9 A closer scrutiny showed that it is highly probable that Ki
knew Schulzs texts at least to some extent. In this context Kis selfreflexive literary practice can be described as postmodern in the sense
that it marks a different attitude in comparison to other texts with their
concomitant idea of reaching or constructing a reality of its own
without reference to underlying sign systems (Lawson 1985: passim;
Vladiv-Glover 2003: 7 ff., 35 ff). Now special attention is paid to two
key features we meet in Schulzs prose as well as in Kis texts. My
interest is focused on the one hand on metatextual devices such as
inserted treatises and on the other hand on mythopoetic traditions
permeating the literary text. I intend to combine these two features and
will focus on two selected passages where they are intertwined. I will
concentrate on the story cycle Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on
Tailors Dummies) in Cinnamon Shops and on the Traktat o
krompiru (Treatise on the Potato), which is part of Beleke jednog
ludaka (Notes of a Madman) in Danilo Kis Hourglass.
Bruno Schulzs Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on Tailors
Dummies)
Mythopoetic narrative in Schulzs texts is often described in reference
to his article Mityzacja rzeczywistoci (The Mythologizing of
Reality), where the ontological basis of reality is defined by the idea
of a general, all-embracing but at the present time dissolved text
(Schulz 1989: 385 ff.) For Schulz, this text lies underneath the
different mythological and religious traditions that form the basis of
literary practice which is trying to adjust these traditions to the
modern world. In this way, a mythopoetic text relates the
contemporary world to mythological traditions which form a certain
canvas for actual texts. Writing means facing the challenge of

8
Kornhauser (2001: 187-202) argues in the same vein.

Cf. Baraczak (1996: 173) for the notion of a dialogue on the common ground of
cultural and historical experience in Central Europe.
157

reconstructing the original text that has been lost. This double-layered
process of writing combines the reference to different mythological
traditions and fragments with the construction of literary visions that
transcend empirical structures of reality. Because the frame of
reference for any understanding and modelling of reality is anchored
in myth, the structure of the real can be compared to language, i.e. to a
certain system of signs that must be deciphered. The primary word is
an expression of this metaphysically established order that still can be
found whenever the given reality is related to its hidden metaphysical
structure. In any case, mythopoetic devices are meant to build a
certain reality founded on regained sense. Literary practice, with its
imaginary way of representing patterns of mythological traditions,
offers insights into a hitherto unseen totality that can be visualized at
least in some fragments. These fragments result from aesthetic
revision of myths. Parcels and fragments of mythologies are
recombined and actualized in the process of literary writing (Kuprel
1996: 100-117).
Moreover, the performative aspect of literary imagination is
closely linked to the idea that in contemporary desacralized and
secularized reality only the newly gained access to myth offers the
possibility of at least a fragmentary presence of lost sense which
cannot be re-established in a metaphysical order. Mythopoetics is thus
a literary ars memoria recalling ancient cultural traditions and thereby
transcending immediate reality.10 Reality loses its firm ground and
stable structure (Stala 1995: passim). The genealogy of myth offers
sense, but does not necessarily establish a newly found reality, as
there is no centre in Schulzs texts that would integrate totality in a
manifest way.11 The antecedent idea prevails that lost sense has to be
found and re-established by the work of the literary text that recollects
mythological beginnings where word and reality, sign and substance,
were once identical. Literary practice, however, as a way of dealing
with the archive of culture including myths, does not regain
metaphysical or ontological stability (Jarz
bski 1984: 196, 205), but
instead enforces the process of disintegration by evoking also minor or

10
Speina (1974: 54) sees a childs imagination at work here.

According to Kasperski (1993: 79-94), reality as the corollary of literary
imagination using and transforming myths (or fragments of them) is denied any
substantial ground and should instead be described as a floating process with no
attainable or clearly defined centre.
11
158
Alfred Gall
only fragmentary realizations full of ironical flavour indicating the

second-rate as well as second-hand character of the reapplied
mythological fragments (Wiegandt 1997: 73). Amongst other things
this is meant when the phantasmagoric character of imagined realities
in Schulzs prose is stressed (Jarz
bski 1973: 120; Okopie-Sawiska
1973: 8).
Bruno Schulzs Cinnamon Shops is an important example of
literary activation of myths. Fragments of mythological and religious
traditions can be found in the Traktat o manekinach, where the
subtitle Wtra ksi
ga Rodzaju (The Second Book of Genesis)
clearly indicates the textual interplay that takes places with the biblical
text. This inserted treatise engenders an intertextual play which
transforms biblical traditions. The treatise contains a heretical vision
of the process of creation. Jacob, the father of the first-person narrator,
explains his own point of view on creation and creativity. Man-made
creation, though of minor quality, is accepted as a consciously
developed second-rate creation that rivals with God and his creation.
The quarrel with God in the treatise is grounded in a religious code
also found elsewhere in Cinnamon Shops that realizes the idea of
regaining a mythological framework for the description of reality. In
the treatise Jacob reflects to a certain degree his own ornithological
experiments that seem to be experiments with the ontological
foundations of reality. The birds and their appearance, after they
underwent far-reaching deformations, resemble the tailors dummies
of the treatise: they are distorted and the product of a secondary
imagination which fails to realize itself in comparison with the power
of God but does indeed fulfil its own premises and self-declared idea
of a second Genesis. This treatise containing the quarrel with a
demiurge and the idea of a man-made creation that substitutes Gods
creation can be identified as an obvious literary travesty of
metaphysical and religious debate. There is no way to identify the
treatise with a clear-cut religious concept although one can see
obvious references to the Gnostic idea of a minor world or creation
that has to be transcended (Jarz
bski 1994: 310).12 The inserted
treatise can also be read as a metatextual frame of reference as it
comments on the process of derealization as well as of
depersonalization that takes place in other texts of Cinnamon Shops,

12
Cf. also Bukwalt (2003: 64 ff.).
159

where the undermining of any stable place leads to ontological
instability.
In Schulzs text we cannot find any hint of concrete historical
circumstances. The whole scenery of Cinnamon Shops is embedded in
the nearby reality of a provincial town in Galicia and is focused on the
narrators family and their home. This setting is the starting point of
the process of derealization. Reality is evolving as a form of
permanent instability without any given aim to reach and lacking
ontological firmness. History appears in the form of economical and
social modernization that undermines the fathers position and thus
threatens the familys home. Additionally, the treatise refers, even in
its form as an inserted text, to a generic tradition that includes
accounts in the sense of a systematic exposition including a
methodical discussion of the facts and principles involved and
conclusions reached. The father claims to be a new creator; in this
way he rivals with the demiurge:
Demiurgos mwi mj ojciec nie posiad monopolu na tworzenie
tworzenie jest przywilejem wszystkich duchw. Materii dana jest
nieskoczona podno, niewyczerpana moc yciowa i zarazem uwodna
sia pokusy, ktra nas n
ci do formowania. (Schulz 1998: 35)13
(The Demiurge, said my father, has had no monopoly of creation, for
creation is the privilege of all spirits. Matter has been given infinite
fertility, inexhaustible vitality, and, at the same time, a seductive power of
temptation which invites us to create as well; Schulz 1988: 39)14
Jacob claims that the material world does not have any stable
structure, and in spite of its seeming stability, it is bound to be
reverted. This means that a creative force can interfere and exert
influence on the floating process of the material world:
Materia jest najbierniejsz i najbezbronniejsz istot w kosmosie. []
Wszystkie organizacje materii s nietrwae i lune, atwe do
uwstecznienia i rozwi zania. (Op 35)
(Matter is the most passive and most defenceless essence in the cosmos.
[] All attempts at organizing matter are transient and temporary, easy to
reverse and to dissolve; TF 39)

13
14

160
Alfred Gall
Jacobs intentions to create a new world that will be founded on the

accepted knowledge of the ever-floating substance of the real
transcend the given world. In his world-making, the creation he faces
goes far beyond the given material reality that seems to be reduced to
a playground of creative energy, constantly changing the appearance
of what we call the real: [] the second Genesis of creatures which
was to stand in open opposition to the present era (TF 41; [] obraz
tej drugiej generacji stworze, ktra stan miaa w otwartej opozycji
do panuj cej epoki; Op 37).
The father explains in detail the idea of creating man a second
time; creation is in this treatise especially concentrated on man, who
has to be created in a new form that will actually not be lasting: In
one word, Father concluded, we wish to create a man a second time
in the shape and semblance of a tailors dummy (TF 41;
Sowem konkludowa mj ojciec chcemy stworzy po raz wtry
czowieka, na obraz i podobiestwo manekina; Op 38).
As far as these new human beings the father intends to create
are concerned, they form a simulacrum of Gods creation; they are
equal but ontologically different because of their lack of stability and
their minor substance in comparison with the creation they are meant
to imitate. In summary, they are a minor substitute to man created by
God:
Byy to w istocie istoty amorfne bez wewn
trznej struktury, pody
imitatywnej tendencji materii, ktra, obdarzona pami
ci , powtarza z
przyzwyczajenia raz przyj
te ksztaty. (Op 43)
([] they were amorphous creatures, with no internal structure, products
of the imitative tendency of matter which, equipped with memory, repeats
from force of habit the forms already accepted; TF 44)
The floating material substance, gaining new shapes that are doomed
to perish and giving way to new evolving forms, is equal to a
permanent metamorphosis affecting every single element. In his
deliberations, Jacob stresses the fact that even his own brother fell
victim to the ever-changing material world in its never ending
unfolding of new forms:
Czy mam przemilcze mwi przyciszonym gosem e brat mj na
skutek dugiej i nieuleczalnej choroby zamieni si
stopniowo w zwj
161

kiszek gumowych, e biedna moja kuzynka dniem i noc nosia go w
poduszkach, nuc c nieszcz
liwemu stworzeniu nieskoczone koysanki
nocy zimowych? Czy moe by co smutniejszego ni czowiek
zamieniony w kiszk
hegarow ? []. (Op 48)
(Am I to conceal from you he said in a low tone, that my own brother,
as a result of a long and incurable illness, has been gradually transformed
into a bundle of rubber tubing, and that my poor cousin had to carry him
day and night on his cushion, singing to the luckless creature endless
lullabies on winter nights? Can there be anything sadder than a human
being changed into the rubber tub of an enema? []; TF 51)
The metamorphosis with its concomitant effects of depersonalization

and dehumanization will play a key role in Hourglass and then also
encompass historical contexts. In the Treatise on Tailors Dummies
the material world is a product of imagination and indicates the basic
instability of any ontological order. Kis Hourglass also displays the
connection of a treatise with mythopoetics. In this context Schulzs
devices and their rearrangement form a certain literary descriptive
vocabulary (Rorty 1989: 3 ff.) that is meant to be used in the wake of
the necessity of self-positioning after the Shoah. More accurately,
Hourglass presents a metatextual rearrangement of Schulzs prose.
One has to be reminded that Ki reworked different literary traditions
in his text and was not following just one textual pattern. It is
important to note that Hourglass is on one level the reconstruction of
the life of E.S. a literary double of Kis own father who as a Jew
fell victim to the Nazis. The reconstruction relies on documents,
especially on a letter E.S. wrote to his sister Olga. For any
comparison, we should carefully remember that Nabokov in his novel
The Gift, in the second chapter, deals with a similar problem: writing
the biography of his own father leads the main protagonist, Fedor
Godunov-erdyncev, to archival studies and evaluations of documents
until he finally resigns because he does not want to falsify his fathers
life in his own biographical study that he is about to complete.
Ki and the resonances of Schulzs works: Traktat o krompiru
(Treatise on the Potato)
The novel we focus on now is the third and concluding volume of the
so-called family trilogy. Hourglass appeared in 1972 and is an
162
Alfred Gall
archaeological novel reconstructing the world lost in the course of

World War II.
Unlike the other two parts of the trilogy, Hourglass is a text
without a first-person narrator. It offers a wide range of different
narrative devices, but none of them can be attributed to a single
narrator. The core motif is the experience of a break in civilization
caused by the Shoah. The break separates two different worlds.
Whereas the former world of the main protagonist E.S. who perished
in Auschwitz is irreversibly lost, the actual world associated with the
narrator is deeply marked by the impact of the Shoah. The text is an
attempt to close the gap between past and present, but it is exactly this
intention that exposes the inadequacy of any successful representation
of the past in a given literary text. Furthermore, the idea of adequacy
itself evaporates (Rorty 1989: 160-161). Yet even the antecedent idea
of representing and regaining a lost world is refuted. The text thus
accomplishes the paradoxical movement between the idea of
reconstructing the past world of a single protagonist in all its variety
and the disclosure of the elusiveness of any such endeavour. The
oscillation between reconstruction and disclosure is thus characterized
as a paradoxical narrative discourse. This paradox refers to the Shoah
as a historical break which undermines any stable textual
representation. Therefore, the novel Hourglass is the complete
disruption of time and ontological embedding of humanity. The
autobiographical trilogy as a narrative return to childhood does not
rest upon any a priori supposed continuity. Because of the irreparable
break the Shoah caused, individual existence is deeply marked by
traumatic experiences which disrupt the continuous flow of history.15
The main protagonist is described as E.S. (obviously Eduard
Sam, as he is called in the two former novels of the trilogy). In
Hourglass the topic of reconstruction is all-embracing and based on
the letter E.S. wrote to Olga. Cited in full length and quoted in italics,
the letter is the underlying document for the whole reconstructive
work in the novel. E.S., the father who is depersonalized, reduced to
his initials and appears in the other parts of the autobiographical cycle,
functions as personification. He is a multi-layered protagonist alluding
to mythological and religious traditions: Ahasverus, Narcissus, Jesus
Christ, Moses, Jeremiah, Don Quixote, Charlie Chaplin, a clown, a

15
Cf. atuszyski (1997: 78 ff) for a discussion of the motif of return to ones own
childhood.
163

genius, a pantheist, a madman, a pharaoh, a chess-player, smoker,
anarchist, drunkard, tyrant, alcoholic etc. (Panti 2000: 42). E.S. thus
appears in a fragmentary vision, in a series of different appearances
and masks without any substantial identity (Bukwalt 2003: 116; Deli
1997: 180). The novel functions as a parable of the creation of the
world and therefore begins in a biblical setting: darkness and the
beginning of literary recreation in the process of reconstruction (Ki
1995: 212). Reconstruction means utmost objectivity (Ki 1995: 216).
The epic is predominantly developed but includes lyric layers. The
first person singular is completely reduced and even eliminated. The
narrative lacks any form of personal reminiscences. Reconstruction of
a past and lost world is an objective aim not related to a concrete
person undertaking it. The whole narrative is based on one single
document that has been found and saved: the letter at the end of the
book (and this letter is in fact a real letter written by Kis father, the
only document Ki possessed of his father).16 The letter is like a bone
that has been found and must be analyzed in order to gain knowledge
about past worlds. Literature is thus correlated to the scientific
approaches of archaeology and palaeontology. Archaeology and
anthropology go hand-in-hand, they complete each other. The
reconstruction of a lost world is at the same time the reconstruction of
past human beings in their everyday experience, even if no full
representation is reachable and even if the idea that a text can actually
grasp the past is proven false (Ki 1995: 243-244). The novel is itself
a combination of anthropology, archaeology, and ontology (Ki 1995:
283). Hourglass consists of four mutually exclusive and not
intertranslatable discursive sections (and two framing texts: the
Prolog (Prologue) at the beginning and the abovementioned letter
at the end of the book). The four sections include Slike s putovanja
(Travel Scenes), Istrani postupak (Criminal Investigation),
Ispitivanje svedoka (A Witness Interrogated), and the Notes of a
Madman. Hourglass, in its objective approach, resembles a protocol
and offers a large-scale inventory but contains no narrative that might
embrace the disseminating pieces of memory. The devices of
registration and description plainly lack the idea of a pertaining
totality.

16
The real letter was dated: 5.4.1942 (cf. Ki 1995: 229).
164
Alfred Gall
The novel contains different mythopoetic elements stemming

from various sources. Mythological, religious, and theological
traditions intermingle in their literary application. One recurrent motif
is the biblical flood indicating the devastating force of history. The
biblical flood is associated with the Pannonian Sea which highlights
the fact that a concrete surrounding Pannonia, i.e. also the
Vojvodina and Hungary is the playground of forces transcending
concrete geographical and historical contexts. This combination of
concrete geographical and historical spaces with a mythological as
well as religious frame of reference marks the disruption of historical
time which is out of joint. In its textual appearance the flood is not a
symbol and certainly does not integrate the reconstructed horror of
Nazi genocide into a religious totality. It is instead part of the literary
imagery accentuating the break of history and of civilization as well.
What is left behind after the flood ought to be treated as a relic of a
distant past, but in the meantime, it provokes and compels
interpretation and needs to be put into a broader context that revives
the former and lost world. Literary practice as archaeology and
anthropology is orientated toward the remnants that have to be
recollected. Writing is akin to remembering; the recollection of relics
and their inventory is the basic literary strategy in Hourglass. A
comparable paradox can also be seen in the Treatise on the Potato
where religious and philosophical thinking is annihilated by the
drastic historical context. The Treatise on the Potato belongs to the
so-called Notes of a madman written by E.S. himself. A closer look
offers fertile insights into the way Ki adopts the textual patterns of
Schulzs prose.
In a discussion of Baruch Spinoza, E.S. first declares his
agreement with the philosopher: reality and history are determined.
Then he differs from Spinoza: the philosophers position in this
determined world order is, for E.S., not linked to the idea of pure
knowledge, an absolute point-of-view where one perceives and
comprehends things sub specie aeternitatis, but is instead rooted in a
position sub specie mortis. The outlined mythopoetic literary practice
can be understood as a certain play on mythological and theological or
philosophical systems of descriptions as well as with their referential
schemes (Goodman 1978: 2 ff.). The mythopoetic devices in Kis text
differ strongly from Schulzs mythopoetic writing in Cinnamon
Shops, where it constructs counterworlds. Furthermore, in Schulzs
165

texts it creates other worlds transcending empirical and established
realities, and destroys given realities that transcend toward their
hitherto unnoticed other side. However, the approach to mythopoetics
is quite different in Hourglass, where emphasis is put on the
disruptive impact of the Shoah.
In the Notes of a madman and especially in the short
Treatise on the Potato, E.S. focuses on the idea of a second creation
that annihilates the given world, a world that seems to have been made
by a bad demiurge. The pseudo-gnostic theory is concretized in the
theory of the potato. According to E.S., the treatise is a parable
referring to the history of the Jews:
Dola su vremena kada moramo misliti o sebi iz aspekta ivota i smrti, ne
kao sebine individue, nego iz aspekta itave svoje rase, tog boanskog
korova zemlje, raseljene po svetu, rairene po svim kontinentima, ba kao
i taj nesreni krompir (solanum tuberosum) []. (Ki 1999: 292)
(The time has come when we must think about ourselves from the
standpoint of life and death, not as self-seeking individuals, but as
representatives of our entire race, that divine weed scattered over all the
continents of the earth, just like the lowly potato (Solanum tuberosum)
[]; Ki 1997: 49)
The potato incorporates the depersonalized, degraded, and

dehumanized essence of men. The potato an obvious analogy to the
tailors dummy in Cinnamon Shops marks the minor reality of
degraded humanity. E.S. links the potato and its history with the Jews.
E.S. sees in the history of the potato a simile of mankind having lost
its integration into a metaphysical order vaulted by a transcendent
frame of reference. As a perfect symbol of the homunculus, the potato,
in a way resembling Schulzs tailors dummy, incorporates a human
reality of a second and minor degree. The core of human reality has
vanished, and all that is left are phantasmatic and disintegrated
homunculi:
[T]e je postao idealna slika zemlje i oveka od zemlje sazdana, meso i
koa, bez sri i bez srca, pravi homunculus (homo-homulus-humus),
sasvim po liku ovekovu, oveka bez due, oveka iz koga je prognan
Bog. (Ki 1999: 293)
(It has thus become a perfect symbol of the earth and earth-made man, all
flesh and skin, without heart or essence, a regular homunculus (homo-
166
Alfred Gall
homulus-humus), just like a man, a man without a soul, a man from whom
God has been banished; Ki 1997: 50)
In his treatise that might be best understood as a short parable on

human history and its disaster, E.S. compares the potato the second
degree and degraded human being, and for E.S. especially, the Jew
to the apple and the tomato. The latter is described by reference to the
Austrian expression Paradiesapfel (Solanum lycopersicum). Of
course, both words refer to the biblical myth of paradise, thereby
integrating the mythological framework into the discourse on human
history. The difference between potato and apple or tomato (in the
sense of the Paradiesapfel) is the metonymical expression of the
difference between man made by God and man driven as well as torn
by history and dispossessed of any metaphysical order.
In comparison to the apple or the tomato, the imperfect shape
of the potato reflects the elementary difference between the mythical
order of biblical tradition and the prevailing force of history. A
biblical narrative is also applied when E.S. refers to Noah and the
deluge, claiming that another, even more profound cataclysm takes
place. The only remnants will be degraded and devastated human
beings of a potato-like appearance. The minor reality of the potato and
its broken substance that cannot be combined to the biblical fruit, the
apple, is caused by the fact that the potato is created by some pseudodemiurge and not by God.
This ontological difference obviously evokes the idea of an
inferior creation as well as an inferior reality in the Treatise on
Tailors Dummies. In the meantime it locates this problem in the
context of historical experience, that is, the Shoah. The Jews are
separated from other human beings and systematically exterminated.
The ontological difference between man made by God and man as
result of a second creation, the difference between tomato/apple on the
one hand and the potato on the other hand, is part of the discourse of
E.S. who tries to grasp through such queer analogies notably in the
Notes of a madman the essence of his own experience as a Jew as
well as of his fellow people. The potato i.e. the Jew is not made by
God but is the essential outcast, an ontological outsider separated
violently from his environment:
I, vidi, danas, dok prosjaim taj krompir, ne mogu da se ne setim te
udesne slinosti izmeu krompira i oveka, i, s druge strane, dozvolite,
167

izmeu krompira i Jevrejina. [] I ja poinjem ozbiljno da verujem,
makar to bilo za ljubav slike i fantazije, da je krompir (Kartoffel, patate)
jedini stvor na svetu i neka mi Bog za to oprosti koji nije sazdan
voljom Bojom i rukom Tvorca, nego da je delo nekog jalovoplodnog i
mahnitog amana, plod neke jalove alhemije []. (Ki 1999: 293-294.)
(And today, you see, when I ask for a potato, I cant help thinking about
the amazing resemblance between potato and man, and, at the same time,
begging your pardon, between potato and Jew. [] Im beginning to
believe in earnest that the potato (Kartoffel, pomme de terre) is the only
thing on earth may God forgive me that was not created by the will of
God and the hand of the Creator, but is the work of some insane, sterilefertile shaman, the fruit of some sterile alchemy []; Ki 1997: 50-51)
Kis text is in a certain sense correcting history because it covers

individual aspects, remembers lost human beings and gives them a
voice of their own in the silence of history, and this is all done under
circumstances where essential insights into ones own life are not
made from an absolute point of view (sub specie aeternitatis) but in
the shadow of death (sub specie mortis). Kis text blurs the
distinction between mythopoetics and thanatopoetics (Lachmann
2004: 277-291). Literature is in its basic principles directed against the
appalling indifference to an individuals and his fellow peoples
history. In that sense, literature is counter-history (Ki 1990: 145).17
Conclusion
The Treatise on Tailors Dummies is obviously a parody of the
biblical book of Genesis. In the meantime, it represents in a ludistic
way a Gnostic concept of the creation of a counter-world transcending
the bad reality of the demiurge.
In the Treatise on the Potato we are confronted with yet
another version of this biblical narrative. Here we observe an intense
intertextual play that takes place between Kis Treatise on the
Potato and Schulzs Treatise on Tailors Dummies. The common

17
Here we see some clear affinities with Walter Benjamins notion of history: Es ist
niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein.
Und wie es selbst nicht frei ist von Barbarei, so ist es auch der Proze der
berlieferung nicht, in der es von dem einen an den andern gefallen ist. Der
historische Materialist rckt daher nach Magabe des Mglichen von ihr ab. Er
betrachtet es als seine Aufgabe, die Geschichte gegen den Strich zu brsten (1997a:
696-697).
168
Alfred Gall
background for this intertextual relationship is the idea of a minor

creation (second creation) as well as the idea of a minor existence, a
second degree human being lacking a stable core and ontological
identity. In both cases, the literary disclosure of other worlds is not to
be understood in terms of multiple alternatives to a single actual
reality but has to be conceived as emergence of actual multiple
worlds. In Kis Treatise on the Potato, just as in Schulzs Treatise
on Tailors Dummies, the emerging multiplicity amounts to a
decomposition of ontological stability.18 Although quite close in its
inner structure and imagery, the literary imagination at work in the
mentioned texts pursues different aims in the process of unfolding an
actual multiplicity of worlds and therefore realizes a divergent range
of functions.
The idea of a second creation for Ki is not only reflected as a
problem of a minor reality that eventually emerges but is also
correlated with the disruptive force of history and linked to another
biblical notion, the cataclysm of the flood irreversibly devastating a
given world. The second genesis, which for Schulz is part of an
aesthetic and Gnostic imagination, is transformed to a basic element in
the self-description of E.S. facing his death. In the Treatise on the
Potato the idea of a minor creation and of a dissolved human
existence is embedded in historical circumstances. The mythopoetical
imagination is intended to render possible the self-description in the
aftermath of the Shoah, whereas Schulz hardly ever confronts history
openly and does not make it his central topic. In the Treatise on
Tailors Dummies the idea of a second genesis is based on Jacobs
defiance of God. In this second creation the imagined new creation
evolves in a ludistic, even absurd new world lacking order,
transparency, and even stability. The metaphysical debate arising from
the challenge to God is in Schulzs text linked to an absurd
countercurrent disenabling the construction of a single sense
(Lachmann 2002: 341).
Kis literary practice is completely different because he is
facing the disseminating force of history and making it the core of his
texts. The idea of a second or minor creation is not meant to open the

18
This reminds us of constructionalist concepts that negate the existence of one single
reality containing multiple possible alternatives to a single actual world. Cf., for
instance, Goodman: We are not speaking in terms of multiple possible alternatives to
a single actual world but of multiple actual worlds (1978: 2).
169

way to some different reality or to transcend given realities. It leads in
contrast to the heart of darkness of history. Ki and his protagonist
E.S. does not want to create an imaginary world, but tries to grasp
the horror of the real. It is, however, noteworthy that Ki applies
similar mythopoetical devices and develops his own writing as a
double-encoded literary practice based on an intertextual play with
antecedent texts. The mythopoetical devices Ki borrows from Schulz
are intended to facilitate a literary self-positioning in the aftermath of
the Shoah. Schulzs Treatise on Tailors Dummies offers a textual
pattern for a literary practice facing the extreme experience of the
Shoah. The following conclusions may be drawn: Schulzs text can be
discerned as a pattern for Kis Hourglass. Ki stresses and unveils the
profound disruption that separates the contemporary culture in its
post-Shoah condition from mythic traditions, but uses myth to reflect
the break in civilization caused by the Shoah. Although the Holocaust
occurred in the past, it is not entirely of the past. Quite the contrary,
the Holocaust haunts the present. Ki responds by transforming
literary intertexts (Riffaterre 1990: 141-162) and offering concrete
conceptual schemes as well as vocabularies for self-description and
self-positioning in a post-Shoah context. In the Treatise on the
potato this is realized from a protagonists perspective, as it is E.S.
who writes down his conclusions about what is going on. But against
the idea of some adequate self-description or self-positioning against
historical trauma we stress the fact that the key concept is the process
of self-positioning without the antecedent idea of a reachable or
realizable description. The break in civilization permanently changes
ones own position and causes an impossibility of regaining a stable
position that might not be further undermined (Rosenfeld 2003: 27).
Kis text functions as a Reflexionsmedium (medium of reflection)
not in quite the sense Walter Benjamin gave to this word (1997b: 36,
62) in which descriptive vocabularies, literary traditions and codes
as well as different semantic and generic traditions are reworked and
re-actualized.19 In our case this goes for the intertextual play with
Schulzs Treatise on Tailors Dummies in the Treatise on the
Potato. The way Kis Hourglass refers to Schulzs inserted treatise
resembles the kind of deconstruction Derrida has in mind, when he
writes that deconstruction operates from within a given text. Ki

19
Cf. Weigel (1994: 9 ff.) for a further discussion of the emergence of a cultural
memory and the different ways of remembering the Shoah in post-Shoah culture.
170
Alfred Gall
operates within Schulzs text and reworks thereby concrete features of

literary tradition in order to develop a hybrid descriptive vocabulary
and conceptual scheme for finding his own position in the post-Shoah
era. For Ki, ontological instability means the loss of any key idea (the
idea of a great book or any other master narrative) that might be
revealed or function as an aim in the process of imagination. The
Shoah has completely destroyed any idea of stable human order. Past
and present are intertwined. Any nostalgia for unity or integrity is
illusory.
Bibliography
Baraczak, Stanisaw. 1996. Poezja i duch uoglnienia: Wybr esejw 1970-1995.
Krakw: Znak.
Benjamin, Walter. 1997a. ber den Begriff der Geschichte in Gesammelte Schriften,
vol. I, 2. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp: 691-704.
. 1997b. Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik in Gesammelte
Schriften, vol. I, 1. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp: 9-122.
Brown, Russell E. 1990. Bruno Schulz and World Literature in Slavic and East
European Journal 34(2): 224-246.
Bukwalt, Miosz. 2003. Literackie portrety ydowskich ojcw w prozie Brunona
Schulza i Danila Kia. (Slavica Wratislaviensia CXXV). Wrocaw:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocawskiego.
irli-Straszyska, Danuta. 1988. Danila Kia ogrd, literatura in Literatura na
wiecie 1: 258-261.
Deli, Jovan. 1997. Kroz prozu Danila Kia. Beograd: Beogradski Izdavako-Grafiki
Zavod.
Fiut, Aleksander. 1999. By (albo nie by) rodkowoeuropejczykiem (Obrazy
wspczesnoci). Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Ingold, Felix Philipp. 1992. Der Autor am Werk: Versuche ber literarische
Kreativitt. Mnchen Wien.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) 1973. Sen o zotym wieku in Teksty 2: 104-121.
. 1984. Powie jako autokreacja. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1994. Czytanie Schulza: Materiay midzynarodowej sesji naukowej Bruno
Schulz w stulecie urodzin i pidziesiciolecie mierci. Krakw: T.I.C.
Kasperski, Edward. 1993. Mit maciczny Bruno Schulz i Kresy in Przegld
Humanistyczny 3: 79-94.
Ki, Danilo. 1978. Klepsydra (tr. D. irli-Straszyska). Krakw: Wydawnictwo
Literackie.
. 1990. Gorki talog iskustva. Beograd: Beogradski Izdavako-Grafiki Zavod.
. 1995. Homo poeticus. (Sabrana dela Danila Kia). Beograd: Beogradski
Izdavako-Grafiki Zavod.
. 1997. Hourglass (tr. R. Manheim). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
171

. 1999. Porodi ni cirkus: Rani jadi Bata, pepeo Pe anik. Split: Feral
Tribune.
Kornhauser, Julian. 2001. wiadomo regionalna i mit odrbnoci: o stereotypach w
literaturze serbskiej i chorwackiej. Krakw 2001: Scriptum.
Koschmal, Walter. 1987. Zur mythischen Modellierung von Raum und Zeit bei
Andrej Belyj und Bruno Schulz in Schmid, Wolf (ed.) Mythos in der
slavischen Moderne (Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 20).
Wien: Institut fr Slavistik der Universitt Wien: 193-214.
Krivokapi, Boro (ed.) 1980. Treba li spaliti Kia. Zagreb: Globus.
Kuprel, Diana. 1996. Errant Events on the Branch Tracks of Time: Bruno Schulz
and Mythical Consciousness in Slavic and East European Journal 40(1):
100-117.
Lachmann, Renate. 2002. Erzhlte Phantastik. Zu Phantasiegeschichte und Semantik
phantastischer Texte. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
. 2004. Faktographie und Thanatographie in Psalam 44 und Pe anik von
Danilo Ki in Hansen-Kokoru, Renate et al. (eds). Mundus narratus:
Festschrift fr Dagmar Burkhart. Frankfurt/Main etc.: Peter Lang: 277-291.
atuszyski, Grzegorz. 1997. W wiecie wykltych. Szkice o literaturze serbskiej i
chorwackiej. Warszawa: Agawa.
Lawson, Hilary. 1985. Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament. London etc.:
Hutchinson.
Okopie-Sawiska, Aleksandra. 1973. Sny i poetyka snu in Teksty 2: 7-23.
Olchanowski, Tomasz. 2001. Jungowska interpretacja mitu ojca w prozie Brunona
Schulza. Biaystok: Trans Humana.
Panti, Mihajlo. 2000. Ki. Beograd: Filip Vinji.
Pijanovi, Petar. 1992. Proza Danila Kia. Pritina Gornji Milanovac Podgorica:
Jedinstvo Deje Novine Oktoih.
Riffaterre, Michael. 1984. Intertextual Representation: On Mimesis as Interpretive
Discourse in Critical Inquiry 11: 141-162.
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rosenfeld, Alvin H. 2003. Podwjna mier. Rozwaania o literaturze Holocaustu (tr.
B. Krawcowicz). Warszawa: Cyklady.
Picador.
. 1998. Opowiadania. Wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
Narodowy im. Ossoliskich.
Speina, Jerzy. 1974. Bankructwo realnoci. Proza Brunona Schulza. Pozna:
Pastwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Stala, Krzysztof. 1995. Na marginesach rzeczywistoci. O paradoksach
przedstawiania w twrczoci Brunona Schulza. Warszawa: Instytut Bada
Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Stowarzyszenie Pro Cultura
Litteraria.
Stojanovi, Branislava. 2002. Recepcija Bruna Schulza u Srbiji. Prvo poglavlje:
Danilo Ki in Slavistika 6: 171-183.
Subotin, Stojan (ed.) 1969. Antologija poljske fantastike. Beograd: Nolit.
Updike, John. 1988. The Visionary of Drohobycz in The New York Times: Book
Review, 30 October 1988. On line at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/
172
Alfred Gall
fullpage.html?res=940DE3DF1139F933A05753C1A96E948260 (consulted
10.04.07).
. 1992. Skromny geniusz Bruno Schulz in NaGos 7: 85-87.
Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka. 2003. Postmodernizam od Kia do danas. Beograd:
Prosveta.
Weigel, Sigrid. 1994. Bilder des kulturellen Gedchtnisses. Beitrge zur
Gegenwartsliteratur. Dlmen-Hiddingsel: Tende.
Wiegandt, Ewa. 1997. Austria felix czyli o micie Galicji w polskiej prozie
wspczesnej. Pozna: Bene Nati.
Wierzbycki, Jan. 1988. Serbska proza (m. in. o I. Andriciu) in Literatura na wiecie
1: 233-257.
Bruno Schulz and the Magical Realism of Gabriel

Garca Mrquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Dorota Wojda
Abstract: The aim of this article is to indicate analogies between the writing of Bruno
Schulz and the magical realism in Gabriel Garca Mrquezs Cien aos de soledad
(One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967) and consider them in the postcolonial
perspective. The irony created by both writers is a strategy that disarms the
authoritarian divisions of colonial discourses. Performativeness of narration is
significant in the works by Schulz and Mrquez because it indicates that magical
realism as the poetics, ontology, and strategy of postcolonial discourse is not only
a literary creation which problematizes discourses of power but also a practice which
induces thought, writing, and action.
Introduction
The conviction has already been expressed that Bruno Schulzs work
has numerous ties with magical realism (cf. Gazda 2005); however, a
more profound exploration of these relationships has not been
performed yet. In the meantime, the context of magical realism
literature, read from the postcolonial perspective, might nevertheless
be beneficial in casting a new light on Schulzs writing, that is, as a
creative expression of a cross-cultural borderland with features close
to postcolonial discourse. The aim of the present article is to indicate
analogies between the writing of Bruno Schulz and the magical
realism in Cien aos de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude,
1967). The most significant comparison would be to show how both
writers create a reality in which the ordinary, ones own, turns out to
be the space for the articulation of the other.
This otherness takes center stage thanks to a poetics which
combines the realist convention with fantasy and creates a special
form of mimesis. It is not a mimesis of adequate representation but an
autothematic mimesis of process, in which the text imitates both itself
and other text-creating practices and not just general cultural
174
Dorota Wojda
mechanisms (Elbanowski 1983; Stala 1995; Gowacka 1996). In the

writings of Schulz and Garca Mrquez, this mimesis consists of the
displacement and ironic demonstration of tensions between centre and
periphery, the personal and the strange, a rule and an exception. As a
result, hybridized creatures are shown transvestites, mannequins,
characters somewhere between life and death, like Jacob or
Melquades as well as borderline areas, like Crocodile Street or the
Street of the Turks. The status of these forms is compatible with the
concepts of plural identity, as proposed by Homi Bhabha (1990, 1995)
or Stephen Slemon (1989). For the sake of explaining hybridization,
Wilson Harris employs the figure of Teiresias: [T]he contrary but
mutually necessary and inextricably linked principles of male and
female, natural and supernatural, life and death are held in productive
tension and do not resolve into a stable final synthesis (in MooreGilbert 1997: 183). Such non-solubility poses an important feature of
the works of Schulz and Garca Mrquez, combining radically
different realities, what may be described with the expressions of
magical realism theoreticians: lo real maravilloso (the marvel of
trivial things) by Alejo Carpentier, el realismo mgico by Luis Leal
(the mystery does not descend to the represented world but rather
hides and palpitates behind it) or lo extrao (strangeness, opposed
to lo verdico and lo sobrenatural) by Enrique Anderson Imbert
(Pindel 2004: 211 ff.)
Although magical realism raises much doubt among
researchers (Elbanowski 1983: 10-11; Slemon 1995: 407; Pindel
2004: 212-214) as an imprecise and ambiguous term, it is still useful
for naming the poetics of combining various conventions and offers a
paradoxical ontology. Garca Mrquez often indicated that in his prose
a merger of separate worlds real and fictional, regular and
miraculous matching the coexistence of those dimensions takes
place in reality. Consequently, he valued Italian neorealism.
Reviewing a movie by Vittorio de Sica, he wrote:
The story told in Miracolo a Milano is a real fairy tale even if only
because it takes place in an unusual setting, where the real blends in a
brilliant way with the fantastic, making it often impossible to discern
where the former ends and the latter begins. (translated from the Polish
text in Ploetz 1997: 49-50)
Schulz and Magical Realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude
175

Schulz, in turn, evoked the convention of arabesque both in the
literary form by mixing the mundane with the fantastic and in the
floral ornament by creating a miraculous, dynamic world. The writer
presented the essence of arabesque art when he described Fathers
experiments:
W jadalni naszej krzesa miay wysokie pi
knie rzebione oparcia. Byy to
jakie girlandy lici i kwiatw w gucie realistycznym, ale wystarczyo
prztykni
cie ojca, a rzeba ta nabieraa nagle niezwykle dowcipnej
fizjonomii [] i ten i w z obecnych zaczyna wykrzykiwa: Ciocia
Wandzia, jak mi Bg miy, ciocia Wandzia! [] Cuda ojca unicestwiay
si
same, bo nie byo to adne widmo, bya to rzeczywista ciocia Wandzia
w caej swej zwyczajnoci i pospolitoci, ktra nie pozwalaa nawet na
myl o jakim cudzie. (Schulz 1998: 359)1
(We had in our dining room a set of chairs with tall backs, beautifully
carved in the realistic manner into garlands of leaves and flowers; it was
enough for Father to flip the carvings and they suddenly acquired an
exceptionally witty physiognomy [] and one or another of those present
would suddenly exclaim: Aunt Wanda, by God, Aunt Wanda! []
Fathers miracles cancelled themselves out automatically, for he did not
produce a ghost but the real Aunt Wanda in all her ordinariness and
commonness, which excluded any thought of a possible miracle; 1988:
103)2
The form revives here so to speak, in order to, receive a grotesque

shape without losing its realism, thanks to which anthropomorphization as a figure of poetry, will be fulfilled. A conjuring trick
constitutes in this case, as Viktor Shklovskii would put it, a bizarre
effect: the ordinary Aunt Wanda shows herself to the spectators in an
extraordinary way, different than in the texts where poetry is supposed
to convey extraordinary things with ordinary depiction (Looby 2003).
Magical realism may be identified by a characteristic mimesis
of difference, where the personal is confronted with the other in the
process of disturbing systemic oppositions (Durix 1998). According to
Slemon, the paradox of this form is matched by the articulation of
incompatible worlds, of which neither one can fully come into being,
and each remains suspended, locked in a continuous dialectic with the
other, a situation which creates disjunction within each of the
separate discursive systems, rending them with gaps, absences, and

1
2

176
Dorota Wojda
silences (1995: 409). Magical realism has become an important

category for the postcolonial studies because it can be perceived as a
strategy of postcolonial discourse, where a dispute of anti-colonialism
and colonialism is arranged in order to, through the exposure of their
dialectics, loosen the structures of imperial power (Pawyszyn 1998;
Podgrniak 2004; 2006). Here the poetics of magical realism is useful,
conveying the collision of intellect with irrationality. This poetics
strikes at the binary divisions, thus turning against diversifying the
world into the values of the colonizers and the colonized (Baker
1993). Moreover, the formula of magical realism nowadays
extended to texts from outside the Latin-American literature allows
readers to recognize significant relations between contemporary and
past texts and to compare very different postcolonial works (Slemon
1995: 409). Some assert that magical realism was one of the first
literary phenomena questioning postcolonial discourse. Such is the
opinion of Alfred Lpez, convinced that thanks to a mimesis of
excess [], which paradoxically turns out to be a more realistic
mode of representation than the conventional Western conceptions of
literary realism, works of magical realism definitely are under the
sign of the postcolonial (2001: 210).
Both the prose of Schulz and One Hundred Years of Solitude
can be situated against colonial discourses. The first case concerns
mythologizations which emerged due to the centuries-old Polish
domination of the Kresy (the Borderlands) and the partition of
Poland which took place in the eighteenth century, leaving the country
without statehood for a long period. The other case concerns the
colonialism of Latin America, particularly the Caribbean. While
locating the novel by Garca Mrquez against colonial discourse is
obvious, analogous placing of the work of Schulz requires a
commentary. At first, colonialism had been associated with cultural
domination on overseas territories. These days, however, the
manifestations of colonialism have also been recognized in other
areas. One may distinguish the real colonialism, linked with racial
discrimination, from the white colonialism, while at the same time
assuming that postcolonialism is not an exclusive feature of the
cultures of the so-called Third and Fourth World ethnic groups but
also concerns the white communities dependent on the imperial
power. That is of significance, for instance, to Ireland as well as to
Poland, where more and more frequently the need has been indicated
177

to assume the postcolonial perspective (Cavanagh 2003; Thompson
2006; Skrczewski 2006; Bakua 2006; Janion 2007).
In One Hundred Years of Solitude magical realism has a
complicated nature: it is created and problematized. Such a strategy
Adam Elbanowski calls magical irony:
Ironia u Mrqueza, nie pozbawiona take pierwiastkw komicznych,
prowadzi wprost do parodii [] realizmu magicznego. Jest
naladowaniem wzoru i jego regu i rwnoczenie jego karykatur ,
przekroczeniem. Parodia byaby zatem jedn z funkcji ironii magicznej,
jako gry sprzecznych znacze, nieustannego przechodzenia elementw
powieciowych w swoje przeciwiestwo, staego podwaania sensw,
przechodzenia afirmacji w negacj
i odwrotnie. (1983: 1516)
(Irony in Mrquez, not deprived of comic elements, leads straight to a
parody [] of magical realism. It is an imitation of the pattern with its
principles and at the same time its caricature, contravention. Parody would
thus be one of the functions of magical irony treated as a game of
contradictory meanings, constant evolving of the novels elements into
their opposites, constant undermining of meanings, turning affirmation
into negation and vice versa.)
Magical realism has a similar character in the tales of Schulz. The

author of Cinnamon Shops creates a mythical reality in which what is
in accordance with doxa blends with the fantastic in order to perform
demythologization and keeps evolving from one level to another. The
target solution in Schulz is not the aesthetics of the binary
opposition (Kaufer 1983) but the very dialectics that are being struck.
Seditiousness in the texts by both writers is close to the form of irony
found in the writings of Friedrich Schlegel by Paul de Man (1996),
who claims that permanent parabasis is a deconstruction: constant
severing of the consistent narrative, exposing fiction, disturbing the
identity of the subject, form and history. Such irony destabilizes the
concepts of otherness from the colonial and anti-colonial models. In
this sense, the ironic poetics of magical realism, determining the
paradoxical ontology, may be called the strategy of the postcolonial
discourse.
Reading Kafka
At first glance, Bruno Schulz and Gabriel Garca Mrquez have not so
much in common. The former, born in Galician Drohobycz in 1892,
178
Dorota Wojda
came from a Jewish merchant family; the latter was born in a

Colombian village of Aracataca in 1927, as a son of a descendant of a
prominent family, Mrquez Iguarn and a telegrapher. Schulzs fate
seems unfulfilled. His biography includes health problems, nuisances
of the teaching profession standing in the way of his creative work,
unsuccessful relationships with women, and finally, a tragic death.
Even though Schulz published prose and exhibited paintings, he did
not have a brilliant career. Only the future showed how great an artist
he was. Garca Mrquez also experienced poverty and difficulty
combining gainful employment with writing; however, after the
success of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and El otoo del
patriarca (The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975), honored with the
Nobel Prize in Literature (1982), a happy husband and father, he could
freely devote himself to artistic work. Schulz spent most of his life in
Drohobycz and concentrated on art, whereas Garca Mrquez, who
kept changing his whereabouts, was involved in politics and
humanitarian actions.
Where, in this case, are the similarities between the writers
whose stories are so different? Just where their roots are. Both the
writings of Schulz and the prose of Garca Mrquez are stimulated by
genius loci and, related to it, by phantasms of childhood. The author
of Ksi
ga (The Book) did not create an epos, though his work is
one fragmented story in which the themes of home, the streets and
outskirts of Drohobycz recur. Similarly, the themes of home can also
be found in Garca Mrquez. The first book that Garca Mrquez
wanted to write was about the house in which he spent his childhood
and was to be entitled La casa. Yet it was La Hojarasca (Leaf Storm,
1954) that emerged; nevertheless, the setting remained the same.
Finally, the outcome of all those exercises appeared One Hundred
Years of Solitude. Even though the novel was acknowledged as a
national epic, it consisted of micronarratives arising from the most
personal experiences, memories, and dreams about home. Just like
Schulz built his textual world from the elements of the Galician
province, Garca Mrquez transformed the peripheral region of
Magdalena into the literary Macondo. They both were able to present
their homelands so that they would radiate with an aura of everyday
life, uncanny yet at the same time universal. This is largely what the
essence of magical realism in the works of those writers consists of:
179

the universalization of localness due to the work of the memory,
dream, and imagination.
Created in such a way, however, literary provinces are not
static and unchanging but quite the opposite things are subject to
metamorphoses, transgress their boundaries, evolve from one form to
another. These changes happen sometimes in the joke convention,
sometimes in the spirit of parody or a dissonant clash; this is matched
in Schulz by the motif of blinking that becomes a figure of the ironic
form:
Tylko p
k pir pawich [] nie da si
utrzyma w ryzach. By to element
swawolny, niebezpieczny, o nieuchwytnej rewolucyjnoci, jak rozhukana
klasa gimnazjalistek, pena dewocji w oczy, a rozpustnej swawoli poza
oczyma. widroway te oczy dzie cay i wierciy dziury w cianach,
mrugay, toczyy si
, trzepocz c rz
sami []. (Op 87).
(These feathers were a dangerous, frivolous element, hiding
rebelliousness, like a class of naughty schoolgirls who are quiet and
composed in appearance, but full of mischief when no longer watched.
The eyes of those feathers never stopped staring; they made holes in the
walls, winking, fluttering their eyelashes [];TF 79).
Garca Mrquez directly describes the form of One Hundred Years of

Solitude as dissonant: Everything will be on the borderline between
sublime and kitsch. Like bolero (translated from the Polish text in
Ploetz 1997: 85). Conveyed in such a form, the outskirts are not at all
idyllic. Their residents are affected not only by love but also by
suffering, betrayal, and death. What links the protagonists of Schulz
and Garca Mrquez in particular is solitude. Similarly to Jacob, Jos
Arcadio Buenda cuts himself off the world and plunges into
experimenting, and rsula, similarly to Adela, has difficulty finding
allies in her passion for establishing order. One Hundred Years of
Solitude is a study of the isolation of the whole community and its
individual members. Many characters live here in seclusion, like
Rebecca, who condemns herself to the solitary confinement of her
own house. A similar existence is led by a character of Schulz, the
pensioner from Samotno (Loneliness), alien even to his mirror
look-alike. A similar motif of a strange mirror reflection is found in
Dilogo del espejo (Dialogue with the Mirror, 1949), the novel by
Garca Mrquez. Contaminated by civilization, Macondo faces
180
Dorota Wojda
complete extinction; the world in Schulzs tales is similarly headed for

collapse.
The reflections on the fatalism of individuals solitary fate, on
the decline of community and the whole world, as well as placing the
provinces in the universal dimension link the works of Schulz and
Garca Mrquez with the writing of William Faulkner (Obehelman
1988; Maszewski 2003). In his works, the region of Lafayette is
transformed into the land of Yoknapatawpha, for which there is no
future. The author of One Hundred Years of Solitude will allude to
this catastrophism, saying: Im not forgetting that the county of
Yoknapatawpha borders on the Caribbean Sea (translated from the
Polish text in Ploetz 1997: 36).
Yet, the texts of both writers are even more strongly linked
with the works of Franz Kafka (Hahn 1994; Owczarski 2004; Gazda
2006). The indicated lines of literary creation the motif of
metamorphosis, a dissonant form, irony, an alienated protagonist
enclosed within four walls, as well as fatalism and the universalization
of ordinariness lead to Der Proze (The Trial, 1925) or Die
Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915). The writers became
fascinated with Kafkas writings for the portrayal of man as dual, dead
in his own lifetime, and the world as a closing trap. In Vor dem
Gesetz (Before the Law, 1919) we can see a man in front of the
door that he cannot get through, whereas in Schulzs story
Loneliness we read:
Ot to wanie: dla dobrej woli nie ma zapory, intensywnej ch
ci nic si
nie oprze. Musz

sobie tylko wyobrazi drzwi, dobre stare drzwi, jak w
kuchni mego dziecistwa, z elazn klamk i ryglem. Nie ma pokoju tak
zamurowanego, eby si
na takie drzwi zaufane nie otwiera, jeli tylko
starczy si, by mu je zainsynuowa. (Op 327)
(That is just it: where there is a will, there is a way; a passionate
determination can conquer all. I must only imagine a door, a good old
door, like the one in the kitchen of my childhood, with an iron handle and
a bolt. There is no walled-in room that could not be opened by such a
trusted door, provided one were strong enough to suggest that such a door
exists; TF 297298).
However, the thought about a trusted door here does not lead to
imagining it and liberating from the walled reality. In der
Strafkolonie (In the Penal Colony, 1919) shows how the island,
181

where the ruthless machine of power has been working, can be
abandoned only by the traveller, whereas all the others have to remain
on it. The text may, just like Kafkas other works, be read as
a presentation of a modern system of discipline and punish
(Foucault 1975), but one may also observe in it a figure of the
primordial world order. Through descriptions of the repressive
structures, Kafka creates fantastic realities, yet he sets them in
ordinary backgrounds, thus demystifying the apparatus of power as
ubiquitous. A similar assessment can be made in Schulzs tales
Wiosna (Spring) or Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium
Under the Sign of the Hourglass) and in One Hundred Years of
Solitude. Just like in Kafkas Before the Law it is the peasant who is
put to the test, in the works of Schulz and Garca Mrquez, ordinary
provincial people are put to the test. The residents of the Galician
town must confront the mercenary power of Crocodile Street, and the
Buendas must face the economic settlement of the Street of the Turks.
Nothing special, except for the desire for freedom, distinguishes
Joseph N., who, just like Joseph K. from The Process, cannot escape
the mills of justice.
For both writers, the reading of Kafka was an important
experience which they used while creating their own literary works. In
the case of Schulz and Garca Mrquez, magical realism is pushed to
the limit negating the apparatus of power turns into affirmation and
vice versa. Jacob experiments on Uncle Edward, and is himself
disciplined by Adela. While killing the cockroaches, he becomes
similar to them, comprehending the dialectics of attraction and
repulsion triggered by what is strange. Aureliano Buenda fights for
the ideal of liberalism in order to become a dictator charismatic but
also repugnant and pity-arousing. After One Hundred Years of
Solitude, Garca Mrquez has written books which were studies of
ambivalent rulers: The Autumn of the Patriarch and El general en su
laberinto (The General in his Labyrinth, 1989), the story of Simn
Bolvar. Such extensive studies cannot be found in the works of
Schulz; however, the creation of Franz Joseph from Spring is also
ambiguous.
In the works of Schulz and Garca Mrquez, the poetics of
magical realism, where mimetic codes interact with fantasy codes, and
irony, which complicates this poetics, are a means to reflect upon the
complicated relations of power. Since such a strategy does not
182
Dorota Wojda
explicitly turn against the systems of cultural domination but imitates

their mechanisms and mythologies in order to problematize them on
different levels, it corresponds with postcolonial discourse. A simple
negation of these systems would create an effect of dialectical
reflection, whereas postcolonialism expresses distrust toward precise
names, simple categories, myths that can explain all, unambiguous
historical stories, and is rather inclined to present the world ironically
(nieufno w stosunku do jasnych hase, prostych kategorii, mitw,
ktre wszystko potrafi wyjani, jednoznacznych opowieci
historycznych, a skonny jest raczej do ironicznego ujmowania
wiata; Pawyszyn 1998: 531).
Periphery, Events and People in Time Loops
As Robert Rawdon Wilson indicates, in works of magical realism
there emerges a space in which the spatial effects of canonical
realism and those of axiomatic fantasy are interwoven [] in magic
realism, space is hybrid (opposite and conflicting properties are copresent) (1990: 204). It is of great significance for postcolonial
revisions because it allows readers to perceive the regions history,
identity, and language of its residents, in general, the culture of the
colonized area as a palimpsest in which layers of different
civilizations show through each other (Brooke-Rose 1983). Magical
realism defines the rhetoric of resistance in relation to the methods of
representation that aspire to exclusivity, such as the traditional realist
novel or the historiography promoting the ideology of conquest. There
are three fundamental methods of loosening the colonial system:
firstly, a representation of transformational regionalism where a
particular local space poses the metonymy of a colony in general;
secondly, a foreshortening of history metaphorical condensation
in the represented time of the whole history of the colonization and its
consequences; thirdly, a thematic foregrounding of blank pages in
the histories of the compared cultures, resulting in the destruction of
the simple division into centre and periphery (Slemon 1995: 411-412).
In One Hundred Years of Solitude a representation of
transformational regionalism is evident. Macondo is a fictional space,
yet it possesses features drawing attention to a reference to the
province of Magdalena. At the same time, the place constitutes a
closed universe, thus created as a figure of a human awareness
183

developing from scratch. The depiction of Macondo is full of
contradictions; in this world, geographical space meets mythical
space, and elliptical space is specified (przestrze geograficzna
styka si
z przestrzeni mityczn , przestrze eliptyczna jest
dookrelona; Elbanowski 1983: 17). The village has love and death
in its origins. Jos Arcadio Buenda marries rsula, his cousin, and
kills Prudencio Aguilar when the latter jeers at the spouses sexual
abstinence. Consequently, the Buendas leave Riohacha to found
Macondo. The novel may also be read as a history of mankind that
starts with breaking the prohibition against incest and a founding
murder. These contraventions recur in both the story of the Buendas
and the history of the world. The initial parts of the narrative abound
in different images of violence. The very first sentence presents an
execution; then there are weapons of war, the colonization of Latin
America, felling trees for the future village, and setting traps for
singing birds. Jos Arcadio Buenda has a conquerors instinct
having learned to use navigational instruments, he conceived a notion
of space that allowed him to navigate across unknown seas, to visit
uninhabited territories, and to establish relations with splendid beings
(1973: 4). At first independent from institutional power, Macondo will
eventually surrender to it, and be drawn into political conflict and war;
finally, it will be exploited by the Banana Company. Capitalism will
become the cause of the crisis leading to the defeat of Macondo.
Therefore, in One Hundred Years of Solitude there takes place
a foreshortening of history the represented time is a metaphor of
the history of mankind that turns out to be a streak of offence,
conquest, and aggression. The fall of the civilization is presented as
a consequence of the incompetent management of natural and cultural
resources and at the same time, as revenge taken by nature on the
people hostile to it. In the last years of its existence, the Buendas
household deteriorates from a plague of rain, an invasion of ants, and
prolific growth of flora, finally being wiped off the surface of the
earth with the whole Macondo by a hurricane. Fatalism of this event is
highlighted by the last words of the novel: races condemned to one
hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth
(1973: 422). In his Nobel Prize speech, however, the writer will call
literature an anti-utopia able to offer resistance to the atrocities of the
world thanks to a vision of life where the races condemned to one
hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second
184
Dorota Wojda
opportunity on earth (translated from the Polish text in Ploetz 1997:

124).
Just as in the case of topography, temporariness, measured
with events and thus being a function of the storyline, has an explicit
reference in the novel, and is connected with the developments in
which the writers family took part. The model here is the time of the
Thousand Days War, the time of violencia, which ravaged Colombia
between 1940s and 1960s, and the time of neocolonialism in the
beginning of the twentieth century, dominated by American capital,
which resulted in economic exploitation, the influx of hojarasca
(hired workers), moral decline of the population, and the loss of
historical memory of the region. These phenomena had already been
given attention by Garca Mrquez in Leaf Storm. Ernesto Volkening
depicts how the writer experienced the impoverishing humanization of
the tropics, acting in defence of the exploited nature and against the
colonial ideology that destroys anything contrary to its idea of the
world (Volkening 1963). One Hundred Years of Solitude also exposes
the cruelty of the power apparatus what takes place here is a
thematic foregrounding of the repressions perpetrated by the
colonial system. Jos Arcadio Segundo continues telling the story of
the striking workers massacre about which history books say nothing.
The Buendas perceive the historic events in a different way than the
authority; they also see temporariness and spatial relations differently.
What is accepted in the official order, has little value for them or is
thoroughly false although at times they do admire alien values, but
then they explain them in their own way. In this way, there is a change
in the way the elements of colonial discourse are marked; qualities
regarded as central by the colonizers turn out to be peripheral in
Macondo and vice versa. The narrative perspective, however, is
displaced in such a way that it passes from one judgement to another,
thereby drawing attention to the relativity of culture and its hybrid
structure in a typically postcolonial way.
Determining references in One Hundred Years of Solitude is
connected with adopting codes of realist representation, whereas the
relativization of values is connected with applying the fantasy
convention. Strictly speaking, the magic of the represented world
contains fantastic and miraculous elements (Todorov 1970). The
former appear when the protagonists find the space, events, or time
incompatible with their own vision of reality, what, on the whole,
185

coincides with the appearance of technological developments in
Macondo. To the villages residents, cinemas, railways, or the
gramophone seem to be supernatural phenomena: Dazzled by so
many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo did not
know where their amazement began (1973: 229). Miracles, on the
other hand, emerge with the appearance of irrational things yet in
accordance with the order of the local microcosm. People perceive the
excesses of time (such as loops, condensations, or the eternal return)
as natural (Michaowski 1983). However, they perceive any
intervention of the historical time, which is measured with the
chronometers of the rational culture, as a disruption. The time is
absorbed by the magical reality in order to become the matter of the
mythical cycle. In a different aspect, the events of Macondo reflect
Latin-American history (Elbanowski 1983: 17). An important part is
played by reiteration when the time loops, the peoples lives also
overlap, which makes us read the novel as a universal parable.
The world created in One Hundred Years of Solitude is built
on the reality outside the text in order to transform it in a literary way
and return to the point of departure, that is, become a metaphor of the
human condition. It is, however, a world given to irony.
Miraculousness receives the status of a literary convention and plays
with the reader. The magic is sometimes so grotesque and the figures
of violence so great in numbers and so odd that the parable seen in the
novel seems to be true (Danow 2004). Consequently, the criticism of
cultural domination performed in the novel saves it from becoming an
ideology analogous to the negated form of the claiming power.
The presence of colonization issues is not as obvious in the
tales of Schulz as it is in the novel by Garca Mrquez. It may be
noticed, however, if we assume that the Polish writer, using the
poetics of magical realism, transforms the Galician reality and imitates
not the reality itself but general cultural processes filtrated by the
artists perception and imagination. The space of Schulzian prose,
similarly to that of Garca Mrquez, refers to specific places. Fathers
map depicts the real valley of the River Tysmienica; Crocodile Street
is a literary counterpart of Stryjska Street; Grka and the tavern are
located on the way to Truskawiec. Simultaneously, the Galician
province is a self-contained area, isolated from the world, constituting
a setting for the story of Josephs family. Just like in One Hundred
Years of Solitude, a family story in Schulzs tales can be read as a
186
Dorota Wojda
metaphor of the history of mankind. Nonetheless, the author of The

Book concentrated on one particular protagonist. The life of Joseph
becomes a figure of mans lot. Also similarly to the novel by Garca
Mrquez, the topography of the tales has a paradoxical nature.
Geography turns into a myth; space emerges from the language and
characterizes the form of the prose on its own; a room evolves into a
jungle or into a nightly forest train (TF 197; w lenym poci gu
nocnym; Op 211). In such a space, the character tries to find a way to
the Book that founded the world and the nature of man. Its distance or
elusiveness (the spread of forgeries made to resemble the Book) is the
reason for the decline of the world because in the absence of the
authentic, reality makes no sense and is full of violence. The demiurge
here is Franz Joseph, destroying the pricelessness of the world with
his police ideology, or Father, seemingly favourably inclined toward
multiplicity but in fact, causing its extinction. Similarly to One
Hundred Years of Solitude, violence here assumes the form of
aggressive capitalization, as evident in The Street of Crocodiles.
Read as a text about the consequences of neocolonialism, the work
also induces the interpretation of Schulzs prose as a representation
of transformational regionalism and a foreshortening of history.
It may be stated that the changes depicted in the tale, which
take place in the province as a result of the invasion of foreign capital,
are metaphors of the decline of the civilization a brief presentation
of a cultural crisis that has spanned considerable time. Moreover, the
method of evaluation from The Street of Crocodiles turns against
Polish stereotypes concerning the centre and periphery, including the
mythologization of the Eastern borderlands. According to the myth of
Kresy, the borderland is a bastion of homeland and cultural
achievements and at the same time, an area with a mission to civilize
and a dangerous but fascinating authenticity (Czaplejewicz 1996: 16).
Schulz creates the space, plot, and character in such a way that the
borderland becomes something different. The old business culture
contrasts here with the modern economy spreading on the outskirts of
the town. The location of the district characterized by progress makes
the centre/periphery opposition lose its clarity. Crocodile Street is
called the space of breaking down the barriers of hierarchy (TF 70;
zniwelowania granic i hierarchij; Op 77) moral principles decline
here, and the new merges with the old, resulting in the appearance of
new hybrid forms. Three attitudes were taken toward this region:
187

approbative, critical, and ironic. The first attitude conforms with the
colonial idea of the centre/periphery layout, according to which action
recognized as a civilizing mission receives a positive opinion. The
second bears the hallmarks of an anti-colonial world view. Crocodile
Street is criticized by most of its natives, including the narrator, who
sees its appearance and rubbish. At the same time, the figure betrays
his fascination with this world, thus pointing to another difference
between Schulzs presentation and colonial discourse: cultural
artificiality is charming here, whereas, the authenticity of nature is
charming there. Furthermore, the explorers experiences are presented
in a different way as the protagonist reaches no destination but keeps
wandering about the street that is subject to constant metamorphoses.
The realist convention is broken with the fantasy code, resulting in the
blurring of the difference between a rule and an exception. In its
process of invalidation, the play between the topography and character
creation manifests itself as an ironic subject that creates illusions of
different conditions in order to dispel them. The ironic subject
changes the perspectives of evaluation and consequently, interprets
the cultural borderland. Owing to that, the dialectic of the
centre/periphery is set in motion it is established, inverted, and
finally, ironically problematized. It may be described as a thematic
foregrounding of the repressions of colonial discourse and a shifting
to the postcolonial vision of the borderland, where irony accompanies
reflection on cultural difference beyond the unequivocal dimension of
the identity-based culture.
Not only in The Street of Crocodiles but also in other tales
by Schulz, the relativization of values occurs thanks to the fantasy
element, which also links the prose with the novel by Garca Mrquez.
It is difficult, however, to speak here of a division into fantastic and
miraculous elements. Father experiments in the field of technology as
well as nature, and he treats all forms on which he works as ordinary
elements of reality, which are at the same time possible places for the
articulation of the mystery of the other. In this aspect, the magical
realism of Schulz differs from the magical realist poetics and ontology
of Garca Mrquez. From the poetological perspective, it can be
presented in the categories developed by the Russian formalists as a
defamiliarization that allows us to perceive the extraordinary in the
ordinary. With regard to the ontological perspective, Schulzs ideas
bring to mind the Freudian concept of Unheimlichkeit, where the
188
Dorota Wojda
uncanny manifests itself in the natural. Despite the indicated

differences, there exists a certain similarity between the presentations
of the two writers in both cases literature opposes the categorization
of rationalism, whereas motion, fluidity of matter, madness, and
nonsense are evaluated positively. This is visible in the creations of
Jos Arcadio Buenda and Jacob, behind whom is the fatherhood
authority. Buenda searches for the philosophers stone and finds an
ice block to be the greatest invention: he imagines the beauty of
tropical Macondo built of icy crystals. Jacobs laboratory works
according to the panta rhei principle. The demiurge experiments with
matter in order to pave its way [] to transfusion, to universal
circulation in accordance with its true nature; (TF 101; torowa jej
drogi [] do tranfuzji, do wszechcyrkulacji, jedynie waciwej jej
naturze; Op 356). We are dealing with a different way of evaluation
than in colonial discourse, where motion is regarded as modus
operandi, which is supposed to make the power consolidate and where
man struggles to control the nature with the power of his mind.
Such a worldview translates in Schulzs tales into the
peculiarity of the temporal form. A history is told correspondingly to
One Hundred Years of Solitude; the plot is not identical with the
fictional pattern. Only after its reconstruction there emerges a linear
story that progresses from Josephs childhood through his
adolescence, Jacobs successive metamorphoses, until Fathers Last
Escape (Ostatnia ucieczka ojca), and from the period of the Books
absence until its loss in the time of forgeries. Both of these processes,
linked with each other, constitute the time of myth, simultaneous
perpetuation of different fragments of history. Such simultaneity also
appears in the novel by Garca Mrquez: Melquades had not put
events in the order of mans conventional time, but had concentrated a
century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one
instant (1973: 421).
The events which have their equivalents in reality do not play
as important a role in Schulzs texts as they do in One Hundred Years
of Solitude, but when they appear, they also become objects of
fantastic transformation. And just like in Garca Mrquez, the literary
representations of those events become a means of conveying the
general evaluation of culture. The temporal fantasy conventions used
by Schulz in many ways resemble the means used later by the
Colombian writer. Among the conventions used are next to
189

simultaneity and inversion ellipses, condensations, loops, and
various kinds of reiteration. The last two techniques especially
combine the different ways of building time in the works of Schulz
and in One Hundred Years of Solitude. The author of Spring
constructs the text in such a way as to create the temporal paradoxes
and the cyclical nature of events, especially of seasons and the times
of the day as well as the stages of human life (Jarz
bski 1998: LVI). A
similar form appears in Garca Mrquez, except that he pays special
attention to the recurrence of the biographical patterns. The images of
the palimpsests and temporal apocrypha are characteristic of Schulzs
prose. In both of the literary creations, the arrangement of time turns
against rational discourse and triggers the parabolic mode of reading.
Schulzs parable is so multidimensional that its meanings
should not be narrowed to just one superior sense. It certainly
underlines the significance of the whole, the myth, integrity of the
world, and literary form on the one hand and fragmentariness,
demythologization, division of existence, and literature on the other.
This duality, passing from one order to another and thus playing with
the conventions of realism and fantasy, is matched by irony. Read in
the postcolonial context, this irony becomes a strategy that disarms the
authoritarian divisions of colonial discourses.
Conclusion: Figures of Narration
The final part of the article concerns a matter that must be addressed
separately: narration in the prose of Schulz and the novel by Garca
Mrquez, which also constitutes the summary of the preceding
discussion. Narration ought to be discussed separately and undertaken
in the part that contains conclusions because it has a dimension
extremely significant for postcolonial discourse, that is,
performativity, which pertains to how the message is formulated
simultaneously in the direct, objective articulation of the text and
through use of the articulated meanings.
The nature of both the writing of Schulz and the work of
Garca Mrquez is intertextual and self-referential. A wide range of
references may be found in them, including the Bible, mythology, and
various philosophical currents writings of the Jewish and Polish
traditions in Schulz, and works from the Latin American world in
Garca Mrquez. Jarz
bski indicates that Schulz was indebted to
190
Dorota Wojda
writers such as Rilke, Kubin, Meyrink, and Mann. Among the writers
philosophical inspirations, the scholar mentions the works of German
Romanticism: Jung, Bergson, and Nietzsche (Jarz
bski 1998: XCVII).
Garca Mrquez, as Elbanowski notices, creates in One Hundred
Years of Solitude a synthesis of Latin American literature
(reminiscences from Borges, Carpentier, Fuentes, and Cortzar are
found in the text) as well as a certain summa of his own work. One of
the characters in the novel is Gabriel Mrquez, who leaves Macondo
for Paris, where he starts writing (Elbanowski 1983: 1920). Similarly
in the work of Schulz, a range of references between his tales,
paintings, and drawings may be found.
In the context of such intertextual and self-referential
techniques, one ought to examine the way both writers lead the
narrative. They insert into their texts sections that characterize the
poetics of magical realism. In Spring, the narrator describes Biancas
villa not only to define the style of the girl but also of Schulzian prose:
W tych wyszukanych i ruchliwych liniach o przesadnej wytwornoci []
byo co fertycznego, arliwego, zbyt jaskrawo gestykuluj cego co
jednym sowem kolorowego kolonialnego i ypi cego oczyma Tak jest,
styl ten mia na dnie swym co niesychanie odraaj cego by rozpustny,
wymylny, tropikalny i niesychanie cyniczny. (Op 183)
(In those elaborate and mobile lines of exaggerated elegance [] there
was something fidgety, too eager, to showy something, in a word,
colourful and colonial Indeed, the style was in effect rather repulsive
lustful, over-elaborate, tropical, and extremely cynical; TF 177).
A previously mentioned metaphor that was important for Schulz was

lost in the translation of this quote. Its meaning would correspond to
that of the idiom to give someone the glad eye. The style of the
author winks at the reader, showing its multidimensional character.
In the quoted paragraph, a metonymy also appears which allows the
text to become performative the winking means that the fragment
refers to the whole, and its form is revealed here. In other words, the
text practises exactly what it describes. Similar techniques are
employed by Garca Mrquez:
It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise
and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation
between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an
191

extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. (1973:
230)
On the surface, the paragraph concerns the reality of Macondo which

dawns with the appearance of new technological inventions, yet those
words also have another meaning they simultaneously explain and
create the dual, magical realist form of the novel.
The self-referentiality of the narration in Schulzs tales and in
One Hundred Years of Solitude is fulfilled on higher levels that are
modal frames of the texts. In the first case, the reader may speculate
that the events of the novel are described in the Book. This guess is
based on the narration of Spring, a key tale of Schulz, where the
stamp album, which is a counterpart of the Book, turns out to be the
text of spring as a season, and at the same time, a piece of prose with
the same title. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, the reader finally
learns that all he has read had already been written in the Manuscript
of Melquades, which the protagonists had been trying to decipher for
one hundred years. The same moment Aureliano reaches the last
words of the manuscript, Macondo is wiped off the face of the earth,
and the reader finishes reading.
Performativeness of narration is significant in the works by
Schulz and Garca Mrquez because it indicates that magical realism
(as the poetics, ontology, and strategy of postcolonial discourse) is not
only a literary creation, in which realism and fantasy problematize the
discourses of power in an ironic way, but also a practice which
induces thought, writing, and action. Requested action may be
explained in different ways either as creating postcolonial literature
or as action meant to change the violence-supporting culture.
Bibliography
Baker, Suzanne. 1993. Binarisms and Duality: Magic Realism and Postcolonialism
in SPAN: Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth
Literature and Language Studies 36: 82-87.
Bakua, Bogusaw. 2006. Kolonialne i postkolonialne aspekty polskiego dyskursu
kresoznawczego. (Zarys problematyki) in Teksty Drugie 6: 11-33.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. Nation and Narration. London and New York: Routledge.
. 1995. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Brooke-Rose, Christine. 1983. Rhetoric of the Unreal: Studies in Narrative and
Structure, Especially of the Fantastic. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
192
Dorota Wojda
Cavanagh, Clare. 2003. Postkolonialna Polska. Biaa plama na mapie wspczesnych

teorii (tr. T. Kunz) in Teksty Drugie 2/3: 60-71.
Czaplejewicz, Eugeniusz. 1996. Czym jest literatura kresowa? in Czaplejewicz,
Eugeniusz and Edward Kasperski (eds). Kresy w literaturze. Twrcy
dwudziestowieczni. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna: 7-73.
Danow, David K. 2004. The Spirit of the Carnival: Magical Realism and the
Grotesque. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
de Man, Paul. 1996. The Concept of Irony in Warminski, Andrzej (ed.) Aesthetic
Ideology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 163-184.
Durix, Jean-Pierre. 1998. Mimesis, Genres and Post-Colonial Discourse.
Deconstructing Magical Realism. London: Macmillan Press.
Elbanowski, Adam. 1983. Mrquez : od realizmu magicznego do ironii magicznej in
Literatura na wiecie 9: 10-23.
Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard.
Garca Mrquez, Gabriel. 1973. One Hundred Years of Solitude (tr. G. Rabassa).
London: Penguin.
Gazda, Grzegorz. 2005. Mityzacja rzeczywistoci a realizm magiczny (glosa
komparatystyczna) in Kita, Magorzata and Boena Witosz (eds).
Spotkanie. Ksiga jubileuszowa dla Profesora Aleksandra Wilkonia.
Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu l skiego: 212-219.
. 2006. Bruno Schulz i Franz Kafka (glosy komparatystyczne) in Bolecki,
Wodzimierz and Ryszard Nycz (eds). Dziea, jzyki tradycje. Profesorowi
Januszowi Sawiskiemu na siedemdziesite urodziny przyjaciele, koledzy,
wsppracownicy. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IBL PAN: 314-326.
Gowacka, Dorota. 1996. Wzniosa tandeta i simulacrum. Bruno Schulz w
postmodernistycznych zaukach in Teksty Drugie 2/3: 72-91.
Hahn, Hannelore. 1994. The Influence of Franz Kafka on Three Novels by Gabriel
Garca Mrquez (Comparative Cultures and Literatures 4). New York: Peter
Lang.
Janion, Maria. 2007. Niesamowita sowiaszczyzna. Fantazmaty literatury. Krakw:
Jarz
p in Schulz (1998): V-CXL.
Kaufer, David S. 1983. Irony, Interpretative Form, and the Theory of Meaning in
Poetics Today 4(3): 451-464.
Looby, Robert. 2003. Formalizm i parodia w twrczoci Brunona Schulza in
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata and Wadysaw Panas (eds). W uamkach
zwierciadaBruno Schulz w 110 rocznic urodzin i 60 rocznic mierci.
Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL: 261-274.
Lpez, Alfred J. 2001. Posts and Pasts. A Theory of Postcolonialism. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Maszewski, Zbigniew. 2003. William Faulkner and Bruno Schulz: a Comparative
Study. d: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu dzkiego.
Michaowski, Piotr. 1983. Sto lat samotnoci powie o czasie in Literatura na
wiecie 9: 24-34.
Moore-Gilbert, Bart. 1997. Postcolonial Theory. Contexts, Practices, Politics. London
and New York: Verso.
193

Obehelman, Harley D. 1980. The Presence of Faulkner in the Writings of Garca
Mrquez (Graduate Studies Texas Tech University 22). Lubbock: Texas
Tech University Press.
Owczarski, Wojciech. 2004. Schulz i Kafka. Poetyka egzystencji in Kasperski,
Edward and Tomasz Mackiewicz (eds). Franz Kafka na progu XXI wieku.
Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo
Wydziau
Polonistyki
Uniwersytetu
Warszawskiego: 247-262.
Pawyszyn, Marko. 1998. Ukraiski postkolonialny postmodernizm (tr. A.
Korniejenko and A. Hnatiuk) in Nycz, Ryszard (ed.) Odkrywanie
modernizmu. Krakw: Universitas: 530-537.
Pindel, Tomasz. 2004. Zjawy, szalestwo i mier. Fantastyka i realizm magiczny w
literaturze hispanoamerykaskiej. Krakw: Universitas.
Ploetz, Dagmar. 1997. Gabriel Garca Mrquez (tr. J. ukosz). Wrocaw:
Wydawnictwo Dolnol skie.
Podgrniak, Alexandra. 2004. Realizm magiczny jako strategia postkolonialna in
Er(r)go 8(1): 189-192.
. 2006. Magic Realism. Postcolonial Literary Theory and Practice. PhD thesis.
University of Silesia.
Rawdon Wilson, Robert. 1990. In Palamedes Shadow: Explorations in Play, Game
and Narrative Theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Picador.
bski).
Skrczewski, Dariusz. 2006. Postkolonialna Polska projekt (nie)moliwy in Teksty
Drugie 1/2: 100-112.
Slemon, Stephen. 1989. Reading for Resistance in the Post-Colonial Literature in
Maes-Jelenek, Hena, Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford (eds). A
Shaping of Connections. Sydney, Coventry, Aarhus: Dangaroo Press: 100115.
. 1995. Magical Realism as Postcolonial Discourse in Parkinson Zamora, Lois
and Wendy B. Faris (eds). Magical Realism. Theory, History, Community.
Durham and London: Duke University Press: 407-426.
Stala, Krzysztof. 1995. Na marginesach rzeczywistoci. O paradoksach
przedstawiania w twrczoci Brunona Schulza. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
IBL PAN.
Thompson, Ewa M. 2006. Sarmatyzm i postkolonializm. O naturze polskich
resentymentw in Europa. Tygodnik Idei 46: 11.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1970. Introduction la littrature fantastique. Paris: Seuil.
Volkening, Ernesto. 1963. Gabriel Garca Mrquez o el trpico desembrujado in
Eco. Revista de la Cultura de Occidente 40: 273-293.
A (Wo)man on a Sofa in Bruno Schulzs Art and

Writings. Schulz as a Painterly and Writerly Artist
Marta Skwara
Abstract: This article analyzes Bruno Schulzs creative application of the motif of a
(wo)man on a sofa in order to indicate the various games that Schulz plays both with
tradition and his spectators/readers, and the ways in which he transgresses the
conventions of art and literature. The essay demonstrates how Schulz creates texts
which unsettle all the readers assumptions by displacing his or her cultural memory
and explains in what sense his text has to be created anew in each reader, who is part
of the seductive theatre of love.
Introduction
When trying to explore the limits of the comparability of Schulzs
works one profitable thing to focus on is a particular motif employed
by Schulz in both his art and writing. A (wo)man on a sofa,
understood as a version of a reclining woman, is a good place to
begin this discussion because the iconographic scheme has been
exploited in European art ever since Titian, and not only is the
tradition rich and evergreen (e.g. Rainer Fettings Reclining Nude on
Sofa, 1988) but it also provokes questions about different kinds of
transgressions in both art and stylistic conventions. Because it is also
possible to point to a literary motif as a specific counterpart of the
iconographic scheme in question, the pictorial character of Schulzs
prose and the literary character of his drawings (Ficowski 1998:
514), or an iconic layer of Schulzs prose, a sort of pictorial screen,
or filter, modeling the mode of representation (Stala 1993: 100-101),
can be put into a comparative perspective and discussed within world
literature and art. What I want to do is demonstrate Bruno Schulzs
modes of creative usage of the widespread art tradition and the various
games he plays with his spectators/readers. Through interpreting
Schulzs creative applications of one particular motif, I do not propose
196
Marta Skwara
to demonstrate his (dis)similarity to other painters and writers but will

instead attempt to discern particular aspects of his technique and
artistic imagination, the ways in which he creates his radically plural
world and makes it function as a conduit for the disruptive potential of
interdisciplinary and intertextual relations. First I will try to establish
the framework of the iconographic scheme that I will use to interpret
Bruno Schulzs art, then I will demonstrate possible comparative
approaches to his realizations of the iconographic scheme. After that, I
will attempt to specify in what manner Schulzs art and writing differ
while applying the same iconographic scheme followed by an
interpretation of the motif in question in Schulzs writing. In
conclusion, I will present possible ways of defining Schulzs art and
writing technique, which makes him a limitlessly comparable yet also
boundlessly transgressive artist, more in his literature than in his art.
Art
It is obvious that a reclining woman is a general iconographic
scheme denoting a picture of a (dressed/half-dressed/naked) woman
resting somewhere (in nature1/a salon/a bedroom) on something (for
example, the ground, a sofa, just a bed, or sometimes in an armchair).
This general scheme is far too generic to be the scheme to which I
would like to refer. When we take Schulzs drawings and graphics
into account, it becomes clear that his interests were focused on a
particular version of the scheme: in almost every case, his women are
half-naked or naked and recline on a sofa (bed) that is situated in some
kind of an interior. It does not seem that Schulz was interested in
explorations of the iconographic scheme in the way Egon Schiele
(Reclining Woman, 1917) or Marc Chagall (Reclining Nude, 1914)
were, producing pictures with a female figure reclining in an
unspecified space.2 Neither was Schulz attracted to explorations of the
shapes which the female body can take as, for example, Matisse (Pink
Nude, 1935) or Modigliani (Reclining Nude on a White Cushion,
1917-1918) were. Surrealistic devices typical of Magritte (Bather
Between Light and Dark, 1935) were also out of the mainstream of his

1
The tradition dates back to Lucas Cranach the Elder (Reclining Nymph, 1530-34)
and Giorgione (Sleeping Venus, 1510).
2
With the exception of some sketches which seem to be unfinished (see drawings in
Schulz 1992: 241-242, 254).
A (Wo)man on a Sofa. Schulz as a Painterly and Writerly Artist
197

fine art. It does not mean, however, that Schulz did not discuss the
tradition as his famous contemporaries did; instead, he tended to
allude to a particular type of tradition by using and combining its
characteristic elements rather than invent new forms of artistic
expression. What he created were more or less discursive versions of
well-known iconographic schemes, connected to various extents to
their prototypes. Drawings such as Reclining Nude (c. 1933) and
Reclining Woman (c. 1933), for example, can be seen as the simplest
cases of using tradition; they are almost exercises in the style of
Goyas Naked Maja or Manets Olympia or as Magorzata Kitowskaysiak argues, Zuloagas Irena (Sownik schulzowski: 428). Kitowskaysiak also sees Schulzs depiction of draperies as a characteristic link
to Zuloagas manner of creating space. By not ignoring this
possibility, one could also point out a connection to Delacroixs
manner of rendering cloth, e.g. in his Female Nude Reclining on a
Divan (1830), especially in the context of the third cover of Schulzs
The Idolatrous Book with the woman reclining on the sofa wrapped in
sophisticated draperies. This clich-verre also alludes to the traditional
air of a female bedroom: warm, cozy, and erotically attractive (the
yellow brownish light used by many painters beginning with
Rembrandt and Rubens was perhaps symbolically replaced by
Schulz with candles burning in candleholders). The fifth cover of The
Idolatrous Book alludes to elements known from Velazquezs Venus
at the Mirror (1649-51), with the figures and symbols being playfully
changed. Instead of presenting the naked beautiful back of the goddess
and hiding her face (in Velazquezs version the face is seen vaguely
only in a mirror held by Cupid), Schulz places the dressed woman
frontally (only her legs and arms are naked) and lets us see her face,
while the mirror held by Pierrot is empty. One may discuss how this
clich-verre can be interpreted (it should be noted that it is not the
only example of Schulz playing with Velazquezs scheme: two
drawings, Venus and Cupid and Venus and Cupid [II] (before 1933)
should be recollected here). Yet it is clear that without putting
Schulzs book covers into the context of Velazquezs painting, the
possibilities of discovering Schulzs art games are lost. What Jerzy
Ficowski (1988: 52) called a deliberate archaization typical of The
Idolatrous Book seems to be a conscious artistic choice bringing forth
the main issue of Schulzs art; it is as though he manifestly declares
on the covers of his Book: this is not how I see a woman but how I
198
Marta Skwara
see (play with) what other artists and their spectators had already
seen.
Inside the Book one finds more examples of such playing: one
of them, titled The Book of Idolatry II, alludes to the classical
images of a woman on a sofa, this time more in the Titian manner. Yet
the woman who lies on the sofa in the pose of Venus of Urbino is only
half-naked; her characteristically full body is covered in the upper
part, just like her face is partly covered by the hat. Her bosom seems
to be shaped in the manner of the other Venus of Titian (with the
organ-player), and this is not the only link between these pictures. In
both the woman is accompanied by a man. Instead of Titians organplayer who is distracted from his job of playing the instrument, Schulz
presents a man who is distracted from reading a book. Neither man
looks at the instruments of art but gazes at the woman. The direction
of the organ-players glance, toward the division of Venuss legs,
makes his interest in her more obvious than that of Schulzs man, who
tries to catch the womans eyes, while kneeling in the pose of both
respect and fear. The open book is as empty as the mirror held by
Pierrot. This may symbolically connect both of Schulzs pictures on
idolatry: the one from the cover and the one from the inside of The
Idolatrous Book. Could it be said that the man with the book
resembling Schulz himself serves as a kind of mediator between the
spectator and the erotic object: the voyeur placed within the
composition as a surrogate for the voyeur who cannot enter it?3 Or
perhaps in Schulzs case the mediator does not dare to be the voyeur
because he can see less than the spectator? The book of idolatry is to
be written, the story to be told, and as Schulz seems to suggest, it is a
more complex story than the story of sexual attraction. Because
Schulzs Venus holds a kind of a whip instead of red roses
symbolizing carnal love (an attribute of Titians Venus), she alludes to
a different kind of sensuality of which Sacher-Masochs Venus
became a symbol. Nevertheless, by combining different traditions,
Schulz deliberately recalls many Venuses (one could fill the line of
tradition with other classical representations among which Paris
Bordones Venus with Cupid (1520-1530) should be most obvious),
intentionally expanding and multiplying meanings. Schulzs
presupposed masochistic interest in women for which drawings such

3
As Edward Lucie-Smith interprets Titians picture (1995: 173).
199

as Reclining Female Nude with Self-portrait (before 1936) could
provide more arguments is an element of a very complex play rather
than a feature of both Schulzs personality and art, as his
contemporary Witkacy (Witkiewicz 1990: 108-109) and later other
interpreters claimed; I agree here with Wodzimierz Boleckis
standpoint (1994: 128-129).
Exploring further the art scenes in which a woman on a sofa is
placed in the center of the composition and is the center of artistic
endeavors, I would point to one more clich-verre, Stallions and
Eunuchs, in which Schulz alludes to the characteristic position of the
woman lying on her stomach with slightly spread legs, introduced by
Franois Boucher (Odalisque, 1743; Mademoiselle OMurphy, 1751).
Instead of an exclusive boudoir, the typical interior of eighteenthcentury pink pornography, Schulz creates a half-open interior and
fills the complex expressionistic setting around the woman on the sofa
with horses (called stallions in the title, which emphasizes their sexual
function) and figures of men (called eunuchs, which emphasizes their
asexual function). In this case, disputable pornographic aspects of
Schulzs art can be discussed within a comparative perspective.
Boucher, according to Edward Lucie-Smiths interpretation, retains
sufficient traces of the individual identity of a desirable young woman
to make one wonder what it would be like to go to bed with her
(Lucie-Smith 1995: 99), which would mean that by doing so, Boucher
crosses the thin line beyond which we talk about pornography.4
Schulz, however, makes one wonder who would go to bed with the
somewhat generalized type of woman, devoid of individual traces, and
gives the possible answers by contrasting active animals with passive
human beings. Through ironic expressions of wishes and fears rather
than suggestions of sexual pleasure, Schulz shifts from causing
reactions to talking about them; he starts to tell the story of adoration
and idolatry, while not necessarily being pornographic (i.e., not
necessarily causing sexual reactions, which, in all honesty, can never
be unarguably denied).
In The Idolatrous Book as a whole, the most characteristic
(because they are the most numerous) scenes show the woman placed
on the sofa and exercising her power over the man with her naked foot
on his face or head (a naked beauty, like Undula, is sometimes

4
Understood in the simplest way as erotic material intended to cause sexual

excitement.
200
Marta Skwara
replaced by her dressed maid, traditionally connected with the literary

heroine Adela). Even Biblical Susanna (who is surprisingly wearing
stockings, which make her look more like Flicien Ropss Cythera
than the biblical symbol of virtue) is placed naked on a type of sofa
and put on display. Schulz, an art student and art lover, seems to retain
connections to the long tradition of an old man watching a sleeping
nude. One may recall Rubenss Angelica and the Hermit (1626-28),
where the possibly dishonest wishes of the hermit are symbolized by
the dark screaming face in the background (likewise, in the
background of Schulzs sleeping Susanna, we can also notice such an
inhuman face). In the other graphic, still naked and asleep, she is
adored by the elders, one of them kissing her foot. The group of elders
plays the same role as the group of artists/pariahs/pilgrims in Schulzs
other graphics or drawings: they adore the beauty who (naked or halfnaked, lying, half-lying, or just sitting on a sofa, sometimes on a
bench or a chair) pays no attention to them. These group scenes go
beyond the iconic tradition of a woman on a sofa and begin to explore
new contexts too complex to discuss here. One element, however,
should be stressed: the role of a female leg. The line of demonologists,
which Witkacy evoked in the context of images of a woman torturing
a man with her leg (Cranach, Drer, Grnewald, Goya, Munch,
Beardsley), could be recalled here, yet Schulz starts to play not only
with the pictures we have seen but also with the scenes about which
we have read. Sacher-Masochs demonic women, like Lola kicking
the face of the male servant kneeling before her or Venus in furs
humiliating her lover, become the most obvious yet, perhaps, overused
contexts (Bolecki 1994: 129). Why should we forget Frida stepping on
the poor surveyor hidden under the counter at their first meeting in
Das Schloss?
While a female leg is an element of the sexual play in
Schulzs graphics and drawings, a sofa (bed) seems to be a necessary
prop, the sign of being put on display and being watched, the iconic
sign of demonstrating sexual attraction and sexual captivation in a
recognizable manner. Schulz creates his message as if he were a
mediator between the pictures already seen and those he creates
himself. Such an attitude seems to have been symbolically presented
in an India ink drawing titled Masochistic scene; above the sofa and
the naked woman displaying her back temptingly to the naked man
lying flat on the rug below, we can see a frame which is left empty. It
201

can be interpreted as a mirror,5 one of many mirrors in Schulzs art
that reflects nothing; yet the pose of the woman can also be
recognized as a transformation of the famous Grand Odalisque (1814)
by Ingres, which was said to be a transformation of Davids Madame
Recamier (1800). Thus the spectator might move backwards in his or
her interpretation: from Schulzs erotic (masochistic) scene in which
the naked woman deliberately puts on a provocative pose while
looking indifferently toward the spectator/admirer present in the
picture to the equally indifferent though less provocative Odalisque
looking at the spectator placed outside the picture, and finally to the
modest and noble Madame whose potential erotic appeal is only
gently suggested by her naked feet fully dressed and placed on the
sofa in a manner which suggests a salon rather than a bedroom scene.
The empty frames above the sofa can be filled with images to which
Schulz seems to allude by using both the well-known scheme and the
symbolically empty frame (which becomes the metaframe), as if he
constantly (also by means of repetitions) moves along the line of
tradition, between the salon and the boudoir; between the innocent
beauty (goddess) and the indifferent torturer; between the spectator
who watches the scene from outside the frames and the spectator
present inside (who is sometimes the artist himself); between this
which can be demonstrated in a particular picture and that which can
be expressed by a series of particular pictures and their
reinterpretations.
Art and Literature
The connection between Schulzs visual and literary representations,
which manifests as a disruptive tension arising between the same
motif depicted in Schulzs art and literature, can be demonstrated by a
scene from the story titled Edzio (Eddie). The well-known
illustration presented in the London edition (1998) with a caption
taken from the story Every night he presses his white, fat face to
the window pane (1998: 242;6 Jak co nocy, przyciska sw blad

5
This would be quite unusual, however, because pictures were commonly placed
above sofas, and this tradition was still respected by expressionists (Erich Heckel,
Lying woman (1909)).
6
202
Marta Skwara
tust twarz [] do szyby; 1989: 292)7 shows a man behind a

window, with an ecstatic (painful) expression on his face, and a naked
woman sleeping on a big flat bed, with her head on a pillow. While
the spectator can see her naked front, the man behind the window can
only see her back, yet he does not look.8 The full moon illuminates the
scene in which the interior mingles with the exterior; since the room
opens into the city, the woman is placed in an open space, while the
man seems to be caged, painfully separated from the woman by the
window that he touches powerlessly with his open hands. The whole
scene could be interpreted in typical sexual terms: the man suffers
from desire, while the woman sleeps indifferently and out of his reach.
When we go back to Schulzs text, however, the interpretation must
be changed considerably because Edzio does not occupy the same
position as the other Peeping Toms, young shop-assistants who
would stand in front of Adelas window singing dirty songs and trying
to spy on her. On the contrary, disabled Edzio cries for help and
because his crutches are locked in the cupboard, so must jump on all
fours like a dog. Alas, Adela sleeps indifferently and ecstatically: She
has no strength even to pull up the blanket over her bare thighs (CW
243; Nie ma si nawet, by wci gn kodr
na obnaone uda; Op
292). Surprisingly, it is not sexuality but dreamlike transformations of
leaf-like insects running over Adelas naked body which are explored
in the literary scene. The manner in which they are depicted creates a
separate and suggestive picture of which nothing is present in the
illustration:
S to paskie torebki na krew, rude mieszki na krew, bez oczu i bez
fizjonomii, i teraz maszeruj caymi klanami, wielka w
drwka ludw
podzielona na pokolenia i na rody. Biegn od ng krociami, niezliczon
promenad , coraz wi
ksze, tak wielkie jak my, jak paskie pugilaresy, jak
wielkie czerwone wampiry bez gowy, lekkie i papierowe na nkach
subtelniejszych od paj
czyny. (CW 292)
They are flat receptacles for blood, reddish blood bags without eyes or
faces, now on the march in whole clans on a migration of the species
subdivided into generations and tribes. They run up from her feet in
scores, a never-ending procession, they are larger now, as large as moths,

7

His eyes are closed, his mouth half-open; the womans mouth is half-open, and her
eyes are closed too while her face is turned in the opposite direction, which
emphasizes the effect of separation.
8
203

flat red vampires without heads, lightweight as if cut out of paper, on legs
more delicate than the web of spiders. (Op 243)
While the drawing depicts the story of desire, the literary text goes
much further, depicting the story of the mysterious life of small
creatures which develops into the image of all the sleeping creatures
in the house. Thus, while the illustration is kept within a wellknown convention, in accordance with the idea that female nakedness
causes male suffering, the literary scene goes beyond the description
of the sexual attractiveness of a naked female body or its aesthetics.
Schulzs literary scenes open the areas of transformations and
transgressions, which always diverge from the pictures, even though
they are called illustrations.
Literature
The first strong indication of a meaningful shift of notions is seen in a
literary depiction of Touya. After having seen and analyzed all of the
fine art scenes where a woman placed on a sofa was admired, adored,
and feared, when we turn to Schulzs first short story Sierpie
(August), the Touya scene strikes us as a unique one, not a typical
realization of the scheme. However, some of the iconic layer is still
easily recognizable. Touya sits hunched up on a bed, among the
yellow bedding and odd rags (CW 11; siedzi przykucni
ta wrd
tej pocieli i szmat; Op 7). The bed itself is an unaesthetic and
defunct object propped up on two bricks where one leg was
missing and so is the heroine, the half-naked idiot girl (CW 11;
podparte zamiast brakuj cej nogi dwiema starymi cegami, na
wp naga i ciemna kretynka; Op 7-8). The scene is set in a garden,
which we seldom see in Schulzs drawings and graphics. When he
once placed the woman on an antique bed against a landscape, it was a
city landscape (Akt w antycznym ou na tle miejskiego krajobrazu,
1930). In the drawing, the naked woman reclines gracefully on a
pillow, with her body put on display and meant to be adored. Touya
cannot be adored because her inhuman ugliness is emphasized in the
description, yet the moment she rises on her feet and stands like a
pagan idol (on short childish legs; CW 11; na krtkich,
dziecinnych nkach; Op 8), she becomes more than an object to be
204
Marta Skwara
seen and not touched.9 Instead of torturing men with her sexuality and
playing with their sexual wishes, she turns out to be a self-sufficient
erotic creature reaching sexual fulfillment without a man. There is,
however, still someone who watches and describes Touya, a voyeur
without whom we would not see the half-wit, half-naked girl on the
bed, the autobiographical boy Joseph, passive, tolerant, a watcher
and a learner (Brown 1991: 54).
Is this scene supposed to function as a simple negation of
aesthetic categories? It seems to be highly subversive in comparison to
literary scenes in which a woman on a sofa used to be placed in the
middle of a salon, for example, Jules Barbey DAurevillys baroness
de Mascranny reclining on the sofa as if she were Cleopatra, or more
ironically rendered yet exploring the same scheme, Witkacys Akne
who lies on a sofa in a traditional pose and teases her admirer Bungo
with her leg intentionally dressed in a black stocking and black shoe
(Witkiewicz 1996: 133). By replacing beauty with ugliness, the salon
with the garden, civilized and controlled poses with savage wild
gestures, erotic passive attractiveness with sexual active selffulfillment, Schulz confronts his voyeur/spectator/reader with a scene
which could hardly be accepted as pleasurable or alluring. The
question he asks is no longer about what we want to see and who
wants to be watched but is instead about what we refuse to see or
realize. Schulz obviously does not ask his imaginary question in the
manner of naturalism, but he instead confronts us with what we have
already seen through using a pictorial screen. His device can be
compared to grotesque devices introduced by the Polish modernistic
writer Roman Jaworski (Historie maniakw / The Stories of Maniacs,
1910). In one of his stories he presents us with Honorcia, who has a
disproportionately ugly body marked by warts and thin wisps of oily
hair and seems to be a parody of the fin de sicle beauties, especially
when her image is contrasted with well-known paintings. Honorcia,
after her death, leaves her husband an unusual set of pictures called
the past tokens of the secret cabaret. Among them, not surprisingly,
are Goyas Maja desunda, Rembrandts Danae, and Titians Venus
9
It seems as if two scenes known from Schulzs graphics, the woman reclining on the
bed and the woman standing up on her beautiful legs, were united in one movie-like
sequence. When we look at Touya from this perspective, her short legs in contrast
with long legs of women from the pictures become one more visible sign of
aesthetic discussion.
205

from Urbino (which itself is the proof of the diffusion of the tradition
in the epoch). All pictures are less attractive and devoid of charm
because the face of Honorcia was glued to all of them (Jaworski 1978:
118). Both Jaworski and Schulz do not create a grotesque
representation of the world but a grotesque representation of the
representations; they glue new pictures on those to which we were
accustomed. Additionally, Schulz sets the pictures in motion using a
cinema-like technique. The narrative character of his graphics turns
into a real narration; the passive idol adored in a set of sequences
becomes an active anti-idol playing its own game, still in front of the
spectator/voyeur, present both inside and outside the scene. The
artistic credo of The Idolatrous Book, which can be specified as the
cult of the freedom of artistic expression aimed against the Old
Testament ban on idolatry (Van Heuckelom 2007: 570), expands to
the region of new transgressions; The Idolatrous Book (a set of
pictures) indeed becomes a book (a story told).
An analogy can be drawn between the manner in which Touya
is presented and the way in which the pornographic cards are
displayed to the young Joseph at the ending of the same story. The
cards with pictures of naked women and boys in strange positions
(nagie kobiety i chopcy w dziwnych pozycjach) are first watched
by the boy with distant, unseeing eyes (dalekimi, niewidz cymi
oczyma), then the moment of sudden comprehension (CW 14;
nage zrozumienie; Op 12) inevitably comes. Both scenes seem to
be good examples of iconic intertextuality an interplay of pictures
and images (Stala 1993: 102) because sexuality is shown through
some medium, through cards, through pictures. In each case the
moment of realization is needed. The realization of how pornography
works, however, is not the realization of how art works. Touya on the
bed in her immobile frame refers to other frames (although the word
frame should not be seen as double-coded in Schulzs text),10 to other
pictures shaking them as she shakes the bed with her moves, and it is
not so much the realization of our sexuality that we are faced with as
the realization of how sexuality was (or was not) depicted. Because
the well-known and widespread convention is subverted, the effect
becomes staggering.

10
In the Polish sentence: Muchy obsiadaj nieruchom g

stym rojem (8; A dense
swarm of flies gathers around the immobile [Touya]), a frame does not appear.
206
Marta Skwara
It could be argued that the interpretation of the Touya scene is

more or less disputable; the bed, for example, can be seen as too weak
a link with the tradition. Had Touya been placed on the ground, it
could be argued, not much would have changed. Nevertheless, Schulz
avoids putting his models and heroines on the ground and seems to
keep the sofa (bed) as the prop which gives him an opportunity to
subvert social codes, especially salon codes (repeated in less majestic
yet equally pretentious drawing rooms) and perhaps also, with an
ironic wink, middle-class morality. What was ironically rendered by
Flaubert as Madam Bovarys enchantments with drawings on which
ladies lay on sofas [] gazing dreamily at the moon (Flaubert 1995:
51) is one more convention which should be kept in mind while
interpreting Schulzs scenes. The element of Madam Bovarys
dreamlike life, ladies on sofas resting in salons, well-established both
in literary and art depictions11 (at least Claude Monets Madame
Monet on the Couch (1871) should be called to mind), is usually set
apart from fine art representations of reclining women because it
seems to be devoid of eroticism, yet the same prop the sofa is in
operation here (which Toulouse-Lautrec masterfully used in In the
Salon at Rue des Moulins (1894)). Let us see what Schulz did with
that salon (drawing room) context.
At the beginning of Karakony (Cockroaches) we find a
mother who, suffering from a migraine (one more stereotypical sign of
social codes), was lying down on the sofa in the drawing room (CW
65; leaa na sofie w salonie; Op 82) with her son sitting near. He
was absent-mindedly touching with two fingers the delicate fabric of
her housecoat (CW 66; badaj c dwoma palcami, jakby w
zamyleniu, delikatn materi
jej szlafroka; Op 82) while his
conscious efforts were directed at learning what had happened to his
father, whether he had been really transformed into the condor. The
mother becomes embarrassed at the question and casts down her eyes.
Nevertheless, after a moment, she starts to masterfully use all the
tricks of a flirtatious woman: she blinks her eyes; her lips tremble
lightly, then they swell but at the same time become smaller. It is no
surprise that the son soon felt she was being coy, like a woman with

11
Ladies on sofas are also well-established in readers imaginations as the cover of

the popular edition quoted above seems to suggests; one can see a charming lady on a
sofa looking straight into a future reader. Le Sphinx by James Tissot turns into
Madame Bovary herself.
207

a strange man (CW 66; [], e mnie kokietuje, jak kobieta
m
czyzn
; Op 83). As in the case of the Touya scene, there is also
an element of movement in the salon scene. Like the black flies
around Touyas bed which rise in a buzzing cloud, the peacocks
feathers standing in a vase (the frivolous element (element
swawolny) out of Adelas control) do not stop winking, fluttering
their eyelashes (CW 66; robiy perskie oczko; Op 82). That
uncontrolled movement seems to suggest that something will be
unsettled: in Touyas case, it is our aesthetic sense whereas in the
mothers case, it is our moral sense. Schulzs play goes far beyond a
simple moral rebellion or a representation of what is really hidden
beneath the salon games around a sofa, which can be demonstrated by
evoking some literary contexts. Proust, commonly regarded as one of
Schulzs literary fathers (Brown 1991: 56-57), and his rendition of the
intimate mother-son rendezvous by the bed, seems to be the most
obvious literary context. Again, as in case of some of Schulzs
graphics, the elements which might be reversed by Schulz would be
easy to indicate; instead of a nervous boy trying to keep his mother at
his bed with his charming poses and small lies, we are presented with
an ailing mother who pretends that she does not know the truth. She
uses all her charm to distract the son from his duty, just as Prousts
son would use all his charm to distract his mother from her duty. In
both cases, the intimate mother-son rendezvous by the bed is used
against fathers (symbolizing the painful truth that one must grow up
and accept the harsh reality). In Schulzs scene the innocent childs
game was replaced with a villainous mothers game, with the shift
emphasized by the mothers erotic attractiveness.
Beyond this literary context (or beneath it) an archetypal
situation emerges because it is the young Joseph who is being
seduced. That Putifars wife, despite being older, was not a mother
could be argued here but only while disregarding the arguments of
Thomas Manns Mut. When Joseph tells her that his master Putifar is
like a father to him and that sleeping with his wife would be like
sleeping with his own mother, Mut ridicules his childishness
announcing that everybody sleeps with his mother because a woman
is the mother of the world and her son is a man who begets in his
mother (Mit der Muter schlft jeder []. Das Weib ist die Mutter
der Welt; ihr Sohn ist der Mann, und jeder Mann zeugt in der Mutter
[] (Mann 1983: 511). Mut, like Schulzs mother with a bandage
208
Marta Skwara
round her head, also bears the sign of illness, an intentionally hurt
tongue (which she cut herself at the moment she thought about killing
her husband, a thought of which Schulzs Joseph also accuses his
mother in the course of action), and most obviously, her attempts to
seduce Joseph focus on drawing him into her bed. Both Josephs,
Manns (or the biblical, see Schulz 1990: 114) and Schulzs, protest
with virtuous indignation in the name of their fathers. Seen from this
angle, Schulzs hero repeats the mythical story of failed seduction
which is in accordance with one of the levels of Schulzs
programmatic mythologizing of reality:
Nie ma okruszyny wrd naszych idei, ktra by nie pochodzia z mitologii
nie bya przeobraon , okaleczon , przeistoczon mitologi .
Najpierwotniejsz funkcj ducha jest bajanie, jest tworzenie historyj.
Si motoryczn wiedzy ludzkiej jest przewiadczenie, e znajdzie ona na
kocu swych bada ostateczny sens wiata. [] Ale elementy, ktrych
uywa do budowy, ju byy raz uyte, ju pochodz z zapomnianych i
uytych historyj. (Op 366)
(Not one scrap of an idea of ours does not originate in myth, isnt
transformed, mutilated, denatured mythology. The most fundamental
function of the spirit is inventing fables, creating tales. The driving force
of human knowledge is the conviction that at the end of its researches the
sense of the world, the meaning of life, will be found. [T]he building
materials it uses were used once before; they come from forgotten,
fragmented tales or histories; Schulz 1990: 116)
Despite the fact that Schulz ironically transforms the

history, rendering the seduction of Joseph as a salon game around a
sofa, he makes the episode meaningful in the context of the whole
story because at the end Josephs transformed father vanishes
definitively while his mother eliminates and takes over the position of
Adela the rival. By doing so, she makes her sexuality, which is
strongly emphasized in the analyzed scene, triumphant. Despite its
visibility, the scene with the mother attempting to seduce her son by
playing coy on a sofa was not noticed by interpreters. Whether one
reads the entry in Sownik schulzowski (The Schulz Dictionary; 2003:
210) or the whole article devoted to the image of the mother in
Schulzs prose (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 351), the sexual connotations
of the sofa scene are not evoked; perhaps the iconic and mythical layer
of the scene had not been decoded (despite the obvious mythical
connotation to Venus, so often represented in Schulzs graphics and
209

drawings, who was Cupids mother); or perhaps the interpreters had
found the scene too unsettling.
Having subverted our aesthetic and moral sense and having
played with all the kitsch which attracts the readers for whom Madam
Bovary is the immortal symbol, Schulz crosses one more line, that of
gender. The creature on the sofa can be attractive not because she is a
woman but because the poses and the sofa have had sexual
connotations for ages. Whoever assumes the right pose in the
convenient situation becomes sexually attractive. The salesman from
the Ulica krokodyli (The Street of Crocodiles) story arranges a
sham comedy as if illustrating Josephs fathers extravagant concept
of mimesis inverted (Stala 1993: 102) introduced in Druga jesie
(A Second Autumn); yet it is not nature that imitates art (or the
expression of pure convention, third- and fourth-rate painters) but a
human being. By manipulating a piece of cloth like a screen
ironically placed to hide the true meaning of things, the salesman is
not only a director but also an actor within that comedy, prancing
around like a transvestite (CW 59; przymila si
i kryguje i chwilami
robi wraenie transwestyty; Op 74).
His actions lead from trademarks on the material which
embody just transparent symbolism into the realm of meanings
marked by the most peculiar trademarks and highly questionable
books and private editions. Once more we are faced with books,
drawings, photographs symbolizing the depths of corruption. This
time the private scene which took place between Joseph and his
cousin in August becomes more public, everyone who enters the
shop is subjected to varieties of licentiousness manifested by visual
objects; the change in narration, with I being replaced by we,
emphasizes the common level of the experience which, with time,
turns into a general lasciviousness (CW 60). At this point, the main
actor changes his tactics from active importuning to feminine
passivity; thus the subject becomes the object. His show culminates
in a well-known display: He now lay on one of the many sofas which
stood between bookshelves, wearing a pair of deeply cut silk
pyjamas (CW 60; Ley teraz na jednej z wielu kanap,
porozstawianych wrd rejonw ksi ek, w jedwabnej piamie,
odsaniaj cej kobiecy dekolt; Op 75). The original says much more:
his pyjamas expose a female cleavage (kobiecy dekolt). This
small detail, omitted in translation, goes beyond the conventions of a
210
Marta Skwara
woman on a sofa; by adding it, Schulz enters a new realm of

transgression: transsexuality. It seems it was easier (or perhaps safer)
for Schulz to transgress the images created by words than those
represented in pictures. No similar scene is to be found in Schulzs
drawings or graphics; it is always a woman who is placed on a sofa,
though for a long time the tradition of fine arts has also known other
representations (e.g. Giovanni Lanfranco, Young Boy on a Bed, c.
1620).
Schulzs transvestite also deviates from the well-established
modernistic pattern of a hermaphrodite. Let us recall Huysmanss
famous Miss Urania, whose sex was being changed artificially in a
single moment from a typical, lovely woman, through an androgynous
phase, and finally to a complete man (Huysmans 1997: 145-146); in
one of Witkacys dramas (Maciej Korbowa i Bellatrix, 1918), the
hermaphrodite Bellatrix exhibits the same type of transformations.
Schulz does not present us with a scene of a deliberate change of sex
which more or less belongs to the fantastic (grotesque) world to which
hermaphrodites themselves belong (in ancient art often placed
alongside satyrs) but with the question of deliberately pretending to
belong to the different sex. From the world of symbolic (mythical)
figures, we move to the world of real (i.e., existing in the real world)
attitudes, from symbols of ambiguous human nature to the real
examples of such ambiguity.12 The sham comedy becomes an ironic
play with our (our being emphasized in narration) modes of
perception because the presentation takes the shape of a performance
played in the theatre with well-known props: a sofa and various
licentious pictures. If the woman on the sofa has always been used to
attract attention in art (and in life), which can be easily accepted and
agreed upon, then the easiest way of arousing the same interest is to
assume the same pose. When Schulzs transvestite does it (s)he does
not subvert the convention itself but subverts our way of interpreting
conventions and sexuality by fitting into the convention. (S)he
becomes the center of attention but his/her pose is also that of the

12
Needless to say, it is a transvestite and not a hermaphrodite who became the cult
figure of the late twentieth century and played a special role, for example, in the socalled camp literature for which Schulzs sentence from the analyzed story could be
a motto: Reality is as thin as paper and betrays with all its cracks its imitative
character (CW 61; Ta rzeczywisto jest cienka jak papier i wszystkimi szparami
zdradza sw imitatywno; Op 76).
211

spectator; (s)he watches the girls who demonstrate the poses of the
drawings in front of the sofa, while the excited onlooker is ignored.
The performance becomes an inner one which is played regardless of
our wishes; the convention goes on by itself. Escape is the only action
one can take when confronted with ironically stripped iconic layers of
our perception: [W]e slip back into the street. No one stops us (CW
61; Skorzystajmy z tego momentu nieuwagi, aeby [] wydosta si
na ulic
. Nikt nas nie zatrzymuje; Op 75-76). The roles of actors and
spectators, passive and active figures are inverted as well as gender
roles in the spectacle traditionally played out in front of the sofa.
Having subverted our aesthetic and moral sense, Schulz uses the same
iconic pattern to subvert our sense of the sexes and their roles by
shifting from literary modernistic patterns (hermaphrodite) to the
theatre of life patterns (transvestite).
All the elements discussed above seem to merge in the poses
which Bianca assumes. In the 28th section of Wiosna (Spring), she
is seen in a shining, open landau as broad and shallow as a conch
(CW 150; lni ca, otwarta landara z pudem szerokim i pytkim; Op
174). In that white, silk-lined shell Bianca is half-lying, in a tulle
dress (CW 150; W tej biaej, jedwabnej muszli [] na wp le c
w tiulowej sukience; Op 174). The aesthetics of this scene serve as
an illustration of Huysmanss Dukes opinion on furniture which, with
its shapes imitating the shapes that a womans body takes, would
cloak the woman in the sinful atmosphere of the eighteenth century.13
What was the symbol of sin becomes in Schulzs image the symbol of
innocence, which is emphasized by the whiteness. However, the
conch-shaped seat in which Bianca reclines evokes sexual
connotations. The same shape is easy to find in Schulzs drawing
called Sadystki (1919); the tradition of using the shell shape dates
back to Botticelli (Sownik schulzowski 2003: 231). The play between
innocence and sin becomes more visible in Schulzs illustrations of
the scene, which directly allude to sexuality. In one of them Biancas
legs are shown; in the other one she is naked, which clashes with the
innocence of her pose in the conch. In the course of the story, during
the night, her poses become even more ambivalent: from the conch
she is moved to the bed, the whiteness of the day scene is replaced by
13
[S]eul, en effet, le XVIIIe sicle a su envelopper la femme dune atmosphre
vicieuse, contournant les meubles selon la forme de ses charmes, imitant les
contractions de ses plaisirs, les volutes de ses spasmes (Huysmans 1997: 105).
212
Marta Skwara
the pink glow of the bed lamp. She rests on enormous pillows (CW
167; spoczywa wrd ogromnych poduszek; Op 198), though in fact
she sails on the bedding like on a night tide and the implied movement
crosses the female passivity connected with the pose on the bed. Her
power over the male spectator (Joseph again but this time in a role of a
secretary, sometimes called regent) is symbolized by the conscious
control of her glamour; flaws in her beauty seen from nearby
disappear from a distance where her beauty regenerates and
becomes unbearable (and from a distance is the only way of seeing the
woman on the sofa). Biancas indifference is emphasized by her book
reading, which irritates the busy secretary. Yet the only reaction he
deserves is irony. Later, with a characteristic gesture, Bianca puts her
pale arm under her head and mischievously plays the role of the
capricious kid, who sends all important papers to the floor with one
kick of her foot under the bedclothes.
Again, as with many of Schulzs graphics, we are presented
with a scene in which the man is ruled by the female leg and finds
himself below the woman, this time crouching and picking up papers.
The scene, just like the Touya, the mother, and the transvestite scenes,
is everything but a stable frame; the crazy rustle of the trees behind
the open window evoke in the room visions of landscapes with
innumerable trees and bushes moving past the bed (CW 168; Coraz
nowe odcinki lasu przesuwaj si
i w
druj , korowody drzew i
krzeww, cae scenerie lene pyn , rozprzestrzeniaj c si
przez
pokj; Op 200). This is only the beginning of the transformations as
the bedroom changes into a compartment, rolling slowly along a
ravine in the wooded outskirts of the city (CW 168; tocz cym si
wolno brzegiem parowu po lesistej okolicy miasta; Op 200). Even a

conductor with a lantern appears from nowhere and punches tickets
with his machine. This surrealistic transformation is far from the plays
one can find in Schulzs pictures; it is as if the surrealistic domain was
reserved (mainly) for his literary world. Nevertheless, the sense of a
bed scene does not disappear as Bianca wriggles like a lizard under
her counterpane (CW 169; jak jaszczurka pod kodr ; Op 200)
before the last act of humiliation. Having accused Joseph of a betrayal
(and having praised his rival Rudolf), she finally asks a surprising
question: Do you remember Lonka, the washerwoman Antonias
daughter, with whom you played when you were small? (CW 169;
Czy pami
tasz Lonk
, crk
Antosi, praczki, z ktr bawie si
,
213

b
d c may?; Op 200) and answers it giggling: It was I [] only I
was a boy at that time. Did you like me then? (CW 169; To byam ja
[] tylko, e byam jeszcze wwczas chopcem. Czy podobaam ci
si
wtedy?; Op 200). The hermaphrodite motif comes back, and it
does not seem to me that it is only a sign of Biancas androgyny
(Sownik schulzowski 2003: 46-49), to which I will revert.
The Bianca scene embodies the richest version of the
(wo)man on a sofa scenes rendered in Schulzs prose. It contains all
the symbolic elements crucial for the iconographic scheme and
transgresses them in the course of action: a majestic pose of a woman
high on pillows changes into a series of a lizard-like movements;
her characteristic gestures vary from expressions of indifference to
exercises of power, including the characteristic movement of a leg.
The figures of the men, in their different roles at the bed, are also
multifariously evoked: a subdued man (who is the spectator of the
display and the actor on whom the game is played), the figure of a
rival (Rudolf), and a conductor whose status is surprisingly not that of
another actor or spectator but that of a controller (who, in fact, cannot
control anything). All of these elements are set in the interior of the
bedroom which changes into a moving landscape. Just like the frame
of the scene is unsettled, all the other categories are subverted: the
moral (Biancas presupposed innocence is crossed by her betrayal),
the aesthetic (her alluring beauty changes according to the distance),
and the sexual (she is not the woman but the boy who became the
woman). All of these elements can be linked to particular fine art and
literary traditions or even sometimes to specific scenes. Biancas
poses allude to a tradition from which various gestures were adopted
and taken up in Schulzs own art (the white arm under her head, the
mischievously playful leg); the changes of objects and landscapes
refer to a surrealistic tradition, such as the one built up by Kafka, for
example. Yet, as Russell E. Brown (1991: 91) remarked, Kafkas
erotic scenes take place in the most inconvenient places, where floors
or benches are much more conspicuous than beds; Biancas sadistic or
at least hostile actions can be seen as an allusion to Sacher-Masochs
stories, which are, however, devoid of any surrealistic devices
(especially surrealistic lightness in the sense Italo Calvino spoke of in
his American lectures). The two texts seem to be particularly in
agreement with the Bianca scene and can be used to illuminate further
interpretations. However, let us look once more at Schulzs literary
214
Marta Skwara
father, Thomas Mann, and his heroine Clawdia Chauchat. At the

beginning of the novel she is set typically in the center of the group,
on the sofa and admired from a distance by Hans Castorp. At the
culmination of his enchantment, during Walpurgis Night, later called
the additional time (the Bianca scene takes place during an extra
night, called noc zamarginesowa), the young admirer brings a soft
armchair in which Clawdia adopts almost a lying pose. Although
she places her knees too high, she still crosses her legs and keeps
rocking one of them (the fact that it was dressed in a black stocking
and a shining black shoe should not surprise us).14 It is no wonder that
Hans ends up kneeling before her and declares his passionate love,
only to be dismissed. Equally as capricious as Bianca, Clawdia also
bears a similar sign of transsexuality; her eyes are the eyes of
Prybislaw, the boy with whom Hans was infatuated as a youth. When
we keep Prybislaw/Clawdia in mind, Biancas revelation that she was
a boy once does not seem astonishing; her figure obviously goes
beyond the mythical context of androgyny and enters the realm of
literary dialogue. Manns Clawdia is also put on pillows in a sledge,
first when she leaves the sanatorium with her compatriot, then when
she comes back with Hanss rival at her side. Perhaps it should not be
surprising that the integral elements in Biancas appearance are all
found in Manns story which is shaped by the same tradition though
considerably condensed (to the length of two pages!), transformed,
and put into a surrealistic domain, into Schulzs specific world.
Also, Marcel and Albertina should not be forgotten in the
context of great love scenes in which a kneeling admirer is dismissed
and humiliated by an indifferent woman lying on a bed. As Marcel
approached too closely, he lost his balance and dared to try kissing the
one who was only supposed to be watched (Proust 1991: 752-753).
(Bianca, in her wisdom, spared her admirer that destructive closeness.)
The humiliated Marcel at last conquers the object of his admiration
during a reverted scene (as he himself says), when he lies down in a
bed, and Albertina sits near. Perhaps that change of position turned
him from the victim into the conqueror. Such a change never happens
to Schulzs Joseph who always remains on the verge of the sexual

14
Sie ihrerseits lag allzu tief in dem Plschgehnge, ihre Knie waren emporgehoben,
doch schlug sie trotzdem das eine ber das andere und lie ihren Fu in der Hhe
wippen, dessen Knchel ber dem Rande des schwarzen Lackschuhs von der
ebenfalls schwarzen Seide des Strumpfes berspannt war (Mann 1981: 470).
215

activities of an adult, while retaining the timidity and diffidence of a
middle-class child (Brown 1991: 60).
Conclusion
Regardless of how many contexts of a particular motif one can
indicate,15 trying to fulfill the encyclopedic Stoffgeschichte task, the
way in which Schulz uses well-known art and literary motifs, has less
to do with intertextuality between specific works than with the entire
cultural code comprised of discourses, stereotypes, clichs, and
various modes of artistic and literary representations. Schulzs
astonishing ability to transgress them makes his text a writerly one
in Barthess sense the text of bliss that imposes a state of loss, the
text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of certain boredom),
unsettles the readers historical, cultural, psychological assumptions,
the consistency of his tastes, values, memories [] (Barthes 1975:
14). Because of this, Schulzs works will always seem to be
simultaneously similar to a particular tradition and different from it16
as his constant play with well-established literary and fine art images
is far from being limited. For the same reason, his texts remain
modern and seductive, especially because they deal with the theatre of
love we all share, the theatre in which a woman who is watched and
admired and a man who watches and admires her have played their
(and not only their) parts for ages. Schulz puts us all in the position of
spectators/voyeurs not only in his art but also in his writing and
does not allow us to forget that we are voyeurs of some higher degree;
15
One could also ask about the traditions which are not evoked, like women dying in
beds, as it often happens in Poes stories, especially since Poe is one of a few writers
evoked by name in Schulzs prose though he is characteristically mistaken for
Baudelaire. Illness and death are not connected with a woman in neither Schulzs
stories nor his pictures; the other tradition of a man in bed, ill and dying, could be
explored instead.
16
In the case of the motif discussed it could be said that Schulz resembles Kafka
while employing surrealistic transformations yet not while applying an iconic layer,
or that he seems to be close to Prousts autobiographical narration yet goes much
further in the transgressions of salon codes; or that he is close to Mann when reaching
for an archetypal layer while being more ironic; or that he delves into the world of art
like Huysmans and Kubin (and that his Crocodile Street reminds one of Huysmanss
Rivoli Street or Kubins French district) yet is more deeply embedded in the world of
nature; or that, at last, he alludes to Sacher-Masochs stories while operating on a
level which goes far beyond set stereotypes.
216
Marta Skwara
we are the spectators of scenes watched before and witnessed many

times in many different circumstances, both in art and literature as
well as in life. In a masterful way, he makes us see them differently,
not beside the broad tradition but through it and beyond it, with new
meanings to be discovered.
In his many drawings and graphics, from simple sketches to
complex scenes, Schulz seems to practice his ability of unsettling our
assumptions by playing with well-known elements and displacing
them (as it happens with a book which is no longer reserved for a
woman on a sofa) rather than by transgressing conventions; in this
sense his art could be called a painterly one. In his published books,
not accidentally limited to two collections of perfectly wrought short
stories, he transgresses both conventions and our expectations.17
Annette Laverss definition of the writerly text seems to suit
Schulzs world perfectly; his text has to be created anew in each
reader, the observer being part of the observed (Lavers 1982: 202).
The mode, however, in which Schulz creates his world is far from
postmodern free play. Despite the fact that he witnesses the
bankruptcy of reality, the ever-present atmosphere of the stage, of
sets viewed from behind, where the actors make fun of the pathos of
their parts after stripping off their costumes (Schulz 1990: 113;
atmosfera kulis, tylnej strony sceny, gdzie aktorzy po zrzuceniu
kostiumw zamiewaj si
z patosu swych rl; Op 445) the
varieties of the (wo)man on a sofa scenes seem to illustrate this
excellently he also constantly searches for primeval patterns,
stories, matrices of myth out of which he creates his own private
mythology, and this is what has to be created in each reader anew, the
reader being part of the reading.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text (tr. R. Miller). New York: Hill and
Wang.
Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 1994. Witkacy-Schulz, Schulz-Witkacy in Jarz
bski, Jerzy
(ed.) Czytanie Schulza. Krakw: Instytut Filologii Polskiej UJ: 127-151.

17
Schulz himself put it this way: A drawing sets narrower limits by its material than
prose does. That is why I feel I have expressed myself more fully in my writing.
(Schulz 1990a: 112; Rysunek zakrela cianiejsze granice swym materiaem ni
proza. Dlatego s dz
, e w prozie wypowiedziaem si
peniej; Op 443-444).
217

Brown, Russell E. 1991. Myths and Relatives. Seven Essays on Bruno Schulz.
Mnchen: Verlag Otto Sagner.
Flaubert, Gustave. 1995. Madame Bovary (tr. T. Russell). London: Penguin.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 1988. Introduction in Schulz, Bruno. Xiga Bawochwalcza (ed. J.
Ficowski). Warsaw: Interpress: 5-54.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 1998, Introduction to Drawings in Schulz (1998): 505-522.
Huysmans, Joris-Karl. 1997. rebours. (ed. D. Mortier). Paris: Pocket.
Jaworski, Roman. 1978. Historie maniakw. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata. 2003. Matka wychodzi z cienia in Kitowska-ysiak,
Magorzata and Wadysaw Panas (eds). W uamkach zwierciadaBruno
Schulz w 110 rocznic urodzin i 60 rocznic mierci. Lublin: Towarzystwo
Naukowe KUL: 341-355.
Lavers, Annette. 1982. Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After. London: Methuen.
Lucie-Smith, Edward. 1995. Sexuality in Western Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Mann, Thomas. 1981. Der Zauberberg. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag.
. 1983. Joseph und seine Brder III. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag.
Proust, Marcel. 1991. A la recherche du temps perdu. A lombre des jeunes filles en
fleurs. (ed. J. Yoshida). Paris: ditions Robert Laffont, S.A.
bski).
. 1990. An Essay for S. I. Witkiewicz; The Mythologizing of Reality in
Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz with Selected Prose (ed. J. Ficowski,
tr. W. Arndt and V. Nelson). New York: Fromm International Publishing
Corporation: 110-114, 115-117.
. 1992. Bruno Schulz 1892-1942: Rysunki i archiwalia ze zbiorw Muzeum
Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie (ed. W. Chmurzyski).
Warszawa: Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie.
. 1998. The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). London: Picador.
Sownik schulzowski. 2003. (ed. W. Bolecki et al.) Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria.
Van Heuckelom, Kris. 2007. Koncepcja idolatrii w twrczoci Brunona Schulza z
punktu widzenia studiw wizualnych in Czermiska, Magorzata et al.
(eds). Literatura, kultura i jzyk polski w kontekstach i kontaktach
wiatowych. Pozna: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM: 563-571.
Witkiewicz, Stanisaw Ignacy. 1990. Interview with Bruno Schulz in: Letters and
Drawings of Bruno Schulz. With Selected Prose: (ed. J. Ficowski, tr. W.
Arndt and V. Nelson). New York: Fromm International Publishing
Corporation: 107-110.
. 1996. 622 upadki Bunga, czyli Demoniczna kobieta. (ed. A. Miciska).
Warszawa: PIW.
The Early Graphic Works of Bruno Schulz and SacherMasochs Venus in Furs: Schulz as a Modernist
Ariko Kato
Abstract: This article discusses the early graphic works of Bruno Schulz in relation to
Leopold von Sacher-Masochs novel Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs, 1870). First, it
demonstrates that some pictures from Xiga bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book)
were inspired by Sacher-Masochs novel. Second, it illustrates the similarity between
Schulz and Sacher-Masoch with regard to the issue of mimesis. Finally, based on an
examination of the reception of Sacher-Masochs works and the popularity of
Freudian theory in Polish-speaking circles prior to WWII, the essay reconsiders the
Schulz-masochist discourse that was first proposed in the 1930s.
Introduction
This article discusses the early graphic works of Bruno Schulz in
relation to Leopold von Sacher-Masochs novel Venus im Pelz (Venus
in Furs, 1870). Edmund Lwenthals remembers that Schulz made
illustrations for Sacher-Masochs Venus in Furs by using the
technique of clich-verre (Schulz 1984: 55).1 Jerzy Ficowski, who
included this reminiscence in his books on Schulz, regarded Schulzs
explanation to be a mere camouflage to hide his real nature, which
was apparent in his graphics (Ficowski 1986: 32; 2002: 246). The
reminiscence has been largely ignored and little attention has been
paid to Sacher-Masochs novels in discussions on Schulzs works.2
In general, Schulzs graphic works that portray a specific
conceptualization of women and men (e.g., Xiga bawochwalcza) are
described as masochistic or sadomasochistic, which has caused

1
Lwenthal was a friend of Schulzs nephew who lived with Schulz in Drohobycz.
An exception is Nella Cassouto, who briefly reminded of this reminiscence and
admitted the influence of Sacher-Masochs novel on Schulzs works (1990: 22-27).
Krystyna Kulig-Janarek also made reference to Venus in Furs in her article on the
graphic works of Schulz (1994: 155).
220
Ariko Kato
confusion between his own life and the subjects in his works.3
Schulzs early graphic works are often regarded as an output of his
hidden sexuality; alternatively, the graphic works are viewed as if they
were created as illustrations for his later novels. In accordance with
the stereotypical views of Schulz as a masochist, Sacher-Masochs
name tends to be taboo in any discussion on Schulz.
Discussions of Schulzs graphic works have often centered on
the subjects in his works, without considering the years of production.
In this article, I will concentrate on his works produced in the 1910s
and 20s, before his literary debut, in order to uncover common
features in his early graphics and later prose. First, I will compare the
images in Xiga bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book) with the text of
Venus in Furs in order to examine Lwenthals reminiscence. Second,
by focusing on the self-referential motif in the early graphics of
Schulz and Sacher-Masochs novel and the manner in which
mythological motifs are adapted in them, I will present the common
concerns of Schulz and Sacher-Masoch with regard to the issue of
mimesis. Finally, I will suggest a reconsideration of the post-1930
discourse on Schulz-masochist, based on an examination of the
reception given to Sacher-Masochs works and the popularity of
Freudian theory in Polish-speaking circles before World War II. The
last examination supports my assumption that Schulz, who could also
read German, was influenced by Venus in Furs. Based on the entire
discussion, I will present Sacher-Masoch as an important figure in the
study of Schulzs works and Schulz as a modernist whose works took
up important issues with regard to artistic representation.
Comparison of The Idolatrous Book with Venus in Furs:
Undula/Wanda
To begin with, I compare The Idolatrous Book with the text of Venus
in Furs. In Venus in Furs, the physical appearance of the heroine,

3
Irena Kossowska and ukasz Kossowski (2002: 26) also suggested distinguishing
between what was represented in Schulzs images from the life of the artist. There are
many academic articles on his graphic works. Krystyna Kulig-Janarek (1993) has
provided iconological analyses. Jan Gondowicz (2006) has discussed Schulzs graphic
works in the wide contexts of culture and history. Cf. also Kitowska-ysiak (1994b,
2002) and Kasjaniuk (1993) for in-depth discussions of Schulzs graphic works.
The Early Graphic Works of Schulz and Sacher-Masochs Venus in Furs
221

Wanda, is introduced to the readers as a figure portrayed in a picture.
The narrator describes the image as follows:
A beautiful woman, with a sunny smile on her fine face, with rich,
classically knotted hair covered with white powder like soft frost: naked in
a dark fur, she reclined on a sofa, leaning on her left arm, her right hand
playing with a whip, her bare foot casually propped on the man, who lay
before her like a slave, like a dog. And this man, who revealed salient but
well-shaped features infused with brooding melancholy and devoted
passion, this man, who peered up at her with the burning, enraptured eyes
of a martyr, this man, who served as a footstool for her feet this man
was Severin, but beardless and apparently ten years younger. (2000: 8)4
Krystyna Kulig-Janarek (1994: 155) also cited this depiction to draw

similarities between Venus in Furs and The Idolatrous Book. This
image of Wanda, depicted three times in Venus, agrees with the
portrayal of the woman named Undula5 in Schulzs The Idolatrous
Book.
The Idolatrous Book is a portfolio comprised of ten or more
clich-verre works. The selection of clich-verre works is different in
each portfolio. Jerzy Ficowski (2002: 252-253), the pioneering scholar
on Schulz and the editor of Schulzs graphic albums in Poland and
abroad, wrote that Schulz signed his name and sometimes provided a
title under his graphics. In addition, Schulz sometimes gave a different
title to the same picture. Through my investigations,6 I noticed that the
graphics included in a set of The Idolatrous Book owned by the
National Museum of Krakow (NMK), along with some of the graphics

4
All further references to the English text of Venus im Pelz will be given as ViF. The
Polish translation of the fragment does not closely follow the original and
interestingly lends a sadomasochistic tone to the scene (Sacher-Masoch 1989: 24), as
will be discussed below.
5
The drawing reprinted in 1930, in the second issue of Cusztajer (Gift), a Yiddish
journal published in Lviv, is similar to that known as Zaczarowane miasto (The
Enchanted City) in The Idolatrous Book; however, it is titled as Undula oyfn
shpatsir (Undula Takes a Walk) though the women are not similar to Undula. It
seems that Undula was the name that was symbolically used by Schulz for the heroine
in his graphics even after The Idolatrous Book.
6
I examined the copies of The Idolatrous Book that are in the National Museum of
Warsaw (NMW), the National Museum of Krakow (NMK), the Library of
Jagiellonian University (JU), and the Museum of Literature in Warsaw (ML). I thank
the curators of these museums for their timely help and suggestions, as well as
Krystyna Kulig-Janarek, a curator of NMK, for the detailed information with regard
to the issue of the titles and signatures of Schulzs graphics.
222
Ariko Kato
included in The Idolatrous Book owned by the National Museum of

Warsaw (NMW), and the Museum of Literature (ML), are entitled and
signed by Schulz. Moreover, a frontispiece of the set owned by the
NMW presents a list of titles, although the list does not completely
correspond with the contents (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 420). However,
from the titles of these graphics, we can identify the female figure that
appears in several graphics as Undula. In this article, I limit my
discussion to those graphics wherein the described titles or
circumstances indicate that the heroine is Undula.
The pose of Wanda described in the above quotation is
represented in the image of Undula. Schulzs graphic entitled Jeszcze
raz Undula (Undula, Once Again [il. 1, ML]) depicts Undula sitting
on a bed, with her foot on the neck of a man. Xi
ga bawochwalcza
(The Idolatrous Book [il. 2, NMK]) shows Undula7 reclining on a
bed with a whip.8 We should also not overlook the conformity of their
hairstyles (awka (Bench [il. 3, NMW]), Undula, Once Again
and Undula u artystw (Undula with the Artists [il. 4, NMW])9.
Some of the women in The Idolatrous Book, including Undula, tie
their hair in a knot, sometimes with a ribbon, which Jan Gondowicz
(2006: 66) described as la grecque. In fact, the classically
knotted (ViF 8) hairstyle of Wanda in the portrait, described later, is
fastened with a green ribbon.10 Given the contextual backdrop, we
also discern that the hairstyle is similar to that of the statue of Venus.11
Incidentally, this knotted hairstyle was commonly used for goddesses
in European paintings on mythological narratives.
7
The Idolatrous Book possessed by the NMK includes two pictures portraying the
same woman with a hat. Schulz entitles them as Undula w nocy (Undula at Night)
and Xi
ga bawochwalcza. We can guess, based on the former title, that the woman
in the latter picture is Undula as well.
8
The woman in Jej garderobiana (The Dresser [il. 16, NMW]) also poses in a
similar manner.
9
In the Polish version, however, there is no description of Wandas hairstyle but a
description of fur that is rich and dark (futrem o obfitym ciemnym wosie;
Sacher-Masoch 1989: 24).
10
[Wanda] then had me tie her heavy, electric hair into a large chignon held together
by the green velvet ribbon (ViF 90).
11
In the opening pages, the narrator dreams that he talks with a living statue of Venus
wearing fur in the cold North Country. Awoken by a servant, the narrator then visits
Severin and finds the portrait of Wanda, who is exactly like the Venus of whom he
dreamt.
223

Let us compare the picture called Bench12 with a scene in
Venus in Furs. The woman in this picture resembles Undula, who is
explicitly represented in other pictures (for example, Undula, once
Again). The hero Severin proposes to Wanda:
[] If you can't be a decent, faithful wife, then be a devil. [] I no
longer know what I said, but I do recall that I kissed her feet and finally
picked up her foot and placed it on the nape of my neck. (ViF 39)
This scene takes place in a park and she [Wanda] sat down on one of
the stone benches (ViF 39). The picture Bench completely agrees
with this scene. This is the only picture that has the background drawn
in the real view, which strengthens the assumption that the depiction is
based on Venus in Furs. Moreover, a man kissing or throwing himself
at a womans feet is typical in Schulzs graphics while Severin also
frequently adopts this pose.
The Idolatrous Book depicts a man sitting at Undulas feet
and reading a book to her. In fact, Venus in Furs has many scenes in
which Severin reads a book to Wanda. For instance, I [Severin] sat
down at her feet and read her a little poem that I had penned for her
(ViF 22). In addition, a poem titled Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs)
begins as follows: Gracious, devilish, mythical lady. / Put your foot
upon your slave [] (ViF 23). The picture titled Undula w nocy
(Undula at Night [il. 5, NMK]) and the one identified with the title
Undula idzie w noc (Undula Walks into the Night [il. 6, NMW])13
depict a man respectfully accompanying Undula. These pictures can
also be understood with reference to the novel. Severin plays the part
of Wandas servant and follows her during a trip to Florence. In one of
these scenes, Wanda wears a Russian hat and attracts attention on the
street, which is consistent with Undulas depiction in the second of the
two pictures.
It is important to note that at the beginning of the novel,
Wanda was Severins witty and tender lover; he was the one who
awakened her latent demonic character and urged her to behave
cruelly with him. Among the women portrayed in The Idolatrous
Book, Undula is the only one who has such a sympathetic expression

12
The picture Bench owned by the NMW is not titled by the author (it only bears his
signature).
13
This picture is not titled by the author (it only bears his signature).
224
Ariko Kato
which contrasts to her masterful pose. Moreover, she and Zuzanna are
the only two recurring figures in The Idolatrous Book to be given
names.
It is true that Schulzs images do not always have a one-to-one
correspondence with the novel; however, his graphics, which he
created for his novels in the 1930s, reveal to us that what he termed
illustrations were not precise visualizations of a concrete scene. The
moderate appearance of the image of fur might be explained simply
by the disagreement with the artists intention or by the technical
difficulty in representing fur in black-and-white clich-verre works. In
fact, it is rather difficult to distinguish fur-like objects from a
background of black shadows.14
Based on this analysis, we can validate Lwenthals
reminiscence about some images in The Idolatrous Book. The
graphics depicting Undula have many similarities with the
descriptions in Venus in Furs; so much so that Undula can be
considered to represent Wanda. Bench and Undulas images are
directly inspired by Venus in Furs and were supposed to be
illustrations for this novel.
The question that remains to be asked is whether Schulz
designed these graphics as part of an order for the publication of
Sacher-Masochs Venus in Furs or created them of his own accord.
The Idolatrous Book is thought to have been produced around the
years 1920 to 1922. Meanwhile, the Polish version of Venus was first
published in Lviv in 1913, with the second edition also published in
Lviv in 1919.15 Incidentally, neither of these publications have
illustrations except for a picture of a slender woman in a fur coat and a
fur hat on the cover of the second edition, though it is drawn in a style
different from that of Schulz. Little is known about his life in those
years, yet it is more likely that he created these illustrations for this
novel of his own accord, before his debut as a graphic artist. In either
case, it is likely that the reissue of the Polish version of this novel

14
We can find the depiction of fur in Plemi

pariasw (Tribe of Pariahs). Black
shadows of Undula, Once Again and The Idolatrous Book look like fur, though
this remains no more than speculation. In other pictures, only fur-like articles on
womens costumes are found.
15
The reissue, from 1989, provides its original as that published in 1920 by the same
publisher (Sacher-Masoch 1989); however, I could not find this edition.
225

gave Schulz, who could also read German, the idea to create
illustrations for this novel.
Similar Concerns between Schulz and Sacher-Masoch: The Issue
of Artistic Representation
After comparing Schulzs images with the descriptions from SacherMasochs novel, let us now examine the usage of the mythological
motif of Venus and the representation of art in Schulzs graphics made
in the 1910s and 1920s and Sacher-Masochs Venus in Furs. These
works are usually regarded as representing masochistic motifs in a
naturalistic style; in reality, they addressed the issue of mimesis from
a modernistic perspective.
As the title Venus in Furs indicates, the goddess Venus is the
central motif in the novel. It is important to note that Wanda
represents the pagan world of the South as opposed to the Christian
world of the North to which Severin a Galician landlord
belongs. Wanda is the modern personification of goddess Venus.
Their romance represents the encounter between ancient spirituality
and modern Christian spirituality. Not just Wandas mentality but also
her looks are compared to those of Venus. The German painter who
painted Wandas portrait, quoted in the first section of this article,
explained that he imagined the Goddess of Love, who has left Mount
Olympus and descended for the sake of a mortal man in the modern
world (ViF 93). He explains his understanding of the portrait as
follows: Like many paintings of the Venetian school, this should be
both a portrait and a narrative; (ViF 92; Das Bild soll, wie viele der
venezianischen Schule, zugleich ein Portrt und eine Historie
werden; Sacher-Masoch 1980: 109; italics mine). The German
painters idea of the portrait reminds us of historical paintings that
visualize mythological, biblical, or historical narratives. In De pictura
(On Painting, 1435), which served as one of the seminal works on
European painting until the end of the nineteenth century, Renaissance
theoretician Leon Battista Alberti proposed the notion of istoria as
paintings of a new age. He discussed in detail the characteristics of the
concept, which refers to a depiction of an event largely extracted from
an ancient written source, and the way to realize it. He regarded
istoria as the greatest work of the painter, in which there ought to be
copiousness and elegance in all things (Alberti 1976: 95). Referring
226
Ariko Kato
to the mythological narrative, the German painter therefore follows

the tradition of istoria and the later historical painting; however, by
modifying the concept that was originally supposed to depict high
literature and featuring a secular womans portrait instead, he creates a
new narrative in his painting.
This idea of the painter also agrees with that of Schulz. The
Greek mythological motifs in Schulzs early graphics have already
been pointed out.16 As a matter of fact, some of the women presented
in these graphics, not only from The Idolatrous Book, have
iconographic references to goddess Venus. We find several attributes
of Venus: Amor17 and Shell18. Schulz even drew two pencil sketches
(Venus and Amor and Venus and Amor [II], both before 1933 [il.
10, il. 11, ML) whose compositions were similar to that of
Velzquezs Venus at Her Mirror. In addition, some picture titles in
The Idolatrous Book contain references to goddess Venus Wiosna
(Spring), wi
to wiosny (Rite of Spring), and Na Cyterze (On
Cythera [il. 13]).19 Venus is associated with spring in historical
paintings (Battistini 2005: 34-35), and the island Cythera was the
place where Venus drifted after her birth. This picture depicts a
woman who has just arrived, which agrees with this mythological
plot.20 Schulz thus compares the woman to the goddess in his early
graphics. However, many of the women represented in the early
graphics of Schulz, including the above three works from The

16
The important articles on this topic include the following: Kulig-Janarek (1993),
Kitowska-ysiak (1994c). Kitowska-ysiak (1994c: 255) also pointed out the
inspiration of the myth of Venus in Schulzs graphics.
17
Swawolne kobiety (Playful Women, 1916 [il. 7]), Autoportret przy pulpicie
rysowniczym (Self-portrait Before an Easel, 1919 [il. 8]), Odwieczna ba (The
Eternal Fairy Tale, from The Idolatrous Book [il. 9]), Wenus i Amor and Wenus i
Amor (II), both before 1933 [il. 10, il. 11]).
18
Self-portrait before an Easel and Kobiety, sadystki (Women, Sadists, 1919 [il.
12]). The same remark is also found in Kulig-Janareks article (1994: 155).
19
The following are the three graphics that Schulz gave titles to: Wiosna (Spring
[NMK]), wi
to wiosny (Rite of Spring [NMW]), and Na Cyterze (On Cythera
[NMW]).
20
This picture also literally visualizes what Wanda says: But the person who wants
pleasure.mustnt shy away from indulging at other peoples expense, he must never
feel pity. He must harness others to his carriage, to his plow like animals (ViF 115).
However, we cannot regard it as a direct inspiration of Sacher-Masochs novel
because this type of image of men harnessed to a carriage was popular in Europe since
the latter half of the nineteenth century. Cf. Noyes (1997), especially chapter 4, for a
discussion of this topic.
227

Idolatrous Book, are dressed in modern clothes if they are not naked.
Moreover, the backgrounds in these pictures convey the impression
that the scenes depicted take place in modern times. Both SacherMasoch and Schulz compared the woman to Venus; however, they
transferred the subject to modern settings and adopted the motif,
which was taken from the original mythological context, in a manner
that enabled them to recreate history on their own. In this way,
Schulzs graphics and the portrait of Wanda in Venus in Furs
remodelled the history of Venus; in modern contexts, Venus appeared
as a cruel woman with a whip, reflecting the zeitgeist of the modern
period.
It seems that Schulz consciously challenged and parodied
historical paintings, which were considered the highest form of art. An
example is Self-portrait Before an Easel (1919 [il. 8]). It depicts two
framed paintings hung on the wall against which the artist, Schulz,
stands before an easel. These two paintings parody religious and
mythological paintings. In one of the paintings, a man dressed in a
monks habit is shown kneeling down similar to what is shown in the
religious paintings; however, he is not kneeling before Christ or the
Madonna but before a naked woman. In the other image, the motif of
Judith is adopted and mingled with that of Venus. A naked woman
with a smiling face is sitting on the edge of an open shell, which is
filled with a black, blood-like liquid. The head of a man lies at her
feet. Two women hold his headless body at the other side of the
shells edge. These examples prove Schulzs sound knowledge of
mythological and biblical motifs in the tradition of European paintings
and his critical reconsideration of its conventions.
Apart from parodying historical paintings, Sacher-Masoch and
Schulz also questioned the conventional understanding of works of art
as imitative representations of nature or narrative. Schulzs
Autoportret ze Stanisawem Weingartenem (Self-portrait with
Stanisaw Weingarten, 1921 [il. 14]) presents the elements related to
a picture at different levels: the artist gazing directly at viewers; the
portrayed person; the works of plastic art (pictures, sculptures);
models or figures represented in a picture; and a picture frame drawn
on the edge of the mat board on which the main drawing is glued.
The drawing is shown as a painting whose composition adopts the
common juxtaposition of the images of a man and his dreams or the
divine revelation in historical paintings of biblical narratives.
228
Ariko Kato
However, this juxtaposition fulfills a role that is different from those

fulfilled by historical paintings depicting biblical stories. It takes up a
theoretical question on representation in the work of art. According to
Alberti,21 a figure looking at viewers in traditional narrative paintings
sometimes plays a role in calling our attention to a picture. In this
drawing, the artist, Schulz, standing in the back and gazing at viewers,
plays this role. The drawn Schulz indicates that he depicted all human
figures that were supposed to belong to different levels the artist, the
person portrayed, posing models or figures represented in a picture
simply as represented figures in a plan. After the traditional
composition of historical painting, Schulz paradoxically questions the
ground on which it stands and rejects the traditional understanding of
works of art as an imitative representation of nature or narrative.22
In addition, in Venus in Furs, the motif of works of art is
scattered and shows a similar view on art.23 The figure of Venus
appears in various forms as a plaster sculpture, as a figure in a
picture, and as the heroine Wanda. This also reminds us of Undula
with the Artists from The Idolatrous Book. Venus in Furs is a frame
story, consisting of two narratives by two narrators at two different
times narration in the present time frames the manuscript written by
Severin about the past episodes between him and Wanda. This
structure enables the story to develop in a manner such that it gives
the reader the illusion that reality imitates artistic representation.24
Moreover, by using language to describe visual art, the distinctions
between reality and representation in art and between the original and
21
In an istoria I like to see someone who admonishes and points out to us what is
happening there; or beckons with his hand to see; or menaces with an angry face and
with flashing eyes, so that no one should come near; or shows some danger or
marvellous thing there; or invites us to weep or to laugh together with them. Thus
whatever the painted persons do among themselves or with the beholder, all is pointed
toward ornamenting or teaching the istoria (Alberti 1976: 78).
22
Kris Van Heuckelom (2006) discussed The Idolatrous Book as an embodiment of
artistic crossover of the verbal and the visual.
23
I owe the inspiration to consider the issue of representation in Leopold von SacherMasochs works to the following studies: Hirano (2004) and Tanemura (2004).
24
Severin even confesses that Wanda reminds him of the legend of the sculptor
Pygmalion, whose statue of a woman came to life: Yes, she had to come alive for
me, like that statue that had started breathing for her creator (ViF 15).
229

copy are suspended.25 This novel challenges the basic understanding
of artworks as a copy of reality.
As mentioned earlier, in Venus in Furs, there are three
depictions of Wandas portrait: first, as a portrait through the
narrators eyes; second, as an actual occurrence between Wanda and
Severin; and finally, the scene in which they again pose before the
German painter who made the portrait in the first depiction.26 After
the second depiction of Wandas image in the novel, Severin found
their image reflected in a mirror:
[] she, placing her one foot upon me as if on a footstool, rested on the
cushions in the large velvet mantle. The supple fur lasciviously snuggled
around her cold marble body, and her left arm, on which she propped
herself like a slumbering swan, remained in the dark sable of the sleeve,
while her right27 hand carelessly played with the whip.
I [Severin] happened to glance at the massive mirror on the opposite wall
and I cried out, for I saw us in its golden frame as if in a painting []
(ViF 90-91; italics mine)
This scene clearly reflects Sacher-Masochs awareness of the issue of

mimesis. He suspends the clear distinction between reality and artistic
representation. Furthermore, the scene captures the moment of the
birth of an artwork; here, a real-life scene has been transformed into
an image through the eyes of a man who has defamiliarized reality.
In the above quotation, the frame of the mirror is a device that
encourages us to notice the boundary between a plan of a picture and
its external environment. In this scene, the frame might be a part of
the picture; however, at the same time, it belongs to the external
world. This scene, therefore, reminds us of the concept of parergon
that Jacques Derrida renewed based on Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft
(The Critique of Judgment). As observed above, Schulzs graphics
Self-portrait with Stanisaw Weingarten and Self-portrait before an
Easel also present picture frames. In the former, Schulz represented
the ambiguity of the frame as a parergon in concord with Derridas

25
Incidentally, suspension is a key term in Gilles Deleuzes study on Sacher-Masoch

(1998).
26
Wanda, dressed only in the sable and clutching the whip, came downstairs and
once more stretched out on the velvet cushions. I lay at her feet, and she put one foot
on me while her right hand played with the whip (ViF 92).
27
Left in the German original.
230
Ariko Kato
meaning. Moreover, he makes the viewers aware of the system on

which their reception of the painting relies.28
We observed in this chapter that Sacher-Masoch and Schulz
share a similar modernist concern with regard to the issue of mimesis.
In their stylistically naturalistic works, they questioned the
conventions of traditional European paintings after the Renaissance
and tried to represent this issue in their own way. Analysis of Schulzs
early graphics leads us to believe that he was well-versed in European
paintings. His later career as an art teacher at the local gymnasium
supports this view. Thus his stay in Vienna during World War I,
before he made the abovementioned graphics, also becomes
meaningful. Based on his knowledge of the European paintings from
the Renaissance to the first period of modernism, Schulz critically
reconsidered the conventions used in historical paintings and the issue
of representation in this tradition, consciously raising relevant issues
in his graphics.
Reception of Sacher-Masochs Novel in the Polish-Speaking
Sphere before World War II
I would like to focus further on how Sacher-Masochs novels were
introduced into the Polish-speaking sphere prior to World War II.29 A
reconstruction of the common perception of Sacher-Masoch in that
period helps us to reconsider the unquestioned discourses presenting
Schulz as a masochist. Until the end of World War I, south-eastern
Poland and Lviv belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Unsurprisingly, the Polish intellectuals in Galicia read German during
that era. Schulz, who was born in 1892, in Drohobycz, was no
exception.
The first Polish translation of Sacher-Masochs works was
published in Warsaw in 1904. It was Warjat z Firlejwki (A Madman
from Firlejwka), a Poe-like Gothic story that did not have so-called
strikingly masochistic scenes. However, the other two titles published

28
I discussed parergon and Schulzs graphic works in a conference paper titled Obraz
i Ksi
ga. O autoreferencyjnoci w twrczoci Brunona Schulza (Lublin, forthcoming
in Biae plamy w schulzologii).
29
I searched for the Polish translations of Sacher-Masochs novels at libraries in
Poland and Lviv (the National Library in Warsaw, the Library of Warsaw University,
the Library of Jagiellonian University, and the Stefanyka Library in Lviv).
231

in Polish concentrated solely on cruel women and were published in
Lviv: Wenus w futrze (Venus in Furs) and Gro
ne kobiety (Cruel
Women).
In 1911, the first two volumes of the six-volume series
Grausame Frauen (Cruel Women, 1907)30 were published, along with
its original subtitles Gro
ne kobiety: Sfinksy (Dangerous Women:
Sphinxes) and Gro
ne kobiety: Silne Serca (Dangerous Women:
Strong Heart), in Lviv by the publisher Kultura i Sztuka (Culture
and Art).31 A year or two later (1912 or 1913),32 they were combined
into one book and republished with a slightly changed title:
Demoniczne kobiety (Demonic Women). Incidentally, Schulz was a
student of the Polytechnic College in Lviv until the outbreak of World
War I. Around 1920, even a third edition of the book was published.
As briefly mentioned above, the first translation of Venus in
Furs was published in 1913, by the publisher Globus in Lviv. In 1919,
the second revised edition of this book was published by Culture and
Art in Lviv.33
To sum up, before World War I, people had already read
Sacher-Masochs novels in Polish and knew him for his writings about
the specific relationship between men and women. On the back pages
of the book Demonic Women (1913), Sacher-Masochs short stories
were advertised as those portraying the cruelty inflicted by women on
men. The following was written about Venus in Furs:
Sacher-Masoch odsania nam miao smutn prawd
o okruciestwie
drzemi cem na dnie duszy kobiecej. Jest on przedstawicielem pogl du, e
pi
kna kobieta posiada w sobie pierwiastki dzikiego despotyzmu i e
stosuje ten despotyzm do m
czyzny, jeli on tylko nie potrafi zapanowa
nad ni bezwzgl
dnie. St d ma Sacher-Masoch suszn saw
jako z

30
It was published in Leipzig, twelve years after the death of Sacher-Masoch.

Given the volume numbers, it seems that the Polish publisher planned to publish the
complete series in Polish.
32
According to the central catalogue of the National Library in Warsaw, the first
edition of Demonic Women was issued in 1912. However, it is not held by the library.
The second and third editions, published in 1913, and around 1920, respectively, are
in several libraries.
33
The main publisher of Sacher-Masochs novels, Culture and Art, published
novels and literary works on spiritualism, Freemasonry, psychology, and sexology.
This publisher appears to have introduced and popularized the then up-to-date topics
into the Polish-speaking sphere.
31
232
Ariko Kato
jednej strony niezmiernie powany i pilnie czytany, a z drugiej strony
bardzo znienawidzony powieciopisarz. (Sacher-Masoch 1913a)
(Sacher-Masoch bravely revealed the sad truth about the cruelty hidden in
womens souls. He presents the view that a beautiful woman has the
ingredients for wild despotism and that she applies it to him only if he
does not manage to rule her mercilessly. This is the reason why SacherMasoch has garnered fame as an extremely important and urgently read
author as well as a very hated novelist.)
His books must have gained popularity considering that the second
and third editions were published in independent Poland.
A noteworthy fact is that the translation does not closely
follow the original. Furthermore, the translators name is not
mentioned. As a result of countless omissions and modifications, the
Polish translation ultimately emphasizes Wandas demonic character
and simply transforms Severins love or adoration into an
abnormality. According to the advertisement, the anonymous
translator clearly and dramatically assigned sadistic and masochistic
attributes to Wanda and Severin, respectively; in contrast, the other
contexts were not shown as distinctly. What mostly changed the
characters of this novel were the several deletions of the key term
suprasensual (bersinnlich, nadzmysowe). This word, which was
repeatedly used in the original to characterize Severin, was once
replaced by the word anormalno abnormality (Sacher-Masoch
1989: 51). The title of Severins manuscript, Bekenntnisse eines
bersinnlichen (Confessions of a Suprasensual Man; Sacher-Masoch
1980: 17), was altered to Zwierzenia gupiego fanatyka (Confessions
of a Foolish Fanatic; Sacher-Masoch 1989: 27) even though the term
suprasensual responds to the manuscripts motto, which is a variation
of Mephistopheles verses from Goethes Faust.34
In addition, some interesting modifications were made from
the Polish perspective. It has been known that Sacher-Masoch often
set his stories in the pluralistic society of eastern Galicia. As a matter
of fact, he projected the exotic image of the East on the Slavic
world, which indeed appealed to Western readers. However, in the
Polish version, the translator projected the images of East or Asia

34
You suprasensual sensual suitor, / A woman leads you by the nose! (ViF 10; Du
bersinnlicher sinnlicher Freier, Ein Weib nasfhret dich!; Sacher-Masoch 1980:
17). Cf. Goethes Du bersinnlicher sinnlicher Freier, Ein Mgdalein nasfhret dich
(Goethe [s.d.] :120).
233

on Russia and eastward. The demonic heroine Wanda, who was from
Lviv in the original, was from Moscow in the translated version. The
figure of the unsophisticated Polish peasants disappeared from the
text, while negative Jewish stereotypes typical to the anti-Semitic
discourse during the interwar period were added and emphasized.
The exotic image of Galicia depicted from the Austrian perspective
was displeasing to the Polish readers; this is confirmed in the only
study on Sacher-Masoch published in the Polish-speaking sphere
before World War I, in 1907. Leon Wachholz author, doctor, and
professor of the Jagiellonian University criticized Sacher-Masoch
for distorting the images of Poles and characterizing the Slavs as
masochists (Wachholz 1907).
Moreover, the pluralistic background had faded away from the
translated Venus in Furs; this novel simply went on to become a work
on a sensational masochistic subject.
It is important to note that the Polish translations of SacherMasochs novels are still limited to the two titles that are actually
reissues of the publications by Culture and Art before World War
II.35 In addition, the translations have not been revised since then. This
could be a reason for the neglect of Sacher-Masoch in the discussion
on Schulz.
Reconsidering the Discourse on Schulz-Masochist
Finally, I would like to reconsider the discourse on Schulzmasochist by comparing it to the cultural background in those days.
Aleksander Wats wife recalled that Schulz was regarded as a
masochist in Warsaw because of his paintings (Watowa 2000: 16). In
fact, in the mid-1930s, his literary contemporaries published some
texts alluding to his or his works masochistic tendency in literary
magazines: an open letter to Schulz from Stanisaw Ignacy
Witkiewicz (1935) and Witold Gombrowicz (1936a, 1936b) as well as
Jzef Nachts report on his meeting with Schulz (1937). In Witkacys
open letter to Schulz, the former interpreted Schulzs graphic works as
those representing female sadism and male masochism (Witkiewicz
1935: 321-322, Witkiewicz 1988: 108). As revealed in Witkacys
novels such as Poegnanie jesieni (Farewell to Autumn, 1927), his

35
The reissue of Demonic Women, from 1986, reproduces the text as it was published
in Lviv by Kultura i Sztuka in 1922.
234
Ariko Kato
understanding of masochism was based on the binomial opposition of

masochism and sadism assigned to men and women, respectively.36
His view must have influenced the response to Schulzs graphics37 and
helped form the discourse on Schulz-masochist.
However, it is important to pay attention to the fact that in
those days, Freudian theory and the topic of the subconscious attracted
a great deal of attention in Poland as well as in other European
countries. In all likelihood, this was true in Galicia, which belonged to
the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Freud began his theory in Vienna.
Since the first decade of the twentieth century, Freudian theories, like
the novels of Sacher-Masoch, have been translated into Polish. In
1936, in the second open letter to Schulz, Gombrowicz wrote, I know
that if someone today talks about thighs, people say Freud and thats
all (wiem, e teraz, jak tylko kto wspomni o ydce, to zaraz mwi ,
e z Freuda i koniec; Gombrowicz 1936a: 220). Moreover, Witkacy
directly mentioned Freud or his theory in his novels without trying to
conceal his hatred or contempt for it. Krystyna Kulig-Janarek pointed
out that the motifs in Schulzs early graphics agreed with the Freudian
schema to a great extent (1993: 47). It seems, therefore, more
important to discuss these motifs against their cultural background
rather than to psychoanalyze them.
In 1937, the Encyclopaedia of Sexology was published in
Warsaw. It was the expanded Polish version of the original German
Handwrterbuch der Sexualwissenschaft edited by Max Marcuse in
Bonn in 1923. The article titled Literature and Psychoanalysis in the
Polish encyclopedia described Schulz as one of the Polish writers
influenced by Freudian theory, along with Witkacy and Karol
Irzykowski (Marcuse 1937: 73).
The article Masochism in this encyclopedia explained that
masochism can be associated with fetishism, especially for boots, and
that masochism is not found among people who culturally belong to
the lower class (Marcuse 1937: 156). This definition of masochism

36
The demonic heroines in Witkacys novels, such as Akne in 622 upadki Bunga czyli
Demoniczna kobieta (The 622 Downfalls of Bungo or the Demonic Woman, 19101911, republished in 1968) and Hela in Farewell to Autumn, have characters similar to
the heroines in Sacher-Masochs novels. The similarities between the works of Schulz
and Witkacy were closely discussed in an article by Wodzimierz Bolecki (1994).
37
Indeed, Schulzs graphics have often been compared to the painters with whom
Witkacy compared Schulz in his open letter to Schulz (i.e. Goya, Rops, Munch, and
Beardsley) (Witkiewicz 1935: 321; Witkiewicz 1988: 108).
235

helps us understand the discourse on Schulz-masochist. In his
report, which seems to be partly fictitious especially the section that
takes the form of dialogue Jzef Nacht expressed sympathy toward
Schulz with regard to his graphics. Nacht parodied Hegels masterslave dialectic, applying it to the relationship between man and
woman. He wrote, The whole world is just to rule or to stop ruling.
There are rulers and slaves everywhere (Cay wiat przecie yje po
to tylko, aby panowa lub znosi panowanie. Wsz
dzie sa wadcy i
niewolnicy; 1937: 5). This view is repeated in Venus in Furs and
apparently adapted from it.38 However, Nacht expressed a negative
view on Sacher-Masochs novels by regarding them as describing
only masochistic practices. In fact, his article represented the common
conceptions of Sacher-Masoch in those days because a similar neglect
was found in the abovementioned encyclopaedia (Marcuse 1937:
56).39 Nacht continued by stating the following: Many people view
masochism as snobbism; however, the possibility of the fashion of
masochism, which could cause a sexual revolution, is far more
dangerous (rni ludzie nazywaj masochism snobizmem, ale
znacznie groniejsza jest moliwo mody masochizmu, ktra
mogaby wywoa rewolucj
seksualn ; 1937: 5). Let us recall that at
the beginning of the open letter to Schulz, Gombrowicz alluded to
Schulzs masochistic tendency, quoting a possibly fictitious comment
made by a doctors wife: Bruno Schulz, she said, hes either a sick
pervert or a poseur, but most probably a poseur. Hes only pretending
(Schulz 1988a: 117; Bruno Schulz powiedziaa to albo chory
zboczeniec, albo pozer; lecz najpewniej pozer. On tylko udaje tak;
Gombrowicz 1936a: 209). Considering that masochism was quite a
popular topic among the intellectuals of Schulzs time, the discourse
on Schulz-masochist becomes understandable as intellectual play
among Schulzs contemporaries. The allusion to masochism by the
artist whose works depicted such motifs was by itself an intellectual
discussion. Schulz, to some extent, played his part as a masochist a
part that was given to him in Polish literary circles.
38
The narrator, in his dream, explained the living statue of Venus about his view on
the relationship between men and women, adopting Hegelian rhetoric. Indeed, the
narrator had been reading Hegel before he fell asleep; interestingly, the name Hegel
was deleted in the Polish version (Sacher-Masoch 1989: 23, 2000: 5).
39
Cf. the article titled Belles Lettres.
236
Ariko Kato
After World War II, Gombrowicz wrote in his Dziennik

(Diary) that Schulz was a masochist (Gombrowicz 2001: 8-13). Irena
Kejlin-Mitelman also observed that Schulz posed like the men in his
paintings (Schulz 1984: 49). We refrain from any discussion on his
masochism since the subject is beyond the scope of our discussion.
At the same time, Kejlin-Mitelmans statement reminds us of
Sacher-Masoch whose novels contained scenes that replicated his real
life. Incidentally, the composition of the picture, which SacherMasoch had taken and which was published in Dresden in 1901, after
his death [il. 15], is similar to Jej garderobiana (The Dresser [il.
16]) in The Idolatrous Book.
Conclusion
The comparison of Venus in Furs with The Idolatrous Book can lead
us to the conclusion that Schulz must have been inspired by the novel
when he made The Idolatrous Book, especially Bench and the
pictures portraying Undula. Moreover, this article has made clear the
similarity between Schulz and Sacher-Masoch: they questioned the
traditional understanding of artworks as imitative representations of
reality or existing narratives, and represented this problem of mimesis
in their naturalistic works. An examination of the then popularity of
Freudianism and the reception accorded to Sacher-Masochs novels
has led us to reconsider the discourse on Schulz-masochist, and it
appears that Schulz, to some extent, played his part in furthering this
discourse.
The analysis of Schulzs early graphics reveal him to be a
theoretic-artist who, based on his knowledge of European paintings,
critically reconsidered its conventions and succeeded in representing
his own views in his works. His early graphics, although they seem to
be inspired by the traditional painting styles, substantiate his
twentieth-century modernistic views on art, which are reflected in his
later prose.
Bibliography
Alberti, Leon Battista. 1976. On Painting. (tr. J.R. Spencer). Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press.
Battistini, Matilde. 2005. Symbole i alegorie (tr. M. Witczak). Warszawa: Arkady.
237

Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 1994. Witkacy-Schulz, Schulz-Witkacy in Jarz
bski (1994):
127-151.
Cassouto, Nella. 1990. She Walked up to Father with a Smile and Flipped Him on
the Nose: Schulz and the Wars of the Sexes (tr. V. Barsky) in Drawings of
Bruno Schulz: From the Collection of the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of
Literature, Warsaw. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum: 22-27.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1998. Masoch to Sade (tr. S. Hasumi). Tokyo: Shobun-sha.
Derrida, Jacques. 2003. Prawda w malarstwie (tr. M. Kwietniewska). Gdask:
sowo/obraz terytoria.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 1986. Okolice sklepw cynamonowych: Szkice, przyczynki, impresje.
. 2002. Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice: Bruno Schulz i jego mitologia. Sejny:
Fundacja Pogranicze.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. [s.d.] Faust: Der Tragdie. Erster Teil. Berlin and
Leipzig: Hermann Seemann Nachfolger.
Gombrowicz, Witold. 1936a. List otwarty do Brunona Schulza in Studio 7: 209-211.
. 1936b. Do Brunona Schulza in Studio 7: 217-220.
. 1988. Open Letter to Bruno Schulz in Schulz (1988a): 117-119.
. 2001. Dziennik: 1961-1969. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Gondowicz, Jan. 2006. Bruno Schulz [1892-1942]. Warszawa: Edipresse Polska.
Hirano, Yoshihiko. 2004. Sacher-Masoch. Tokyo: Seido-sha.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) 1994. Czytanie Schulza. Krakw: T.I.C.
. 1999. Schulz. Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnol skie.
Kasjaniuk, Halina. 1993. Rodowody i symbole w grafikach Schulza in Ciechowicz
J. and Kasjaniuk H. (eds). Teatr Pamici Brunona Schulza. Gdynia: s.n.: 1025.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata. (ed.) 1981. Xiga Bawochwalcza grafiki oryginalne
(clich verre) Brunona Schulza in Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 4: 401-410.
(ed.) 1994a. Bruno Schulz. In memoriam. 1892-1942. Lublin: Wydawnictwo
FIS.
. 1994b. Bruno Schulz Xi
ga Bawochwalcza: wizja forma analogie in
Kitowska-ysiak (1994a): 133-151.
. 1994c. Wizje kobiecoci w Xi
dze Bawochwalczej: Salome i androgyne in
Jarz
bski (1994): 251-263.
. 2002. Bezlik nieskoczonych historyj: O reinterpretacji mitologicznych
pierwowzorw na kartach Xigi Bawochwalczej in Schulz (2002b): 9-22.
. 2003. Xiga bawochwalcza in Bolecki, Wodzimierz, Jerzy Jarz
bski and
Stanisaw Rosiek (eds) (2003): 420-425.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata and Wadysaw Panas (eds). 2003. W uamkach
zwierciadaBruno Schulz w 110 rocznic urodzin i 60 rocznic mierci.
Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL.
Kossowska, Irena, and ukasz Kossowski. 2002. Wanie: humor Schulza in Schulz
(2002b): 23-33.
Kulig-Janarek, Krystyna. 1993. Schulzowska mitologia: Motywy, w tki, inspiracje w
Xidze Bawochwalczej in Kresy 14: 37-49.
238
Ariko Kato
. 1994. Erotyka groteska ironia kreacja in Kitowska-ysiak (1994a): 153177.

Marcuse, Max (ed). 1937. Encyklopedia wiedzy seksualnej: dla lekarzy, prawnikw i
socjologw. Vol. II. (tr. S. Higier). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Lekarskie
Eskulap.
Nacht, Jzef. 1937. Wywiad drastyczny (Rozmowa z Brunonem Schulzem) in
Nasza opinja 77 (204): 5.
Noyes, John K. 1997. The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism. Ithaca &
London: Cornell University Press.
Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. 1904. Warjat z Firlejwki: Opowiadanie. Warsaw:
Skad u F. Kasprzykiewicza i S-ki.
. [1911a]. Gro
ne kobiety (Sfinksy). Lviv: Kultura i Sztuka.
. [1911b]. Gro
ne kobiety (Silne Serca). Lviv: Kultura i Sztuka.
. [1913a]. Demoniczne kobiety (2nd ed.) Lviv: Kultura i Sztuka.
. [1913b]. Wenus w futrze. Lviv: Globus.
. [1919]. Wenus w futrze (2nd ed.) Lviv: Kultura i Sztuka.
. [ca. 1920]. Demoniczne kobiety (3rd ed.) Lviv: Kultura i Sztuka.
. 1980. Venus im Pelz. Frankfurt am Main: Insel.
. 1986. Demoniczne kobiety. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe.
. 1989. Wenus w futrze. d: Wydawnictwo Res Polona.
. 2000. Venus in Furs (tr. J. Neugroschel). New York: Penguin.
Sandauer, Artur. 1964. Rzeczywisto zdegradowana (Rzecz o Brunonie Schulzu) in
Bruno Schulz. Proza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 7-43.
. [1992]. Trjca nowoczesnych. Krakw: Miniatura.
Schulz, Bruno. 1936. Do Witolda Gombrowicza in Studio 7: 211-217.
. 1984. Listy, fragmenty: Wspomnienia o pisarzu. (ed. J. Ficowski). Krakw:
. 1985. Xi
ga Bawochwalcza in Twrczo 7/8: 124-152.
. 1988a. Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz: With Selected Prose. (ed. J.
Ficowski, tr. W. Arndt and V. Nelson). New York: Harper & Row
Publishers.
. 1988b. Xiga Bawochwalcza. (ed. J. Ficowski). Warszawa: Interpress.
. 1992. Bruno Schulz 1892-1942: Rysunki i archiwalia ze zbiorw Muzeum
Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie (ed. W. Chmurzyski).
Warszawa: Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie.
. 1995. Bruno Schulz 1892-1942: Katalog-Pamitnik Wystawy Bruno Schulz.
Ad Memoriam w Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie
(ed. W. Chmurzyski). Warszawa: Muzeum Literatury im. Adama
Mickiewicza.
. 1998. The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz. (ed. J. Ficowski). London: Picador.
. 2002a. Ksiga listw. (2nd ed.) (ed. J. Ficowski). Gdask: sowo/obraz
terytoria.
. 2002b. Mityzacja rzeczywistoci: Bruno Schulz 1892-1942. Lublin:
Wydawnictwo UMCS.
. 2003. Bruno Schulz. Olszanica: BOSZ.
Tanemura, Suehiro. 2004. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.Tokyo: Heibon-sha.
239

Van Heuckelom, Kris. Artistic Crossover in Polish Modernism. The Case of Bruno
Schulzs Xiga Bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Booke) in Image [&]
Narrative. Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative 15. On line at
(consulted
09.11.2007).
Wachholz, Leon. 1907. Sacher Masoch i masochizm: Szkic literacko-psychiatryczny
wedug collegium publicum. Krakw: Drukarnia Uniwersytetu
Jagielloskiego.
Watowa, Ola. 2000. Wszystko co najwaniejsze(2nd ed.) Warszawa: Czytelnik.
Witkiewicz, Stanisaw Ignacy. 1935. Wywiad z Brunonem Schulzem in Tygodnik
Ilustrowany 17: 321-323.
. 1988. Interview with Bruno Schulz in Schulz (1988a): 107-110.
. 2001. Poegnanie jesieni (ed. A. Miciska). Warszawa: Pastwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy.
. 2005. 622 upadki Bunga czyli Demoniczna Kobieta. Krakw: Zielona Sowa.
Ariko Kato
240
Illustrations
[il.1] Jeszcze raz Undula [Undula, Once Again], 9.5x15 (ML Bibl. II 14606/2)
[il.2] Xi
ga bawochwalcza [The Idolatrous Book], 14.5x23.9 (NMK: III7474)
241
[il.3] awka [Bench], 13x18.1 (NMW: Gr.W.6007/7)
[il.4] Undula u artystw [Undula with the Artists], 9.9x15 (NMW: Gr.W.6008/5)
242
Ariko Kato
[il.5] Undula w nocy [Undula at Night], 15x10.5 (NMK: III7468)
[il.6] Undula idzie w noc [Undula Walks into the Night], 11.6x8.4
(NMW: Gr.W.6007/6)
243
244
Ariko Kato
[il.7] Swawolne kobiety [Playful Women], 26.8x35.8 (Jewish Historical Institute

Warsaw (JHI): A-738)
[il.8] Autoportret przy pulpicie rysowniczym [Self-portrait Before an Easel], 43x29.5

(JHI: A-460)
245
[il.9] Odwieczna ba [The Eternal Fairy Tale], 16.8x12.2 (NMW: Gr.W. 6007/3)
246
Ariko Kato
[il.10] Wenus i Amor (II) [Venus and Amor (II)], 17.5x27 (ML: K.725)
[il.11] Wenus i Amor [Venus and Amor], 15.5x25.5 (ML: K.726)
[il.12] Kobiety, sadystki [Women, Sadists], 29x40 (JHI: A-462)
[il.13] Na Cyterze [On Cythera], 11.4x18 (NMW: Gr.W 6008/7)
247
248
Ariko Kato
[il.14] Autoportret ze Stanisawem Weingartenem [Self-portrait with Stanisaw

Weingarten], 24x31 (JHI: A-739)
249
[il. 15] Picture of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with Fanny Pistor (reproduced from
Carl Felix von Schlichtegroll. Sacher Masoch und der Masochismus. Dresden: Verlag
von H. R. Dohrn, 1901)
[il.16] Jej garderobiana [The Dresser], 12x16 (NMW: Gr.W.6008/4)

Jan Zieliski
Abstract: The article discusses some thematic and stylistic affinities between Bruno
Schulz and the Basque painter Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (1870-1945). Rainer Maria
Rilke is treated as a potential mediator. After a survey of Polish themes in Zuloaga
and Spanish ones in Schulz, a parallel is drawn between the motif of a wounded horse
in Zuloagas art and Schulzs imagery. The article ends with the presentation of the
similarities in the treatment of a human head by both artists and a discussion of the
role of physical deformation for Zuloaga and Schulz.
Introduction
Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (1870-1945) was one of Schulzs favorite
painters, if not the favorite, according to the testimony of Bruno
Schulzs pupil, Feiwel Schreier:
Przynosi na lekcje rne albumy dzie malarzy, objania ich obrazy []
Utkwi mi w pami
ci szczeglnie hiszpaski malarz Zuloaga zdaje si
,
by to jego ulubiony malarz a take El Greco. (in Ficowski 2002: 119).
(He used to bring along art publications with works of different painters,
explaining their meaning [] Especially the Spanish painter Zuloaga
who was, as it seems, his favourite painter stuck in my memory, as well
as El Greco.)
Zuloaga has a short but dense entry in Sownik schulzowski, the

famous dictionary on Schulz. Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak starts from
Schreiers testimony and describes one particular painting, Irene, a
young nude female reclining on a sofa, with a picturesque shawl
across her left arm (2003: 428). Kitowska-ysiak discerns two aspects
that could particularly interest Schulz in Zuloaga: his direct, emotional
treatment of erotic subjects and the theatricalization of the space,
visible especially in the form of suspended curtains creating the
background of his compositions, representing either the sky or a
252
Jan Zieliski
distant small town. However, according to Kitowska-ysiak, all these

possible inspirations were treated by Schulz with his characteristic
refinement.
To begin, let us compare their respective biographies. Schulz
was a contemporary of Zuloaga who, born twenty-two years earlier,
died three years after Schulz was killed by a Nazi. Both were
minoritarian: Zuloaga, known as a Spanish painter, was Basque, like
his great predecessor Zurbaran; Schulz, one of the greatest Polish
writers, was born into a Jewish family. Both were provincial and came
from small towns: Zuloaga from Eibar in the Basque Country and
Schulz from Drohobycz, now part of Ukraine. Apart from Schulzs
short studies in Lww/Lemberg (1913) and Vienna (1917), and some
short trips to Warsaw, Zakopane, Kudowa, the village of Boberka,
Stockholm, and Paris, he spent practically his entire life in Drohobycz.
But Zuloaga, unlike Schulz, was a restless spirit, moving constantly
between Rome, Paris, Florence, Madrid, Segovia, Seville, and
Zumaya, a Basque fishermens village.
Zuloaga and Schulz were born respectively into the families
of craftsmen and merchants: Zuloaga into that of armorers, whereas
Schulzs father, an accountant, owned a textile wholesale shop. Both
felt attached to their ancestors and families, especially to some
particular wizardly figures. In the case of Zuloaga, it was his uncle
Daniel, called el alchimista de San Juan de los Caballeros:
Painter as well as potter, he leads the life of a sixteenth-century craftsman,
and when you see him, bearded and clad in long, flowing blouse, adding a
touch of colour to some ornate composition or feverishly firing the clay,
your mind travels back to Fausts kitchen and the spell of mediaeval
necromancy (Sargent 1916: 18).
In the case of Schulz, it was his father; when remembering that Sklepy
cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934) was initially going to be called
Recollections of My Father, one is tempted to compare Daniel
Zuloaga with the father from Schulzs prose, an inspired heresiarch
(Schulz 1989a: 33;1 herezjarcha natchniony; Schulz 1989b: 37)2
with the terrible eye of a prophet (grone oko prorocze; Op 39):

1
2
All further references will be given as CF.

253

Broda jego zjeya si
dziwnie, wiechcie i p
dzle wosw, strzelaj ce z
brodawek, z pieprzw, z dziurek od nosa, nastroszyy si
na swych
korzonkach. Tak sta dr
twy, z gorej cymi oczyma, dr c od
wewn
trznego wzburzenia, jak automat, ktry zaci si
i zatrzyma na
martwym punkcie. (Op 39)
(His beard bristled grotesquely, the tufts of hair growing from warts and
moles and from his nostrils stood on end. He became rigid and stood with
flaming eyes, trembling from an internal conflict like an automaton of
which the mechanism has broken down; CF 35)
A question arises: which of Zuloagas vast output of paintings could

Schulz have actually seen? One picture hangs now in the Lviv
museum A Spanish Woman on a Street. It shows a woman in blue
dress with a fan and some people and houses in the background. It has
not been determined if the painting was a part of the collection during
Schulzs lifetime. During his stay in Vienna he could have seen the
portrait of the folk-poet Don Miguel from Segovia, offered in 1903 by
the count Lanckoroski to the newly founded Moderne Galerie, now
called sterreichische Galerie Belvedere (Anonymous 2003: 9).
Schulz certainly saw many of Zuloagas paintings in Paris in
1938, although that was after both of his books had been published. Of
the numerous publications books and articles on Zuloaga, Schulz
most probably knew those published in German. The most important
of these was the German edition of Lonce Bndites (the director of
Muse du Luxembourg) book on Zuloaga, published in 1911, by Otto
Beckmann Verlag mit 1 Gravure und 51 Originalreproductionen,
with titles of the pictures given in French, German, and English. Then,
almost simultaneously, the German translation of Camille Mauclairs
study, Ignacio Zuloaga, was published in the October 1, 1911, issue of
Die Kunst fr Alle, with twenty-two black-and-white and two colour
illustrations. These two publications provided a rich survey of Ignacio
Zuloagas early work.
Rilke the Go-Between?
As a possible missing link between Zuloaga and Schulz, one should
consider Rainer Maria Rilke. He and his wife, Clara Rilke-Westhoff,
became friends with Zuloaga in 1902, in Paris, and in 1904, they went
to Dsseldorf to see his exhibition. For a few years (1902-06), Rilke
and Zuloaga exchanged letters, which were full of admiration and
254
Jan Zieliski
devotion on the part of the poet. After 1906, their friendship waned,
and Rilke did not visit Zuloaga during his travels in Spain. He never
wrote a book or even an article on Zuloaga.3 On the other hand, Rilke
was one of the most important literary influences on Schulz, who
admired his poetry and prose and liked to read aloud from his book in
German and make improvised comments.4
The correspondence between Rilke and Zuloaga was prepared
for publication by Jean Gebser and even published during Schulzs
lifetime, but it is unlikely that Schulz ever had it in his hands. The text
was written by Gebser in Spanish in spring 1936, but the civil war
made the planned publication impossible and almost cost the author
his life. The German version was published in 1940, in Zurich by Emil
Oprecht, a well-known anti-Nazi publisher. It is very doubtful, albeit
not totally impossible, that the book could find its way to Drohobycz
during the Nazi occupation.
Spanish Themes Polish Themes
The main Spanish subject in the written work of Bruno Schulz is
Bianca, the heroine of Wiosna (Spring). The form of this first
name, used by Shakespeare for a meek young daughter in The Taming
of the Shrew and for a courtesan in Othello, is Italian, not Spanish, but
the heroine of Spring has many Spanish characteristics. There is a
close affinity between Bianca and the heroine of Schulzs engraving
Infantka i jej kary (The Infant and her Dwarfs, 1920), who
resembles some historical Spanish female figures: first and foremost,
la infanta Blanca de Castila, who at the age of twelve married the
future king of France, Louis VII, and was a dominant political and
military personage; as well as Blanca de la Cerda, through whom the
Basque province Vizcaya passed into the hands of the Castilian kings.
Bianca is the daughter of a certain de V. What we hear about
her presumed and rejected maternal ancestors all sounds very Spanish:
C z tego, e nie wywodzia si
ona ani od prawowitej cesarzowej
Meksyku, ani nawet od owej maonki po lewej r
ce, morganatycznej

3
Their relationship was recently the subject of the paper delivered by Justus Lange
during the meeting of the International Rilke Society in Dresden (September 2006).
4
On Rilkes influence on Schulz, cf. Zieliski (1999) and Kuczyska-Koschany
(2004).
255

Izabeli dOrgaz, ktra ze sceny w
drownej podbia arcyksi
cia sw
pi
knoci ? C z tego, e matk jej bya owa maa Kreolka, ktrej
nadawa pieszczotliwe imi
Conchity i ktra pod tym imieniem wesza do
historii niejako przez kuchenne schody? (Op 187)
(What if she was not descended either from the legitimate empress of
Mexico or even from the morganatic wife, Izabella dOrgaz, who, from
the stage of a touring opera, conquered Archduke Maximilian by her
beauty? What if her mother was a little Creole girl whom he called
Conchita and who under that name has entered history through the back
door as it were; CF 186).
DOrgaz was the stage name of the Mexican actress Elena Delgado de
Baviera (1919-47), quite popular in the thirties. First of all, however,
the surname, dOrgaz, sends a reader to the famous painting by El
Greco. One should mention here that Zuloaga, who owned several
paintings by El Greco, was so fascinated by The Burial of the Count
Orgaz that he once travelled day and night from Paris to Seville, woke
the local priest, demanded to see the picture, contemplated it, and
went directly back to Paris.5
In the description of Bianca, Schulz emphasizes her whiteness
several times. One is tempted to compare these passages with the
picture by Zuloaga, which presents a lady in a wide white gown and is
entitled The Duchess of Alba (1925). Her surname, one of the best
Spanish families, can be translated as white, just as Bianca can be.
Another Spanish theme in the work of Schulz is the corrida motif in
his open letter to Witold Gombrowicz. I will discuss this case
separately below. All these references are treated here not as direct
indicators of the influence of Zuloaga but as the most recognizable
motifs of Spanish culture in general.
There are reciprocally some Polish subjects in Zuloagas
paintings. In 1912, he painted a portrait of the red-haired beauty
Vittoria Malinowska, called La Rusa. The nickname means Russian,
but her name sounds Polish. Definitely Polish was the soprano singer
Aga Lahowska, another beautiful woman, painted by Zuloaga in 1919.
Joaqun Turina composed Poema en forma de canciones (1911) for
5
El Greco tambin tuvo un papel fundamental en su vida. Durante su estancia en
Pars, si senta el deseo de contemplar El entierro del conde de Orgaz era capaz de
viajar da y noche. Una vez en Toledo, y fuese la hora que fuese, peda al capelln que
por favor le abriese la iglesia. Lo admiraba y despus emprenda viaje de regreso a la
capital francesa (Garcia 2000).
256
Jan Zieliski
Lahowska. She was a friend and performer of the works of Manuel de

Falla (another friend of Zuloaga). In October 1917, Lahowska, Falla,
and Zuloaga participated in the inauguration of a school complex near
the birth house of Goya in Fuendetodos (del Pino 2006). But most
interesting for us is the portrait of the Polish musician and politician
Ignacy Paderewski. In 1924, Zuloaga went specially to Riond-Bosson,
near Morges in Switzerland, to paint this picture, commissioned by
Steinway. According to the New York Times article from 1925:
The painting shows Paderewski standing before his piano, which is on a
balcony and in the background is Warsaw, with the famous monument
there brought out. [] About him are the trappings of a statesman a few
law books on a stool near by and the eagle of Poland is seen in the folds of
the red emblem that is thrown loosely over the end of the piano. [] But
the details of the picture are lost in the strength of the figure and
especially the face, which shows all the vigor and strength that the
erstwhile Premier of Poland has. (Anonymous 1925)
This description reveals the importance of the symbolic value of

background in Zuloagas pictures, especially in his portraits. The
background is frequently a distant view of a city, like Toledo in the
magnificent portrait of the French writer Maurice Barrs. Sometimes
it is simply a street or some separate houses. There is a passage in the
prose of Schulz, namely the twenty-fourth chapter of Spring, that
seems to comment on this technique of using architecture as a
background:
Odkryem tajemnic
tego stylu. Tak dugo linie tej architektury w swej
natarczywej swadzie powtarzay ten sam niezrozumiay frazes, a poj em
ten szyfr zjadliwy, to perskie oko, t
askotliw mistyfikacj
. Bya to
zaprawd
zbyt przejrzysta maskarada. W tych wyszukanych i ruchliwych
liniach o przesadnej wytwornoci bya jaka papryka nazbyt ostra, jaki
nadmiar gor cej pikanterii, byo co fertycznego, arliwego, zbyt jaskrawo
gestykuluj cego co jednym sowem kolorowego, kolonialnego i
ypi cego oczyma Tak jest, ten styl mia na dnie swym co niesychanie
odraaj cego by rozpustny, wymylny, tropikalny i niesychanie
cyniczny. (Op 172)
(I have discovered the secret of the villas style. The lines of its
architecture repeated one incomprehensible pattern so many times and so
insistently that I finally understood their mystifying code: the masquerade
was really quite transparent. In those elaborate and mobile lines of
exaggerated elegance there was too much spice, an excess of hot
piquancy, something fidgety, too eager, too showy something, in a
257

word, colorful and colonial Indeed, the style was in effect rather
repulsive lustful, overelaborate, tropical, and extremely cynical; Schulz
CF 173).
Fighting Bull and Wounded Horse

In the year 1936, the editor of the Warsaw monthly Studio encouraged
Witold Gombrowicz and Schulz to exchange some letters. Three of
the letters were published in the July issue of Studio. In his first letter,
Gombrowicz attempted to provoke Schulz and quoted (or rather
fabricated) the opinion of a doctors wife (from Wilcza Street in
Warsaw); the quote suggested that Schulz was either a pervert or a
poseur. Gombrowicz was challenging Schulz to descend from his
usual heights and face the allegation. In his answer, Schulz used a
peculiar argument, taken from the Spanish reality but adapted to his
own situation. He compared the action taken by his friend against him
with a corrida, with Schulz as a bull and Gombrowicz as a torero,
hidden behind the doctors wife in her red underwear. Schulz,
however, refused to step into the trap and declared himself ready to
challenge the convention by fighting directly with Gombrowicz
instead of attacking the lady in red: Not to bump you off your feet, O
noble toreador, but to take you on my back [] and carry you out of
the arena, beyond the confines of its rules and statutes (Schulz 1988:
120; Nie, eby Ci
zwali z ng, szlachetny Toreadorze, ale eby Ci
wzi na grzbiet [] i wynie Ci

poza obr
b areny, jej prawide i
kodeksw; Op 450). He even proposed challenging convention by
abandoning the tauromachy and
with the muttters of the disappointed crowd rising behind us, walk side by
side at an easy gait, bull and toreador, to the exit, freedom, absorbed in
intimate conversation even before we leave behind the outer circle of the
arena. (Schulz 1988: 120-121)
(maj c gwar rozczarowanej publicznoci za sob , ruszyli rami
przy
ramieniu byk i jego toreador ku wyjciu, na wolno, swobodnym
spacerowym krokiem pogr eni w intymnej rozmowie, zanim jeszcze
wyszlimy z ostatnich kr
gw teatru; Op 451)
This exchange was the subject of numerous speculations;

some commentators were trying to discover its hidden meaning
(Salamon 1996). I would like to propose a modest explanation.
Schulzs answer clearly reminds the reader of the following
258
Jan Zieliski
description of a corrida in Granada, taken from a book, published first

in Sweden, here in German translation:
Ich befinde mich in diesem Augenblick im feindlichen Lager. Mein
menschliches Solidarittsgefhl lsst mich im Stich und ich fhle mich
solidarisch mit dem gemarterten Tier. Ich hatte das Gefhl, als ob die
Rollen hier vertauscht wren: die Menschen benehmen sich wie Tiere, das
Tier dagegen wirkte in seiner hilflosen Bestrzung so ganz und gar
menschlich. War aber nicht auch meine eigene Stimmung in jener Stunde
etwas verworren? In dieser von Leidenschaft aufgepeitschten Luft werden
die moralischen Instinkte umnebelt und die Rechtsbegriffe von oberst zu
unterst gekehrt. Wer hatte hier recht? Wer war moralisch verworrener: die
Toreadore in ihrem sinnlosen Angriff auf das berrumpelte Tier, das
blutdurstig verwilderte Publikum oder ich selbst, der ich mit dem Tier
gegen die Menschen mitfhlte? [A]ls ich mitten im, fortgesetzten, Spiele,
die Arena verlie, hatte ich das Gefhl, dass mich das Publikum als
Barbaren betrachtete. (Ehrenpreis 1928: 123-124)
The similarities between these passages are striking: the identification

of the writer with the bull, the need to overturn the conventions, the
final escape. The book about Spain was written by Marcus Ehrenpreis
(1869-1951), born in Lviv, a Jewish journalist from Sweden, publisher
of the Judisk Tidskrift, and chief rabbi of Sweden; there were two
ways how this passage could quite probably have reached Schulz.
Firstly, at the Iberian Peninsula, Ehrenpreis had a guide, Samuel
Schwarz, from Zgierz near d (Lodz). Schwarz, a mining engineer,
discovered a community of crypto Jews when he went to Portugal just
before the outbreak of World War I. His brother Marek was a painter,
active in Paris, a member of the artistic group Junge Jidysz. Schulz
himself had good contacts with Jewish artists in d. One of them,
Nathan Spiegel, encouraged him to go to Paris in 1938, to try and
organize an exhibition of his works. Secondly, and this seems even
more probable, Ehrenpreis was the uncle of Debora Vogel, a writer
and a friend of Schulz. In 1930, he published in his Judisk Tidskrift
Vogels article on the art of Schulz, illustrated by Spotkanie (Meeting)
and The Infanta and her Dwarfs (Chmurzyski 1995: 163). Also in
1930, Ehrenpreis published the Polish version of his Spanish book,
Kraj midzy Wschodem a Zachodem Podr yda po Hiszpanii (The
Country Between East and West The Journey of a Jew Through
Spain). Six years later Schulz used the motif of a reversal of the roles
in corrida in his polemic with Gombrowicz.
259

Although Schulz, of course, was not known to partake in an
actual bull fight, Zuloaga was an active participant in the bull-fighting
scene when he was a young man. On a corrida poster from 1897, we
see his name as one of two matadors, with a nickname El Pintor (The
Painter). Because of pressure from his family, he quit after being
wounded, but corrida was present in his work until the end.6 Later in
his life, his attitude toward corrida became milder, full of compassion.
Another animal seems to be directly related to Zuloaga. In one
of the most lyrical fragments of Schulzs prose, the short story
Cinnamon Shops, which was the title to the original edition of his
first collection of short stories, there appeared an old, wise cabhorse (stary, m dry ko dorokarski), a horse that inspired
confidence (budzi zaufanie) and even seemed smarter than its
driver (CF 60; wydawa si
m drzejszy od wonicy; Op 67). This
passage was often interpreted as a deep personal recollection. The ride
with the wise horse became a special, mystical experience for the hero
of the story, who confessed: I shall never forget that luminous
journey on that brightest of winter nights (CF 61; Nie zapomn
nigdy tej jazdy wietlistej w najjaniejsz noc zimow ; Op 68). The

culminating point of that journey is worth quoting in full:
Wreszcie usta. Wyszedem z doroki. Dysza ci
ko ze zwieszon gow .
Przytuliem jego eb do piersi, w jego wielkich czarnych oczach lniy zy.
Wtedy ujrzaem na jego brzuchu okr g czarn ran
. Dlaczego mi nie
powiedziae? szepn em ze zami. Drogi mj to dla ciebie rzek i
sta si
bardzo may, jak konik z drzewa. Opuciem go. Czuem si
dziwnie lekki i szcz

liwy (Op 68).
(At last we stopped. I got out of the cab. The horse was panting, hanging
its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in his
eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. Why did not you tell
me? I whispered, crying. My dearest, I did it for you, the horse said
and became very small, like a wooden toy. I left him and felt wonderfully
light and happy; CF 61)
The wounded horse is the subject of one of the best-known pictures by

Zuloaga, called The Victim of a Fiesta (1910), where, to use the words
of Camille Mauclair, ein alter, sich ber sein blutendes Pferd
neigender Pikador [der] vor einem Himmel la Delacroix
vorberreitet, frsteln macht (Mauclair 1911: 13). In 1923, in an

6
Cf. Claretie (1905) on Zuloaga and corrida.
260
Jan Zieliski
interview Zuloaga declared his wish to keep that painting to himself

and explained the story of its creation:
I bought the old horse right from the bull-ring, and he lived just long
enough for me to paint him. I did it more as a protest than anything else,
and it has made such an impression on the minds of the Spanish people,
that now, when a white horse comes into a bull-ring, a shuddering whisper
passes through the crowd: Zuloagas horse! (Sangree 1923).
The following year this passage gave an anonymous author from the
same newspaper inspiration for a witty remark:
There is a case of a horse, who sat, or stood, for The Picador. Legend has
it that he died as a result of being gored in a bullfight. Zuloaga assured the
reporters that it was quite true. That horse watched me painting, and
when I came to the very last stroke of my brush he turned to me and said,
Well, goodbye, old man! and then he dropped over dead. But that, of
course, was after he had seen his portrait. (Anonymous 1924)
On the one hand, we can hardly assume that Schulz could have seen
these publications in the American daily press; on the other hand,
those stories were widely spread, and he could have read about this
legend of the dying horse who speaks to its creator somewhere in the
German or Polish press.
An Evening Stroll and the Desire
One of the most spectacular examples of the affinity between
Zuloagas and Schulzs subjects is the picture Evening Promenade
and the sixteenth chapter of Spring. Let us start with two opening
paragraphs from Schulz:
W parku miejskim gra teraz codziennie wieczorem muzyka i przez aleje
przesuwa si
promenada wiosenna. Kr i nawracaj , mijaj i spotykaj
si
w symetrycznych, wci powtarzaj cych si
arabeskach. Modzi ludzie
nosz nowe wiosenne kapelusze i trzymaj niedbale r
kawiczki w doni.
Przez pnie drzew i ywopoty wiec w s siednich alejach sukienki
dziewcz t. Id te dziewcz
ta parami, koysz c si
w biodrach, napuszone
pian szlar i wolantw, nosz ze sob , jak ab
dzie, te rowe i biae
napuszenia dzwony pene kwitn cego mulinu i czasami osiadaj nimi
na awce, jakby zm
czone ich pust parad osiadaj ca t wielk r
gazy i batystu, ktry p
ka, przelewaj c si
patkami. I wtedy odsaniaj si
nogi zaoone jedna na drug i skrzyowane splecione w biay ksztat
261

peen nieodpartej wymowy, a modzi spacerowicze, mijaj c je, milkn i
bledn , raeni trafnoci argumentu, do g
bi przekonani i zwyci
eni.
Przychodzi chwila przed samym zmierzchem i kolory wiata
pi
kniej . Wszystkie barwy wst
puj na koturny, staj si
odwi
tne,
arliwe i smutne. Szybko napenia si
park rowym werniksem, lni cym
lakierem, od ktrego rzeczy staj si
naraz bardzo kolorowe i
iluminowane. Ale ju w tych barwach jest jaki lazur zbyt g
boki, jaka
pi
kno zbyt askawa i ju podejrzana. Jeszcze chwila i g szcz parku
ledwie przysypany mod zieleni , ga
zisty jeszcze i nagi, przewieca
cay na wskro row godzin zmierzchu, podbit balsamem chodu,
napuszon niewymownym smutkiem rzeczy na zawsze i miertelnie
pi
knych (Op 154-155).
(A band is now playing every evening in the city park, and people on their
spring outings fill the avenues. They walk up and down, pass one another,
and meet again in symmetrical, continuously repeated patterns. The young
men are wearing new spring hats and nonchalantly carrying gloves in their
hands. Through the hedges and between the tree trunks the dresses of girls
walking in parallel avenues glow. The girls walk in pairs, swinging their
hips, strutting like swans under the foam of their ribbons, and flounces;
sometimes they land on garden seats, as if tired by the idle parade, and the
bells of their flowered muslin skirts expand on the seats, like roses
beginning to shed their petals. And then they disclose their crossed legs
white irresistibly expressive shapes and the young men, passing them,
grow speechless and pale, hit by the accuracy of the argument, completely
convinced and conquered.
At a particular moment before dusk all the colors of the world become
more beautiful than ever, festive, ardent yet sad. The park quickly fills
with pink varnish, with shining lacquer that makes every other color glow
deeper; and at the same time the beauty of the colors becomes too glaring
and somewhat suspect. In another instant the thickets of the park strewn
with young greenery, still naked and twiggy, fill with the pinkness of the
dusk, shot with coolness, spilling the indescribable sadness of things
supremely beautiful but mortal; CF 160-161)
The first sentence contains a direct reference to Zuloagas title, visible

especially in Polish original: codziennie wieczorem [] przez aleje
przesuwa si
promenada wiosenna (italics mine; every evening []
people on their spring outings fill the avenues). In the second
paragraph we find terms taken from the technique of a painter
rowym werniksem (with pink varnish) or lni cym lakierem
(with shining lacquer) another hint that the scene was borrowed
from Zuloagas painting. Evening Promenade is one of many works
by Zuloaga that develop the subject of awakening sexuality,
seduction, and courtship. It is enough to mention such well-known
Jan Zieliski
262
paintings as Spanish Lady, The Spicy Joke, Weariness, The Lady with
the Fan, Paulette the Dancer, Spanish Ladies at a Bull-fight. Two of
them deserve closer attention in the context of Schulzs writing and
art. The Old Womens Admirer shows an elderly gentleman with an
umbrella under his right arm who eagerly follows two beautiful
Spanish ladies, one of them looking with a knowing smile at the
viewer a parallel motif to numerous drawings and engravings by
Schulz, such as Zaczarowane Miasto I (The Enchanted City I).
Zuloagas The Street of Desire evokes the dubious atmosphere of the
Street of Crocodiles.
Both Zuloaga and Schulz were exploring the borderland
between religious devotion and sensual admiration. From that point of
view it seems interesting to compare Schulzs The Tributary
Procession on the Streets of a Town with Zuloagas The Scourgers.
There are also some similarities in the use of particular motifs, like
that of a pilgrims stick. Particularly striking from that point of view is
the similarity between Schulzs sketch W
drwki sceptyka (The
Wanderings of a Sceptic, 1936) and Zuloagas dwarf Gregorio in The
Old Castile.
Self-portraits and Portraits
To all these similarities I would finally like to add another one: the
means of self-presentation, more specifically, the presentation of the
human head. Let us start with the striking affinity between Zuloagas
Sketch for a Portrait of Prez de Ayala (1931) and the way Schulz
used to draw his own face. Apart from the accidental similarity of the
features between Prez de Ayala and Schulz, there is a deeper affinity
in the way the human head is presented in such a way which allows
the skull to emanate from under the skin. The structure of the skull is
visible through the shape of a drawn or painted head, especially when
you look at it diagonally from a certain angle. Schulz gives an apt
description of this particular angle in his short story Samotno
(Loneliness):
Czasem widz
si
w lustrze. Rzecz dziwna, mieszna i bolesna! Wstyd
wyzna. Nie widz
si
nigdy en face, twarz w twarz. Ale troch
g
biej,
troch
dalej stoj
tam w g
bi lustra nieco z boku, nieco profilem, stoj
zamylony i patrz
w bok. (Op 311).
263

(Sometimes I see myself in the mirror. A strange, ridiculous, and painful
thing! I am ashamed to admit it: I never look at myself full face.
Somewhat deeper, somewhat farther away I stand inside the mirror a little
off center, slightly in profile, thoughtful and glancing sideways; CF 309)
Schulzs interest in skulls probably originated in his visit to the

Schdelkapelle near Kudowa, in the Sudety Mountains in 1921.7
Pride of the Dwarfs
Another common trait is the interest in physical deformation. Let us
compare some cases of swollen faces. In Schulzs work we have the
face of the defecating vagabond in Pan:
Wieche brudnych kakw wichrzy si
nad czoem wysokim i wypukym
jak bua kamienna, utoczona przez rzek
. [T]en grymas rs, bra w siebie
tamten ob
d i natchnienie, p
cznia nim, wybacza si
coraz bardziej, a
wyama si
rycz cym, charcz cym kaszlem miechu. (Op 53)
(A tuft of filthy hair bristled over his broad forehead rounded like a stone
washed by a stream [] The grimace intensified, taking in the previous
madness and tension, swelling, becoming broader and broader, until it
broke into a roaring, hoarse shout of laughter; CF 47)
Schulz also describes Charles/Karol, who has something growing

inside his body:
Gdy tak siedzia w bezmylnym, wegetatywnym osupieniu, cay
zamieniony w kr enie, w respiracj
, w g
bokie pulsowanie sokw, rosa
w g
bi jego ciaa, spoconego i pokrytego wosem w rozlicznych
miejscach, jaka niewiadoma, nie sformuowana przyszo, niby
potworna narol, wyrastaj ca fantastycznie w nieznan dymensj
. (Op 56)
(While Charles sat there in a thoughtless, vegetative stupor, completely
surrendered to circulation, respiration, and the deep pulsation of his
natural juices, there formed inside his perspiring body an unknown,
unformulated future, like a terrible growth, pushing forth in an unknown
direction; CF 50)
Zuloaga has a predilection for dwarfs and other cases of deformation

of the human body. There are several paintings showing the dwarf
named Gregorio. A fragment of one of them, the abovementioned

7
See the recollection of Irena Kejlin-Mitelman in Schulz (1984: 48).
264
Jan Zieliski
picture The Old Castile, was titled Hypothyroid Dwarf in a book on

nutritional deficiency in Spain (Fernandez 1990). That example shows
the ambivalence of Zuloagas treatment of dwarfs, a certain pride in
deformity.
In the work of Bruno Schulz both literary and artistic there
are many dwarfish male figures with disproportionately large heads.8
They crawl under the feet of women, begging for a glance or a touch
of the shoe. Some of them have Schulzs face, and despite the
submissive attitude, there is a distinct touch of pride in them.
Zuloagas toreros in dance-like poses proudly present their
elaborate costumes and carefully coiffed hair. One of the best pictures
of this subject, representing three young toreros and sometimes called
The Young Bull-fighters, also has a metaphorical title: The Idols of the
Future. One recalls immediately the title of Schulzs map of
engravings: Xiga bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book, 1920-1922).
Both artists, the Spanish-Basque and the Polish-Jew, meet again in
their critical description of the aspirations of the modern society, a
description which mingles humility with pride and distance with
admiration.
The comparison between Zuloaga and Schulz certainly has
some limitations. On the one hand, it is definitely more visible in the
prose than in the art work of Schulz. On the other hand, the influence
of Zuloaga is attested not only by several (more or less) direct
borrowings, which are usually ingeniously refined but also by the
testimony of Schulzs pupil. One can well imagine a Spanish edition
of Bruno Schulzs prose illustrated with reproductions of works by
Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta.
Bibliography
Anonymous. 1924. Portraits as Art in The New York Times (17 December 1924).
. 1925. Paderewski Portrait by Zuloaga on View in The New York Times (29
November 1925).
. 2003. Die neuesten Bestrebungen der Kunst documentieren Die Moderne
Galerie 1903. Wien: sterreichische Galerie Belvedere.
Chmurzyski, Wojciech. 1995. Nieznany szwedzki artyku Debory Vogel o
Brunonie Schulzu in Chmurzyski, Wojciech (ed.) Bruno Schulz 18921942: Katalog-Pamitnik Wystawy Bruno Schulz. Ad Memoriam w

8
They were recently discussed by Owczarski (2007) in his book on Lemian, Schulz,
and Kantor.
265

Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie. Warszawa:
Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza: 165-166.
Claretie, Jules. 1905. Bravo Toro! in Je sais tout 1: 501-516.
del Pino, Rafael. 2006. Falla ante Goya: una romera spiritual in La Opinin de
Granada (26 November 2006).
Ehrenpreis, Marcus. 1928. Das Land zwischen Orient und Okzident. Spanische Reise
eines Juden. Berlin: Welt-Verlag.
Fernandez, Renate Lellep. 1990. A Simple Matter of Salt: An Ethnography of
Nutritional Deficiency in Spain. Berkeley: University of California Press.
On line at: http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft2d5nb1b2/ (consulted
24.12.2008).
Ficowski, Jerzy. 2002. Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Sejny: Fundacja
Pogranicze.
Garcia, Amaya. 2000. Un pintor con una visin muy peculiar de Espaa in Aula del
mundo (30 October 2000).
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata. 2003. Zuloaga (y Zabaleta) Ignacio in Bolecki,
Wodzimierz, Jerzy Jarz
bski and Stanisaw Rosiek (eds). Sownik
schulzowski. Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria: 428-429.
Kuczyska-Koschany, Katarzyna. 2004. Rilke poetw polskich, Wrocaw:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocawskiego.
Mauclair, Camille. 1911. Ignacio Zuloaga in Die Kunst fr Alle (1 October 1911).
Owczarski, Wojciech. 2007. Kantor, Lemian, Schulz miejsca wsplne, miejsca
wasne. Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria.
Salamon, Joanna. 1996. Schulz hermetyczny in Gnosis 8-9. On line at:
http://www.gnosis.art.pl/numery/gn08_salamon_schulz_hermetyczny1.htm
(consulted 24.12.2008).
Sangree, Constance L. 1923. Ignacio Zuloaga His Own Architect in The New York
Times (1 July 1923).
Sargent, John S. 1916. Foreword in Exhibition of Paintings by Ignacio Zuloaga.
New York: Redfield-Kendrick-Odell Co., Printers.
Schulz, Bruno. 1984. Listy, fragmenty. Wspomnienia o pisarzu (ed. J. Ficowski).
. 1988. Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz with Selected Prose (ed. J.
Ficowski, tr. W. Arndt with V. Nelson). New York: Harper & Row.
. 1989a. The Complete Fiction (tr. C. Wieniewska). New York: Walker.
. 1989b. Opowiadania, wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
Zieliski, Jan. 1999. Schulz a Rilke. Hipotetyczna prba rekonstrukcji lektury in
Ritz, German and Gabriela Matuszek (eds). Recepcja literacka i proces
literacki / Literarische Rezeption und literarischer Prozess. Krakw:
Universitas: 231-242.
Bruno Schulz and Djuna Barnes: Border-crossing and

Artistic Practice
Esther Snchez-Pardo
Abstract: Bruno Schulz and Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) are two unclassifiable
modernist artists. A closer look at their works, superficially disparate and unrelated,
reveals striking similarities in both form and content. Their fierce independence as
self-taught writers and visual artists distinguished them from a bourgeois milieu in
which the artist no longer occupied an autonomous realm. Their relative isolation also
enabled their transformation into icons of the decadence and bohemianism of the
avant-garde. This essay will examine their convergences and differences in order to
elucidate their methods of work and sources of inspiration as well as their engagement
with their audiences and societies.
Introduction
When the careers of these two great writers and artists, Bruno Schulz
(1892-1942) and Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) are examined, striking
similarities, which connect them across a European and American
1
cultural divide at the time after the world broke, are perceived.
Their creative production bears witness to a world in a state of
permanent instability. Apart from the fact that they were both born in
1892, Schulz in a rural area in Poland (Drohobycz) and Barnes in
upstate New York (Cornwall on Hudson), their lives were completely
dissimilar. Barnes lived a long life; she outlived Schulz by forty years.
Barnes also disappeared from view in 1940, when she moved to a

1
American writer Willa Cathers much-quoted dictum that [t]he world broke in two
in 1922 or thereabouts reflects her awareness of the radical social alterations, most
notably in the areas of sex and gender, that were consolidated in Europe and in the
United States in the years following the First World War (1936: v)
268
Esther Snchez-Pardo
small apartment in Greenwich Village and lived in complete

isolation.2
Critics coincide in their appraisal of Schulzs and Barness
works as primarily the product of writers rather than visual artists. As
they gradually developed their own styles, they decided to jettison
their role as illustrators and concentrate on their struggle to resolve
through their writing the continual rapid transformation of the world
in the period between the two world wars. We may also ask ourselves
if it is not precisely in their passion and need to write rather than in the
illustrations to their written work where we find Schulzs and Barness
clearest statement of their inner world.
In literary history, social upheavals, including shifts in social
relations and in sex and gender, appeared both in the publication of
alternative literary traditions by women, minorities (Jewish, AfricanAmerican), and non-heterosexuals, and in the professionalization of
literary studies that marginalized these literatures. Authorship in the
modern era could be seen as both feminine, insofar as it was an
uncertain, part-time occupation, and masculine, insofar as it was a
financially profitable one, even though writing could actually be
lucrative for a woman or unreliable for a man.
In this article, I will focus on Schulzs and Barness early
work, and I will expand more on Barnes due to the familiarity and the
expertise of the readership of this volume with the work of Schulz.
This contribution is part of a larger project that compares the
achievements of both artists along the different stages of their careers
fatally cut short in the case of Schulz and voluntarily in the case of
Barnes.
Schulz and Barnes: Intersections
Schulz and Barnes were both born into middle-class households that
did not provide them with a university education. The progress and

2
Philip Herring, Barness biographer, writes: The longevity of the Barnes family
was for Djuna an inherited curse. She had tried to end her life in London in 1939; in
the late 1970s, she tried again, undertaking to swallow all the pills on her night table,
though somehow she missed the sleeping pills [] But [even if] daily life and simple
tasks became increasingly difficultthe alternative to staying in Patchin Place drove
Barnes to even more intense anxiety: a nursing home would be a fate far worse than
death itself, for it would mean the end of creativity (1995: 295-296).
Bruno Schulz and Djuna Barnes: Border-crossing and Artistic Practice
269

evolution in their writing and art was self-taught. They both found
themselves faced with the necessity of making a living and thus
practiced their creative work on the side. Schulz and Barnes worked in
solitude, almost in complete isolation; they never belonged to a
literary or artistic group. They were also terribly protective of their
independence and had no masters.
They differ in their openness to the world; whereas Schulz
spent his entire life in his birthplace, Drohobycz, except for a few
3
short visits abroad, Barnes crossed the Atlantic several times. She
lived in Paris and London and moved around freely in Europe.
Schulz and Barnes were both influenced by the Decadent
movement and specifically by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). They
both shared similar concerns with turn-of-the-century artists interested
in representing and writing about the obscene and the grotesque.
Beardsleys thin line-style of drawing was particularly well suited to
the grotesque. The use of the grotesque, which deliberately plays with
forms that are exaggerated, bizarre, and ugly, is an accepted artistic
convention and an important element in much of Beardsleys work. It
tends to express a particularly disillusioned view of life, and this
underpinned Beardsleys occasionally morbid philosophical outlook.
He once famously remarked: I have one thing, the grotesque. If I am
not grotesque, then I am nothing (Slessor 2000: 27).
Schulzs art, original and unique as it is, comes also from
Viennese expressionism and the Old masters. In Jerzy Ficowskis
view, the dynamic arrangement of figures and bright spots surrounded
by complete darkness are signs of Goyas influence, especially from
the series of Los Disparates, Los Caprichos, and The Naked Maja a
direct source of Schulzs Undula in The Idolatrous Book.
Scholars of Schulzs work have stated that it is almost
impossible to place his oeuvre in mainstream Polish literature, to find
affinities, influences, and identify trends present in his work. Schulz
was a loner living in a world of his own. In Celina Wieniewskas
words,
[He was a man] with an intense, formidable inner life, a painters
imagination, a sensuality and responsiveness to physical stimuli which

3
With the help of friends in Poland and France, Schulz did manage to visit Paris
during the summer of 1938. He spent three weeks visiting museums and discussing art
and literature. This visit had quite an impact on him.
270
Esther Snchez-Pardo
most probably could find satisfaction only in artistic creation (in Schulz
1988: 12)
The world of Schulz is an eminently private one where his

family and especially his father occupy center stage. Apart from his
family, Schulzs universe is populated by the inhabitants of
Drohobycz. His characters are people who stuck to the old way of life
before a new wave of entrepreneurs and fortune seekers moved to the
region. When oil was struck near the city and prosperity brought about
major changes in their lifestyles, the old patriarchal order collapsed.
Nazi expansionist policies presented a threat to peace in
central Europe. The Polish-German pact of 1934 intensified the spread
of Nazi ideas in some sections of Polish society. When war broke out
in September 1939, Drohobycz was for a time occupied by the
Russians. Schulz could still teach and was able to write, but his type
of writing was too personal and confessional to be acceptable during
wartime. He, therefore, had to return to painting and to try to make a
living as a traditional craftsman when, during the German advance
into Soviet territory, Drohobycz was occupied by the Nazis in the
summer of 1941. In the Jewish quarter of the city, in November 1942,
Schulz was shot dead on the street by a Gestapo officer.
Regarding Djuna Barnes, we know Oscar Wilde had an
important influence on the early plays she wrote for the Provincetown
Players. The 1906 American edition of Salom, which Barnes
probably owned, was adorned with Beardsleys enigmatic
illustrations. These stories, the drawings, the decadent aura, and the
curiously stilted dialogue of many of Barness plays point to the styles
of Wilde and Beardsley as crucial influences in her formative years.
Barness Nightwood, written at the peak of her career, is a
rereading, from the grim perspective of 1936, of the alternatives
available to men and women after the collapse of the American
economy and the worldwide depression had constrained the
possibilities for avant-garde literary communities, and after the
ascendance of the National Socialists in Germany who had begun to
enforce ordered and hierarchical social patterns with deadly power.4
In what follows, we will examine similarities and differences
between Schulzs and Barness formal and thematic concerns
appearing in their early work. This comparative framework will lead

4
Jane Marcus (1991) has documented Nightwoods relation to the rise of Nazism.
271

us to further cross-cultural reflections on the unexplored connections
between the Anglo-American and the Eastern European avant-gardes
and on the yet uncharted territories of modernism.
Bruno Schulzs and Djuna Barness Forms
There are clear formal similarities in Schulzs and Barness work.
First, Schulz and Barnes shared ideas on visual artistic practice as the
illustration of the textual. As Jerzy Ficowski has remarked, Schulz
was fully aware of the divergence of the two realms of the visual and
the verbal; Schulz wrote in one of his letters:
If I were asked whether the same thread recurs in my drawings as in my
prose, I would answer in the affirmative. The reality is the same only the
frames are different. Here material and technique operate as the criteria of
selection. A drawing sets narrower limits by its material than prose does.
That is why I feel I have expressed myself more fully in my writing (in
Ficowski 1990: 4).
This is also the case with Barnes, as I will try to show later in this
article.
In terms of style, both Barnes and Schulz manifest love for the
archaic, the grotesque, and the uncanny. They were extremely
interested in metamorphosis and in profound transformation and
experimentation. Barnes and Schulz usually shape their narratives as
life-writing, a part of their autobiographies-in-progress. As it is wellknown in Schulzs case, his Sanatorium Under the Sign of the
Hourglass (1937) is a poetic recreation of his autobiography. Schulz
delves into his past, and with the sensitivity of an artist merged with
the capacity to recollect as a grown-up child, he embarks on a journey
to reconstruct a lost and happier time. In this sense, we may
understand the collection of stories in Sanatorium as a Knstlerroman,
in which the discovery of Schulzs artistic vocation goes hand-in-hand
with a growing awareness of the loneliness, sadness, and near despair
of his daily existence. The fatal accident that brought about his
brothers premature death in 1936 made his financial responsibilities
grow; he became the sole supporter of his widowed sister, his nephew,
and an aged cousin. His correspondence in these years reveals
frequent bouts of depression lasting for longer periods of time.
272
Esther Snchez-Pardo
Schulz and Barnes both painted their friends and

acquaintances. The majority of Schulzs early drawings were
destroyed or lost during the war. From his extant works, the authors
self-portrait in pencil (1919) together with portraits of friends
(Stanislaw Weingarten, Maria Budratzka) bear the mark of his
characteristic style, which moves from realistic academic
compositions to pictures full of imaginary scenes, mythological
figures, and pastoral vision.
In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Barnes produced detailed
portrait drawings, primarily in pencil and using color and shading. A
good number of her early portraits were of the Provincetown Players
e.g., a pen-and-ink portrait of Eugene ONeill showing the highly
textured style of her early, more Beardsleyesque work (a reptile is
growing out of his shoulder, but the drawing is sensitive and frank) or
the portrait of actress Helen Westley, with whom Barnes had a
personal as well as a professional connection; the portrait of Westley
appears as an illustration in her short story collection, A Book. The
portrait of her friend Emily Coleman also appears in A Book; it shocks
the viewer because of its distorted character. This and other images
show Barness peculiarly bleak view of the human being. As it has
been noted, the more emotionally involved Barnes was with the
subject, the more likely she was to represent that person in accordance
with her own inner world, producing an image simultaneously
deformed and transformed, terrifying and true.
If it was the emotional proximity and intimacy that caused
Barnes to reshape and deform those she loved, the origin of this
process may be seen in her own early experience of intimacy. In
creating the illustrations and text of Ryder, Barnes concealed
fragments of her autobiography amid a true explosion of styles and
genres. The illustrations of Ryder and Ladies Almanack show a
marked break from Barness early work. Between 1923, when A Book
was published, and 1928, Barnes moved to Paris and became the lover
of sculptor Thelma Wood, whose work consisted of sculpture and
etchings. We wonder to what extent the fact that Wood was an artist
contributed to Barness decision to derive her illustrations from
existing images.
Barnes herself was using what Frances Doughty has called a
strategy of literal representation, hidden by borrowed and highly
stylized forms that seems to have no experiential referent [which is]
273

especially clear in these illustrations, which contain direct copies of
folk images from popular culture into which Barnes inserted the faces
of her family and friends (1991: 140-141). Duchartre and Saulniers
LImagerie Populaire appeared in 1926 and it was the source of many
images that Barnes produced between 1926 and 1928, later on to
appear in Ladies Almanack and Ryder. It is a collection of eighteenthand nineteenth-century imagiers. As Carolyn Burke has noted,
Barness radicalism in her visual work downplays the values of
originality and creativity through her open acknowledgement of her
sources and her adaptation, which is a type of visual quotation
(1991: 77). Barnes certainly challenged the concept of artistic
authority. Intrigued by the atemporal quality (1991: 76) of the
French illustrations, Barnes used the past as a source and model; she
was paradoxically engaging in a cyclical return while creating her own
images. Once we acknowledge this process of visual quotation, we
are no longer able to see her as a traditional author or to function as
traditional readers.
Yet Barness illustrations are not as innocent as they might
seem. Doughty argues that although the images are mimetically tied to
the text, the passages that they illustrate are not only the most
emotionally disturbing kind but also generally those that cannot be
fully understood without the help of a visual image (1991: 142).
Barnes uses the double-coding of visual and verbal art in many of her
works in order to subvert the social structure of her time. Barnes
challenges her readers and the whole social order by using canonically
sanctioned writing styles (from the Elizabethan in Ryder to the avantgarde in Ladies Almanack and high modernism in Nightwood) to place
her narratives in a safe, unquestionable position.
Schulzs and Barness Contents
With regard to content, Schulz and Barnes also share similar creative
concerns. For both artists, the realm of private fantasies and the
imagination coexists alongside a realistic rendering of human types.
They are also attracted by the representation of sexuality in its
multiple forms, especially the complex power relations between men
and women.
Their own families are central to their creative processes.
They show a tendency to create self-portraits and to appear as
274
Esther Snchez-Pardo
characters in their respective works. Their lives were also marked by

loss, and their art testifies to the traumatic effects of that loss. In the
case of Schulz, the loss of his father and the burning of the family
home and business as a consequence of German occupation and in the
case of Barnes, the deprivation of parental love, abuse, and an
obligation to grow up fast and abandon the family household had a
profound impact on their careers.
Schulz and Barnes were both interested in transiency,
bohemianism, and the precarious existence of the artist. This is shown
in their interest in representing life at the circus. Anyone who has read
Nightwood, with Dr. OConnors splendid description of Nikka, a
performer of the Cirque de Paris, would be aware of how important
the visual was to Barnes.5 In Schulzs The Idolatrous Book, several
engravings pay tribute to the grotesque world of the circus (see The
Infanta and her Dwarfs, Mademoiselle Circe and her Troupe-circus)
Both Schulz and Barnes were also censored in their writings
and visual productions. Schulzs later drawings were never presented
to the public. The intimate subject matter, bordering on obscenity, did
not seem appropriate for public display, and he had to consider the
consequences his drawings might have had on his reputation as a
teacher in the local gymnasium. What is more, as Ficowski has
written, some artistic circles would not have looked favorably upon
the dilettante, and others, especially in the provinces, rejected his
work as mere pornography (1990: 12). Under such circumstances, his
drawings could only be presented as illustrations of his literary works
this was certainly the case with the illustrations Schulz designed for
Sanatorium after the success of the 1934 story collection Cinnamon
Shops (originally with no illustrations due to the editors decision to
cut production costs).
Barness 1928 novel Ryder was censored, and its original and
subsequent versions appear with a foreword by the author who
explains that her work is missing fragments that are marked by blanks
within the text. This was also the case with several of her explicitly

5
Barness work is notorious for its interest in democratic forms of entertainment. The
circus is among those forms of popular culture that undoubtedly influenced Barness
literary creations. Nightwood draws precisely from the cult of the circus, the sideshow
and the theatre, to populate its pages, expanding on the experiences she had already
written about in her earlier work as a reporter for various journals in New York City
(see Marcus 1991: 221-250).
275

sexual illustrations to the text. Ladies Almanack faced similar
circumstances due to the fact that this booklet was self-published and
circulated furtively among the circles of the Paris Left Bank in the late
1920s.
Djuna Barnes: Early Work
The majority of Barness early drawings were originally published in
newspapers along with her interviews, stories, and essays. Her first
four books (Book of Repulsive Women, Smoke, Ladies Almanack,
Ryder) also interweave illustrations and text. Even in her great novel
Nightwood (1936), which contains no drawings, Barnes focuses much
of her concern on linguistic descriptions of tableaux vivants. It is
impossible to separate the visual from the verbal in Barness work.
This has led scholars of Barnes to describe her writing as emblematic,
both text and visual image are given equal weight, each
comprehensible on its own terms, but together redefining and
reshaping the other (Messerli 1995: 7). For both Barnes and Schulz,
the interplay between the textual and the visual is of paramount
importance; one dimension cannot exist without the other because
they are complementary, and full meaning is only produced through
the creative convergence of the two.
As Douglas Messerli has noted, Barnes often sketched her
subjects during her interviews as she recorded her conversations with
her interviewees (1995: 5). There is also a tendency in her written
works to describe the visual appearances of those with whom she has
spoken. In her journalism, with the urgency and artistic limitations of
the genre, Barness drawings served as snapshots that captured,
among other things, the reality of life in the streets of Paris and New
York. In her novels, it is through the visual that Barnes reveals her
characters and the rationale behind their acts.
Barnes struggled to situate her work within a specific style in
line with her sensitivity and her concerns. She recasts many of her
subjects in fin de sicle contexts and established a fruitful dialogue
with her revolutionary predecessor, Beardsley. Around 1915, Barnes
began to borrow the style of Beardsley and set her Greenwich Village
bohemians and her early literary characters in a world of decadence;
this was an art world divorced from the realistic portrayal of her
previous New York scenes. She embraced this Beardsleyesque style
276
Esther Snchez-Pardo
up to the 1920s when she started to incorporate other sources into her
work, especially emblem books, chapbooks, and almanacs from
earlier centuries. By the late 1920s, from the Ladies Almanack on,
Barness style manifests a profound change; once again the imitation
of older art forms takes her subjects out of a contemporary context and
places them in a remote world, the world of art. This is apparent in her
sketches and descriptions of figures from that time when Barness
interest in the grotesque becomes obvious.
Bruno Schulz and the Enigma of The Idolatrous Book
Even before he was a writer, Schulz came closest to creating a
complete book with his early The Idolatrous Book (1920-22), a
portfolio of black-and-white engravings with titles like Tribe of
Pariahs and The Infanta and her Dwarfs, all depicting women with
men abasing themselves at their feet. Schulz was a brilliant
caricaturist, and his own face was used many times as a recurrent
motif in his work. In The Idolatrous Book, Schulz appears as part of
the crowd, center stage with his face tilted and with a small dwarfish
body crawling toward the foot of a woman. Systematically, the
women are indifferent and take no notice of their suitors.
The book contains a series of engravings in which women are
depicted as superior beings while men adapt to their role of
subordinate creatures, praising and adoring the all-powerful women
and their qualities. It is clear and highly significant that the primary
opposition on which the book is based is that of gender, and from
there a second binary emerges: the opposition of the visual and the
verbal. On the cover illustration Schulz designed for The Idolatrous
Book, he shows the female idol sitting on a throne that looks very
much like a book.
The Idolatrous Book is Schulzs only series of engravings,
created in 1920-22. The series is governed by the idea of idolatry, the
veneration of a Woman-idol by a submissive Man-slave. That motif
dominates the majority of Schulzs graphic works: the celebration of
gynocracy, the rule of women over men who find satisfaction in pain
and humiliation at the hands of their female rulers. Suffering seems to
be the condition of love.
Throughout the entire portfolio, books are presented as the
male domain par excellence whereas the idol is given an obvious
277

female shape. Most of the engravings in The Idolatrous Book are
characterized by the pattern of looking and being looked upon. The
female figure is always the object of looking usually the object of
the male gaze, or by extension the object of her own gaze as reflected
in a mirror whereas the male, apparently in a subservient position,
governs the field of vision (Van Heuckelom 2006).
Critics have described these female figures as idealized or
goddesses, but their poses, the faces full of ennui and the
surprisingly stylish dress could well represent the New Women of
the turn of the century. These women may be enthroned or languidly
reposing on a bed or divan or carriage seat. A persistent motif in The
Idolatrous Book is that of a carriage sweeping through the dark,
sometimes drawn by horses, sometimes drawn by the Schulz figure
himself. In The Idolatrous Book Schulz manages both to approach and
to stay out of the womans way simultaneously with a peculiar
mixture of longing and detachment.
The series is clearly obsessed with masochism and deviant
sexuality. Masochism as a sexual deviation becomes a ritual of
prostration in front of the idol and is shown in scenes of
transformation of humans into beasts, in gestures of worship,
genuflection, abjection, and slavery. As Ficowski writes,
In these drawings the stigma of slavery marking the faces of the men
(sometimes little Negroes, as a symbol of slavery) is combined with
teratoid deformation of their whole figures, their dwarfing and
animalization in short, with a metaphor of degradation. Such a caricature
or black magic transformation affects only the Idolaters and never the
Idol. The woman is untouchable, not only free of deformation but
idealized, as if presented with greater care for her beauty and charm than
for the pictorial quality of the drawing, its stylistic and formal unity.
(1990: 6)
In Ficowskis view, the drawing shows the self-contained perfection

of the woman and even the line of the drawing is different from those
of the rest of the composition.
One of the demonic elements Ficowski identifies as central in
The Idolatrous Book is fetishism, which is clearly present in the
attention to detail, especially to feminine attire, from shoes to clothes
to body parts. As Ewa Kuryluk states, when Schulz was working on
The Idolatrous Book, he told his students that he had been illustrating
278
Esther Snchez-Pardo
6
Sacher-Masochs novel Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs), indeed a book

of idolatry and the founding literary text of masochism (1990: 32).
As Kuryluk writes,
Schulzs women, evocative of powerful pagan goddesses seem to be
superior. But their superiority is also a form of degradation. The erotic
prominence of femaleness is associated with the all-encompassing but
inferior quality of womb, mother, and earth, and connected, like in the Old
Testament and in Platonic philosophy, to matter, ignorance, and
immortality. This archaic vision of femininity as omnipotent nature and
low culture prevails in Schulzs texts and pictures where women represent
a physical threat and an irresistible temptation. (1990: 33)
Ficowski has proved that Schulzs art finds also a rudimentary

source, which he himself speaks about in his story The Book:
advertisements and personal announcements from old magazines.
Schulz brought these dead pictures to life making them unfold in
stories that develop their hidden potential.
The innovative and self-reflective character of The Idolatrous
Book has recently been underlined by Kris Van Heuckelom (2006)
who writes:
This proclaimed autoreferential character of The Booke ensues directly
from the fact that the title of the books seems to have a twofold
application. It refers firstly, to the material product created by the artist (a
portfolio of engravings). Secondly, it designates a similar object (a book)
being depicted on the engravings themselves (creating thus the effect of a
sui generis mise-en-abme). The double position of the book, both inside
and outside of the depicted world, enables and urges the reader to reflect
upon the function and the status of the artifact he is dealing with.
This extreme self-reflexivity manifests itself in how the book shows

the act of its own creation and in the presence of the book-within-thebook motif. The final stage of the process of creation is evident on the
final engraving, which has the same title as the entire portfolio (The
Idolatrous Book). The work-in-progress is also shown in the seventh
engraving (Undula with the Artists), which depicts the female idol
Undula looking at a sheet of paper and surrounded by a group of male
artists, who are apparently sculptors and painters. The separate sheets

6
As Ewa Kuryluk aptly remarks, Sacher-Masochs and Schulzs preoccupation with

male degradation do not reflect simply their personal choice for analysis; they instead
testify to the masochism of late nineteenth-century Europe (Schulz 1990: 34)
279

lying at Undulas feet may be regarded as drafts or as final revisions
of the engravings that will eventually constitute the idolatrous book.
(Van Heuckelom 2006)
The enigmatic Idolatrous Book still possesses an aura of
mystery with its eclectic mixture of themes and motifs and shows the
contradictions that stem from this unique combination of worship and
demonism, elegance and abjection, initiation and knowledge. Schulz
delves into an atmosphere where everything, even the human body,
transmutes into dead matter, and this finally translates into stories.
Barness Critique in The Book of Repulsive Women
Originally published by Guido Bruno as part of his chapbook series,
The Book of Repulsive Women contains eight poems and five
illustrations. As Burke has noted, there is something troubling about
the eroticism of the images (1991: 70), and when we place them
within the context of the verbal text, we begin to see how the book as
a whole constitutes an attempt to write radically with pictures.
In 1912, a twenty-year-old Barnes moved with her mother to
New York from her home in Cornwall-on-Hudson, thereby joining the
mass exodus from country to city which occurred in these years. She
was young, but she had already lived through incest in her childhood
and a broken marriage in her teens. A year after her arrival in New
York, Barnes began publishing articles in the Brooklyn Eagle and
entered an American tradition by joining the ranks of notable
journalist-cum-fiction writers such as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane,
and Theodore Dreiser. Journalism, like everything else, was
undergoing changes in these years. Gone was the comfortable
reporting of the nineteenth century when the journalist from a cool
distance objectively stated the facts of an event. Many felt that this
detached, god-like poise was entirely inadequate in this fast, rapidly
changing, and fragmentary world where the journalist felt just as
bewildered as other mortals. It is known that Barnes carried out
participatory journalism as a means of closing the distance between
the reporter and the event: firstly, in order to better guarantee the
validity of her angle; and secondly, as a means of imbuing news with
human warmth and thereby affecting her readership. Her experience
as journalist would leave its mark on some of her early work, such as
280
Esther Snchez-Pardo
her first book of poetry, The Book of Repulsive Women, published in

1915.
Just as a newspaper is necessarily made up of fragments of
news forming a collage so too is Barness little book, subtitled 8
rhythms and 5 drawings. It is a collage of drawings and poems, each
with a headline, often hinting at some piece of news caught by the
camera lens as the journalist travels around New York. In this sense,
just as Dos Passoss Manhattan Transfer is a portrait of the city, this
book constitutes an angle on New York. Interestingly, it is also piece
of Barness intimate autobiography in those years of apprenticeship
away from the family household, when she was trying to establish
herself as a writer.
In The Book of Repulsive Women, however, we are not shown
the hustle and bustle, the skyscrapers, and the fast cars of the big city.
Here there is no rendering of the rich and successful. On the contrary,
and in keeping with Barness later work, we are shown some of the
realities that perhaps the establishment would rather not emphasize.
Barnes depicts marginal figures that society would prefer to ignore;
she makes news of those who would never be news unless, as in the
final poem, it were through their final capitulation before the system
her poem Suicide closes this collection. The sweeping eye of the
journalist captures the dark side of life and treats its inhabitants with
warmth and sympathy, giving them a place of equal right in the fabric
of society. In this sense, The Book of Repulsive Women prefigures
Nightwood, which concentrates on marginal groups and, as Jane
Marcus puts it, [it] figures by absence the authoritarian dominators of
Europe in the thirties, the sexual and political fascists (1991: 221).
This little book of poems also figures by absence the upright,
hegemonic power against which its women protagonists are measured
and found wanting. This sense of otherness is signaled by Shari
Benstock, who maintains that the fall from innocence [] results
from the realization that woman in Western society is defined by her
difference from the masculine norm (1986: 241). Benstock reads The
Book of Repulsive Women as part of a developing critique of
womans place in modern society. The decadence and depravity of
[the] women [] is an effect of patriarchal culture (1986: 241).
Along the same lines, Marcus points out with reference to Nightwood
that Barness aim was to assert that the outcast is normal and truly
281

human Barnes makes us all misfits claiming that in human misery
we can find the animal and divine in ourselves (1991: 233).
If Barnes intended an embracing of difference, what made her
focus The Book of Repulsive Women on womens loss of innocence,
on womens destruction? What made her choose precisely repulsive
women as her subject matter? It is a fact that The Book of Repulsive
Women has been relatively ignored in Barnes scholarship. Despite the
poems directness and lack of sophistication when compared with her
mature work, they remain a troubling part of the Barnes canon. Apart
from the shocking ending with feminine suicide, one of the answers to
this neglect can be found in the accompanying illustrations heavily
influenced by Beardsley.
As we move through the cycle of poems, which in some way
mirrors one day and night, we first encounter the woman in From
Fifth Avenue Up who is called upon to reveal her sexual orientation,
while the protagonist in From Third Avenue On has a vacant
spacein her face (1994: 20). Their companion in Seen from the L
stands naked with a risky body (24). She is certainly an appropriate
precursor to the women in Twilight of the Illicit and To a Cabaret
Dancer who start as dangerous and bestial but end up defeated, thus
leading finally to the corpse of Suicide powerless, voiceless.
On the one hand, the poems create portraits of women who
experience brief moments of freedom outside the conventions that
would capture and silence them. On the other hand, these women are
ultimately defeated by those societal conventions. In this sense, these
women are repulsive because like the suicide they prefigure, they
end their own lives, thereby suffocating their protest and negating
themselves and their voices.
In General and In Particular are two very short and very
obscure poems that can be considered to constitute a diptych. As their
names suggest we move from the general to the particular, from a
sense of bitter disillusionment to the concrete reason for this
disillusionment, and this reason is once again the abuse suffered. In
General starts with altar cloth and its sacred connotations then
moves on immediately to question this sacredness with the use of the
oxymoron rag of worth. Unpriced also allows the double reading
of priceless or with no price, i.e., worthless. The next lines introduce
us into a game of chance, yet the Undiced of the next line suggest
that in this case, there was no chance. The last lines, And you we
282
Esther Snchez-Pardo
valued still a little / More than Christ (17), give us a final clue to the
meaning of the poem. Christ, as both God and son of God,
simultaneously connotes the sacrifice of the child at the hands of the
father and the father figure itself, imbued with all the power and
authority that a father has for a child. These lines give us a poignant
vision of the extent of the disillusionment the child suffers when her
father, her god who can do no wrong, stoops to abuse. In Particular
ratifies this reading with its overt references to loin, wrong,
body, and lust, and again the last two lines, now with valued
substituted by Worshipped (25) a word which suggests the blind
faith that the religious place in their God a reiteration of the bitter
accusation of the child toward her father, her god.
The five original black-and-white illustrations present images
of women, animals, and inanimate objects. Four of the five drawings
have clear borders, but all of the images challenge these borders with
off-center subjects and large areas of either blankness or black
background. The women of the poems are always off-center,
paradoxically surviving and thriving on the margins. This power of
the margin is exemplified in the first drawing in the series in the
original chapbook, opposite the poem From Third Avenue On.
Against a black rectangle, Barnes creates a white image of a tall
woman, walking out of the frame, accompanied by two birds. The
woman is dressed in a white-patterned jacket, wide-legged pants, and
white shoes. She smiles as she walks, projecting a seemingly positive
image of her independence, creativity, and freedom. That the birds
would seem to be cocks and that one is positioned between her legs
seems to reinforce further an impression of power. Yet this woman is
restricted to only a third of the picture space. She is off-center; the two
birds, including the cock, seem to occupy a more prominent
position. Even more disturbing is the thick blackness of the image.
Although the woman seems to be liberated and powerful, she is
simultaneously marginalized, pushed to the edges of a bounded
illustration, never to escape the frame.
As a prototypical New Woman of the turn-of-the-century,
single and professional, Barnes did not fit into the societal scheme nor
did her writing entirely correspond to the writing of high modernism.
As Louis Kannenstine pointed out, although Barness work displays
certain affinities with the major literary movements of the early years
of the twentieth century, it cannot be said to wholly conform to any of
283

these movements (in Benstock 1986: 233) and it is precisely
Barness relation to literary tradition that so troubles assessments of
her work: readers do not know where to place her (in Benstock
1986: 242). Finally, why does Barnes remain on the margins of
literature and art? We might answer the question by focusing on her
emphasis on the body: she exalts it, sings its intricacies, hidden places,
and dark desires.
Barnes writes about the emotions as opposed to cool
rationalism; she writes herself fearlessly into her work, and from this
personal perspective, she addresses many themes, all of which
constitute an attack on the values of the day. In The Book of Repulsive
Women, she shows prostitution, the hypocrisy of the upright,
perverse sexuality, suicide, loneliness, squalor, and underlying all
these she deals with the taboo subjects of incest and rape. These
themes and attitudes were more than sufficient to convert her, in the
eyes of her society, as a real danger to the way of life supported and
promoted by the capitalist system; it was necessary for the good of all
that these womens voices be silenced and so it came to pass, through
feigned indifference and ridicule.
The Convergences of Schulz and Barnes
Schulzs visual and verbal art has many features in common with
Barness: their stories converge on the absurd and the grotesque; they
deal with conflicts within the family and specifically between
childhood and adulthood; and their production is to a large extent
autobiographical. In their visual artwork, the figure of the artist is
central and constantly appears in self-portraits; and they both refuse to
devalorize the popular culture from which they draw many of their
images.
Their themes were common to German expressionist prose
and poetry and to French decadent art: the mechanization and
dehumanization of life, the anthropomorphic character of the natural
world, teratoid figures, and dummies and dolls that may come to life.
Barness early journalism includes several stories about the sideshow,
the circus, the zoo, and other forms of mass entertainment where
bodies are displayed before paying audiences; this is shown in her best
known novel Nightwood. Understanding Barness characters as
freaks sheds light on her attempt to portray radical forms of sexual
284
Esther Snchez-Pardo
difference and to find an appropriate stylistic form to depict

Otherness. Thus, contemporary scholars interested in the novels
lesbian themes focus on the relationship between Robin, Nora, and
Jenny whereas others concentrate on its marginal characters. In
Nightwood, there are multiple allusions to dolls, and, as it has been
noted, the doll as a substitute for the child is a reference to nonreproductive sexuality.7
In Schulzs story Tailors Dummies included in Cinnamon
Shops a dressmakers shop assistants work under the gaze of an
anthropomorphized dummy. The dummys control over the situation
creates ambiguity around her inanimate figure, and what follows is the
father figures growing obsession with the animation of dummies. He
becomes fascinated with the idea that human beings, as well as God,
are capable of creating life. The fathers preoccupation with the
animation of nature is grotesque because it so strongly emphasizes the
mechanical aspect of the body.
Both Schulz and Barnes present us with the irruption of the
grotesque in their work. The grotesque depends on an unexpected and
unsettling contrast to achieve its effect, and it requires some
grounding in reality in order not to be classified as purely absurd or
frightening. In the grotesque, the human body is a common focal
point. When the given limits of the body are transgressed, the result
can be either disturbing or comical with an emphasis on artificiality
and ambiguity.
Often Schulzs and Barness works describe the old world
coming to an end in a context of natural disasters and decay, usually
interspersed with observations on the state of the bourgeois world.
The idea of a natural phenomenon behaving in unnatural ways echoes
the expressionist idea that the unexpected has become commonplace.
Modernity, it is implied, requires a reordering of accepted beliefs and
the casual acceptance of the grotesque in everyday life.
In The Idolatrous Book, the grotesque effect is magnified by
the fact that the reader is aware from the start that there is a mixture of
real-life characters and fictional characters. In The Book of Repulsive
Women something analogous occurs. The mysterious figures that
often appear in the background blur the line between reality and the

7
For discussions about the novels lesbian themes, see Julie Abraham (1996), Carolyn
Allen (1996), and Frann Michel (1989). Karen Kaivola (1991) and Jane Marcus
(1991) pay special attention to Nightwoods marginal characters.
285

imagined fears and dangers to which women are exposed, making the
figures grotesque and even uncanny familiar yet unfamiliar as in the
Freudian sense.8
In any event, the ambivalent nature of Schulz and Barness
visual and verbal production complicates interpretation and keeps
their work from being simply comical or horrifying. In literary history,
the effectiveness of these resources carries over from times of
confrontation and conflict the interval between the two world wars
into the periods of peace that follow. They appear not only to make
sense of contemporary crises but also to make sense of, or at least give
voice to, the emotional aftereffects of such a crisis.
I would like to draw attention to the importance of the
grotesque with regard to the effect a text has on a reader. Because the
grotesque thrives on the inability to synthesize two opposing forces, it
provides us with a useful way of looking at the impossibility of
closure in the texts we are examining. The grotesque requires an
intense negotiation of meaning and the transgression of boundaries,
and it depends on the readers response to achieve full effect. It opens
up new perspectives by revealing a hidden reality, and it inspires,
particularly as a result of its fragmentary nature, reflection that
reaches beyond the text.
Finally, we should also note that Schulz and Barnes were
warding off silence in their dense and complex works, in part because
of their suspicion that not all could be said in words and that the
silence of the visual image was an ideal that language could emulate
but never attain. In The Idolatrous Book, Schulz probably felt visual
images were somehow superior to literary ones; in The Book of
Repulsive Women, Barnes, preoccupied with the relationship between
words and images, repeatedly reflected on the impossibility of
conveying adequate images of women. From their different gender
positions, Schulz and Barnes show a deep concern about the functions
of representation and interpretation.

8
Hoffmanns novella Der Sandmann (1817) is considered the definitive grotesque

text of the nineteenth century, in large part because of Freuds treatment of it in his
essay Das Unheimliche (1919). Freud writes about a familiar object or event that
returns in unfamiliar form (1955 [1919]). In literature, the uncanny can be used as a
way of dealing with moments of crisis, even collective trauma, since
incomprehensibility in literature enacts the same situation in life.
286
Esther Snchez-Pardo
Conclusion
Neither Barness repulsive women nor Schulzs women idols fit
into conventional formats; they are never perfect models that lend
themselves to mimetic realism. These women are all powerful and
powerless, always restrained by a society that is unable to accept them
in their emotional and sexual freedom. They walk away from the
center but are paradoxically contained by the borders a visual
contradiction that mirrors the verbal contradictions present in Barness
series of poems about strong women who end up as suicides. In the
case of Schulz, women are constrained as objects of the male gaze. As
a response to the ironic centrality of the New Woman of the fin de
sicle who was frequently observed and feared by men (Showalter
1990: 127-8), Barness women, our most extreme instance, ignore the
masculine gaze and instead celebrate their own freedom by quitting
society altogether.9 With The Book of Repulsive Women, Barnes
challenges the canonical through a combination of radical visual and
verbal techniques. She came to realize that the only way for her to
gain entrance into this space was to play by its rules and to subvert it
from within.
Schulz and Barnes placed emphasis on physicality, on the
body when the entire western world wanted to forget physicality by
focusing on the superphysical. They showed humankind with raw
animality, stripped bare of the comforting veils of humanity. And they
proudly showed and wrote fearlessly about themselves. They
constructed a poetics of the body and spoke to us in many voices,
moving from the margins to perform a true polyphony, a magnificent
chorus that grants Modernist texts their privileged status in
contemporary literary history. How can one write about oneself from a
position of marginality and expect to be read?
The complex terrain between visual and verbal art was
undoubtedly a privileged medium with which to violate the barrier of

9
In this way, Barnes is addressing what Carol Laing identifies as the structures of
gender that surrounded Barnes in 1920s Paris: Barnes describes the conditions of
abjection before the fact, simultaneously beseeching and pulverizing her female
subjects because they are impossible, ambiguous, and in perceptual danger, preempted by the One who has already set everything in its place, with whom she cannot
identify without becoming him (1992: 70). Barnes conveys a dark message, to live
only in the conventional world amounts to choosing silence and suicide.
287

repression and circumvent the institution of censorship. Schulz and
Barnes, each in their own way, refused the symbolic constructs that
humankind used to make life more bearable and opposed the dominant
trends of thought in their time. In their oeuvres they actively work
against replacing the flesh with a cultural construct. They also predict
the dilemmas of contemporary artists before their radical alienation
from the self, and they perhaps also predict a time when the body will
regain its precedence over the Word and humanity will be once more
humanized.
Finally, the eclecticism of current definitions of the avantgarde does not necessarily fit in with the singularity of its major
representatives. Why should we exclude Barnes or Schulz as
important contributors to twentieth-century European avant-garde? As
other scholars and critics sympathetic to Barness and Schulzs
engagement with their own work, we would also heartily endorse
complementing the well-known facade of modern art with the ignored
backstage: the stylistic revolution of Djuna Barnes and Bruno Schulz,
whose escape into the past ended in the future.
Bibliography
Abraham, Julie. 1996. Are Girls Necessary? Lesbian Writing and Modern Histories.
New York: Routledge.
Allen, Carolyn. 1996. Following Djuna: Women Lovers and the Erotics of Loss.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Barnes, Djuna. 1994. The Book of Repulsive Women (ed. D. Messerli). Los Angeles:
Sun & Moon Press.
. 1995. Poes Mother. Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes (ed. D. Messerli). Los
Angeles: Sun & Moon Press.
Benstock, Shari. 1986. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Broe, Mary Lynn (ed.) 1991. Silence and Power. A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Burke, Carolyn. 1991. Accidental Aloofness: Barnes, Loy, and Modernism in Broe
(1991): 67-79.
Cather, Willa. 1936. Not Under Forty. New York: Knopf.
Doughty, Frances. 1991. Gilt on Cardboard. Djuna Barnes as Illustrator of Her Life
and Work in Broe (1991): 137-154.
Herring, Philip. 1995. Djuna. The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. New York: Viking.
Freud, Sigmund. 1955 [1919]. The Uncanny in Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol XVII. London: Hogarth Press:
217-256.
Kaivola, Karen. 1991. All Contraries Confounded. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.
288
Esther Snchez-Pardo
Laing, Carol. 1992. Rhetoric and Ornament: Reading (S)exchanges and Violence in
Work by Women in Public 6: 65-80.
Marcus, Jane. 1991. Laughing at Leviticus. Nightwood as Womans Circus Epic in
Broe (1991): 221-250.
Messerli, Douglas (ed.) 1995. Introduction in Barnes (1995): 5-9.
Michel, Frann. 1989. Displacing Castration: Nightwood, Ladies Almanack and
Feminine Writing in Contemporary Literature 30(1): 33-58.
Picador.
. 1990. The Drawings of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). Evanston, Il.:
Northwestern University Press.
Showalter, Elaine. 1990. Sexual Anarchy. Gender and Culture at the Fin de Sicle.
New York: Penguin.
Slessor, Catherine. 2000. The Art of Aubrey Beardsley. London: Chancellor Press.
Bruno Schulzs Xi
(consulted
18.05.2008)
Bruno Schulzs Incomparable Realities: From

Literature to Theatricality
Daniel Watt
Abstract: Bruno Schulzs fiction has influenced fantastical literature profoundly
without engendering attempts to replicate it directly. Rather the stories have generated
a mood and atmosphere which resists any clear critical strategy to interpret them. It is
interesting therefore that reading the work seems to call for some form of
representation, in the form of art, theatre, or film. This essay examines the theatrical
representation of his texts (Complicites Street of Crocodiles and Double Edge
Theatres Republic of Dreams), its influence on other dramatic events (Tadeusz
Kantors Dead Class), and the ensuing creation of phantasmagorical worlds of
eroticised objects (The Quay Brothers Street of Crocodiles).
Introduction: An Illegal Event, a Doubtful Manoeuvre or a

Cul-de-sac?
What might a faithful adaptation of Schulzs work consist of? It is a
question that arose from teaching, not from research. I have been
attempting to teach Schulzs texts and their various stage and film
adaptations for an undergraduate module on adaptation. For this
course we use an admirable text, Julie Sanders Adaptation and
Appropriation (2006). In it Sanders distinguishes two broad strategies
for the transformation of prose to stage, or a variety of media in their
migration to other forms of entertainment. These are, as the title
might well suggest: adaptation the relatively straightforward
transposition of one work into the new medium, in an attempt to
render a faithful repetition in the new form; and appropriation the
essential characters, themes, or issues, transposed and represented in a
somewhat changed or even entirely different setting.
This essay begins therefore by asking: are stage and screen
adaptations of Schulzs work doubtful manoeuvres or cul-de-sacs
in understanding his work? Schulz himself provides something of an
answer concerning transformations:
290
Daniel Watt
There is no dead matterlifelessness is only a disguise behind which hide
unknown forms of life. The range of these forms is infinite and their
shades and nuances limitless. The Demiurge was in possession of
important and interesting creative recipes. Thanks to them he created a
multiplicity of species which renew themselves by their own devices. No
one knows whether these recipes will ever be reconstructed. But this is
unnecessary, because even if the classical methods of creation should
prove inaccessible for evermore, there still remain some illegal methods,
an infinity of heretical and criminal methods. (Schulz 1998: 30)
Of course, the matter of which Father speaks is precisely that: matter.

The ever-present mood of Tailors Dummies is the props cupboard,
the storeroom of old childrens toys fashioned variously from tubing,
canvas and cardboard, whitewashed and emblazoned with memory
and imagination. So to extend my question in light of the
transformation of matter that Schulz is so obsessed with, is it possible
that theatre and film are just materials in the heretical and criminal
methodology of Schulz criticism? Do these multiple species,
originating from the Schulzian fermenting matter of the page of the
book, give us a particular insight into Schulzs work? These terms:
book, play, film, as considered in the classic manoeuvres of
contemporary cultural artefacts, bear no relation to the complex
interplay of such terms in the Schulzian universe. As we shall come to
momentarily, the book(e) and the theatre are emblems of a
metaphysical transformation that perhaps only a certain type of media
is able to realize.
As Krzysztof Stala notes, there is a relational aspect of
Schulzs work to the burgeoning activities of mass culture:
Only due to supplements containing the trash of secondary truths we can
realize the (non)existence of the true Book. Only in the margins and in
palimpsests of the official culture, may altered time appear the time of
heretical art, of magical reality that transgresses the boundaries of the
world. In these supplementary books one is able to recognize the glitter,
the radiance of the great Original, of the metaphysical repletion which
appears in the quotidian world only in its secondary, unsuccessful shapes.
(Stala 1993: 45)
Obviously this quotation branches out across many issues concerned

with Schulzs work; the book(e), the Original, time, reality etc., but it
is to the issue of the supplement that I should like to turn here. For the
supplementarity of the theatrical, in terms of a temporal relation to
Schulzs Incomparable Realities: From Literature to Theatricality
291

Schulzs texts, cannot be denied (and perhaps the foundational aspects
of this supplementarity may also make themselves apparent).
However, as many critics note, the visual, theatrical, and performative
are not as simply separate from the written work as might initially
appear. The area is, of course, fraught with issues of translation,
nationhood, mythology, religion, and iconography, but let us return to
an issue of writing and one that might be best addressed by the work
of Jacques Derrida. For in tracing the movements of works in relation
to origins, totalities, and meanings, he is perhaps the most careful
thinker with which to proceed in terms of what might constitute the
illegal event of Schulz on stage and screen. Consider Derridas
statement from Positions in light of Schulzs work:
[P]olysemia, as such, is organized within the implicit horizon of a unitary
resumption of meaning, that is, within the horizon of a dialectics a
teleological and totalizing dialectics that at a given moment, however far
off, must permit the reassemblage of the totality of a text into the truth of
its meaning, constituting the text as expression, as illustration, and
annulling the open and productive displacement of the textual chain.
Dissemination, on the contrary, although producing a nonfinite number of
semantic effects, can be led back neither to a present of simple origin
nor to an eschatological presence. It marks an irreducible and generative
multiplicity. The supplement and the turbulence of a certain lack fracture
the limit of the text, forbidding an exhaustive and closed formulation of it,
or at least a saturating taxonomy of its themes, its signified, its meaning.
(Derrida 1981: 45)
It will be worth bearing these issues in mind as we consider the

following, provisional, examples of Schulz adaptations. There is, in
each of them, a certain lack, and none has a simple origin or
formulates the work in relation to an eschatological presence. None
attempts to draw out the meaning of Schulz, but rather than adapt or
appropriate, perhaps each example, in its own way, inhabits
Schulzs world momentarily.
Consider this essay a visit to a travelling waxworks museum,
with a grainy pre-recorded voiceover of partial details and issues that
arise for consideration, an evocation of a performance memory
perhaps. These scraps, as in the nature of dissemination, have no
distinct origin, nor fathomable teleology. As Schulz would have it,
[t]heir roles will be short, concise; their characters without a
background. Sometimes, for one gesture, for one word alone, we shall
292
Daniel Watt
make the effort to bring them to life. We openly admit: we shall not insist
either on durability or solidity of workmanship; our creations will be
temporary, to serve for a single occasion. (Schulz 1998: 31)
Four Installations in the Great Schulz Waxworks Sideshow:

Kantor, Complicite, Double Edge and the Quay Brothers
The Dead Class is the first in the series that would be associated with
Tadeusz Kantors Theatre of Death, and it toured worldwide and
brought him well deserved recognition. It opens on classroom benches
occupied by ashen-faced older actors playing at being schoolchildren.
Kantor is also there, on stage, as he always was conducting the
event. After silent appeals and the raising of their hands these elderly
children exit, to return moments later with dummies of themselves as
children, sprouting strangely from their bodies, impeding their
movements a burden of memories. The sance begins.
The origins of Kantors The Dead Class may well be found in
Schulzs story The Old-Age Pensioner. Certainly the environment of
the schoolroom in this performance evokes the early twentieth-century
Galician schoolroom that would have been the rich and febrile
memory of Kantors youth and Schulzs workplace. Krzysztof Pleniarowicz in The Dead Memory Machine provides a comprehensive
literary background to Kantors work. He writes:
Just before the war, Kantor began discovering Witkiewiczs extravagant
dramas, which had been rejected by the theatre. He also became familiar
with Gombrowiczs 1938 novel Ferdydurke and Schulzs extraordinary
stories, although it was only during the occupation that he fully immersed
himself in the latter Schulz remained forgotten until the mid-1970s
when, along with Witkiewicz, he became a participant in The Dead
Class. In a conversation with Miklaszewski, Kantor said that his whole
generation had grown up in the shadow of Schulz. (Pleniarowicz 2004:
27)
So Kantor directly signals that the participants in this dramatic

sance, The Dead Class, include Bruno Schulz. Can it be said to be
an adaptation of Schulzs work? It seems firmly based on a particular
experience of the classroom and certainly also carries elements of
Schulzs pensioner who returns to the class to learn his times tables
properly. However, Kantors actors are somewhat different.
293

In the accompanying Theatre of Death Manifesto from 1975,
Kantor writes: The MANNEQUIN in my theatre must become a
MODEL through which pass a strong sense of DEATH and the
conditions of the DEAD. A model for the live ACTOR (Kantor 1993:
112). It is here, most crucially, that the tension between object and
actor appears and indicates the proximity of Kantors sance to the
work of Schulz. For whilst Kleist and Craig (precursors, Kantor
acknowledges, to the work of the Theatre of Death) had urged for the
grace of the marionette over the false consciousness of the human
(actor), Kantor wanted the actor to fuse themselves to, or be
challenged by the presence of, their mannequin. Kantor took the
mannequin very seriously; the effigy was not a joke, and it became a
fulcrum upon which the theatre itself created a new reality. In
Kantors own work on objects, which begins long before the Theatre
of Death period, we can also hear the same concern that runs through
Schulzs texts:
Figures in a waxwork museum even fairground parodies of dummies,
must not be treated lightly. Matter never makes jokes: it is always full of
the tragically serious. Who dares to think that you can play with matter,
that you can shape it for a joke, that the joke will not be built in, will not
eat into it like fate, like destiny? Can you imagine that pain, the dull
imprisoned suffering, hewn into the matter of that dummy which does not
know why it must be what it is, why it must remain in that forcibly
imposed form which is no more than a parody? (Schulz 1998: 33)
The Dead Class, as a performance, also cares for matter in the same
way that it cares for the chaotic absurdity of memory. It evokes
childhood to locate it throughout life and in so doing provokes the
audience to remember. The mannequin itself, whilst an obvious
symbol for the memory of youth, repeats the opposition that takes
place between actor and audience; an opposition that Kantor himself
comments upon: IT IS NECESSARY TO RECOVER THE
PRIMEVAL FORCE OF THE SHOCK TAKING PLACE AT THE
MOMENT WHEN OPPOSITE A MAN (THE VIEWER) THERE
STOOD FOR THE FIRST TIME A MAN (THE ACTOR)
DECEPTIVELY SIMILAR TO US, YET AT THE SAME TIME
INFINITELY FOREIGN, BEYOND AN IMPASSABLE BARRIER
(Kantor 1993: 114). Is it Kantors actor or dummy that is so infinitely
foreign, or the traces of Schulzs tragically serious matter that
haunts the audience throughout the performance?
294
Daniel Watt
Kantor does not attempt to simply adapt Schulz, certainly.

There is nothing but the barest element of the Old Age Pensioner
remaining in The Dead Class a return to childhood in the most
funereal of guises. But as Pleniarowicz comments, it is in this surface
that a certain layer of reality, Kantors reality, is revealed through
Schulz:
The characters in the dead class are additionally, like Schulzs heroes,
suspended between a drive to grow and a tendency to regress, and also
imprisoned in a labyrinth of unavoidable repetitions (the pictorial form of
the labyrinth expresses the futility of their actions). Yet neither of the
themes borrowed from Schulz indicates any mythological motivation or
content with a deeper source; each illustrates imprisonment in the
photographs of dead memory and demonstrates the automatism of vain
action in Schulzs words, vestigial automatism, without cause and
effect. (Pleniarowicz 2004: 199)
In the tradition of the great puppet thinking of Kleist, Hoffmann, and

Craig, Kantors cyclical circus of memory and desire evokes a
Schulzian world, at once threateningly degenerate but liberatingly
infantile and signals the theatre as a possible site of reconfigured
reading of Schulzian themes.
Whilst Kantor recreated Schulz as part of his own dramatic
construct, others have taken what might be considered, in terms of
adaptation, to be a more faithful approach to the texts. Theatre de
Complicites The Street of Crocodiles was originally produced in
1992 and toured the world until 1994. It was then remounted in 1998
and 1999. Taking direct textual quotation and a blend of biography
and physical theatre, the company created a fast-paced dreamscape
that evokes the environment of Schulzs writing. An important
element in the process is, of course, rehearsal. Of this Simon
McBurney, the companys director, writes:
[We began] by telling and retelling the stories. In abbreviated forms; or as
fireside tales. As evocations of The World of Bruno and visions without
words at all, as dreams and nightmares. But in this rehearsal the objects
began to dominate. They took over the room, filling pockets and the
insides of the actors hats, or under their tables. Umbrellas, book sprouting
feathers, boots, shirts, plates, glasses and cutlery. In retrospect I realised
that Schulzs vision, which evokes the transforming power of the childs
eye, necessarily meant that objects and their transmogrification would be
central to the process. But when we were in it, they seemed to take over
295

the whole process without permission, beyond our control. (McBurney,
Complicite Website)
If we recall the powerful role of objects in Kantor, it seems that the

object dominates a Schulz performance. In Complicites production a
variety of languages were used, dependent on the performers
involved, lending a certain chaotic dreaminess to the production of
meaning as the piece carried along.
What remains now is obviously the play text itself and a video
in the Theatre Museum. McBurney describes the play text as follows:
More the record of a process than a text for performance; a map rather
than a play. A play is a place which demands to be inhabited; both origin
and destination, linked by a clearly determined path. A map indicates the
landscape, suggests a multitude of directions, but does not dictate which
one you should take. A map, however beautiful, is a guide not a site. If
you wish to visit the site yourself, pick up Schulzs books. And travel.
(Complicite 1999: note on the script)
Again the terminology of inhabitation which describes both the

relation of Schulzs work to stage and film and also the audiences
relation to the work and to Schulzs writing. We may also recall the
bleak whiteness of the map area of the street of crocodiles, which
usually marks polar regions or unexplored countries of which almost
nothing is known (Schulz 1998: 57). So at once McBurney directs
the explorer away from the book that is the map of the performance
and into Schulzs own texts but also reifies the absent performance as
a place in which to dwell.
If a map remains to show some way into uncharted territory,
there is also the issue of the building plans. A play script may also be
treated in this manner: the basic model to construct a site in which to
dwell. Indeed Kantors scripts1 worked in this fashion, too. They
constituted a series of possible blocks from which the piece was built,
differently, in each environment. Brian Banks eloquently pursues the
architectural elaboration of Schulzs imagination:
Schulz shares a search for place an imaginary space thats partly of
this world but reconstituted through language, uncorrupted by history and
undefiled overtly at least by ideas. He creates a house of being, as

1
The script or partytura comprises the compositional elements of the

performance. It is not a fixed text and functions more like a musical score.
296
Daniel Watt
Iribarne noted, reflected also in both book titles, first entered through
childhood then through lexical incantation. The reader hasnt been shown
the plans drafts, diaries and reading lists are lost but its masonry can
be glimpsed among the architectural remains (as well as the formal shapes
of his drawings) where is exhibited a fondness for images of a protective
refuge, the houses, rooms, shop interiors, cabs, landaus, and frozen market
square of childhood. Drohobycz and its environs is his dream republic,
which just happens to be called Poland. Even the sky is conceived
architecturally, in parallel fashion to the almost plotless stories that are
built up, word upon word, simile upon metaphor, into basilicas. (Banks
2006: 91-92)
Here there is also a description of the process of group theatre

elaboration, as scenes are built up, plotless, broken and shorn from
narrative coherence, but rising into some form of reflection of the
Schulzian psyche.
There are moments in Complicites performance that mirror
Kantors: schoolroom anarchy prevails at the opening of part two of
the play. But what is perhaps lost in the Complicite piece is a sense of
Poland itself, which seems to come through more forcefully in
Kantors work. However, as Banks (2006: 91-92) notes, Drohobycz is
Schulzs dream republic that just happens to be called Poland. Place
is incidental in many respects to the fantastical dream imperative of
Schulzs work. Any backstage, refuse ridden alleyway, or gaudy toyroom may present a detour into the imaginary wilderness of his
supremely theatrical mental map. Each work of adaptation must
declare itself provisional until the pieces, or props, are reconfigured.
Double Edge Theatres recent work, The Republic of Dreams,
has evolved steadily from a lengthy engagement with Schulzs work,
both directly in previous performances and also as part of community
cultural exchange programmes such as during a visit in 1994 to
Drohobycz where the company focused on the recovery of Judaic
songs in the synagogue there. The work from this period included
collaboration with the Polish company Gardzienice, but the company
has since focused on their own performer training techniques partly
informed by the Jewish history of many of the companys performers.
A brief description of the performance by Ewa Kara in her
recent review of the work may help set the scene of the piece:
If at first sight the performance builds slowly, this is just an illusion,
because here time submits to a vital condensation of events. One vision
runs into another. Numerous transformations come one by one, and the
297

lines between dream and reality are being blurred. From an opened
armoire, a big city degeneration falls out and Brunos family household
changes in a crowded Street of Crocodiles, full of music, and galling
erotic women of blemished beauty. Later, from the same armoire, will fall
Jacob, father of Joseph (and Bruno as well), played remarkably by Carlos
Uriona, who transforms also for a moment into a grotesque Franz Joseph
together with the mother (Carroll Durand) as Maximilian. This big
armoire, as well as a table, are places of transformation and at the same
time places of sacrum and peace. Although the creators of the
performance are interested in Schulzs magical realism, they dont let us
forget about a real world and history, which in 1942 so cruelly claimed
him Fluent changes between scenes are strengthened by moving set
pieces (tables, armoire, mannequins), and a fantastical character of space
by rhythmically placed curtains used also as a screen for shadows []
Sometimes it seems like the spectator is expected to be familiar with
Schulzs work. Its not necessary but highly recommended, in order to
fully understand the quotations appearing on stage. Dreamy atmosphere,
dynamism, and plasticity of a performance are its huge advantages, but
there is an impression of dissatisfaction, because proud regions of great
heresy want to be captured by frames of time. (2007: 10)
I think Kara raises an important concern at the end here, but one that
will perhaps always be levelled at any adaptation, of Schulz or
otherwise: the capture of the vast imaginative sphere by the time
limits of a performance event. Indeed, but then one may ask, is all
performance a vain attempt to render visible this invisible threshold of
dream and nightmare? If we treat each theatre piece in light of its
inevitable failing, we will perhaps be much better able to understand
the impulse to create the work, for its impulse lies elsewhere than the
final dramatised event. And to return to Schulzs question, Could it
be that time is too narrow for all events? Could it happen that all the
seats within time have been sold?, we might state that yes, the
demands reality places on time are too narrow for the event of theatre,
whether the tickets have all been sold or not.
Stacy Klein, the director of Double Edge, elaborates her own
methods for working in the frame of time that is theatre, in an
interview:
As a director I create the performance through image, rhythm, and poetics.
To me it is indeed a moving painting, or a musical poem. Schulz bursts
out alive on the performance platform in my view, and perhaps
particularly for my theatre, I surmise. The difficulty may be for those
watching to suspend their literal minds enough to go into his world. For
me his stories, and his wonderful art, practically jump off the page by
298
Daniel Watt
themselves, and most of what I had to do was fill in Schulzs own life
story and his context. This was the hard part, to juxtapose his life and his
terrible ending, and his work. (Klein 2007)
So there is an element of exchange that has to happen here. The

audience must be gracious enough to accept the new world they will
enter: an amalgam of Schulz and the director of that work.
The company have produced a piece very similar in design to
that of Complicite, in the sense that it takes textual, biographical, and
imaginary elements and combines them into a vivid and physical
theatre piece. Very apparent in Double Edges work is the evolution of
particular visual quotations from Schulzs artistic output. These
emerge from the general mise-en-scene with uncanny precision and
dwell briefly before evaporating. This succeeds in evoking the dream
environment still further. Again in interview Klein elaborates further:
Daniel Watt: Theatre seems so adept at evoking dream worlds and I
wonder if there was a particular method you had of training actors to
dwell in, or represent, their own dream environments during the evolution
of the piece?
Stacy Klein: We train in three parts for a piece the first is physical and
physical metaphor (using objects) which is very concrete. The second
stage is improvization, in which the actors take the physicality and turn it
towards the relationship between themselves and their characters. This is
done as a group, and also each actor directs an etude with everyone based
on their character. So the first is an interrupted dream world, the second is
a dream world which is controlled. Through this process the scenes are
developed by me. The third stage is the structure in which this is all edited
and developed into a performance language.
Basically the entire second stage deals with dreams, the actors in relation
to the material we work with. My view is that dreams, or imagination, or
creativity, is what is lacking on our dear earth today, so in every way we
try to encourage or provoke our audience into another reality, a separate
reality. To demonstrate that it exists and is possible, not only for us, but
for them. That is why I love The Republic of Dreams, the story, and the
sentence, no dream, however senseless, goes wasted in the universe.
(Klein 2007)
That final quotation from Schulz, therefore, forms the basis of much
of what Klein is looking to effect in the Double Edge production, and
should the audience give themselves up to it, they will also find that
perhaps, like dreams, no theatre event goes wasted in the universe. For
however marginal or central its Schulzian core may be, each
299

production elaborates a performance language that communicates
new strata of meaning not only for the Schulz texts but also to that
thin, fragile, environment we are so fond of: reality.
It is important to bear in mind that the Quay Brothers were
initially working on their animation that finally came to life as Street
of Crocodiles without the particular focus of a Schulz story. The
project, as a funding requirement, needed to have a particular literary
foundation, as they explain in a 2001 interview with Andr Habib:
I remember when we first read Schulz. The BFI was demanding that we
hang our new film on an author, and we proposed Schulz right away. It
was such a challenge, since we had been reading his work and we thought
that this was the direction we really wanted to go with the puppets. We
had to sort of grab them, and not be fearless, not be afraid of the puppets.
Schulz in a way liberated us. Hes such a powerful writer. We could make
films around Bruno Schulz for the rest of our lives and still try and grasp,
apprehend his universe. (Habib 2001)
The animation was also driven particularly by the musical score by

Leszek Jankowski. Later in the interview there is discussion again of
maps and the way that the stories were used in the generation of the
film.
AH: I read Schulzs Street of Crocodiles after having seen your film. Its
funny how Schulzs text works like a map on which you placed different
elements.
Quays: In fact, we took a lot of elements from different stories and sort of
pulled it together. We gave the story a theatrical dimension gleaning a lot
of other things from Schulz, and even other things which we thought were
Schulzianesque, which we thought would work in terms of a Schulzian
universe. He didnt have to write about such and such, its all blurred.
Were not sure what belonged to us and what was in the texts. (Habib
2001)
So the Quays work gathered, gravitationally, around Schulzs work,

and the difference is very apparent. They succeed, in an animation
devoid of dialogue and containing only one direct textual reference to
Schulzs stories, in portraying a world of nightmarish matter:
animated screws, leather strips, broken toy automata, a world close to
Fathers almost psychotic speculations:
300
Daniel Watt
Who knows how many suffering, crippled, fragmentary forms of life
there are, such as the artificially created life of chests and tables quickly
nailed together, crucified timbers, silent martyrs to cruel human
inventiveness? The terrible transplantation of incompatible and hostile
races of wood, their merging into one misbegotten personality. (Schulz
1998: 36)
And in another interview the Quays have said that what they want to
create in their work is an alchemy of objects where there is a sense
of things inhabited; they want puppet films [that] have a life, a
pathology (Quays 2006). What the animation achieves with great
effect is conjuring the general atmosphere of The Street of
Crocodiles evoked so well in the following quotations:
Only a few people noticed the peculiar characteristics of that district: the
fatal lack of colour, as if that shoddy, quickly growing area could not
afford the luxury of it. Everything was grey there, as in black-and-white
photographs or in cheap illustrated catalogues. The similarity was real
rather than metaphorical because at times, when wandering in those parts,
one in fact gained the impression that one was turning the pages of a
prospectus, looking at columns of boring commercial advertisements,
among which suspect announcements nestled like parasites, together with
dubious notices and illustrations with a double meaning. And ones
wandering proved as sterile and pointless as the excitement produced by a
close study of pornographic albums. (Schulz 1998: 59)
It is precisely this dual quality of the fecund and the sterile that the
Quays produce in their animation, both the guilty indulgence of the
lustful gaze and the tawdry, meaninglessness of commerce. Indeed,
everything in the film seems busy, or brimming with life, but
despite the bustle and sense of purpose, one has the impression of a
monotonous aimless wandering, of a sleepy procession of puppets. An
atmosphere of strange insignificance pervades the scene. The crowd flows
lazily by and, strange to say, one can see it only indistinctly; the figures
pass in gentle disarray, never reaching complete sharpness of outline.
Only at times do we catch among the turmoil of many heads a dark
vivacious look, a black bowler hat worn at an angle, half a face spilt by a
smile formed by lips which had just finished speaking, a foot thrust
forward to take a step and fixed forever in that position. (Schulz 1998: 61)
The Quays succeed in offering us puppets at once beautiful and

terrible. These creatures not only echo the crippled forms trapped in
wood but also the frustrated, sexually charged characters of the
301

tailors shop. Returning a moment to consider Kantors elaboration of
Kleist and Craigs obsession with the grace of the puppet, the Quays
are very particular with the way they wish to use the puppet.
AH: I was reading the other night Heinrich Kleists essay on the Theatre
of Marionettes and it made me think of the relationship between puppets
and dancers, between puppetry and dancing. Do you believe, like Kleist
does, that a puppet since its movements are void of self-consciousness
can have more grace than a dancer?
Quays: Certainly not. Its of a different kind. I dont think you can ever
compete with the human body, the way a dancer can. But I think a puppet
can achieve other things, on a more symbolic level. You would never
make your puppets work the way a dancer can and we wouldnt begin to
attempt it. Its a sort of empty virtuosity, even to begin. (Habib 2001)
Their different approach is fundamentally, one might argue, in the

form of puppet that they deploy. Their puppets are still characters,
moved minutely, frame by frame, as the film advances. The graceful
puppet of the Kleist and Craig school is one in full movement by the
puppeteer, its limbs and body under gravitational commands. But one
statement here is very important, empty virtuosity, because however
the grace of the puppet is conceived, it is still under the power of the
human. What, ironically, the Quays enable through stop-motion
animation is matter to regain control of itself, for things to come alive,
through time, and generate a universe less planned by the artistry of
the director.
The Quay Brothers original treatment for the film indicates
directions at the beginning for the middle-aged man who enters an
amusement parlour of private viewing machines (Quays 2006
[Notes]: 16). This framing device is frequently overlooked in
considerations of the animation, but I think it serves to return us to the
private world evoked in the film and by Schulzs work in general. Due
to the incredibly insular environment of altered reality evoked by
Schulz, we readers, and viewers, must each come to our own private
view; whether it is through a rather shady kinetoscope in a dusty
museum or on the stage of a grand theatre or in the isolation of a study
or library room. Schulzs work is difficult to share. Let us admire the
effort of those who attempt to represent the work, whilst also
safeguarding our own private pathological Schulzian reality.
302
Daniel Watt
Conclusion: An Accumulation of Charges

So to our growing list of changing forms, from adapt and
appropriate to inhabit, we might also add, in light of the Quays
work: pathologise. The urge to pathologise becomes one of
dissemination, of distribution of the varieties of meaning. Rather than
pursuing polysemic renderings of all possible meaning, recoverable at
some distant future point, Schulzs work on stage and screen offers us
new environments of understanding that free our thought with a view
to the vast spaces of the work. Perhaps Schulz might even add his own
term to our list. He might say mythologise. As he writes in The
Mythologizing of Reality:
The process of imparting meaning to the world is closely bound up with
the word. Language is mans metaphysical organ. Nonetheless, in the
course of time the word becomes static and rigid, stops being the
conductor of new meanings. The poet restores conductivity to words by
new quasi-electric tensions that are produced by an accumulation of
charges. Mathematical symbols are extensions of the word into new
realms. The image, too, derives from the primal word, the word that was
not yet a sign but myth, story, sense. (Schulz 1998: 373)
So Schulz proposes a continual refiguring of the world, through word

and image. It is a task, even an obligation, to work against stasis and
rigidity and to become conductors of new meanings. Such a
combination of language and the visual is most obvious not only in the
theatre, but also in Schulzs own drawings that accompany the texts.
They are ways to build an accumulation of charges that direct new
meanings into the world. Let us pursue a branch-line momentarily
before we reach our destination and explore the chiasmatic event of
The Idolatrous Book, as recently examined by Kris Van Heuckelom.
He writes:
The interpretational approach I would like to propose focuses on Schulzs
portfolio of engravings as an autoreferential artifact. This proclaimed
autoreferential character of The Booke ensues directly from the fact that
the title of the book seems to have a twofold application. It refers, firstly,
to the material product created by the artist (a portfolio of engravings).
Secondly, it designates a similar object (a book) being depicted on some
of the engravings themselves (creating thus the effect of a mise-en-abme).
The double position of the book, both inside and outside of the depicted
world, enables and urges the reader to reflect upon the function and the
303

status of the artifact he is dealing with. The impetus for an autoreferential
reading of Schulzs Idolatrous Booke is reinforced by the fact that not
only the book itself, but also its creator reappears on many of the
engravings. (Van Heuckelom, 2006)
This autoreferential structure that is suggested here, with very

particular reference to The Idolatrous Book, may nudge us to consider
the very paradoxical nature of the mise-en-abme generated by its
internal mirroring. But it also leads me to think of a certain outward
directionality, a dissemination perhaps. For there is no doubt there is a
sort of sealed quality in Schulzs work, a kind of hermetic imagination
locked inside a skull now long lost to the world. But the artifacts
remain, pseudo-iconic, and urge continually towards the visual.
Perhaps the very autoreferentiality that Van Heuckelom suggests for
the Book can also be found in the other works, both biographically
and nationally (which if we recall Banks quotation above just
happens to be Poland). Perhaps in Schulzs work the accumulation
of charges leads to new meanings in terms of representation rather
than just interpretation, and the growing number of adaptations of the
works is only reflective of an implicit tendency for the works to
theatricalise rather than realise. The qualities we should look for in
Schulzs journey from literature to theatre are perhaps more in tune
with his own quest for alternate time frames, more concerned with the
illegal event or the doubtful manoeuvre, which pays little regard
to the simple facts but rather transforms and represents the banal and
mundane. Returning, then, to the impact of reality, it is not simply
discarded in Schulzs work but reapplied, touched up, gilded, and put
on stage. Banks again, paraphrasing from The Street of Crocodiles,
provides a poetic description of Schulzs immersion in reality:
As if a physical phenomena psychic sance, reality is something to be
analyzed. It collides with the senses and impacts upon cognition, yet so
paper-thin its imitative character is betrayed in all its cracks, creating an
impression of only a small section immediately before we fall into the
expected pointillistic picture of, say, a city street. On either side the
improvised masquerade already disintegrates and, unable to endure,
crumbles behind us like plaster and sawdust (the rubbish of reality) into
the store-room of an enormous empty theatre. Parallel to his visual art that
barely sketches the surrounding world, reality is a sham exposed in the
tenseness of an artificial pose, the assumed earnestness of a mask, an
ironical pathos trembling in its own faade. (Banks 2006: 107)
304
Daniel Watt
And in the context of the sham that is reality, it is the responsibility of

the artist to attempt, through language and image, to conjure new
realms of meaning that face realitys mask with other faades, more
artificial perhaps, more human, perhaps, but always to attempt further
constructions than the complacent acceptance of the given conditions
that surround us. That is also each readers obligation in approaching
Schulzs work, each audience members obligation in encountering
Schulz in the theatre: to draw together the visual and literary spheres,
perhaps in one gesture, for one single occasion and to state, from
the individual confines of our dreamy imaginary dwellings, that the
world will be run for our pleasure. Such would be the instigation of
a myriad number of incomparable realities, rather than the return to a
single one.
But perhaps Schulz may have disagreed, and to borrow a
phrase from anothers love song, he may have replied to this essay,
and perhaps to many others: That is not it at all, / That is not what I
meant, at all (T.S. Eliot. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
1915).
Bibliography
Banks, Brian R. 2006. Muse & Messiah: The Life, Imagination and Legacy of Bruno
Schulz (1892-1942), Ashby-de-la-Zouch: InkerMen Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Positions (tr. A. Bass). Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 2003. Regions of the Great Heresy: Bruno Schulz. A Biographical
Portrait (tr. T. Robertson). London: Norton.
Habib, Andr. 2001. Through a Glass Darkly An Interview with the Quay
Brothers, 20th of October 2001, at LAuberge des Acacias, in Montreal,
Qubec. On line at: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/quay.
html (consulted 25.04.2007).
Kara, Ewa. 2007. Dreamy World of Schulz in Przegld Polski (16 March 2007).
Kantor, Tadeusz. 1993. A Journey Through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos,
1944-1990 (ed. and tr. M. Kobialka). Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Klein, Stacy. Email Interview with Daniel Watt, 2nd 3rd May 2007.
Pleniarowicz, Krzysztof. 2004. The Dead Memory Machine: Tadeusz Kantors
Theatre of Death (tr. W. Brand). Aberystwyth: Black Mountain Press.
Quay, Stephen and Timothy. 2006. Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003
(DVD). British Film Institute.
Schulz, Bruno. 1998. The Collected Works of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). London:
Picador.
305

Theatre de Complicite. 1999. The Street of Crocodiles, based on stories by Bruno
Schulz. Adapted by Simon McBurney and Mark Wheatley. London:
Methuen.
Theatre de Complicite. 1999. The Street of Crocodiles, based on stories by Bruno
Schulz. An Account of a Play. (Information Pack) Compiled by Kate
Sparshatt. London: Complicite.
Theatre de Complicite Website. 2007. Online at: http://www.complicite.org/
productions/detail.html?id=14 (consulted 18.04.2007).
Bruno Schulzs Xi
(consulted
24.04.2007).
Aesthetics of Melancholy in Bruno Schulzs Writings

Mieczysaw D browski
Abstract: The article analyzes Schulz through the consciousness and aesthetics of
melancholy in its modern meaning, or the melancholy of fulfilled future and the
disappearance of the horizon of expectations, which according to Kosellecks
diagnosis (1979: 211-375) determined the direction of thinking and general desires
from the early Enlightenment (cf. Heidbrink 1994: 246). The analysis concentrates on
issues such as awareness of loss, nostalgia for uncontaminated totality and better
life, the state of being embroiled in the mystery of existence, insolvability of textual
events, and suspension of sense. The author also proves that Schulz uses fundamental
figures of melancholy, i.e. trace, allusion, and allegory, which constitute not only the
text itself but also the whole aesthetics of melancholy.
Introduction
The fundamental dimension of Schulzs prose is a feeling or
awareness of loss. Loss, fragmentariness, incompleteness are the bases
for both this ontology and aesthetics. The heros consciousness is
never set in the entirety, which is never given to him; he learns it in
pieces, fragments of experience. This stems from the ontologicalcognitive systems becoming in some way blurred, and a particular
fragment of reality is merely a sign, an allegory of some whole, which
is absent. Schulz was an insightful visionary, whose predictions can
only now be attained in this reality by fully developing them. The
point is that the nineteenth-century experience based on solemnity,
transparent pragmatics, clear-cut contours of social discourse, distinct
stratification, the prescriptive force of customs, etc. started to
collapse after the First World War and was replaced by a considerable
measure of freedom, latitude, fancy, idiosyncrasy, and ambiguity. If
we recall Benjamins description of allegories (cf. Frydryczak 2002),
it will transpire that precisely this colorful world of pieces, the everchanging picture, and especially language fit well in this context.
308
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
After these preliminary remarks, I would like to examine the

problem of the aesthetics of melancholy in two ways. First, by
examining this problem as an ideology of melancholy, I will explain
why we can associate Schulz with this conception; this would be, as
Bieczyk (2002: 34) puts it, a melanchological (melanchologiczny)
level. Second, by investigating the aforementioned problem using the
aesthetics of melancholy, I will attempt to show how literary figures
and stylistic tropes characteristic of melancholy are at play in his
prose.
Ideology. Irony. Parabasis
Schulz can be read as not only a modern but also a present-day writer,
whose texts proved his extraordinary insight and in his time foresaw
the world we were entering. This is a world of fragments,
incompleteness, and discontinuity. His prose corresponds to this basic
experience through its form as a series of loosely connected stories,
which can nevertheless be easily recognized as a whole, and by its
graphic isomorphism. But this is only its surface for we are dealing
with a fragmented world on a far deeper level of the text: on the
ontological level of the presented world and experience. This is a
world in fragments: fragments on the level of expression because the
world is perceived in this way by the main character who is a child
and fragments on the level of ontology because the world broke up
long ago. The wholeness can only be longed for like a healing myth,
but it can never be attained. This state is best (but not solely)
signalized by the motif of the Book. Each of the main characters, even
Shloma, who was released from prison, feels that he is not living in
the world he would expect to live in, that it is only a sorry imitation of
what used to be. This awareness of the collapse of the myth, the
decomposition of the whole, is highly characteristic of the
philosophical understanding of melancholy, which is a language of
decay, which explains why it is so widely used nowadays. It is
believed that the question of incompleteness and discontinuity is an
indicator of contemporary culture. Melancholy, however, has such a
quality that it combines three aspects: ontological, epistemological
and axiological; we speak of three levels at once, of a philosophically
understood whole. Melancholy in the contemporary sense is therefore
not the source of single motifs, which most often convey the
Aesthetics of Melancholy in Schulzs Writings
309

impression of pessimism but a matter of the general method of being
in the world, and thereby a text for an all-embracing interpretation
(Bieczyk 2002: 41). Interpreted in this way, Schulz becomes an
example of a weakened (doubting), mourning, nostalgic, and thanatic
consciousness, yet he is creative on the level of melancholic
aesthetics, on the level of writing, where his characteristic figures can
be read in two ways.
The aesthetics of melancholy closely cooperates with irony.
Schulzs prose would not be his prose if we failed to notice its
constant accompanying element of irony, which is the source of all
modern thinking/writing. This is signaled through a characteristic kind
of distance between the text and its creator (narrator, writer); it
denotes the inner inconsistency of the narrators/heros Self, and then
reveals the figurativeness of speech, the conscious moulding of the
language of knowledge, and it imposes on the reader the duty of
another way of reading. In the basic dimension, irony denotes
reversing, and it is obvious that the reversibility of the text and
sense in Schulzs works cannot (at least today) be read in a canonical,
unambiguous way. The real Schulz is always somewhere nearby, and
each suggestion of reading refers only to some periwinkle garland
strand, but it never embraces the whole. A whole like that is
probably not possible in this case. For irony is a trope/mode of
language that introduces unusual dynamism, movement, or
uncertainty into the text. In the philosophical sense, irony is the
mechanism which, by exposing the construction of the text, inevitably
leads to the fundamental question about its (intangible) truth and the
machinery of language. At the same time, which is very important,
irony is a manner of interpreting the text (its ideology) and grammar
(construction); irony therefore pervades the whole text and is not its
property located here or there. It is most clearly visible in Schulzs
prose in the space of parabasis or in the places which are metatextual
or paratextual, where, while being a text, they comment on and
interpret the text while using a different rhetorical code. But irony is
also seen in the mainstream of the story. We may call it basic, where
repeatedly a more or less distinct rhetorical turn takes place in the
form of characteristic question marks, language forms, or rhetorical
phrases. Irony, therefore, is not only a disruption of narrative
coherence; it is, as de Man repeats after Schlegel, permanent
parabasis (2000: 237). Parabasis thus understood is a way of
310
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
destroying the nave world; it introduces into it the question marks,

movement, and suspicion while at the same time demonstrating the
linguistic character of the work. As such, parabasis is negative and
deconstructive, and excellently fits in with the general field of
melanchological reflection.
Take, for example, this child/adult narrator in Schulzs prose.
He is characterized by his duality, and to separate the phenomenon
from a specific character, this doubling of his perspective is very
characteristic of understanding melancholy. As a narrator with adult
consciousness, he perceives the world in a melancholic way: in the
state of decline, in fragments, in decomposition, in material and moral
decay; and most of all, when witnessing the mental and bodily
degradation of his father, he experiences a sense of acute loss. As a
narrator/child character, he perceives the world in a cheerful and
ecstatic way, as a place of incessant explorations, inspirations, and
delights. Beata Frydryczak (2002: 191 ff.), when examining the figure
of the collector, emphasizes this very duality: for the adult man, the
collectors room reminds him of the entirety, which is gone, broken
apart; we can only reconstruct it, look at the traces of the once
splendid whole; however, for the childs perception, the room will be
a constant source of cheerful exploration. In incredibly rich language,
vivid, colourful descriptions of summer, the garden, and shopping in
the market (Sierpie/August), of neglected rooms (Sklepy
cynamonowe/Cinnamon Shops) etc. are the very example of such
childish delight.
Schulz formulates highly significant remarks concerning the
power of depiction and representation. As we know, this issue is one
of the major points of reference for modern consciousness. The
referentiality of the text, so strongly established in previous literature
and literary studies, was found in a weak and uncertain form in poststructuralism and deconstructivism. It was found earlier in the writings
of Freud and Nietzsche, but it was only our era that defined its
eventual status. The break-up of the monolith of the human Self and
introduction of a specific psycho-linguistic game, reinforced by the
fundamental question posed by Nietzsche (and earlier by Fichte) of
whether the self is actually the self and on what grounds we can
suppose so, must have had a strong impact on philosophical discourse.
The development of studies on language in the twentieth century
completed the work of destruction. Text referentiality, which
311

previously cooperated with mimesis so efficiently, was put under
suspicion primarily by the question of whether the word really touches
the thing (object) since between the thing and its name there is the
subject, which, by naming the thing, interprets reality after all. That is
one point; the other point is that the question arises about the shade of
that which is expressed, about that which is absent, about the
possibility to express it, about its existential and ontological
legitimacy, etc. Referentiality is therefore suspended; this
powerlessness of the power of representation naturally breeds
melancholy, for at present it is founded on the sense of collapse of the
clear metaphysical world order. It breeds melancholy yet also
sublimity because the latter stems from the impossibility to express
experience. If we look at Schulzs prose from this standpoint, we
amazingly will find in it many statements that signal this kind of
conviction. Schulzs narrator repeatedly interrupts the narrative
coherence of the story in order to enter the space of parabasis, stand
beside his narrative plot, and comment upon it in a specific way: for
example, the final part of Ksi
ga (The Book), the final part of
Ulica krokodyli (The Street of Crocodiles), the conclusion of Pan
Karol (Mr. Charles), an excerpt from Wiosna (Spring). If we
also add his Mityzacja rzeczywistoci (The Mythologizing of
Reality), where Schulz significantly states that The unnamed does
not exist for us (Schulz 1979: 42;1 Nienazwane nie istnieje dla nas,
Schulz 1998: 383)2, we will obtain highly puzzling material for
analysis. For it is only above ground, in the light of day, that we are a
trembling, articulate bundle of tunes; in the depth we disintegrate
again into black murmurs, confused purring, a multitude of unfinished
stories (San 42; Bo tylko w grze, w wietle trzeba to raz
powiedzie jestemy dr c artykuowan wi zk melodii,
wietlistym wierzchokiem skowronkowym w g
bi rozsypujemy si
z powrotem w czarne mruczenie, w gwar, w bezlik nieskoczonych

historyj; Op 169). The material points to the inefficiency of language,
its naming and interpretive dysfunction, its peripherality and
impermanence these are rather fundamental statements to be
expressed in the early 1930s.
Admittedly, a very serious discussion on language had already
started. Wittgenstein was to advance his radical thesis about making

1
2
All further references will be given as San.

312
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
the power of language more modest (3.221: Objects I can only name.
Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them.
A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is; 2000: 1314). The so-called British analytic school was active, and there was
the Vienna Circle of neopositivists, who permanently wanted to tie
together the object, the word, and the meaning on the basis of
consistent empiricism. However, this defence of the former status of
the word and the condition of language failed; Schulz, for example,
continued to stress the uncertain status of the word, its ontological
instability, and consequently, epistemological impossibility. Words
are only an attempt to approximate the thing, always incomplete,
imperfect and doomed to fail; their stability is undermined by either
the self-knowledge or consciousness of limitless nature, or the
impossibility to express oneself. Schulz is attracted by some
mysterious other side, the lining of things, where nothing has
been decided yet, nothing resolved, nothing established in a name, in
the final, concrete concept. What interests Schulz is where the power
of the word ends, stretches the incomprehensible and the
inexpressible: Again, the power of our magic has failed and the dark
element that cannot be embraced is roaring somewhere beyond it
(San 41; Dopiero poza naszymi sowami, gdzie moc naszej magii ju
nie si
ga, szumi ten ciemny, nieobj
ty ywio; Op 168). He is
fascinated with this fluidity, chance, possibility, because it denotes the
absence of constraints; the word or the name always appears to him as
a constraint and damages reality; the name is usually richer and more
vivid than the language of the one who cognizes it. In Jewish culture
the word asserted, not simply described, a thing. Schulzs narrator
goes back to the sources, where everything is still open. He is
fascinated by the pulp of reality/being because he believes that it is the
truth of existence, which in a name always comes mutilated, lame in
the form of continual als ob, as if. It resembles Deleuze and
Guattaris concept of rhizome, which means that we are right in the
middle of postmodernist discourse whereas some scholars regard this
whole discourse as melancholic or at least ambiguous.
But what is vital is not only this impossibility, insufficiency,
and failure of language as a tool for naming/cognition; Schulzs
negation appears to extend further: it touches the thing/event itself.
Beings established to exist by the word are always imperfect and
incomplete; they essentially indicate their basis, which is supposedly
313

far richer and more important: There are things that cannot ever
occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be
contained in mere facts (San 12; Bo s rzeczy, ktre si
cakiem, do
koca nie mog zdarzy. S za wielkie, aeby si
zmieci w
zdarzeniu, i za wspaniae; Op 128). Therefore, that which we see and
partake in would be merely surrogates something instead,
miserable concretization in the face of the magnificent ideal,
imaginary world, the world of the age of genius or myth which
underlie the origins of human culture and the eternal longing for
something different, for something that goes beyond, for, lets phrase
it strongly, a kind of primitiveness and unity. Bieczyk speaks
accordingly about the affirmation of lack of source:
To szczeglne ustanowienie nieobecnoci czy to jako horyzontu
t
sknoty, czy to jako jedynej prawdy tekstu, lecz w obu wypadkach jako
punktu wyjcia, negatywnego i zarazem sprawczego zdaje si
kreowa
kondycj
melancholiczn tak w planie ekspresji, jak w planie istnienia.
(2002: 14)
(This special assertion of absence whether as a horizon of yearning or as
the only truth of the text, but in either case as the starting point, both
negative and causative appears to create the melancholic condition both
on the level of expression and on the level of existence.)
This is indeed a philosophical issue par excellence; we could observe

that in this way we come closer to the aesthetic subject matter of trace
and allegory. What we encounter every day are traces, allusions,
these earthly approximations (San 13; aluzje, te ziemskie
przyblienia; Op 129) of an ideal, superterrestrial world of myth that
we cannot attain or cognize. We are dealing, therefore, with the issue
of the inexpressible, constant experience of the sublime. Reality of
essence eludes us; we are doomed to deal with its surrogates, with an
als ob reality. The existential representation of the world is
challenged in these texts. The concept of the world according to the
als ob principle implies linear time, where continuity and
successiveness (San 14; ci go i sukcesja; Op 130) prevail. But
Schulzs narrator breaks with such a line of thinking by constructing a
branched off form of time, which is chaotic and torn from the
influence of logos and subjected to sensitivity. The time of chaos, also
in the theological-religious sense, is the time of potency and
development, when no actions or circumstances can be excluded.
314
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
Shloma speaks mysteriously about some unexplained breakdown of

the creative impetus of the Creator on the seventh day of creation.
Schulz is convinced that order kills spontaneity and multiplicity; it is a
constraint. The orders of law, society, religion, causal logic, referential
and transparent language all cause us to live in the world of constraint
and impoverishment, that is, the world of the father, logos,
metaphysics, abstraction, and patriarchy. In this respect, what Schulz
promotes would coincide with Poulets pense indetermine, free
thought before the time of concretization, perceiving some other
underlying sense of experience concealed under the named faade (cf.
Bieczyk 2002: 11 ff.) Longing for a state of chaos is in essence an
unrealizable metaphysical yearning for the origins, for the beginning
of all there is, under the illusion that everything could have been done
differently. Schulzs utopia must stem from his insightful recognition
of the model of the world in which he functioned: the pragmatic
Austro-Hungarian model, so spitefully treated in several texts, most
notably in Spring. Schulz is plagued by a vision of an unequivocal
world. He prefers a Platonic vision, which marks only the direction of
thinking, an idea, and all the rest is left to individual fancy and a
separate language. He finds ambiguity unpleasant and dangerous
because it is a constraint. Hence, the motif of the Book as an
unattainable model of everythingness; his fathers explanations that
the Book does not exist, that there are only books or the Books
miserable mystifications, arouses Josephs anger and bitterness. He
does not abandon his convictions and repeats them even while
browsing through a stamp album: The main thing was not to forget
[] that no Mexico is final, that it is a point of passage which the
world will cross, that beyond each Mexico there opens another, ever
brighter one (San 47; Gwna rzecz, aeby nie zapomnie [] e
aden Meksyk nie jest ostateczny, e jest on punktem przejcia, ktry
wiat przekracza, e za kadym Meksykiem otwiera si
nowy
Meksyk, jeszcze jaskrawszy; Op 177). This is the type of thinking
confirmed much later by literary theory and rewritten in the detailed
language of deconstruction in the diagnoses offered by Jacques
Derrida, Wolfgang Iser, and Odo Marquard: Before the oldest known
legend there were others no one has ever heard; there were nameless
forerunners; novels without a title; enormous, pale, and monotonous
epics [] sagas, unwritten books (San 44; Przed najstarsz
zasyszan histori byy inne, ktrych nie syszelicie, byli bezimienni
315

poprzednicy, powieci bez nazwy, epopeje ogromne, blade i
monotonne, [] ksi ki-legendy, ksi ki nigdy nie napisane; Op
173). This deconstructivist sentiment denotes the departure from the
essentialist model of thinking and is characterized by an impossibility
to indicate the beginning, which continues to escape into its more
primal stages and hidden regions, a recognition of the right to the
ambiguity of sense, many forms of reality, and diversity of thinking.
Another issue associated with what has just been discussed, is
the flickering of matter. In Schulzs prose, there are two competing
positions: one of solemnity, moderation, decency, and norms, and the
other of extravagance, color, and multiplicity. The former could be
linked with the idea of social being subordinated to logos and
symbolically called the nineteenth-century experience; the latter
with the experience of surfeit, passion, materiality and freedom
could be contained in a formula of idiosyncratic sensitivity and
associated with the twentieth-century experience. Schulzs prose is
seething with experiences of the latter type; each of his descriptions is
one of an exceptionally eventful life, of the unrestrained instinct to
give birth, of endurance, growth, and exploration of the impossible,
which even has temporal implications: there arise these thirteenth
months, time-wildings, and the luxuriance of the world can no longer
be contained within the framework imposed upon it by human
cognitive ability and pragmatic rationality. We can see this in the
description of a summer day: a garbage heap, a window with flies,
Nimrod, the festival of colors in his fathers breeding of birds, and
empty, forgotten rooms. But this is most discernible in Traktat o
manekinach (Treatise on Tailors Dummies), where the father, this
second Demiurge (1977: 61;3 wtra demiurgia; Op 37) expounds
on his concept of the world, which will be materially saturated,
colorful, though poor and barely tacked together.4 It will be turned
with only one side facing the viewer, but it will also be luxuriantly
free from the original, constraining solemnity. Observe, however, that
the second Demiurge father is a caricature, an imperfect figure. His
authority is nevertheless retained on cultural grounds, and at best, it is
slightly disrespected by Adela. While the first Demiurge is treated
here in a traditional way, as demonstrating the logos, law, and

3
All further references will be given as SoC.

Cf. Schulzs image of fragments of a dress marked with white basting thread (SoC
55; fragmenty sukni, znaczone bia fastryg ; Op 31).
4
316
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
abstraction, the second Demiurge is full of praise for the feminine

element in culture (Kristeva?), for matter, body plurality, impression,
elusiveness. He clearly has a greater mixture of the anima and animus,
which stimulate and complement each other. Father, as the second
Demiurge and creator, is the logos, which asserts reality, but because
of what he states, he is also a signifier. Similar experiences can be
found on each page of Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops). In the
story Manekiny (Mannequins) the first thing we witness is the
confusion of matter; in Pan Karol (Mr. Charles) the blurring of a
picture, as a consequence of which we do not quite know what to
think of the main character, who walked toward the door slowly,
resignedly, hanging his head, while someone else, someone forever
turning his back, walked at the same pace in the opposite direction
into the depths of the mirror, through the row of empty rooms which
did not exist (SoC 84; odchodzi ku drzwiom zrezygnowany, z
wolna, ze spuszczon gow gdy w przeciwn stron
oddala si
tymczasem bez popiechu w g b zwierciada kto odwrcony na

zawsze plecami przez pust amfilad
pokojw, ktre nie istniay;
Op 61). This language, imagination, and thinking are penetrated by
the principle of change, difference, and plurality. The modern ThisOther replaces the traditional, hierarchical, and patriarchal This-Same.
A fundamental question therefore arises: what is twentieth-century
culture about? Is it about the masculine, patriarchal-Christian (in our
circle) logos or the feminine proliferation of sense and matter,
plurality and randomness, which are secondarily subordinated to some
order, for example, the order of writing, which means aesthetization?
As I said earlier, we are dealing with deliberately practiced
irony; the father, as an exemplar of a traditional, reliable trader, must
have opposed this kind of thinking and practice. But did Schulz
himself? If we were to examine his texts as a specific anthropological
project, then we should treat these statements as signals of the coming
world, where interpersonal relations are, as Lyotard (1997: 176) puts
it, temporal. The world is extremely diversified and uses in its
recognitions the category of difference rather than the identical, which
evokes precisely the feelings of loss and nostalgia.
A passionate declaration of fondness for diversity,
multiplicity, plurality, in short, for everything that is ambiguous and
equivocal is the text Spring, which is expanded into forty fragments.
Its essential formal-aesthetic trait is a specific isomorphism between
317

the shape of the text and history (a tale). Note the opposition between
the Austria of Emperor Franz Joseph and of Rudolfs stamp album.
The Habsburg empire is described as hermetically closed, divided like
a checked notebook, organized in the minutest detail there is no
room for individual human behavior because everything is governed
by legal paragraphs, decisions, orders, and prescripts. In contrast there
is the narration of the stamp album, which spreads the peacocks tail
of worlds, colors, representations, and stories. The stamp album
activates imagination, releases desire and nostalgia; in short, it
stimulates the need to be in many worlds, to shed the straitjacket of
legal mandates and reject the existing world for the sake of accepting
and experiencing created worlds. Austria, with its emperor, is
downgraded and marching with some others [] immediately
following South America, but preceding Australia (San 35; kroczy
w szeregu za Ameryk Poudniow , a przed Australi ; Op 157). In
another phrase we can read: A stamp album is a universal book, a
compendium of knowledge about everything human. Naturally, only
by allusion, implication, and hint (San 48; Markownik jest ksi
g
uniwersaln , jest kompendium wszelkiej wiedzy o ludzkim.
Naturalnie w aluzjach, potr ceniach, w niedomwieniach; Op 179).
Let us also examine the issue of the insolvability of situations
and the ambiguity of sense, which is predicated on the level of textual
events and associated with establishing the dominance of the signifier
over the signified. In Schulz we often encounter specific situational
epiphanies: short clashes of events about which there is no clear idea
of how they can be understood. In these events, Schulz eludes action
and retreats for cover into the unclear game of fragments, verbal
epiphanies, and vivid external descriptions. We should concentrate on
Hourglass), a fairly fundamental text, where we will deal with such
experience. Both the essential plot situation (comprised of a visit to
the deceased/living father in a peculiar place and the way he functions
there) and the ending of the story are highly mysterious. First, in the
world of physical time, the father is dead; however, the narrator
speaks elsewhere about a wild, additional time, where the father can
be alive. The son-narrator goes to visit him there, finds his father
either immersed in a deep slumber or engrossed in a busy traders
activity in the ad hoc store this collision, this simultaneous cooccurrence, confuses the son. He is unable to decide correctly whether
318
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
his father is alive or not, which one is the real, and what kind of
activity the one in the sanatorium room or the one in the
marketplace, store, and restaurant is characteristic of his father:
Jak to pogodzi? pyta Czy ojciec siedzi w restauracji, ogarni
ty
niezdrow ambicj arocznoci, czy ley w swoim pokoju, ci
ko chory?
Czy jest dwch ojcw? Nic podobnego. Wszystkiemu winien jest pr
dki
rozpad czasu, nie nadzorowanego nieustann czujnoci . (Op 279)
(How do I reconcile all this? Has Father been sitting in the restaurant,
driven there by unhealthy greed, or has he been lying in bed feeling very
ill? Are there two fathers? Nothing of the kind. The problem is the quick
decomposition of time no longer watched with incessant vigilance; San
127)
Moreover, no one seems to be able to explain it to the son. Dr. Gotard

uses vague language, offering unclear explanations both of the fathers
condition and the special kind of procedures that apply in this world:
My fathers time and my own no longer coincide (Op 279; Czas
mego ojca i mj wasny czas ju do siebie nie przystaway; San 127).
This reversed time appears sometimes to him as a gift and sometimes
as a used, second-hand thing, thrown up (zwymiotowana), and
therefore not the best, and it would be thus better if people dont
tamper with time (San 131; nie tykali czasu; Op 283). Time is an
element which can be subjectively moulded, defined according to
ones individual wish. Events occur which are quite fantastic in their
absurdity (San 132; rzeczy fantastyczne wprost przez sw
absurdalno; Op 284). The dog guarding the sanatorium door turns
out to be a man, who, freed from the leash by the narrator, eventually
accepts an invitation to the room, by which he only adds to the
confusion and insolvability of the situation. We learn on this occasion
that dogness is neither an external attribute nor inherent in the
shape/form of the dog. In order to explain this, the narrator resorts to
oxymorons: terrible friendship and uncanny sympathy (San 138;
straszna przyja/niesamowita sympatia; Op 289). No wonder
that the ending comes from the same level: the hero flees from this
place on the first train he can board, leaving both his father and the
dog/man in a state of non-recognition, incomprehension with the
absence of any solution. He himself metamorphoses and presents
himself as an eternal, ghostly passenger who lives his life on trains. In
terms of cause-and-effect logic, it is an entirely vague text and can
319

only be treated as an example of creationist logic, which is, according
to former recognitions, surrealist. Perhaps the text could also be
treated as a logic of retention, incompletion, and reversal. Dr. Gotard
explains to Joseph that they turned back time by a certain interval
and the length is unknown; therefore, one can reverse that which
happened in that world, e.g. illness can develop in a different way or
disappear altogether. In this particular time space, the father lives a
relative and conditional [] life, circumscribed by so many
limitations! (San 121-122; yciem tak warunkowym, relatywnym,
ograniczonym tylu zastrzeeniami!; Op 272). This situation is well
explained by the logic of proliferation, an analytical-linguistic
example of which was given by Derrida and an artistic one, much
earlier, by Borges in his story El Jardn de senderos que se bifurcan
(The Garden of Forking Paths, 1941), where the novel is a labyrinth
because the main character killed in chapter three is still alive in
chapter four, and the plots are happening in parallel times. This
applies to any experience; the narrator says that even the mirror did
not clearly reflect his shape when he wanted to tie a tie: only an
opaque blur was visible (San 120; wiruj c m
tn toni ; Op 270).
Everyone here lives some imaginary life, implementing a specific ide
fixe; this is risked anticipation, without any guarantee (San 129;
antycypacja powzi
ta na wasne ryzyko, bez adnej por
ki; Op
280), in which one could see the freeing of human cognitive and
existential passion from norms and constraints. Schulz, therefore,
speaks about an existential utopia, which is possible only in the
system of the word, in unconstrained expression and creation, freed
from the universal rules of the game, obligations, and pragmatic
meanings. Such existence is possible only as a product of words in the
world of imagination, where Dichtung is mixed up with Wahrheit and
where we cannot attain the ultimate truth of being because it
constantly eludes the organization of reason. This is an attribute of
modern allegory, to which we attribute precisely with the ability to
speak about something in a language from another domain, a language
which is incognoscible.
Allegory and Trace. History (Tale)
In the melancholic understanding of the world the most important
literary figure is allegory. Known in aesthetics for a long time, and
320
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
long treated interchangeably with the symbol, allegory came to be

interpreted differently by Walter Benjamin and has lived a separate
life ever since. Paul de Man devoted considerable attention to it; for
him it also became a figure of modern reading, an admission of
interference of truth and error in the process of understanding
(interferencja prawdy i faszu w procesie rozumienia; 2004: 92).
This guarantee lies primarily in its insolvability and the impossibility
of such an act because allegory assumes vacillation and in the last
resort, the temporality and cultural nature of cognition. Allegory is a
sign of the interpretive attitude; its value is not constant but dynamic.
How we read a text/picture depends to the same extent on the time and
place of reading as on our cultural marking. Therefore, it is a
definition on the level of modelling our reading and making sense of
the signs scattered throughout the text. Allegory is also treated as the
picture of language itself or as response to the contemporary ruined
language of communication. Language is at the same time too rich and
too poor; metaphorically speaking, we could say that there is too little
and too much of it: everything originates in cognitive ambiguity, in
the separation of the word from the thing, in expansion of the
consciousness of the intermediate link, which is the act of naming
(interpretation) itself. It is here that a conviction must probably arise
that language is in decay at the moment. Such a conviction evokes
dual feelings: first, it is not communicatively efficient enough and
sufficiently expressive in meaning;5 and second, that as a fragment, a
scrap, it focuses the readers attention on its primeval quality. This
embraces melancholic loss, nostalgia, the inexpressible, and the
sublime. Schulz writes so insightfully for our modern era: We are
beginning to be at a loss for words: they become confused,
meandering, and raving (San 41; Jestemy u koca naszych sw,
ktre ju tu staj si
majaczliwe, bredz ce i niepoczytalne; Op 168).
And he adds that the truth of being is revealed only beyond them,
where the word does not reach. We also have to agree with the
conclusion that such a form of the word is richer in meaning, even if it
is only implied rather than in its canonical form. Jean Starobinski,
therefore, is right when he writes that allegory reveals excess, points
to diverse connections that surround each real object, or to countless
sense forms that can be assumed by each ideal being (alegoria

5
Cf. Wojciech Kalagas conception of speech as a nebula of discourses (2001).
321

ujawnia nadmiar, wskazuje na wielorakie po czenia, ktre otaczaj
kady rzeczywisty przedmiot, albo na niezliczone formy zmysowe, w
ktre moe si
wcieli kada istota idealna; in Bieczyk 2002: 48).
In the third part of Treatise on Tailors Dummies appears a
description of the environment, in which the allegorical picture is
specifically shaped: it speaks of squalid apartments, where there are
those rubbish heaps, abounding in the humus of memories, of
nostalgia, and of sterile boredom (SoC 67; rumowiska, obfituj ce w
humus wspomnie, t
sknot, jaowej nudy; Op 44). It is under such
conditions that this pseudovegetation sprouted abundantly yet
ephemerally (SoC 67; owa pseudowegetacja kiekowaa szybko i
powierzchownie, pasoytowaa obficie i efemerycznie; Op 44). The
description combines two perspectives: on the one hand, the picture of
decay, neglect, and degradation; on the other hand, the picture of
false, short-lived luxuriance and multiplication. The father both
rejoices in and is upset by this; he rejoices in the plurality and
variability of matter, which he exalts in the whole Treatise, and he is
upset that these are ephemeral worlds and that we do not lend
credence or room to the fragmentary forms of life (SoC 69;
fragmentaryczne postacie ycia; Op 46) that do not have enough
energy to become stable and come into being in full even though they
might have their reasons and rights for that. The father is a troubadour
of decay and plurality, and of the allegorical figures because behind
each one, there is a conviction about the specific crossing of the
boundary which is current reality. Allegory is a way of shaping
imaginary worlds moulded from fragments recalled in language, in
reminiscence, in experience; allegory is a way of creative existence or,
according to Marquard, a compensatory, surrogate experience of the
world.
But there is also another significant remark referring to the
negation of reality and the impossibility of finding the source of sense,
a specific negative epistemology (negatywna epistemologia; de
Man 2004: 91), then allegory also appears as specific form of
speaking instead. Allegory, in its basic function, is the way of
speaking about the abstract in the language of a surrogate picture, or
in more general terms, it is a possible narration in the face of
capitulation before an unattainable narration. If we take into
consideration, for example, Schulzs Spring, then we can say in the
most general terms that it is an allegory of the Book, a pre-established
322
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
myth of entirety and sacredness, and within it Rudolfs stamp album

could be an allegory of richness of the world: With the stamp album
in my hand, I was studying the spring. Was it not a great commentary
on the times, the grammar of its days and nights? (San 47; Z
markownikiem w r
ku czytaem t
wiosn
. Czy nie by on wielkim
komentarzem czasw, gramatyk ich dni i nocy?; Op 177). We read
at the beginning of Spring that the text is an allegorical, graphicverbal emblem of spring: [M]y story, like that text, will follow many
different tracks and will be punctuated by spring-like dashes, sighs,
and dots (San 25; Dlatego b
dzie ta historia, wzorem tego tekstu,
ci gn
a si
na wielu rozga
zionych torach i caa przetykana b
dzie
wiosennymi mylnikami, westchnieniami i wielokropkami; Op 145).
Spring is in the state of waiting, in tension; it is simultaneously ready
for realization and afraid of it, and finally realized by allegorical
surrogate in Rudolfs stamp album: In it were strange abbreviations
and formulae, recipes for civilizations, handy amulets (Byy to
przedziwne skrty i formuy, recepty na cywilizacje, por
czne
amulety). The stamp book suddenly reveals information of the
limitless possibilities of being (San 32; o nieobj
tych
moliwociach bytu; Op 154). He contrasts the album with stamps
(which are emblems of far-away countries, signs of the exotic), with
Kakania (the imperial and royal or kaiserliche und knigliche
(k.u.k.) monarchy), where Franz Joseph I rested on top of everything
and checked the world in its growth (San 33; Na wszystkim pooy
si
Franciszek Jzef I i zahamowa wiat w jego wzrocie; Op 155).
Bianka, the main character in Spring, is colorless and grey because
she is dominated by Gombrowiczian form and class or she would
be were it not for the implicit signs of ambiguity implying her
boyishness: this is deeply touching and guides my thoughts into
tantalizing regions of contradiction, into blissful antinomies (San 39;
co jest g
boko wzruszaj ce i prowadzi myl w dr
cz ce przesmyki
sprzecznoci, pomi
dzy uszcz
liwiaj ce antynomie; Op 212). This
is again one of those characteristic transgressions of the code of
official reality which open the possibility for implied meanings. The
Book, in turn, is contrasted with the Fragment (the shred of a book);
the two phenomena are allegorical. The Book is referred to in the first
sentences in a very mysterious way:
323

[W]iatr szed przez jej stronice i obrazy wstaway [] wywiewaj c kolory
i figury [] Tak ulatywaa, rozsypuj c si
stronica za stronic i wsi kaa
agodnie w krajobraz, ktry sycia barwnoci . (Op 114)
([T]he wind would rustle through its pages and the pictures would rise
[] merging the colors and shapes [] Page after page floated in the air
and gently saturated the landscape with brightness; San 1)
The Book, therefore, is a primeval myth. It is the power and

fundamental reason, which saturates the world and cannot at the same
time be concretized and understood. Its phenomena (pictures) arise
from rubbing the pages with fathers wet fingertip (San 1;
polinionym palcem; Op 113). We should add that it appeared in
the dawn of childhood (San 2; zaraniu dziecistwa; Op 115),
which was fulfilled without a mother and was the domain of the
Father and symbolic language. Then the mother appears, and the
narrator yields to her pleasures, [s]educed by [her] caresses
(uwiedziony pieszczotami), but the following days began to run
along a new and different track with no holidays and no miracles
(San 2; potoczyy si
nowym, odmiennym torem, bez wi t i bez
cudw; Op 115). The picture of the Book does not correspond even
to the Bible, which the father tries to give his son to read; the Book
was something more. The son calls the Bible a fake copy [] clumsy
falsification (San 3; skaony apokryf, nieudolny falsyfikat; Op
117). The point is that something more primeval can only be felt by
the mind and by a desire which can never be fulfilled or materialized.
The opposite of the Book is the Fragment, in which the narrator
unexpectedly found the Books concretization; the Fragment is
evidently a kind of popular diary, containing more or less fanciful and
entertaining stories about characters such as Anna Csillag and her
heavenly hair, and Madame Magda Wang, an expert in bringing men
to heel. When studying the Fragment, the narrator becomes immersed
into the heart of the Book. How is it possible? What principle governs
this process? I believe this is the dialectic complement of thought and
reality, the abstract idea and life concretization, logos and chaos. The
Fragment is treated as the unofficial supplement (San 5; jej
nieurz
dowy dodatek; Op 119) of the book; there is an ongoing
process of peculiar confusion of words, of which the meaning had
mysteriously shifted (San 9; osobliwego zawrotu i migotania /
kierunki oznacze moralnych przesun
y si
dziwnie; Op 124).
324
Mieczysaw Dbrowski
Meanings are not permanently assigned to some or other form of

being; they change, complement and add to one another, and the effect
of recontextualization follows. The process is continuous and cannot
be stopped. Schulz compares this phenomenon to a luminescence,
which burned over and over again from within itself, and passed
through all its flames and purples, and returned once more, and didnt
not want to end (wci na nowo od samej siebie si
zapalaa i sza
przez wszystkie pomienie i purpury, i wracaa raz jeszcze, i nie
chciaa si
skoczy; Op 125). The phenomenon of semiosis, as we
understand it today, is infinite because meaning is constantly
proliferated; that which was the signified in earlier reasoning will be
merely the signifying in the next, and again and again without end.
This is also the nature of present-day allegory. Because the narration
is made up of fragments of mental and concrete reality, and is open to
shifts and complements, the unstable structure is subjected to constant
interpretive processing and yields all sorts of interpretations; its
semantic productivity is essentially infinite Well, perhaps next
time, when we open our old script, we may not find Anna Csillag and
her devotees in their old place (San 11; Oto, gdy nast
pnym razem
otworzymy nasz szparga, kto wie, gdzie b
dzie ju wwczas Anna
Csillag i jej wierni; Op 125). Regardless of experience, phenomena
(Erfahrung) remain in their place. Their meaning and experiencing
(Erlebnis) will change because circumstances and contexts change.
Paradoxically, the two spheres define the horizon of our thinking and
imagination, and they are both allegorical toward existential
expectations. Allegory stretches between those poles: Lets return to
the Authentic. We have never forsaken it (San 12; Wracamy do
Autentyku. Ale nie opuszczalimy go nigdy; Op 127), writes
Schulz. One, therefore, is the other, and the former turns into the
latter. The Fragment is open to all fluctuations and is in a way an
example of the phenomenon of imagination and vicarious being
(San 13; zjawiska reprezentacji i zast
pczego bytu; Op 128) for the
Book. I wrote about the other aspects of the text earlier. The question
about the age of genius remains unresolved because language and
thinking, the high and the low, the noble and the mediocre, constantly
merge, producing some inextricable tangle of sensation, which can be
understood only as a figure of a certain way of perceiving and
interpreting the world, a figure of allegory.
325

Bibliography
Bieczyk, Marek. 2002. Oczy Drera. O melancholii romantycznej. Warszawa: Sic!
De Man, Paul. 2000. Poj
cie ironii in Ideologia estetyczna (tr. A. Przybysawski).
Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria: 251-281.
. 2004. Czytanie Prousta in Alegorie czytania. Jzyk figuralny u Rousseau,
Nietzschego, Rilkego i Prousta (tr. A. Przybysawski). Krakw: Universitas:
74-98.
Frydryczak, Beata. 2002. wiat jako kolekcja. Prba analizy estetycznej natury
nowoczesnoci. Pozna: Wydawnictwo Fundacji Humaniora.
Heidbrink, Ludger. 1994. Melancholie und Moderne. Zur Kritik der historischen
Verzweilung. Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Kalaga, Wojciech. 2001. Mgawice dyskursu. Podmiot, tekst, interpretacja. Krakw:
Universitas.
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1979. Vergangene Zukunft: zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Lyotard, Jean-Franois. 1997. Kondycja ponowoczesna, Raport o stanie wiedzy (tr. M.
Kowalska and J. Migasiski). Warszawa: Fundacja Aletheia.
Schulz, Bruno. 1977. The Street of Crocodiles (tr. C. Wieniewska). New York:
Penguin.
. 1979. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (tr. C. Wieniewska). New
York: Penguin.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2000. Tractatus logico-philosophicus (tr. B. Wolniewicz).
Warszawa: PWN.
Bruno Schulz and Seductive Discourse

Jerzy Jarz
bski
Abstract: Bruno Schulz is well aware of the fact that having to be content with
fragments, bits and pieces of the unattainable Whole is the universal fate of every
artist and thinker. This weakness, this insufficiency of the demiurge, demands
acceptance from the entourage, so it is no longer self-sufficient; it desires, at all cost,
to be completed; it demands going beyond ones limits, seducing, gentle eroticism; it
is feminine by nature and contains a hidden irony. This seductive activity concerns
practically all of Schulzs characters, especially the Father. One could compare
Fathers demiurgic activity and Schulzs own creative doctrine, observing that both of
them are directed at some recipient and contain a hidden intention of seducing.
Two earlier texts of mine: Schulz ironiczny ad i dyskurs

uwodzicielski (Schulz Ironic Order and the Seductive Discourse),
a presentation given at Drohobycz at a conference in November 2006
(Jarz
bski 2007) and Schulz: uniwersalno i poetyka fragmentu
(Schulz: Universality and the Poetics of the Fragment), a lecture
delivered in Montreal at the beginning of May 2007 (Jarz
bski 2008),
lay the foundations for this article. Both were a result of a significant
change, a switch in emphasizing certain elements of interpretation,
which took place in my reading of Schulz in the course of the last
year.
To put it briefly, this means a practical shift away from an allinclusive way of looking at the world of Schulz, that is, the sort of
looking which primarily stresses some form of general order ruling in
that world and its subordination to universal concepts such as mythical
time and space as well as various dimensions of cycles, for example,
cosmic, natural, historical, ritual, and commercial. Within the frame of
these cycles of various lengths, the world presents itself as the domain
of repetitiveness. It is, therefore, not only well ordered but also
predictable and constitutes a safe place, which is familiar to its
inhabitants, day after day, year after year confirming its order and the
eternal return of The Same.
328
Jerzy Jarzbski
And yet this world also contains profoundly different aspects

related to the uncertainty, insufficiency, and fragmentation of being.
Even though the world of Schulz refers us to a vision of the Whole
which (having now ceased to provoke researchers emotions) has
never been abrogated, it requires, nevertheless, reconstruction from
data provided by the writer, and he himself never allows us direct
access to this Whole. On the contrary, he always shows us only
particles of that Whole: unfinished stories lacking a moral, characters
reduced to a single, very short role who disappear forever from the
story after performing their function, humiliating and failed endeavors
(like those undertaken by Father). A crippled world and a myth of the
heros manifold impotence was even half a century ago the
leitmotiv of Artur Sandauers reading of Schulz (1964). The writer
from Drohobycz, however, was an artist very aware of his worth and
would not agree to this somewhat deprecatory way of interpreting his
world.
The poetics of the fragment, considered by Friedrich Schlegel
to be a fully legitimate artistic device in which the thought appears in
a flash, at the moment of its birth, gained wide recognition and
popularity in the period of romanticism. Novalis, Coleridge, Shelley,
Macpherson, Byron, Poe, and in Poland Krasiski, Pol, and
Korzeniowski, among others, made use of it (Konarzewska 2006;
Bartoszyski 1991). I do not want to suggest that Schulz was directly
inspired by them; instead, I only want to point out that this poetics was
something well established in literature at the moment when the
author of Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934) was beginning
to write. Schulz was totally aware that he was doomed to
incompleteness and failure as an artist and creator, since being content
with fragments of the unattainable Whole is the universal fate of every
artist and thinker. The best example of this is the return of the birds
raised by Father in the closing part of Noc wielkiego sezonu (The
Night of the Great Season), which ends the grandest of old Jacobs
demiurgic performances.
In my essay Schulz Ironic order and the seductive
discourse (Jarz
bski 2007), I devoted some space to the comparison
of Fathers demiurgic activity and Schulzs own creative doctrine,
observing that both of them are directed at some recipient and contain
a hidden intention of seducing. This seductive activity concerns
practically all of Schulzs characters. There are no persons among
Schulz and Seductive Discourse
329

them who would be especially predestined to perform this function.
Thus, the beautiful and enticing Adela seduces, but so does the dotty
Touya and the old man Jacob. In Schulzs work, seduction is a
concept understood similarly to the way it is expressed by Jean
Baudrillard (1990: 37-49), where it is sharply opposed to eroticism as
an activity not aimed at fulfillment, inscribed in cyclical time. This is
confirmed by the case of Touya, who does not necessarily autoerotically seduce the stump she rubs herself against but instead
seduces the potential observers, for whom she becomes a
pornographic spectacle. It seems that seducing is one of the most
elementary human activities without which no creature can exist.
Why? Is it not because each one feels in his or her own way
incomplete and thus demands completion, reaches out beyond himself
or herself toward the object of its efforts, and at the same time, just
before fulfillment, withdraws, wanting to repeat the act of seducing
endlessly.
Such a conclusion does not seem especially original unless we
survey particular characters from Schulzs writings and discover how
varied their repertoire of different forms of seduction is. The most
typical method is the one that the shop attendants use to seduce
Adela in The Night of the Great Season: chasing her, catching her in
the kitchen where she had barricaded herself, and finally dragging her
out through the window. Adela is also seduced in Ksi
ga (The
Book) by Joseph himself, who cuddles up to her and breathes in the
scent of her body. Old Jacob seduces Adela in a different way by
trying to interest her and the seamstresses Polda and Pauline in his
bizarre and heretical Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on Tailors
Dummies). Thus, Adela is the universal object of seductive exertions
although nothing is known of anyone ever having succeeded in
possessing her. Such is also the case with Bianca from Wiosna
(Spring), for whom Joseph (with Rudolf in the background)
organizes an entire historical spectacle-story, only to withdraw just
before the very end and hand the girl over to his rival. In Schulzs
writings, however, there are many reasons why the seducers are more
interesting than the ones who are being seduced. The seducers
sometimes go beyond their stereotypical social or familial roles
(Father in the Treatise, cousin Emil from Sierpie (August),
even the handicapped Edzio or Dodo, who complete themselves in
substitute actions). They also transfer their seductive endeavors to a
Jerzy Jarzbski
330
different sphere, such as a commercial one (like Father in The Night

of the Great Season or the shop assistant in Ulica krokodyli (The
Street of Crocodiles), who try to draw the clients in the shop into
their game). Sometimes the seducers simply press themselves
senselessly against the world, trying to squeeze their own portion of
bliss and acceptance out of it (Touya rubbing her genitals against the
tree stump).
The state of seduction is, therefore, situated on the border
between one person and another or, in some special cases, between a
person and everything that surrounds him or her. By his very nature,
the writer is a seducer who incites his readers to an endless repetition
of voluptuous textual pleasure. Schulz is aware of this as well as of
the fact that as he seduces, he must pretend and in a way surpass
himself. In a letter to Romana Halpern, Schulz writes:
M
cz
si
bardzo moimi prbami pisania. Pisarz (przynajmniej w moim
rodzaju) to najn
dzniejsze stworzenie na ziemi. Musi nieustannie kama,
musi przekonywaj co przedstawi jako ziszczone i realne, co jest w nim
naprawd
w n
dznym rozpadzie i chaosie. (2002: 126)
(My attempts to write are really agonizing. A writer (my type of writer,
anyway) is the most wretched creature on earth. He has to lie incessantly,
has to represent as valid and real what is actually in a miserable state of
disintegration and chaos within him; 1990: 133)
Tomasz Bocheski uses this quotation as a starting point to reflect on

the role that writing can play in overcoming death in the works of
Schulz:
Ruch form, pynno, nieokrelono, amorfia, formy porednie,
hybrydyczne, opis wiata, ktry przemija, akcentowanie przemijalnego,
odrzucanie wiecznego, wreszcie pena czarnego humoru kpina z
ostatecznoci to sposoby wymkni
cia si
mierci (2005: 208).
(The movement of forms, fluidity, indefiniteness, amorphous shapes,
oblique forms, hybrid beings, the description of a world that slips away,
stressing all that is transient, rejecting the eternal, finally, mocking
eschatology, in the spirit of black humor all these are ways of escaping
death.)
And further on :
331

Igranie ze mierci prowadzi do rozkoszy tekstowej, do zwyci
stwa w
narracji nad si zamykaj c kad narracj
i dlatego ujawnia g
bok
zaleno mi
dzy pisaniem a erotyk . T
zaleno doskonale pokazuj
opisane w Sklepach relacje ojciec-Adela. Erotyzm perwersyjny, erotyzm
skrywany, wstydliwy to dobry sposb przeciwstawienia si
mierci. Gra
Schulza w ukrywanie skonnoci, tak by zostay odkryte, to rodzaj
zabawy z czytelnikiem, tym lektorem przynosz cym do dziea mier
ostatecznych odczyta, zamykaj cym dzieo w ksztat interpretacji, a
erotyzm cienia ukazuj cym w penym wietle psychiatrii czy socjologii
(2005: 209).
(Trifling with death leads to voluptuous textual pleasure, to victory,
through narration over the force that ends all narrations and that is why it
unveils the deep relationship between writing and eroticism. This
interdependence is shown very well by the example of the father-Adela
relationship described in Cinnamon Shops. Perverse eroticism, hidden
eroticism, the shameful eroticism is a good way to oppose death.
Schulzs game of hiding dispositions, so that they may be disclosed, is a
way of playing with the reader, the kind of reader who brings the death of
final, unequivocal interpretations to the literary text, and closes the literary
work into such readings, presenting the shadow of eroticism in the full
light of psychiatry or sociology.)
Bocheski probably stresses correctly the tendency, so characteristic

of Schulz, of avoiding all visions of the final sense or the definite
interpretation understandable in such an assiduous reader of
Nietzsche (cf. Bolecki 2003a). It is not, however, only a matter of
escaping death. For Schulz, life itself is obviously a specific balancing
act between great gestures of assuming or even enforcing power over
the Whole of the universe on the one hand and a ceaseless slipping
into ordinariness on the other hand, an ordinariness within which
everything is only a fragment, a particle, a tawdry trinket, a pretense at
having the might of a demiurge. But this weakness, this deficiency of
the demiurge, demands acceptance from the entourage; therefore, it is
no longer self-sufficient; it desires at all cost to be completed; it
demands going beyond ones limits, beyond seduction and gentle
eroticism; it is feminine by nature.
However, what is seduction in Schulzs writings? In the
classic Diary of a Seducer, Kierkegaard tells the story of a young man
who masterfully entices a girl who previously was emotionally
involved with another man. When the intrigue is successful and
Kordelia yields to the seducer, he is no longer interested in continuing
the adventure and abandons her. In the texts by Schulz, no such
332
Jerzy Jarzbski
development is taken into consideration; his characters have no erotic

successes but this is not because they are unwilling nor due to their
character traits. Instead, erotic success would mean embracing either
the world in its entirety or a definite interpretation of it, which is
impossible in Schulzs version of understanding reality. In the world
of Schulz, seduction always directs us toward the fragment. The
seducing body is dismembered and reduced to functional elements:
Adelas eyes and long legs, the soft line of the chin (mi
kko
zarysowana broda) and the powdered, white cheek (upudrowany,
blady policzek; Schulz 1989: 79) of the effeminate shop assistant
from The Street of Crocodiles, and finally the bodies of the
creatures designed by Father in Treatise on Tailors Dummies.
These functional elements can be compared to the fictional characters
in literary texts who are always reduced to glimpses, always
demanding completion, qualification, or definition on the part of the
reader.
In my earlier work about seductive discourse, I pointed out the
special way in which Schulz creates the recipients of narration. In the
case of the Treatise on Tailors Dummies, which seems to be the
prototype of his seductive stories, the recipients of Fathers tirades are
three enticing but simple girls, which explains why Fathers heretical
lecture about demiurgic power occasionally slips into kitschy exempla
which are chosen to intrigue the simple little souls, to draw the
recipients to the narrator and allow him to make awkward advances.
These advances end with the fondling and caressing of their legs; the
magic of the story allows Jacob that much and no more. It is Adela
who constitutes the obstacle on the way to more scandalous practices,
and Father himself seems to be aware that he cannot (or does not want
to) allow himself anything more because going further would
contradict the very principle of seduction.
Treatise on Tailors Dummies seems to be the ideal
seductive discourse in the sense given to it by Baudrillard:
Seduction takes from discourse its sense and turns it from its truth. It is,
therefore, contrary to the psychoanalytic distinction between manifest and
latent discourses. For the latent discourse turns the manifest discourse not
from its truth, but towards its truth. [] In seduction [] it is the
manifest discourse discourse at its most superficial that turns back on
the deeper order (whether conscious or unconscious) in order to invalidate
it, substituting the charm and illusion of appearances. These appearances
are not in the least frivolous, but occasions for a game and its stakes, and a
333

passion for deviation the seduction of the signs themselves being more
important than the emergence of any truth which interpretation neglects
and destroys in its search for hidden meanings. (1990: 53)
It is a different matter with Schulzs short stories. We can consider

Debora Vogel in the case of Cinnamon Shops and Jzefina Szeliska
in the case of Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium Under the Sign
of the Hourglass, 1938) as the recipients. Vogel is the addressee of the
letters from which the beginning writers short stories evolved. The
volume of writings in prose was dedicated to Szeliska. The specific
trait shared by these stories, which are undoubtedly seductive, is that
the recipients are absent from them. Additionally, at the moment of
publication, the recipients were already absent from Schulzs life as
potential erotic partners. Thus, the texts perform a substitutional
function because they take the place of physical contact. In the texts,
there is not only the shy shamefulness of emotions, but also the
intention of repeating seductive actions endlessly, and all are doomed
to futility from the very start.
What, however, does the writer offer his beloved yet
unattainable women? He offers his self-portrait as an author taken at
different moments and in different roles, as if in accordance with the
conviction that one seduces most effectively when talking about
oneself, which he does in a special way, so as to incite the addressees
emotional involvement. Both Debora Vogel and Jzefina Szeliska
came to Drohobycz from the outside, from the wide world; thus, the
provincial atmosphere and climate characteristic of the small
homeland where Schulz lived could have appealed to them. Schulz,
the eulogist of regress and withdrawal, was an author who glorified
marginal beings and creatures, which were at the same time the center
of the spiritual world of the individual (cf. Jarz
bski 2005, LipiskaIakowicz 2003). Schulzs seducing, therefore, was rather like the
opposite of the Fathers in Treatise on Tailors Dummies. Father
seduces by performing the role of the sage-heresiarch, the demiurge
imitating the divine act of creation, trying to impress his listeners with
a grand gesture even though he is somewhat limited intellectually and
comes from a rather common background. Father is very different
from Schulz who, while facing his wordly listeners, spins a tale
from the worlds backstage about defective people and projects
doomed to failure from the moment of their very conception. And
334
Jerzy Jarzbski
even if Schulz portrays his own Father, he presents his tirades in

ironical parentheses.
We would thus have a multi-layered irony because the Father
also pressed them [his female listeners] against the wall, tickled them
with the finger of irony (przypiera do ciany i askota, drapa
ironicznym palcem; Schulz 1989: 36), while his great speech was
treated by the narrator without appropriate seriousness. It seems that
the ironic distance is born in the gap between the initial scale of the
gesture and its miserable realization. This brings to mind the contrast
between the universal idea of the Book and the demonstratively
vestigial script, or rather scrap (szparga), saved from it. It
appears, then, that whatever the Whole may mean in Schulzs text, it
is in fact presented as a foggy outline within the framework of which
one can only see a fragment, a pars pro toto, which directs us back
toward the Whole, yet the fragment is not only not identical with the
Whole but also uncertain about having any links with it.
Where, however, does the ironic quality of all presentations in
Schulzs texts stem from? Does it not come from these performances
that are always done in someones presence, in some sense publicly in
front of a varied audience with a critical outlook, which is quick to
pronounce unfavorable sentences and make malicious comments?
These performances seduce, but at the same time, they are
compromising and render someone ridiculous in the eyes of others.
One can find the most striking examples in August, where the
unwitting demonstration of Aunt Agatas daughters sexuality is
exciting but at the same time makes them feel ashamed.1 Touya, on
the contrary, is shameless; her condition of being handicapped
(mentally) is expressed in one way by the fact that she is not
embarrassed to show her physical desire. This lowest form of
seduction is at the same time definitely obscene, and perhaps its

1
In his psychoanalytical interpretation of eroticism in Schulzs writings, Pawe Dybel

(2005: 204-218) stresses the fact that the female characters are totally self-sufficient
as well as very successful in their seducing whereas the Father is not capable of
fulfilling his role of symbolical father, one who imposes compliance with the Law;
his existence consists of a continuous lack, a fading away. In its hard version, this
view derived from Freud and Lacan, seems to me definitely exaggerated because
women do not dominate the world of Schulz in such a decisive manner. In his own
way, Father as a seducer is much more efficient , and he seduces all the time, albeit
only through story telling.
335

obscenity is that element of all seduction which is concealed
elsewhere.
Seduction is a form of theatrical activity calculated to produce
a public result, which is probably the most frequent outcome in
Schulzs texts. The shop assistants chasing after Adela do so
publicly; their efforts to attract clients are presented as happening
publicly in The Street of Crocodiles, and the performances of
Father in Treatise on Tailors Dummies, The Night of the Great
Season, and Kometa (The Comet) are also public. This means
nothing more than stating the fact that a man who is fighting for
recognition, admiration, or for someones body is usually doing so in
the presence of others, under their gaze and subject to their evaluation.
Writers whose books are available on the market and become
critically assessed by readers are all the more so acting in the public
eye; this is what lies at the source of the irony that pervades all
being in the works of Schulz. The irony in Schulzs work operates
in a manner somewhat different from the definitions of irony given in
Sownik schulzowski (The Schulz Dictionary) by Piotr Millati and
Wodzimierz Bolecki:
[] ironia jest nie tylko sugesti obecnoci w tekcie innego znaczenia
ni to wyraone dosownie, nie tylko poszukiwaniem drugiego dna,
demaskacj waciwego, lecz zakamuflowanego sensu, ale te
filozoficznym wyznaniem wiary, i rzeczywisto jako taka ma charakter
wielowarstwowy, e to, co dane nam jest ogl da na jej powierzchni,
stanowi jedynie przykrywk
dla tego, co g
binowe, a wi
c faktycznie
prawdziwe. (Millati 2003: 157)
(Irony is not only a suggestion of the presence of a different meaning in
the text than the one expressed literally, not only a searching for the other,
deeper, layer of meaning, an unveiling of the hidden sense, but also a
philosophical declaration of a conviction that reality as such is multilayered, that what we can see on the surface is only a cover for what is
hidden deep down and what is really true.)
Can we prove the existence of the depth of reality though? Or can we

possibly discover from where this multi-layered character of reality
comes? Is it a trait belonging to the worlds ontology or does it have a
completely different source? We should consult the author of the other
definition of irony:
336
Jerzy Jarzbski
Ironiczno zdarze w tym wiecie oznacza, e s one oparte na
narastaj cych nieporozumieniach: zudzenie jest brane za istot
, kulisy za
miejsce akcji, mistyfikacja za rzeczywisto, udawanie za szczero,
nazwa za stan rzeczywistoci etc. Wszystko to jednak postrzega tylko
opowiadacz ze swojej zewn
trznej perspektywy, albowiem ogl dany od
wewn trz wiat Schulza przypomina zdarzenia bezadne i chaotyczne.
(Bolecki 2003b: 156)
(The ironic character of events in this world means that they are based
on accumulating misunderstandings; illusion is taken for the heart of the
matter itself, the backstage for the place of the main action, mystification
for reality, pretending for sincerity, the name for the fact, etc. All this,
however, can be perceived by the one who tells the story from his outer
perspective because the world of Schulz seen from within resembles
chaotic and disordered events.)
Bolecki inadvertently changes the perspective here, writing not so

much about objective traits of being as about how being presents itself
to its observers. This, it seems, is the heart of the matter: Schulzs
world is ironic not so much by its nature but because at every moment
it is perceived from several points of view, thus bringing to the one
who tells the story a whole set of various emotions ranging from the
sense of power (offering what Bocheski calls voluptuous textual
pleasure) to shame. The problem, however, is that one can be
obscene in various ways. The first way, described by Barthes in
Fragments dun discours amoureux (Fragments of a Lovers
Discourse, 1977), is the kind in which the very expression of love is
obscene, which is why the discourse of emotions is always
fragmentary, incapable of naming its object directly and slides
constantly into irony, spoiling its own strategy. The other way of
understanding the matter is Baudrillard-like by nature: it becomes
clear that obscenity consists of bringing to the surface and exposing
everything that is elsewhere hidden shamefully; what is characteristic
of the stage ceases to exist in such a world because there is no
identified space which could be called the stage. It seems that
Schulz is obscene in that first way; he would like to salvage the notion
of the worlds theatricality because the theatre unveils and covers
simultaneously, exposes and leaves itself to the mercy of the public
(audience), while at the same time hiding the mechanism of the
spectacle backstage, behind the scene. In the world of Schulz, as
stated in an often cited fragment of his letter to Witkacy, the principle
of the panmasquerade (panmaskarada) rules:
337

Rzeczywisto przybiera pewne ksztaty tylko dla pozoru, dla artu, dla
zabawy. Kto jest czowiekiem, a kto karakonem, ale ten ksztat nie si
ga
istoty, jest tylko rol na chwil
przyj
t , tylko naskrkiem, ktry za
chwil
zostanie zrzucony. Statuowany tu jest pewien skrajny monizm
substancji, dla ktrej poszczeglne przedmioty s jedynie maskami. ycie
substancji polega na zuywaniu niezmiernej iloci masek. Ta w
drwka
form jest istot ycia. Dlatego z substancji tej emanuje aura jakiej
panironii. Obecna tam jest nieustannie atmosfera kulis, tylnej strony
sceny, gdzie aktorzy po zrzuceniu kostiumw zamiewaj si
z patosu
swych rl. W samym fakcie istnienia poszczeglnego zawarta jest ironia,
nabieranie, j
zyk po bazesku wystawiony (Schulz 1989: 444-445).
(Reality takes on certain shapes merely for the sake of appearance, as a
than masks. The life of the substance consists in the assuming and
consuming of numberless masks. This migration of forms is the essence of
life. Thus an all-pervading aura of irony emanates from this substance.
There is an ever-present atmosphere of the stage, of sets viewed from
behind, where the actors make fun of the pathos of their parts after
stripping out their costumes. The bare fact of separate individual existence
holds an irony, a hoax, a clowns stuck-out tongue; 1990: 113)
Schulz theatre exists in two ways: it ironically unmasks the pretextlike character of all the pronounced texts, a spectacle during which
people realize their seductive passions, often while being watched by
others, but it is also a personal adventure in which the author himself
is the one who tries to seduce, and the theatre which he is presenting is
the theatre of his own soul, which is incurably sick with loneliness and
desperately needs someone emotionally close if not a woman, then
at least a partner in the enterprises of discovery.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. 1977. Fragments dun discours amoureux. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Bartoszyski, Kazimierz. 1991. O fragmencie in Powie w wiecie literackoci.
Szkice. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IBL PAN: 141-164.
Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. America (tr. C. Turner). London and New York: Verso.
. 1990. Seduction (tr. B. Singer). New York: St. Martins Press.
Bocheski, Tomasz. 2005. Czarny humor w twrczoci Witkacego, Gombrowicza,
Schulza. Lata trzydzieste. Krakw: Universitas.
Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 2003a. Principium individuationis. Motywy nietzscheaskie
w twrczoci Brunona Schulza in Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata and
338
Jerzy Jarzbski
Wadysaw Panas (eds). W uamkach zwierciadaBruno Schulz w 110

rocznic urodzin i 60 rocznic mierci. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe
KUL: 321-340.
. 2003b. Ironia (1) in Bolecki, Wodzimierz, Jerzy Jarz
bski and Stanisaw
Rosiek (eds). Sownik schulzowski. Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria: 155-157.
Dybel, Pawe. 2005. Seksualno zdegradowana, czyli perwersyjny wiat prozy
Brunona Schulza in Teksty Drugie 16(3): 204-218.
Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 2005. Prowincja Centrum in Prowincja Centrum. Przypisy do
Schulza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 109-129.
. 2007. Schulz ironiczny ad i dyskurs uwodzicielski in Akcent 1: 25-31.
. 2008. Schulz: uniwersalno i poetyka fragmentu in Kozicka, Dorota and
Maciej Urbanowski (eds). Literatura punkty widzenia wiatopogldy.
Prace ofiarowane Marcie Wyce. Krakw: Universitas: 143-156.
Kierkegaard, Sren. 1966. Diary of a Seducer (tr. G. Gillhoff). New York: F. Ungar
Publishers Co.
Konarzewska Marta. 2006. Fragment in Gazda, Grzegorz and Sowinia TyneckaMakowska (eds). Sownik rodzajw i gatunkw literackich. Krakw:
Universitas.
Lipiska-Iakowicz, Krystyna. 2003. Myl c powoli: przestrze prowincjonalna u
Heideggera i Schulza in Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata and Wadysaw
Panas (eds). W uamkach zwierciadaBruno Schulz w 110 rocznic
urodzin i 60 rocznic mierci. Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL: 485496.
Millati, Piotr. 2003. Ironia (2) in Bolecki, Wodzimierz, Jerzy Jarz
bski and
Stanisaw Rosiek (eds). Sownik schulzowski. Gdask: sowo/obraz
terytoria: 157-159.
Sandauer, Artur. 1964. Rzeczywisto zdegradowana (Rzecz o Brunonie Schulzu) in
Schulz, Bruno. Proza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 5-43.
bski).
Thinking About Absurdity with Bruno Schulz:

Paradox and Potential
Shlomit Gorin
Abstract: It is inadequate to think about conditions of existence, and absurdity in
particular, without contemplating dynamics of perspective, conflict, and potential; a
sense of the absurd is inextricable from the nature of perception and, moreover, is
necessarily rooted in a specific kind of perceptual tension. Underlying the works of
Bruno Schulz is a unique framework for a sophisticated understanding of and
reconciliation with the nature of absurdity, which paradoxically may lead to its
annihilation as a source of anguish and provide an alternative to a view of life as
meaningless.
Introduction
Essays and fictional narratives giving expression to absurdity present
a challenge to a view of life as inherently meaningful. Implicit within
such works is a polemic against deterministic ideologies and historical
and scientific theories that purport to account for the boundless,
unknowable phenomena of life. Philosophical, existential, and other
critical analyses about absurdity, as well as creative efforts to express
the absurd, can strike at some pillars of characteristically Western
thought as they question fundamental assumptions about knowledge,
language, and meaning.
I suspect that it is impossible, or at least inadequate, to think
about conditions of existence, and absurdity in particular, without
contemplating dynamics of perspective, conflict, and potential. In this
essay, I argue that a sense of the absurd is inextricable from the nature
of perception and, moreover, is necessarily rooted in a specific kind of
perceptual tension. Furthermore, I suggest that a sophisticated
understanding of and reconciliation with the nature of absurdity
paradoxically may lead to its annihilation as a source of anguish and
provide an alternative to a view of life as meaningless. This alternative
340
Shlomit Gorin
view is based on the idea that the world is only absurd if we think it
can be and expect it to be otherwise. I believe that such a
perspective is implicit in the works of Bruno Schulz. While different
scholars have focused on various interesting features of his writing, I
derive from his stories and essays a framework of thinking about
absurdity that fits the aforementioned alternative view.
A common conceptualization of absurdity is based upon the
supposition that existence precedes meaning, and that the world is an
objective entity distinct from human consciousness and devoid of
meaning. Realization of absence of inherent reason, purpose and
necessity in life may result in a sense of absurdity and anguish. A
view of absurdity as a source of despair violates notions of inherent
meaning, yet it fails to depart from the same fundamental assumptions
in which these very trends of thought are rooted. In other words, it
tacitly accepts what it openly rejects.
The alternative view of absurdity that I will explore is not
concerned with objective meaning or purpose, for it does not
characterize the absence of inherent meaning in the world as a defect
or problem. The inquiry of whether meaning is one of the properties
making up the objective world is not significant. What is essential is
acknowledging dynamics of agency implicit within the nature of
perception, as well as embracing contradiction, absence of universal
purpose, and uncertainty. The question of how one finds meaning in a
meaningless world is not answered, but recast.
Identification of absurdity with a problematic absence of
innate meaning leads to an intense sense of absurdity that diminishes
vigor and vitality and serves as an impetus to yearning for death.
Death may function both as a resignation to, as well as a confrontation
with or subversion of, absurdity. Self-annihilation is the (albeit
extreme) consequence for an individual who views life as wholly and
absolutely meaningless and sees no way of escaping such conditions
lest they lead to an artificial existence or a way of life based on what
Sartre calls Bad Faith. Bad Faith, Sartre explains, is
A lie to oneself within the unity of a single consciousness. Through Bad
Faith a person seeks to escape the responsible freedom of Being-for-itself. Bad Faith rests on a vacillation between transcendence and facticity
which refuses to recognize either one for what it really is or to synthesize
them (1956: 628).
Thinking About Absurdity with Schulz: Paradox and Potential
341

Sartre insists that the sincere man must face Nothingness
(Hinchliffe 1969: 25).
Interestingly, an awareness of absurdity does not exclude
emphasis on sincerity, or even its praise. Suicide, Sartre believes, is by
no means a solution to absurdity since it is clearly a relinquishment,
rather than an honest facing up, to the meaninglessness of the world.
This proposition implies absence of inherent reason and overarching
purpose in life need not, and should not, halt the search for
authenticity. Recognizing inherent meaninglessness, which rests in
large part on an admission of mortality, is a fundamental prerequisite
for a genuine life. The existentialist (absurd) hero is exemplified by
the individual who achieves honesty only in the face of death
(Hinchliffe 1969: 21).
Like the hero in Tolstois Smert Ivana Ilicha (The Death of
Ivan Ilich, 1886), one may establish and preserve an honest
experience of life only by considering death rather than by trying to
forget its existence or by ending ones life oneself. As Camus urges,
[i]t is essential to die unreconciled and not of ones own free will
(1955: 21). Refusal to die will not ameliorate a sense of anguish
arising from absurdity. On the contrary, it will remain and ought to
remain so that we can resist it. As John K. Roth writes in Great
Thinkers of the Western World, Defiance of the absurd maximizes
lifes intensity in a way that would not be possible if some
transcendent God guaranteed lifes significance (1999: 558). Camus
contends believing there is a way to escape absurdity is merely
philosophical suicide, for such hope disables one from drawing honest
existential conclusions. One cannot remain honest if one has
succumbed to the temptation offered by that hope (Camus 1955: 21).
With honest consideration of death, the idea of action despite
human mortality becomes significant; individuals are free in the sense
that they do not have to do any particular thing and yet they both
painfully suffer through and joyfully delight in a life they know ends
in death. Freedom as absence of reason, purpose, or necessity
translates into metaphysical captivity in which everything becomes
equal and, hence, meaningless. Total and open potentiality
paradoxically creates the impossibility of creating meaning in a world
in which everything is arbitrary. Implicit within this concept of
freedom is a view of limitations as necessary for the generation of
meaning. Dostoevskiis underground man personifies the idea of sheer
342
Shlomit Gorin
potential as enslaving and longs for limits that release him from the
burden of nothingness: If only my doing nothing were due to
laziness! How Id respect myself then! Yes, respect, because I would
know that I could be lazy at least, that I had at least one definite
feature in me, something positive, something I could be sure of
(1961: 104).
Camus proposes that the only type of action capable of
overcoming this arbitrary quality of freedom is willful and thoughtful
action. Action in this sense is not meant to escape the absurdity of the
world but is rooted in an embrace of it. Authenticity is derived from
action that occurs despite mortality and absence of purpose. An
understanding of absurdity as a source of genuine experience is a
beginning that leads to revolt against it.
Escape Versus Confrontation
Fictional narratives expressing absurdity portray a world with
characteristics that aggravate notions of a deterministic world. The
degree to which such writing moves beyond trends of mechanistic
thought varies; some depictions of an unfamiliar world may lean more
toward the realm of fantasy than toward an expression of absurdity.
One could speculate that in a fantasy world, relations of being are
overturned and remain unordinary, whereas an absurd world is created
when the unordinary melts into, or collides with, the ordinary.
Kafkas Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915)
represents the archetypal literary expression of the absurd world in
these terms. The first line of The Metamorphosis reads: As Gregor
Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect (1970: 67). The scene
immediately presents a most extraordinary event as a very ordinary
occurrence. As the story unfolds, the reader, Gregors family, and
Gregor himself become progressively more accepting of this most
bizarre transformation, yet the tension between unpredictable fantasy
and familiar reality never fully dissipates. In contrast, the dynamics
within a fantasy world remain within the context of the unreal and the
reader is not presented with a challenge of discerning between the
two. Fantasy is rooted in reality as a result of its direct departure from
a familiar world and in its polarity to reality. Its unrealistic nature
remains within the expected boundaries of the realistic.
343

Based on these conditions, one could claim that the emergence
of conflict between genres or imaginative worlds is what distinguishes
the absurd from fantasy. Confusion and uncertainty evoked through
portrayal of a world oscillating between normalized and fantastical
anticipations reflect the unique nature of the absurd world.
Expressions of absurdity challenge notions of a known, rigid reality
through an attempt to create an authentic depiction of the world, one
that explodes illusions of order and certainty and moves beyond the
direct negation of such notions. Although a surface examination
reveals an absurdist depiction of the world as a retreat from reality, a
more thorough exploration of absurdist writing illuminates how such
writing manifests the attempt and desire to penetrate reality in all its
irascibility.
Viewing friction between worlds as an integral feature of the
absurd means that conflict plays a crucial role in ideas about
absurdity. To reiterate, the absurd world presents neither evasion, nor
acquiescence; absurdity presents itself when the fantastic is placed
within the context of the realistic and therefore must be considered
within the terms of collision. This requires a battle with paradoxes and
challenges one to embrace honestly inconsistencies and complexities
that are otherwise and oftentimes either maddening or justified
through reductive simplifications. Meaning is necessarily rooted in
tension, complexity, and dynamism.
An element of conflict is apparent from the initial emergence
of absurdity. Camus attributes a sense of the absurd to opposition
between human need for rational comprehension on the one hand, and
existence within an untenable world on the other: What is absurd is a
confrontation of the irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose
call echoes in the human heart (1955: 16). This is the basic encounter
with absurdity and the fundamental tension upon which all proceeding
conflicts rest. To realize absurdity is neither difficult nor unique: At
any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the
face (1955: 9). What follows from this nascent meeting is difficult to
digest, but it is in the complexity of facing up to absurdity that the
possibility for meaning is found. As [the feeling of absurdity] is, in
its distressing nudity, in its light without effulgence, it is elusive. But
that very difficulty deserves reflection (1955: 9).
Discarding suicide, which he views as the ultimate retreat
(Roth 1999: 558), Camus insists an attempt to acquire meaning from
344
Shlomit Gorin
recognition of inherent meaninglessness is crucial and must not be

construed as resignation. To refuse the world for what it is does not
mean that one gives up and flees it rather it means that one lives it
under different terms (Camus 1974: 56). The way to find or create
meaning involves simultaneous acceptance and defiance of the absurd.
Camus persists that the absurd has meaning only insofar as it is not
agreed to (1955: 24).
Not only is there an intrinsic tension involved in the
phenomenon of revolt itself, but also there is clearly a conflict
between accepting the world as absurd while revolting against
absurdity through conscious adoption of human purpose and action.
Sisyphus is the exemplary embodiment of such tension held in ideal
balance and Camuss hero:
Sisyphus loves life and hates death. His passions have condemned him,
but the grandeur of Sisyphus is that he never gives up and is never
dishonest. He accepts his fate only to defy it. Thereby he gives meaning to
existence, meaning that cannot negate absurdity but refuses to succumb to
it (Roth 1999: 558).
In Camuss interpretation, absurdity lies in the opposition between the

demand we make as rational beings for purpose and reason and a
world that is indifferent to such implorations and expectations: The
absurd depends as much on man as on the world (Camus 1955: 16).
Absurdity presents a challenge to our capacity to find rational
solutions through logical employment of reason. Camus thereby
asserts limitations of reason while suggesting meaning is found in the
very aspiration for rational comprehension of the world. Longing for
rational comprehension is still given precedence over accepting
absence of rational solutions. Camuss recognition of uncertainty lies
in his resignation to absence of certainty hitherto and is tinged with
hope for a future arrival of certitude. Perseverance in the search for
knowledge or moral authority in based on a desire for certainty and
absolutes. Thus, although Camus adamantly insists upon the gravity of
accepting our inability to understand the worlds irrationality, his
proposition seems rather suspect.
It may be fair, then, to assert that Camus questions the ability
to arrive at answers, yet not the questions themselves. His assertion
that a sense of disgust follows recognition of absurdity implicitly and
paradoxically stems from an assumption that meaning in order to be
345

meaningful must be total. If one really accepted the impossibility of
inherent, total meaning in the world, then it would be difficult to
conceive of such an absence as indeed an absence. Defiance of the
absurd only strengthens its significance.
Moreover, Camuss view that absurdity arises out of a divorce
between human awareness and the world rests upon an assumption of
a dichotomy between the two and paradoxically presupposes a
possibility for the existence of innate meaning. Underlying Camuss
view that [t]he absurd is born of the confrontation between human
need and the unreasonable silence of the world (1955: 21) is the idea
that there exists a world separate from human consciousness a world
that inherently constrains human potential.
Perception and the Impulse to Create
The Polish modernist writer Bruno Schulz expresses a view of open
potentiality that offers a breath of fresh air in light of Camuss ideas
about absurdity. Schulzs narratives invoke the feeling that both
freedom and meaning exist within the threshold of potentiality.
Whereas Camuss conception of freedom implicitly denies the value
of sheer potential, Schulz suggests the fact we are free to do what we
want can be helpful rather than terrifying. Lack of necessity open
potentiality is seen as liberating rather than enslaving.
The world Schulz portrays merges external reality with the
life of imagination and suggests that an attempt to separate the two
would prove to be a futile task. His narratives reflect a perspective of
the world as what we see it to be rather than as a distinct entity
following its own objective logic and rules (or absence of rules).
Detachment of external phenomena from consciousness, which Camus
finds problematic, is not a feature in Schulzs world. Instead, Schulzs
work presents an external reality consumed by imagination. In his
fascinating work, Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934),
emphasis falls on imagination's power and its influence on perception
and the decisions we make about how to live.
Such a narrative, in which imagination determines all senses
of life, carries significant implications for a view of reality and human
potential. The world in Cinnamon Shops illuminates the dream-like
quality of reality, a place where unpredictability, inexplicability, and
instability reign. It also affirms human potentiality and the impulse to
346
Shlomit Gorin
create. Within the depths of chaos, an authentic vibrancy is found and

creative expression bubbles and thrives, but this brilliance is neither
final nor permanent, making itself known through acute observations
rather than rational grasping. It is also expected to change shape since
novelty and honesty require both tension and fluidity.
Father, the protagonist in Cinnamon Shops, is obsessed with
birds. His meticulous nurturing of rare, exotic birds epitomizes
ultimate cultivation of his imagination. When Adela, the housemaid,
could no longer cope with the fetid smell that filled the room, the
heaps of droppings covering the floor, the tables, and the chairs
(Schulz 1987: 50;1 nad fetorem, ktry si
unosi w powietrzu oraz
nad kupami kau, zalegaj cego podogi, stoy i meble; Schulz 1989:
25)2, she prodded the mass of birds out the window with a broom and
danced the dance of destruction (SC 50; taczya taniec
zniszczenia; Op 25).
Adela, symbolizing the incessant maintenance of order,
destroys the lively chaos of Fathers bird kingdom, an empire of
imagination, creative freedom, and unyielding expression. The
endeavor to accomplish order results in the elimination of vibrant life
and the destruction of creativitys breathing vitality. In the chapter
following the account of the birds, Schulz writes:
Ta ptasia impreza mego ojca bya ostatnim wybuchem kolorowoci,
ostatnim i wietnym kontrmarszem fantazji, ktry ten niepoprawny
improwizator, ten fechtmistrz wyobrani poprowadzi na szace i okopy
jaowej i pustej zimy. Dzi dopiero rozumiem samotne bohaterstwo, z
jakim sam jeden wyda on wojn
bezbrzenemu ywioowi nudy,
dr
twi cej miasto. Pozbawiony wszelkiego poparcia, bez uznania z naszej
strony broni ten m przedziwny straconej sprawy poezji. (Op 26)
(The affair of the birds was the last colorful and splendid counteroffensive
of fantasy which my father, that incorrigible improviser, that fencing
master of imagination, had led against the trenches and defenseworks of a
sterile and empty winter. Only now do I understand the lonely hero who
alone had waged war against the fathomless, elemental boredom that
strangled the city. Without any support, without recognition on our part,
that strangest of men was defending the lost cause of poetry; SC 51)

1
2
All further references will be given as SC.

347

When Fathers metaphysical mission (Schulz 1988: 154) is
interrupted by the attempt to establish order and Adela dethrones him,
boredom and dullness fill the space once occupied by a kaleidoscope
of dazzling colors and creatures:
Oblega nas znowu ze wszech stron aobna szaro miasta, zakwitaj c w
oknach ciemnym liszajem witw tapety pokojw rozlunione bogo za
tamtych dni i otwarte dla kolorowych lotw owej skrzydlatej czeredy,
zamkn
y si
znowu w sobie, zg
stniay, pl cz c si
w monotonii
gorzkich monologw. (Op 26-27)
(We were beset again from all sides by the mournful grayness of the city
which crept through the windows with the dark rash of dawn the
wallpaper of the rooms, blissfully unconstrained in those former days and
accessible to the multicolored flights of the birds, closed in on itself
and hardened, becoming engrossed in the monotony of bitter monologues;
SC 52)
Even perception of physical reality, devoid of imagination, is lifeless

and dreary:
Lampy poczerniay i zwi
dy jak stare osty i bodiaki. Wisiay teraz
osowiae i zgryliwe, dzwoni c cicho krysztakami szkieek, gdy kto
przeprawia si
omackiem przez szary zmierzch pokoju. Na prno
w
tkn
a Adela we wszystkie ramiona tych lamp kolorowe wiece,
nieudolny surogat, blade wspomnienie wietnych iluminacyj, ktrymi
kwity niedawno wisz ce ich ogrody. (Op 27)
(The chandeliers blackened and wilted like old thistles; now they hung
dejected and ill-tempered, their glass pendants ringing softly whenever
anybody groped their way through the dimly lit room. In vain did Adela
put colored candles in all the holders; they were a poor substitute for, a
pale reflection of, those splendid illuminations which had so recently
enlivened these hanging gardens; SC 52).
Adelas attempt to revitalize the somberness of existence fails, not

surprisingly, for she is not only the destroyer of Fathers imaginative
kingdom but also the symbol of order whose omnipresence is
embodied in the clacking of her slippers (SC 75; z kapaniem
pantofli Adeli; Op 49).
Schulz unveils the intimate relationship between imagination
and perception by describing a change in material reality, and in so
doing, he irradiates the bizarre, enigmatic manner in which the
animate and inanimate sometimes fuse. Perhaps more significantly,
348
Shlomit Gorin
Schulz evokes and affirms the playful dance between imagination,

perception, and human potentiality. The possibilities surrounding
perception are infinitely expanded by dynamics of imagination, and
the impulse to create becomes highly sensitized.
Whereas expressions of creativity are generally thought about
in terms of tangibility (books, paintings, sculptures), Schulz suggests a
novel possibility for the manifestation of creativity, or perhaps he
elevates the process that necessarily precedes tangible expression.
Nevertheless, accentuation clearly lies in the inner world of
imagination. The world, Schulz suggests, is colored and shaped by the
landscape of imagination and thus the way we see, to a large extent,
determines the way we live.
Fathers eccentric obsession with birds provides a way to
quell his curiosity of other life forms and perspectives. Fathers
passionate interest in animals (SC 47; nami
tne zainteresowanie
dla zwierz t; Op 22) is described as the passion of the huntsman and
the artist rolled into one. It was also perhaps a deeper, biological
sympathy of one creature for kindred, yet different, forms of life, a
kind of experimenting in the unexplored regions of existence (SC 47;
nami
tno myliwego i artysty zarazem, bya moe g
bsza,
zoologiczna sympatia kreatury dla pokrewnych, a tak odmiennych
form ycia, eksperymentowanie w niewyprbowanych rejestrach
bytu; Op 22). Father attempts to transcend all that is familiar and
known, seeking unique ways of viewing the world. Perhaps more
importantly, Father recognizes the parameters of his perception and
how those boundaries may be stretched; aware of the limitations, he
seeks every possibility to reinforce potential. Through close
observation of birds and absorption into their manners of existence,
Father wishes to see through the eyes of another.
Even before Father begins importing rare birds, there are
traces in his behavior of a sense of identification with this particular
life form that are closely related to his longing for unordinary, fresh
experiences:
Czasem wdrapywa si
na karnisz i przybiera nieruchom poz
symetrycznie do wielkiego wypchanego s

pa, ktry po drugiej stronie
okna zawieszony by na cianie. W tej nieruchomej, przykucni
tej pozie, z
wzrokiem zamglonym i z min chytrze umiechni
t trwa godzinami,
aeby z naga przy czyim wejciu zatrzepota r
koma jak skrzydami i
zapia jak kogut; Op 19).
349

(Occasionally [Father] climbed on a pelmet and froze into immobility, a
counterpart to the large stuffed vulture which hung on the wall opposite.
In this crouching pose, with misty eyes and a sly smile on his lips, he
remained for long periods without moving, except to flap his arms like
wings and crow like a cock whenever anybody entered the room; SC43)
Fathers identification with the stuffed vulture permeates his body and
reaches physical imitation. When Adela shooed Fathers bird kingdom
out the window, Father, waving his arms in panic, tried to lift himself
into the air with his feathered flock (SC 50; razem z ptasi gromad
ojciec mj, trzepi c r
koma, w przeraeniu prbowa wznie si
w
powietrze; Op 25). Fathers intimate assimilation into his creative
empire spills into his physicality, so much so that he even hopes in
desperation that he can literally flee Adelas destruction with his bird
friends.
Change and Authenticity
As we will see, Fathers theories about matter and form denote a view
of life that serve as an alternative to Camuss conceptualization of
absurdity. To reiterate, Camus calls for a passionate revolt against
absurdity through concurrent acceptance and defiance of it. His
demand, nevertheless, does not eliminate the significance of, or
possibility for, rational comprehension of the world from his ideas and
hopes. Meaning, Camus infers, must be totalizing in order to be truly
meaningful and is equated with striving for rational understanding.
Within the section in Cinnamon Shops entitled Traktat o
manekinach (Treatises on Tailors Dummies) lies a subtle and
ingenious critique of the endeavor to understand the world in Camuss
recommended terms. Schulz suggests that replacing consistency with
contingency and rational analysis with imagination makes much more
sense.
In an essay dedicated to S.I. Witkiewicz (1935), Schulz
elaborates the process of auto-recreation in which matter perpetually
partakes, referring to this process as the migration of forms (1998:
369; w
drwka form Op 445):
Substancja tamtejszej rzeczywistoci jest w stanie nieustannej fermentacji,
kiekowania, utajonego ycia. Nie ma przedmiotw martwych, twardych,
ograniczonych. Wszystko dyfunduje poza swoje granice, trwa tylko na
350
Shlomit Gorin
chwil
w pewnym ksztacie, aeby go przy pierwszej sposobnoci
opuci. (Op 444)
(The substance of that reality exists in a state of constant fermentation,
germination, hidden life. It contains no dead, hard, limited objects.
Everything diffuses beyond its borders, remains in a given shape only
momentarily, leaving its shape at the first opportunity; 1998: 369)
Schulzs notions (seemingly expressed through Father) about matter

containing infinite possibilities for limitless cultivation affirm human
potential and impulse to create:
Stanowi ona teren wyj
ty spod prawa, otwarty dla wszelkiego rodzaju
szarlatanerii i dyletantyzmw, domen
wszelkich naduy i w tpliwych
manipulacyj
demiurgicznych.
Materia
jest
najbierniejsz
i
najbezbronniejsz istot w kosmosie. Kady moe j ugniata, formowa,
kademu jest posuszna. Wszystkie organizacje materii s nietrwae i
lune, atwe do uwstecznienia i rozwi zania. (Op 33)
([Matter] is a territory outside any law, open to all kinds of charlatans and
dilettanti, a domain of abuses and of dubious demiurgical manipulations.
Matter is the most passive and most defenseless essence in cosmos.
Anyone can mold it and shape it; it obeys everybody. All attempts at
organizing matter are transient and temporary, easy to reverse and to
dissolve; SC 59).
Instability, impermanency, and absence of strict laws serve as the

ontological and existential condition[s] for all creation (Shallcross
1997: 281). Demand for certainty constricts creative outflow and, in
the worst case, may impede creative production altogether: The
matchless perfection of the Demiurge [] has paralysed our own
creative instinct (SC 62; niedociga doskonao Demiurga []
paralizowaa nasz wasn twrczo; Op 34).
In one of the earliest in a series of meetings Father has with
the two seamstresses Polda and Pauline, who father succeeded in
charming [] with the magnetism of his strange personality (ojciec
mj zdoa rycho oczarowa [] urokiem swej przedziwnej
osobowoci) and who in return for his witty and elegant
conversation [] permitted the ardent ornithologist to study the
structure of their thin and ordinary little bodies (SC 57; Odpacaj c
si
za pen galanterii i dowcipu konwersacj
[] pozwalay
zapalonemu badaczowi studiowa struktur
swych szczupych i
tandetnych ciaek; Op 31), Father exclaims:
351

Gdybym, odrzucaj c respekt przed Stwrc , chcia si
zabawi w krytyk
stworzenia, woabym: Mniej treci, wi

cej formy! Ach, jak by uly
wiatu ten ubytek treci. Wi
cej skromnoci w zamierzeniach, wi
cej
wstrzemi
liwoci w pretensjach panowie demiurdzy a wiat byby
doskonalszy! (Op 31)
(If, forgetting the respect due to the creator, I were to attempt a criticism
of creation, I would say Less matter, more form! Ah, what relief it
would be for the world to lose some of its contents. More modesty in
aspirations, more sobriety in claims, Gentlemen Demiurges, and the world
would be more perfect!; SC 57)
In the aforementioned essay dedicated to Witkiewicz, one finds what

may be interpreted as an explanation for Fathers desire for less matter
an unusual yearning when placed aside Fathers conflation of matter
with pure, unrealized potential. Schulz writes:
Wszystko dyfunduje poza swoje granice, trwa tylko na chwil
w pewnym
ksztacie, aeby go przy pierwszej sposobnoci opuci. W zwyczajach, w
sposobach bycia tej rzeczywistoci przejawia si
pewnego rodzaju zasada
panmaskarady. Rzeczywisto przybiera pewne ksztaty tylko dla
pozoru, dla artu, dla zabawy. (Op 444)
(Everything diffuses beyond its borders, remains in a given shape only
momentarily, leaving this shape behind at the first opportunity. A
principle of sorts appears in the habits, the modes of existence of this
reality: universal masquerade. Reality takes on certain shapes merely for
the sake of appearance, as a joke or form of play; 1998: 369)
This endless masquerade contributes to the creative and playful

dimension of Schulzs perception of reality, but it also seems to
trouble him: What the meaning of this universal disillusioning reality
is I am not able to say. I maintain only that it would be unbearable
unless it was compensated for in some other dimension (1998: 369;
Jaki jest sens tej uniwersalnej deziluzji rzeczywistoci nie potrafi
powiedzie. Twierdz
tylko, e byaby ona nie do zniesienia, gdyby
nie doznawaa odszkodowania w jakiej innej dymensji; Op 445). This
other dimension may be understood as the imaginative realm of
creation in which lack of solidity plays a beneficial role, as seems to
be suggested by Schulzs statement that, In some sense we derive a
profound satisfaction from the loosening of the web of reality; we feel
an interest in witnessing the bankruptcy of reality (1998: 369; W
jaki sposb doznajemy g
bokiej satysfakcji z tego rozlunienia
352
Shlomit Gorin
tkanki rzeczywistoci, jestemy zainteresowani w tym bankructwie

realnoci; Op 445). Moreover, the juxtaposition of more with
perfect in Fathers exclamation that more modesty in aspirations,
more sobriety in claims would result in a more perfect world
mimics the way that finitude and permanence cease to exist in a world
that is already perfect yet could still be perfected a testament to the
incessantly changing nature of matter.
If resilience and doubt caused by the incessant migration of
forms are assimilated, then acknowledgment of fundamental
uncertainty may serve as both a receptor for, and transmitter of, the
creative impulse. Human creation is inevitable, Father adamantly
claims, because matter inherently and incessantly provides potential
that necessarily leads to creative interaction and expression:
Demiurgos [...] nie posiad monopolu na tworzenie tworzenie jest
przywilejem wszystkich duchw. Materii dana jest nieskoczona
podno, niewyczerpana moc yciowa i zarazem uwodna sia pokusy,
ktra nas n
ci do formowania [] Caa materia faluje od nieskoczonych
moliwoci, ktre przez ni przechodz mdymi dreszczami. Czekaj c na
oywcze tchnienie ducha, przelewa si
ona w sobie bez koca, kusi
tysi cem sodkich okr glizn i mi
kkoci, ktre z siebie w lepych
rojeniach wymajacza. (Op 33)
(The Demiurge has had no monopoly of creation, for creation is the
privilege of all spirits. Matter has been given infinite fertility,
inexhaustible vitality, and, at the same time, a seductive power of
temptation which invites us to create as well [] The whole of matter
pulsates with infinite possibilities that send dull shivers through it.
Waiting for the life-giving breath of the spirit, it is endlessly in motion. It
entices us with a thousand sweet, soft, round shapes which it blindly
dreams up within itself; SC 59).
Matter blurs the boundaries between humans and the world, between
subject and object. Humans interact with their environment fluidly,
their bodily matter fusing with and melting into their surroundings.
Thus, the dichotomy between humans and the world Camus
characterizes as a leading cause of a sense of absurdity is not a feature
in Fathers world. Paradoxically, maximization of potential portrayed
in Schulzs narrative world makes the existence of absurdity
impossible.
353

Subjectivity and Time
In his essay Mityzacja rzeczywistoci (The Mythologizing of
Reality, 1936), Schulz expresses a view of reality as embroiled in
both meaning and language. He claims, [t]he essence of reality is
Meaning or Sense. What lacks Sense is, for us, not reality [] The
nameless does not exist for us. To name something means to include it
in some universal Sense (1988: 115; Istot rzeczywistoci jest sens.
Co nie ma sensu, nie jest dla nas rzeczywiste [] Nienazwane nie
istnieje dla nas. Nazwa co znaczy w czy to w jaki sens
uniwersalny; Op 366). Reality is filtered through language; however,
one should be careful not to conclude hastily that Schulz is claiming
language makes the signified real and lasting. In Schulzs stories, one
can find recognition of this capacity, but, as scholar Diana Kuprel
observes, the recognition is a negative one and the capacity
provisional (1996: 111).
In Ksi
ga (The Book), found in Schulzs Sanatorium pod
klepsydr (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1937), the
opening lines consist precisely of the act of naming The Book. Yet the
narrator views this process, as Kuprel describes, as a silent
capitulation before the vastness of the transcendental, for no word, no
allusion, can adequately suggest the shiver of fear, the presentiment of
a thing without name that exceeds all our capacity for wonder (1996:
110). The world evades both the volume and aptitude of language,
which only trickles like sand through the human grasp.
What underlies Schulzs declaration is not the idea that the
world possesses objective meaning but that it is swollen with potent
possibilities leading inevitably to creation of meaning. Schulzs
thoughts about language highlight the nature of subjectivity inherent
within dynamics of perspective; our understanding of the world is
always changing, and, hence, our reality is implicitly mutable. Reality
is fluid to the extent that subjectivity and, thus, possibility (for
change) actively and persistently affect perception. Enhancing the
significance he attaches to subjective experience, he further
emphasizes the affects of human agency on dynamics of perspective.
Implicit in the idea that meaning must be produced within
conditions of subjectivity and confines of language is an assent to
absence of inherent, objective meaning. However, unlike Camuss
assertion that meaning cannot exist without a revolt against absurdity,
354
Shlomit Gorin
Schulz does not interpret lack of intrinsic meaning and purpose as a

challenge. As pointed out previously, and as his thoughts in The
Mythologizing of Reality maintain, Schulz sees no dichotomy
between perception and the world. The world is what we are capable
of conceiving it to be. Meaning must be produced through human
consciousness and creativity and can be neither total nor a feature
belonging to an isolated, circumscribed world.
Schulz illuminates the role of humans in the concern about
absurdity; human demands for certainty are problematic in Schulzs
narratives, rather than the worlds indifference to such expectations
(as Camus suggests). Absurdity, then, in Schulzs world, is no cause
for despair, but is instead an essential characteristic of life that ought
to be assumed and accepted. If human thought and behavior accord
with absence of objective meaning and work on the assumption that
our world is fundamentally messy, then absence as such no longer
presents itself as problematic. This stance differs from Camuss
understanding of absurdity. Since Camus presupposes a desire for
inherent meaning, he contends that meaninglessness of the world
becomes a source of anguish. The underlying implication of Schulzs
view is affirmation of human potential and agency; the world is only
absurd if our desires are not viable. In a way, the world Schulz creates,
though unrealistic on the surface, is perhaps unfathomably realistic.
Schulzs treatment of time exposes the subtle yet essential
idea that when desire for certainty is eliminated, a sense of absurdity
dissipates. Schulzs characters are unable to relate to a universal time;
instead, each follows his or her own sense of time, as epitomized by
the remark My fathers time and my own no longer coincide (1978:
127;3 Czas mego ojca i mj wasny czas ju do siebie nie
przystaway; Op 265). Moreover, none of the characters seem to be
comfortable even within their own temporal experience. Time
personified in Schulzs writing represents a threatening force
unpleasantly reckoned with, an unwanted guest who makes everyone
nervous. However, it is not time itself that Schulz describes as
taunting but time as a quantifiable phenomenon, as linear and
progressive. It is time represented by clocks and calendars which
Schulz portrays negatively. The challenge presented here is directed
against methodological and quotidian treatment of an unquantifiable

3
355

and unknowable force, which results, Schulz suggests, in imposition
of artificial limitations.
The idea that time, when placed within the boundaries of
measurement and tangible representation, functions as a force
constraining potential is enhanced by allusions to time as a spatial
entity: The days passed, the afternoons grew longer: there was
nothing to do in them. The excess of time, still raw, still sterile and
without use, lengthened the evening with empty dusks (San 151;
Mijay dni, popoudnia staway si
dusze. Nie byo co z nimi
zrobi. Nadmiar czasu jeszcze surowego, jeszcze czczego i bez
zastosowania, przedual wieczory pustymi zmierzchami; Op 345).
Here, it is time metaphorically represented within the confines of
spatial dimensions not time as a phenomenon itself that is
problematic. As scholar Sven Spieker has observed, The real
problem for Schulzs characters lies in their inability to avoid allegory
in their dealing with time Time becomes knowable only where it
takes on the guise of an image or symbol. As such, it seems
chronically devoid of meaning, unable to provide a definition
(1997: 283). Characters are unable to relate to time as something
incapable of representation, yet their understanding of time
represented by symbols also proves inadequate. The endeavor to
understand time through representational, bounded means only leads
to disappointment.
Kuprel has pointed out that time transposed as a spatial entity
also functions as a master image, which, as Ray Hart in Unfinished
Man and the Imagination explains, is not the direct object of
knowledge, but is, rather, the horizon through and in which things
are known [ it is not] an id quod cognoscitur (that which is known)
but rather an id quo cognoscitur (that by which is known) (in Kuprel
1996: 104). Time functions as a sensory sea in which possibility
thrives. Similarly, the stamp album in Sanatorium Under the Sign of
the Hourglass serves as a master image the protagonist uses to
navigate toward the events in his life.
Kuprel suggests that [t]his spatio-temporal void serves as a
schema of all possible togetherness and successiveness (1996: 105).
Yet perhaps just as importantly, this empty (or full) chasm also
functions as a fluid network of all possible incongruency, disorder,
and contingency. Similarly, Kuprel writes: Empty space and time
serve as the ground of latency out of which specific events are
356
Shlomit Gorin
actualized (105). However, and again perhaps as significantly

empty spatio-temporal dimensions also serve as the ground of
latency in which those events that do not happen, yet nevertheless
could happen, lie in their pre-actualized, purely potential states.
Viewing spatio-temporal dimensions as containing both
unrealized and realized possibility leads to the idea that reveling in the
threshold of potential maximizes possibility. To see potential, or
empty time and space, only as a medium to obtain actualized
outcomes necessarily limits possibility because at the moment
potential becomes crystallized, it ceases to exist as potential. Camuss
call to action and to the conscious espousal of human purpose and
reason suggests the medium of potential serves as a bridge one must
cross to reach a destination. Contrarily, Schulzs narratives urge us to
pay close attention while strolling across that bridge.
Schulzs approach to time also implicitly challenges histories
that disguise contingency in masks of causal patterns. He portrays
time, and, by implication, canonical history, as incapable of being
contained within the boundaries of human knowledge and
comprehension:
Wiemy wszyscy, e ten niezdyscyplinowany ywio trzyma si
jedynie od
biedy w pewnych ryzach dzi
ki nieustannej uprawie, pieczoowitej
troskliwoci, starannej regulacji i korygowaniu jego wybrykw.
Pozbawiony tej opieki, skania si
natychmiast do przekrocze, do dzikiej
aberracji, do patania nieobliczalnych figlw, do bezksztatnego
baznowania. (Op 265)
(We all know that time, this undisciplined element, holds itself within
bounds but precariously, thanks to unceasing cultivation, meticulous care,
and a continuous regulation and correction of its excesses. Free of this
vigilance, it immediately begins to do tricks, run wild, play irresponsible
practical jokes, and indulge in crazy clowning; San 127)
Schulzs perception of time as a jokester may be understood as his

attempt to overturn an interpretation of history as a series of stable,
self-contained, sequential patterns. Implicit in this representation of
history is an attack on the artificial production of meaning through
syntheses of historical and scientific determinism that fail to take
contingency into account.
By writing about the contraband of supernumerary events
that cannot be registered (San 14; tak kontraband
[], takie
357

nadliczbowe zdarzenie nie do zaszeregowania; Op 121), and how
[e]veryone knows that in a run of normal uneventful years that great
eccentric, Time, begets sometimes other years, different, prodigal
years which like a sixth, smallest toe grow a thirteenth freak
month (SC 125; Kady wie, e w szeregu zwykych, normalnych lat
rodzi niekiedy zdziwaczay czas ze swego ona lata inne, lata
osobliwe, lata wyrodne, ktrym, jak szsty, may palec u r
ki, wyrasta
k
dy trzynasty, faszywy miesi c; Op 91), Schulz pokes at some of
the most fundamental assumptions we hold about time and history. He
opens for exploration an alternative view of time as expanded and
multi-dimensional an idea that, not surprisingly, cannot be
represented through the use of symbols or terms of measurement. As
Spieker asserts, Schulzian extra time is semiotically empty (1997:
285).
Time and history enter into an unfamiliar world, a realm of
possibility beyond dialectics and rational understanding wherein many
different things could have happened and could yet happen. Schulzs
views of time and space implicitly attach as much significance to the
real as they do to the possible. Spieker points out that the Schulzian
motif of time has a pretext in Robert Musils idea of Mglichkeitssinn,
a sense of alternative history a feeling for that which is not but
which nevertheless could be (1997: 286). As Czesaw Miosz
expressed in A Few Words on Bruno Schulz: Every object and
every action reveals, the very instant it materializes, its own
instability, its temporarily assumed role. Every form is undermined by
an anti-form sticking its tongue out (1989: 32). One cannot help but
hear the echoes here of Schulzs ideas about the substance of reality,
which he describes in his essay dedicated to S. I. Witkiewicz:
ycie substancji polega na zuywaniu niezmiernej iloci masek. Ta
w
drwka form jest istot ycia. Dlatego z substancji tej emanuje aura
jakiej panironii. Obecna tam jest nieustannie atmosfera kulis, tylnej
strony sceny, gdzie aktorzy po zrzuceniu kostiumw zamiewaj si
z
patosu swych rl. W samym fakcie istnienia poszczeglnego zawarta jest
ironia, nabieranie, j
zyk po bazesku wystawiony. (Op 445)
(The life of the substance consists in the assuming and consuming of
numberless masks. This migration of forms is the essence of life. Thus an
all-pervading aura of irony emanates from this substance. There is an
ever-present atmosphere of the stage, of sets viewed from behind, where
the actors make fun of the paths of their parts after stripping off their
Shlomit Gorin
358
costumes. The bare fact of separate individual existence holds an irony,

hoax, a clowns stuck-out-tongue; 1998: 369)
In summary, Schulz suggests the attempt to encapsulate time into a

unifying system of terms and guiding principles is misleading,
unsatisfactory, and, perhaps most importantly, premised upon false
assumptions. The temporality of potential is highlighted; through an
acknowledgment of the impossibility of defining and knowing time as
an objective entity, possibility is heightened. The oppressive weight of
time may be ameliorated through this realization, allowing for a more
open and honest dealing with ones life. As Kuprel asserts, Schulzs
stories present a unique re-envisagement of the world, and
demonstrate the inherent plasticity of literature to provide a panorama
of the possible (1996: 112).
Conclusion
Absurdist writing does not present an imaginary escape from life or
reality. It does, however, suggest different terms under which to live
life authentically and thus, meaningfully. Ultimately, meaning is
derived from an understanding of the world as complex and messy
rather than from an illusory existence in which life appears to lack
contradiction, disorder, and chance. A view of the world as inherently
meaningful is not only deceptive but also misleading. Moreover, an
acknowledgment of absurdity implicitly and paradoxically upholds the
same presuppositions from which a belief in inherent meaning, order,
and certainty stems.
The depth of the paradoxical nature of absurdity is
remarkable. An acknowledgment of absurdity must simultaneously be
an acknowledgment of existence of meaning, for how can one assert
absence of meaning if its existence is a phenomenon completely
unknown? How does one claim nothingness without creating
something in the process? Is not the thoughtful and careful declaration
of meaninglessness meaningful in itself?
These questions point to how analyses of absurdity demand
attention to definitions of and ideas about absence and nothingness.
To claim there is nothing is problematic, for it seems impossible to
conceptualize nothing. One may attempt to think of an absence of
something, but the result is usually either a validation of the presence
of that thing or a transformation of that initial absence into something
359

else. Therefore, to claim that the world is meaningless is to assert
simultaneously not only the possibility, but also the existence, of
meaning. In addition, to claim that the world is irrational is to display
a product of rational thinking since an understanding of irrationality
may only be thought about under the premises of rationality. Needless
to say, the annihilation of rational concepts can only occur through the
use of rationality, and the claim that the world has no meaning is a
function of rationality itself. Regardless, what one can perhaps learn
from Schulz is that imagination can play as dominant a role in our
perception of reality as rationality does. Far from the act of imagining
yielding merely creative pleasure, it is also, as Schulz shows us, a
dance with reality.
Bibliography
Camus, Albert. 1955. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (tr. J. OBrien). New
York: Random House, Inc.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1961. Notes From Underground (tr. A. R. MacAndrew). New
York: NAL Penguin, Inc.
Goldfarb, David A. 1994. A Living Schulz: Noc wielkiego sezonu (The Night of
the Great Season) in Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 14(1):
25-48.
. 1997. The Vortex and the Labyrinth: Bruno Schulz and the Objective
Correlative in East European Politics and Societies 11(2): 257-269.
Hinchliffe, Arnold P. 1969. The Absurd. London: Methuen & Co Ltd.
Kafka, Franz. 1970. The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces (tr. W. and E. Muir).
New York: Schocken Books.
Kuprel, Diana. 1996. Errant Events on the Branch Tracks of Time in Slavic and East
European Journal 40(1): 110-117.
Milosz, Czeslaw. 1989. A Few Words on Bruno Schulz in The New Republic
200(1): 30.
Roth, John K. 1999. Albert Camus in Great Thinkers of the Western World. New
York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology (tr. H. E. Barnes). New York: Philosophical Library, Inc.
Schulz, Bruno. 1978. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (tr. C.
Wieniewska). New York: Walker and Company.
. 1987. The Street of Crocodiles (tr. C. Wieniewska). New York: Viking Penguin
Inc.
. 1988. Letters and Drawing of Bruno Schulz, with Selected Prose (ed. J.
Ficowski, tr. W. Arndt and V. Nelson). New York: Harper & Row.
. 1989. Opowiadania, wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
360
Shlomit Gorin

Retextualization of the Kabbalah in East European Politics and Societies
11(2): 270-281.
. 1997. Introduction: Bruno Schulz and Modernism in East European Politics
and Societies 11(2): 254-256.
Spieker, Sven. 1997. Stumps Folded Into a Fist: Extra Time, Chance, and Virtual
Reality in Bruno Schulz in East European Politics and Societies 11(2): 282298.
Jewish Mysticism A Source of Similarities Between

Bruno Schulzs Writings and Psychoanalysis
Marta Suchaska-Drayska
Abstract: This essay explores the similarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and
the concepts of Bruno Schulz from the perspective of Jewish mystical thought.
Although many have interpreted his works in Freudian categories, Schulz himself was
rather skeptical about applying psychoanalytic theory to literature. We can, however,
observe that both authors look into the past to participate in the present; they both dive
into the reality beyond language and try to understand dreams using wordplay to
elucidate their hidden meaning. Furthermore, they both understand the process of
entitling things as an act of creation. Their way of understanding language and
interpreting meanings proves that they share a Jewish philosophical source.
Introduction
I will try to show Sigmund Freuds psychoanalysis and Bruno
Schulzs prose from the angle of Jewish traditional themes. Such a
view is just one of many interpretations and variations on the presence
of the kabbalistic thought in European culture. Nevertheless, it lets us
compare some aspects of Freudian thought with the works by Schulz
and prove that there are some similarities between them. The
concurrences may be coincidental; however, they may also be related
to the intellectual atmosphere which was characteristic of Jewish
circles in Middle-Eastern Europe at the turn of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
Bruno Schulzs Attitude Toward Psychoanalysis
The relationship between Schulzs work and psychoanalysis seems to
be remarkable. Even the first superficial reading of Sklepy
cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934) reveals motifs that are typical
of Freuds theory: the presence of the unconscious, wordplay and free
association, the poetry of dreams, dominant female figures, the main
362
characters complex about the father. Many important interpretations

of Schulzs work headed in that direction (cf. Sandauer 1974, Speina
1976, Dybel 2002). These interpretations were frequently based on the
explanation of the way in which the author of Sanatorium pod
klepsydr (Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1938)
included the motifs of psychoanalysis in his works. Pawe Dybel
showed that Schulz managed to illustrate and describe the
unconscious mechanisms of psychological life as if they were
conscious and in this way gave some autonomy to his fantasy world.
We also hear repeatedly that it was Jungs theory, and not Freuds,
that was the source of Schulzs inspirations. According to Jerzy
Speina and Jerzy Jarz
bski, the influence of Jungs theory in Schulzs
work is proved by the fact that Schulz refers to concepts such as the
collective unconsciousness, archetypes of Great Mother and Old Wise
Man, and that he presents the psyche as a multilayered structure with
deep recesses. I wonder, however, if this combination of Schulzs
motifs with analytical psychologys premises is correct. Schulz never
mentions Jungs concepts; however, he refers to Freuds discoveries
four times.1 Moreover, the psychoanalytical terms he uses come from
Freud. Such concepts as the language of the conscious and the
dynamics of the unconscious, psychological energy and neurotic
symptom occur in Jungs work secondarily but do not form the core of
his work. Furthermore, the archetype of Great Mother,2 which Schulz
supposedly took from Jung, is interpreted by the writer differently
than it is in Jungs psychoanalysis. The prototype of the mother
presented by Schulz is far removed from the archetype of the Great
Mother as described by Jung. In analytical psychology, she is equated
with nature and is a harmonious synthesis of contradictions, a symbol
of plenitude and solace. In Schulzs work, the mother evokes
ambivalent feelings; at times she is authoritarian and even arouses

1
The references are found in the article Aneksja podwiadomoci (Uwagi o

Cudzoziemce Kuncewiczowej) (The Annexation of the Subconscious. Observations
on Kuncewicz's The Foreigner), in Zofia Nakowska na tle swej nowej powieci
(Zofia Nakowska Against the Background of her New Novel), in the W
drwki
sceptyka (Travels of a Sceptic) review of Aldous Huxleys book Music at Night
(1931), and in the review of Witold Gombrowiczs Ferdydurke.
2
Some of Jungs archetypes have their equivalents in Schulzs prose, but as I will try
to prove later, it is possible that the author took them from kabbalistic tradition and
not from analytical psychology. Jung himself indicates that he knows kabbalistic
thought, e.g., in Mysterium Coniunctionis (1956).
Jewish Mysticism, Schulz, and Psychoanalysis
363

anger and aggression in the main character. Aside from this, it is hard
to differentiate between Jungs and Freuds concepts. They have
common roots, vocabulary, and ideas.
I think, therefore, that one should not only focus on Jungs
analytical psychology but also on the relationship of the Drohobycz
authors prose to Freuds classic theory. I must thus assume that there
are similarities between Schulzs world and the concept of reality
presented by psychoanalysis. It does not mean, however, that Schulz
was directly inspired by Freudianism; we should remain cautious with
regard to the origin of these similarities. Did Freud and his students
discoveries influence Schulz in such great measure that he
intentionally made them the subject of his works? Did the reading of
psychoanalytical classics affect the form of Cinnamon Shops and
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass?
I am aware that it is impossible to find definitive answers to
these questions. We can only be sure of the fact that Schulz, who
spoke German fluently, knew the psychoanalytical works just as he
knew the works of the Vienna and Prague circles of writers and
German expressionism. When World War I broke out, he stayed for a
few months in Vienna, where he was close to the scientific and
cultural life of Europe at that time. However, the authors statements
concerning Freuds theory are distant and even reluctant. In his
commentary on Maria Kuncewiczowas Cudzoziemka (The Foreigner,
1935), Schulz only reaches the conclusion that it was not yet time to
use psychoanalytical methods in novels and that they will be for a
long time unconvincing for an unaccustomed mind (dla
nieprzyzwyczajonego umysu nieprzekonywuj ce; 1989: 375).3 He is
more resolute in the review of Ferdydurke, in which he accuses Freud
of showing only a small fragment of the subconscious world and of
making an isolated island (wyspa izolowana; Op 381) of it. He
says:
Generalny atak na t
dziedzin
mg si
uda tylko przez cakowite
zwini
cie i opuszczenie pozycji powagi, przez otworzenie frontu dla
ywiou miechu, dla bezgranicznej inwazji komizmu. Okazuje si
, e w
samej powadze naukowej, w samej dostojnej pozie badacza lea
najpowaniejszy szkopu, nie pozwalaj cy na gruntown dekonspiracj
mechanizmu mylenia. Oficjalno i obuda, wyposzone z pozycji

3
364
zdemaskowanej, chroniy si
w powag
postawy badawczej. Bya to gra w
ciuciubabk
[]. (Op 381)
(A general attack on this field could be a success only if the position of
being completely serious was abandoned, and the front for laughter and
total invasion of humour opened. It turns out that the problem was the
scientific seriousness, the dignified pose of a researcher. These made the
thorough exposure of the mechanism of thinking impossible. Chased out
of the exposed position, formality and hypocrisy found refuge in the
seriousness of the research-oriented attitude. It was playing blind mans
bluff.)
For Schulz, the person who exposes the rules of the unconscious, who
manages to change a tool of destruction into a constructive unit
(przerobi narz
dzie destrukcji na organ konstruktywny; Op 381) is
Gombrowicz, not Freud.
It is difficult for me to imagine on the one hand that Schulz,
with his attitude to in-depth psychology, was inspired by Freud and
intentionally included psychoanalytical motifs in his works. On the
other hand, the argument saying that Schulz unconsciously used these
motifs in his works is also not convincing. As Pawe Dybel and Jerzy
Speina showed, Schulz is completely conscious of his references to
symbolic pictures. Consequently, there is no good reason to consider
his works as expositions of unconscious contents.
One more explanation of the relationship between Schulzs
prose and Freuds theory is possible. It is an assumption that there is a
common tradition of thinking, which influenced both authors, a
philosophical system, which is a common source of inspiration. I do
not want to say that Schulz did not draw on psychoanalytical
knowledge; however, I am convinced that the most important thing in
his work which coincides with Freuds thinking comes from a
different tradition rather than a psychoanalytical one. For this common
point of reference, I would like to use Jewish mysticism.
Schulz and Freuds Jewish Identity
In a letter to Karl Abraham, Freud wrote:
Please, do not forget that it is much easier for you than for Jung, to accept
my point of view. Primarily, because you are completely independent, but
also because of our common roots - this makes it possible for you to share
my intellectual temperament. (in Szafran 1971: 93)
365

I think that the father of psychoanalysis could turn to Schulz in the
same way as he did to Abraham. It is probable that common roots, the
same tradition, influenced their work. Maybe thanks to this, Schulz
was particularly sensitive about some of the ideas presented in
psychoanalysis.
Freud and Schulz have roots in the same Galician Jewish
environment, which was one of the most pervaded by mystic ideas in
that period. The tradition of kabbalah stayed indefinitely in the Vienna
and Prague circle of writers in which Gustav Meyrink revived the
kabbalistic legend of Golem. Also in Central-Eastern Europe, the
penultimate period in the history of kabbalah, Hasidism, developed in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the context of this article,
the significance of that period is especially important because not only
individuals but also whole communities had access to mystical
knowledge and experience. This democratization of kabbalah
consisted of experiencing its ideas together with a master called cadik
(cf. Ouaknin 2006: 123). We should, therefore, assume that the
environment in which Schulz and Freud grew up was immersed in
mysticism. As Willy Szafran points out:
La mystique juive, transmise par ses derniers hritiers, les Hassidim, est
bien plus importante par linfluence philosophique quelle eut sur la
pense juive que par ses aspects religieux. Si Freud estime tre rest juif,
sil pense avoir une communication de pense plus facile avec ses frres
de race, la tradition mystique juive dans son influence sura la pense en
gnral ne peut lui tre trangre. (1971: 95)
Schulzs and Freuds attitude to Judaism is quite similar although the

latter is more radical. They were both born into families in which the
traditional rite of the Mosaic religion was poorly obeyed. Schulzs
family spoke among themselves in Polish and Freuds in German.
Neither renounced their Jewish roots nor did they make a point of it.
As a matter of fact, both Schulz and Freud had to cope with the
question of their identity as a Jew who was not a believer of Judaism.
This conflict became apparent especially in Freuds case. His attitude
toward religion (especially to orthodox Judaism) was very critical.
Although they both withdrew from the Jewish community, neither of
them decided to convert to Christianity even though they had such an
opportunity (Schulz to Catholicism and Freud to Protestantism).
Schulz and Freud, to an even greater extent, wanted to become known
366
in Europe, to assimilate into the environment of the countries in which

they lived. Freud was aware of the fact that his Jewish origin caused
reluctance toward psychoanalysis, which was considered a Jewish
theory.4 Schulz tried to mingle with Polish literary circles. However,
neither isolated himself from the Jewish community. On the contrary,
Schulz even wrote to a Polish Zionist press once in a while. That was
something that Julian Tuwim and Antoni Sonimski avoided (cf.
Prokop-Janiec 1997: 4). It is a well-known fact that Freud supported
the Zionist movement in Germany and was surrounded almost
exclusively by friends of Jewish origin (with the exception of Jung). It
is worth mentioning that the first listeners of his works were the
members of the Viennese Jewish service organization Bnai Brith.
This association was established as an answer to the signs of antiSemitism in Europe. It was open to certain members of Jewish origin.
Freud joined it in 1897 and took part in obligatory gatherings every
month on the second Tuesday and in Saturday tarot meetings.
Undoubtedly Schulz was also under the influence of his Jewish
environment. He published in Jewish, Polish-speaking periodicals
such as Chwila (The Moment) and Nasza Opinia (Our Opinion). His
works were reproduced in Yiddish by the Cusztajer (Gift) magazine
(cf. Prokop-Janiec 1997: 86). These circles treated Schulz favourably
and even promoted his works in the 1920s.
This seemingly random biographical information about Freud
and Schulz forms a factual basis for a hypothesis saying that both
authors could have been influenced by Jewish mystical thought. While
in Schulzs case this statement is quite popular and supported by many
analyses,5 when it comes to Freud, it is only an assumption, which
cannot be proved explicitly. However, this statement was already
suggested before6 and it seems to have had serious consequences with
regard to the understanding of the psychoanalytical theory. The
question, nonetheless, is whether or not the kabbalistic tradition had

4
This belief has remained to this day; in the Arab world, psychoanalysis is virtually
unknown on account of its Jewish origin. Only in the last few years have some Arab
psychologists begun studying this theory and encourage their patients to undergo
psychoanalytical therapy.
5
Cf. especially Wadysaw Panas works, in particular Panas (1997).
6
Bakan (1975) is one of the most important works on Freud and Jewish mysticism;
cf. also the many articles and lectures by Willy Szafran (1971) and Robert (1987) on
Freud and his Jewish identity.
367

an impact on Schulzs works and the form of psychoanalysis, and if
so, in what way.
Traces of Kabbalistic Thought in Schulzs Prose and in
Psychoanalysis
In Zohara, rabbi Szimon ben Jochaja says that it would have been
stupid to stay on the surface of the Torahs meanings. The Torahs
nature lies in descending into the depth of the scripture, in discovering
the real, latent sense. Schulz mentions that our knowledge of reality is
like a palimpsest. Between the official verses, the latent, invisible
white script (biae pismo; Stala 1983: 92)7 shows through. In
Freuds Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899) we
read: [F]or us a new psychic material interposes itself between the
dream-content and the results of our investigations: the latent dreamcontent, or dream-thoughts, which are obtained only by our method
(1911: 183).
Jewish mysticism is immersed in metaphorical thinking. A
human being exists in a world of symbols, through which he turns to
God. According to Gershom Scholem, a mystical symbol presents
contents that stay outside expression and verbal communication. It
introduces something that comes from another sphere, something that
is a part of it. It comes from a sphere which is turned away from us
toward the inside. Schulzs world and Freuds thinking are both
organized by such consciousness. With Schulz we find ourselves in a
symbolically organized reality, which exists in a process of constant
reference to intuitive sense. This reality exists in a network of
scintillating, metaphorical meanings. Just as Schulzs and kabbalahs
world, psychoanalysis could also be described as a symbol sphere. It
is based on an attempt to explain and demystify that symbol sphere.
This superior pattern of covering and discovering, the pattern of the
presence of overt and latent content and of reaching the elusive sense
determines a whole list of similarities in Schulzs and Freuds

7
I find the term white script puzzling. According to the kabbalistic theory, the
Torah was written on Gods right arm as black fire on white fire. So white fire could
be the primeval, covered contents of the Torah, whose meaning is looked for by the
mystics. The white script of the palimpsest, the latent contents, could be an allusion to
the latent meaning of the Torah.
368
thinking. These similarities were preceded by the ontological vision of

kabbalah.
Kabbalists metaphysics, Schulzs use of metaphors, and
Freuds metapsychology are based on a meta mechanism, which
means going beyond what is visible toward what is inaccessible.
Jewish metaphysics goes from the physical world to the metaphysical
plenitude of heavens. The writer from Drohobycz goes beyond the
boundaries of the word toward the metaphor, which reveals latent
senses of the language. Freud drifts away from the psychology of
consciousness and behaviourism of the nineteenth century and heads
toward the recesses of unconsciousness and thus creates
metapsychology. This move, leaving one sphere for the other, is
conditioned by energy. It is one of the central ideas of kabbalah,
Schulzs prose, and Freuds theory. Such migration, mounting, and
dynamics of energy organize all movement; they determine the
position of a human being. According to kabbalah, it is the energy and
not the matter that constitutes the reality of the world. Matter was put
on the top of emanation as a source of forms. However, it remains
elusive for the mind. It is a substratum of a thing, and it cannot exist in
the world without energy. A similar conclusion could be drawn from
the construct of Schulzs world. In his work, matter is subordinate to
energy. Schulz revives lifeless things and reifies living beings by
giving them energy or taking it away from them.
The same dynamics of the overt and the latent determine the
concept of time in theories. We always fluctuate between historical
and cyclical time. The first one belongs to the overt order and the
second one to the latent order. The Torahs literal meaning describes
events in a linear, historical dimension. The interpretation of its latent
meaning refers to mystical pictures. We find ourselves in the cyclical
time sphere, in a sphere of meanings of universal significance. These
meanings take part in the mystical process of repetition. And so we
immerse in sacrum. Schulz's prose follows the same rule. Here, the
linear time has its offshoots, branches, and alcoves, in which it
changes into cyclical time. When we unexpectedly get lost in
unknown offshoots, rhizomes of time and space, we are immersed in
mythical stories. That is where the cornflower shop is no longer an
ordinary room but becomes an arena on which ultimate matters take
place. Freuds thinking is ingrained in the very same logic. Overt
contents belong to the conscious sphere. They are arranged in a
369

definite order by the rules of rational thinking. The events that exist in
our consciousness are organized. They belong to certain moments in
life and come one after another. The laws of the unconscious sphere
work in exactly the opposite way because historical time is negated;
some things repeat or stay intact regardless of passing time. Childhood
reality is sometimes more real than the present, and the energy is
organized around more significant experiences.
The transition from the overt to the latent, the turning toward
what occurs in the secret sphere, seems, at least in some way, a
violation of set boundaries because it means entering the sphere of
what is unavailable. Ireneusz Kania writes in his commentary to
Opowieci z Zoharu (Tales from the Zohar):
[P]odoem psychologicznym pomysowych koncepcji kabalistw i ich
fantazji jest jaki niepokj, pyn cy gdzie g
boko mrocznym nurtem
niezadowolenia z literalnego sensu Tory [] Tora jest tak wi
toci dla
prawowiernego yda, e owo niezadowolenie, choby tylko
intelektualne, musiao go napawa trwog i oburzeniem; samo w sobie
byo dla herezj . (Kania 2005: XVIII)
(The psychological basis of Kabbalists inventive ideas and their fantasy
is a kind of anxiety which comes with a deep dark current from the
disgruntlement at the literal meaning of the Torah. The Torah is such a
sanctity for an orthodox Jew that this disgruntlement, even if only
intellectual, had to fill him with trepidation and indignation; for him it was
heresy.)
And that is what happens in Schulzs prose. He dips into these

doubtful, risky and ambiguous regions, which in short we call the
regions of great heresy (w tpliwe, ryzykowne i dwuznaczne
regiony, ktre nazwiemy tu krtko regionami wielkiej herezji; Op
32). Their opposition to the official letter of the law and Judaic
tradition marked Jewish mystics, who started the search for a latent
meaning of the Torah in the second century BC. The same sort of
rebellion against the ties of tradition and literature are described by
Wadysaw Panas (1996). In Schulzs work, the Demiurge-Creator
transforms into a misshapen bird, then into a cockroach, and then
becomes tangled in erotic desires, and changes its form again: from a
prophet releasing waves of anger as Moses on Sinai, to a clumsy
figure of a father in a nightgown and with ruffled hair who, at night,
pours the contents of a chamber pot out of the window. He alternately
desacralizes and elevates the main figures of the Judaic tradition. That
370
is what he does with Demiurge-Creator, Moses, Joseph, and the events

which are crucial for Jews, such as the liberation from Egyptian
slavery or the giving of the commandments on Mount Sinai.
In this heretical sphere, we also find Freud. Psychoanalysis
turned out to be an attack not only on the Judaic tradition but also on
Western civilizations morality. From the very beginning Freud
opposes the rabbinical tradition. When he drops out of law school, he
defies the letter of law and religion, and these two are considered
equivalent in Jewish communities. The same person, a rabbi,
adjudicates matters of law and religion. Freud, however, chooses
medicine. In Moses and Monotheism (1939), his last and only work in
which he addresses the issue of his Jewish identity, Freud writes about
Moses as the embodiment of the super-ego (cf. Bakan 1975: 137-183).
The prophet on Mount Sinai received the law, which since then had
been imposed on the Jews. Freud turns away from this tradition and
enters the path of heresy.
In this context, we find Schulzs commentary to Franz
Kafkas Der Proze (The Trial, 1925) puzzling. There is no doubt that
Schulz sees the novel by the Prague author from the angle of the
Jewish mystical tradition. He sees in it a parable of a trial by ordeal,
which is, contrary to most interpretations of The Trial, a just court.
According to Schulz, Joseph K.s mistake was that he tried to avoid
the sentence. He sees negation in the novel as a human's response to
the loftiness of divine order. He writes:
Te poznania, wgl dy i wnikni
cia, ktrym Kafka pragnie da tu wyraz,
nie s jego wy czn wasnoci , s one wsplnym dziedzictwem mistyki
wszystkich czasw i narodw, ktra je wyraaa zawsze w j
zyku
subiektywnym, przypadkowym, w j
zyku umownym pewnych gmin i
szk ezoterycznych. (Op 413)
(The perceptions and insights Kafka means to give expression to here are
not his exclusive property. They are the common heritage of the
mysticism of all times and nations, which has, however, always been
couched in a language that was subjective and extraneous, the adopted
language of certain esoteric communities and schools; 1990: 88)
This interpretation shows that the kabbalistic view of the trial by

ordeal was present in Schulzs consciousness.8 The author of

8
I would like to quote a description of a trial by ordeal from one of the Hasidic stories
that was popular in the Jewish circles of Galicia and Prague in that time: Kadego
371

Cinnamon Shops saw The Trial as if he had taken Scholems advice to
Walter Benjamin: I would suggest you start your research into Kafka
from the Book of Job or from deliberations on the inevitability of the
divine decrees, which I consider the only object of Kafkas work
([R]adzibym Ci zacz wszelkie badania nad Kafk od Ksi
gi Hioba
albo od rozwaa o nieuchronnoci boskich wyrokw, co uwaam za
jedyny przedmiot twrczoci Kafki; in Grzinger 2006: 21). We
could hazard a guess that Freud felt the omnipresence and the
inevitability of the trial by ordeal even more strongly than the two
authors discussed above. While in Kafkas and Schulzs work we see
that this trial is constant and inevitable, in Freuds work it does not
manifest at all. Just as the figure of Moses embodies law, the trial
embodies its execution. The law is burned as deeply in an individuals
psyche just as though it were carved into a tablet of stone. A person
cannot hide from it because there is no way he could break free from
himself. Thus, the trial is constant, regardless of wherever we go and
whatever we do.
Schulzs references to kabbalistic concepts are direct and
overt. The language in Cinnamon Shops and Sanatorium Under the
Sign of the Hourglass itself refers to the kabbalistic tradition. He uses
expressions such as: exegesis, messiah, demiurge, book, light, energy,
heresiarch, golem, cherub, and prophets. Panas proves that the central
subject of Schulzs prose is cosmogony, the conception of the world,
matter, time, and sense. The author wants to encompass everything
in his writing, discover a great, unlimited perspective, present the
history since the Creation till Prophets arrival and end of the history
(cf. Panas 1997: 8). As Panas shows, Schulzs cosmogony is based on
the Lurian kabbalah doctrine.9 From the first gesture of Creation that

dnia zawisza S d nad wiatem, bo wiat zosta stworzony na s dzie [to znaczy wedug
zasad Prawa] i to jest jego fundament. Dlatego strzee si
czowiek grzechu, bo nie
wie, kiedy rozpocznie si
nad nim S d. [Zdarzy si
moe], siedzi w swym domu, a
tam zaczyna si
S d nad nim, albo idzie na dwr z domu, a S d ju radzi i nie wie,
czy powrci jeszcze w dom [], bo S d pod a przed nim (in Grzinger 2006: 23;
Everyday the Trial looms over the world, because the world was created during the
trial which is according to the Law and that is its foundation. That is why the man
bewares a sin, for he does not know when his Trial starts. It might happen that he is at
home and there the Trial begins, or he goes to the courtyard and the Trial is already on
and he does not know if he comes back home, for the Trial is ahead of him).
9
Cf. Scholem (1997: 302-352), Ouaknin (2006: 189-201) and Mopsik (2001: 18-19)
for more on Lurian kabbalah.
372
is cimcum, when God retreated inside himself, shrank and therefore

left space in which the world came into being, through the fall of
Creation, breaking the vessels and scattering divine sparks, which is
szewirat ha-kelim, to the repair and transformation of the world tikkun
and the anticipation of the Messiahs arrival and his times (cf. Panas
1997). The confirmation of this interpretation is an unpublished,
missing novel, Mesjasz (Messiah), Schulzs largest literary project.
There are many threads linking the author of Cinnamon Shops
and psychoanalysis with the kabbalistic doctrine. I would like to draw
your attention to one more, possibly the most important one. I mean
the philosophy of language, which has its roots in the Jewish
mysticism and which is present both in Freud's and Schulz's thinking.
The Philosophy of Language
The linguistic aspect of the Jewish mystical tradition is one of its most
important parts.10 The kabbalists developed a coherent philosophy of
language, which became an inspiration for many later thinkers.
According to their doctrine, it is impossible to unify with God. It is a
sacrilege to watch the Almighty, and the sphere of language is the
only place where a human can meet the Creator. Words, letters, and
numbers are the three manifestations of divine nature. They have an
infinitely creative power, and at the same time, they are the expression
of languages triumph. For the kabbalists, a word is the ancient
material of the world (cf. Tomkowski 1992). The word creates the
reality; we live for it and in it. Scholem wrote that all happening is in
the deepest sense a linguistic happening, and the combinations of the
most primeval elements of speech, hidden in it or working, are
concealed in the existence of a matter ([w]szelkie dzianie si
jest w
najg
bszym sensie dzianiem si
j
zykowym, to za co kryje si
w
istnieniu rzeczy, to schowane w nich lub dziaaj ce kombinacje
najpierwotniejszych elementw mowy; in Kania 2005: XXVI). This
language, which determines the nature of the world, is a poetical
language. Only this language lets us open our minds to infinity.
10
We can hazard a guess that it opposes the premises of Christian mysticism, which
talk about the insignificance of the earthly language. The wide spheres of speech and
writing are completely insignificant during the encounter with God. Language is only
an imperfect tool, which Adam took with him from paradise. A mystical experience in
Christianity is completely non-linguistic; it turns the word away from God.
373

Original pictures, symbols, and metaphors are the first means of
expression because they precede the logical discourse:
J
zyk i nasze rozumienie wiata rozpoczynaj si
w tym pierwotnym
obszarze, gdzie zgodnie wspbrzmi zoone powi zania, ktre
pozwalaj wyczu najmniejsze subtelnoci naszej obecnoci w wiecie.
(Ouaknin 2006: 96)
(Language and our understanding of the world begin in this primeval
field, where complicated connections stay in harmony. These connections
let us sense the slightest subtleties of our presence in the world.)
This description of the kabbalists language may serve as a definition

of a word in Schulzs concept. Here it is the language that has the
creative power. It starts, shapes, and distorts reality. The word in
Schulzs works develops in a sequence of associations, triggers an
avalanche of connotations and images. Everything in this world is
text, even spring: Because the text of spring is marked by hints,
ellipses, lines dotted on an empty azure (2008: 142; [B]o tekst
wiosny znaczony jest cay w domylnikach, w niedomwieniach, w
elipsach, wykropkowany bez liter w pustym b
kicie; Op 135). Just
as the poetical language in kabbalah heads for pre-eternal, primeval
harmony, the word in Schulzs works heads for that lost integral
mythology (integralna mitologia; Op 365), the primeval home of
words (praojczyzna sowna; Op 366), which we call poetry.
Freud refers to the same concept of language. The premise of
psychoanalysis (presented even more literally in later concepts by
Jacques Lacan) is our immersion in the language. Reality is set up
only in the act of naming. Unconscious contents, such as the
primeval home, come up to the surface in the form of a story, and as
Lacan would say, their structure recalls the structure of a language. A
word results in a word; it induces senses.
When we look for the sources which inspired the
psychoanalytical method of free association, we find one of Freud's
favourite authors, Ludwik Brne. Freud was able to quote him from
memory many years after he read his works. In 1823, Brne wrote an
essay, How to be an original writer in three days, in which we find
almost the exact description of the free association technique. As
Willy Szafran (1971: 97) points out, both Freud and Brne find their
inspiration in the Jewish mystical tradition. The divine reality, which
for the kabbalists is the world of language, is learned by humans
374
through a process of interpretation. Among the basic linguistic

assumptions of kabbalah there are the meditation of Gods names and
examining the Torah as a living organism whose language becomes an
object of endless analyses and thus an unlimited number of
interpretations and variations of the meaning of words and letters.
After David Bakan (1975: 246-270) we could say that Freud analyzes
his patient in the same way as a kabbalist interprets the Torah: through
dreams, symbols, mistakes and, above all, through endless narrations,
associations and verbal sequences. The work of a dream is similar in
its construction to poetical language. Unconsciousness, as the deepest
primeval sphere of the psyche, refers to poetical tracks. After all, the
condensation of a dream is nothing other than a metaphor, a shift that
uses the mechanism of metonymy. The dreams vividness is the
translation of a word into an image (cf. Burzyska and Markowski
2006: 47-78).
Both Freud and the kabbalists try to reach the worlds and
human depths. Their word, just as Schulzs, reaches to its source, back
to childhood, in the search for the primeval meaning. We are able to
confirm that psychoanalytical therapy is subordinate to the aim of
inserting as many unconscious elements into the consciousness as
possible. This process makes it linguistic in nature. We are surprised
by the similarity between this idea and Schulzs demand of
humanism (postulat humanizmu; 2002: 123), which he made in a
letter to Rosenberg in 1938. According to Schulz, the words task is to
humanize dark spheres of life so that fewer and fewer things avoided
the light of thought and dodged the word (eby coraz mniej rzeczy
byo unikaj cych wiata myli i uchylaj cych si
przed sowem;
Schulz 2002: 123).
The lost sphere of primeval poetry is the source to which we
turn and which stays inaccessible. Krzysztof Stala wrote that Schulzs
prose concentrates on the search of sense, which continually flees
from cognition. The world of kabbalah, Cinnamon Shops, and
psychoanalysis, through the continuous process of interpretation,
heads for what is non-linguistic, deepest, and primeval yet never
reaches it. In kabbalah and in the Talmud we find the interpretation of
the four levels of a reading: pesztat simple, literal meaning, remez
allusive meaning, derasz desired meaning, and sod secret, latent
meaning. The last and deepest level of interpretation of the four
mentioned above is characterized by a complete lack of meaning. This
375

emptiness, this void is one of the fundamental premises of kabbalistic
ontology. The space for the world came into existence as God
retreated. Szechina, which is divine existence, was chased away from
Him and then the history of man began. That is a history of the
combination of the transcendental world and the human world, the
continuous dialogue with God, the circulation of the energy between
the lower and higher spheres. In this sense, absence is the condition of
existence. A human aspires to a union with God but such a mystical
union is unattainable. The human wants to fill the void, but his actions
are doomed to failure from the start because this void is the very
essence of his human nature. The same paradox occurs in Schulzs
prose. Stala aptly characterized this phenomenon in one of his articles:
Dotarcie do sensu w jego g
bokiej, pozawiatowej postaci, w jego
transcendencji i descendencji, jest zadaniem niemoliwym, nieosi galnym
[]. Sens jest wiecznie oddalaj cym si
centrum, otchani bez dna,
j drem niedost
pnym w swym sukiennym mateczniku. (Stala 1983: 96)
(Reaching the sense in its deep, out-of-world form, in its transcendence
and descendance is impossible, unattainable []. Sense is an ever
receding centre, an abyss with no end, an unavailable crux in its cloth
matrix)
In a later work Stala adds:

Penia wiata zdaje si
by gwarantowana jedynie przez jego pusty
rodek. Tylko wypadni
cie rodka utrata Ksi
gi, poraka Krla,
odejcie Ojca umoliwia twrcze widzenie i dowiadczanie wiata
(Stala 1995:61)
(The fullness of the world seems to be guaranteed only by its hollow core.
Only the falling out of the core the loss of the Book, the defeat of the
King, the abandonment of the Father enables creative thinking and
experiencing the world.)
The term of loss (castration) is also one of the central premises of

psychoanalysis. The very existence of the unconscious places the
human in a position of void. He loses access to himself. We confront
the notion of absence from our birth. During our infancy, it is separation from our mother, who has a symbolical meaning. Substitution,
compensation, sublimation, complex all key psychoanalytical terms
involve the primeval experience of loss. Simultaneously, the loss
376
determines the dynamics of development; it is the driving force of the

process of individualization. Moreover, the absence, and in fact, the
need of compensation of the void, leads the human to a symbolical
order, which as we mentioned before, is the underlying reason for
meditation between the overt sense and the present latent contents.
Conclusion
The main purpose of this essay was to explore a hypothesis
concerning similarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the
concepts of Bruno Schulz. from the perspective of Jewish mystical
thought. In my opinion, the correspondence of Schulzs and Freuds
works with kabbalah expresses similar structures of thinking, mutually
overlapping ideas, rooted in the same tradition. They are the answer to
an eternal pursuit of understanding the latent sense. They are the
secret of hearing the inaudible and seeing the invisible.
Bibliography
Bakan, David. 1975. Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Burzyska, Anna and Micha Pawe Markowski. 2006. Teorie literatury XX wieku.
Podrcznik. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Znak.
Dybel, Pawe. 2002. Bruno Schulz and Psychoanalysis: The Images of Women in
August. On line at: http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/schulz/
schulzA.html (consulted 06.11. 2008).
Ficowski, Jerzy. 1975. Regiony wielkiej herezji. Szkice o yciu i twrczoci Brunona
Schulza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Freud, Sigmund. 1999. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Grzinger, Karl-Erich. 2006. Kafka a Kabaa. Krakw: Austeria.
Kania, Ireneusz. 2005. Opowieci z Zoharu. O Kabale i Zoharze. Krakw:
Wydawnictwo Homini.
Mopsik, Charles. 2001. Kabaa. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Cyklady.
Ouaknin, Marc-Alain. 2006. Tajemnice Kabay. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Cyklady.
Panas, Wadysaw. 1974. Regiony czystej poezji. O koncepcji j
zyka w prozie
Brunona Schulza in Rocznik Humanistyczny 22/1: 151-172.
. 1996. Bruno kabalista. O kosmogonii kabalistycznej Brunona Schulza in
Akcent 1: 19-29.
Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL.
377

Prokop-Janiec, Eugenia. 1997. Schulz and the Galician Melting Pot of Cultures in
Periphery 3: 84-88.
Robert, Marthe. 1987. DOedipe Mose. Freud et la conscience juive. Paris: Seuil.
Sandauer, Artur. 1974. Schulz i Gombrowicz, czyli literatura g
bin (Prba
psychoanalizy) in Kultura 44: 4-8.
Scholem, Gershom. 1997. Mistycyzm ydowski i jego gwne kierunki. Warszawa:
Czytelnik.
bski).
York: Penguin.
Speina, Jerzy. 1976. Bruno Schulz wobec psychoanalizy in Czaplowa, Kazimiera
(ed.) Studia o prozie Brunona Schulza. Katowice: Uniwersytet l ski: 1729.
Stala, Krzysztof. 1983. Przestrze metafizyki, przestrze j
zyka. Schulzowskie
mateczniki sensu in Pamitnik Literacki 74/1: 81-104.
. 1995. Na marginesach rzeczywistoci. O paradoksach przedstawiania w
twrczoci Brunona Schulza. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo IBL PAN.
Szafran, Willy A. 1971. Aspects socio-culturels judaques de la pense de Freud in
Lvolution psychiatrique 36/1: 89-107.
Tomkowski, Jan. 1992. wi
ta przestrze j
zyka in Teksty Drugie 5: 63-74.
The Clepsydra of Empedocles and the Phenomena of

Breath and Wind in Bruno Schulzs Fiction
Jrg Schulte
Abstract: The article examines the phenomena of breath and wind in Bruno Schulzs
stories. Both motifs are part of a rich mythological and literary tradition. It has only
been possible to identify the immediate sources for a few metaphors whereas for other
metaphors only suggestions are made to which periods and authors certain motifs
might refer. In many cases, this article will consider through which intermediaries
Schulz gained his knowledge of Greek mythology and cosmology. The failure to
identify the individual sources indicates that Schulz was aware that breath and wind
are poetically as well as anthropologically universal phenomena and that their use
implies a consciousness of both aspects.
The longest extant fragment (fr. 100 Diels 1906-1910) by the Greek
pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles deals with the problem of
respiration. Empedocles uses the clepsydra, which was a simple device for drawing water from jars, as evidence for the corporeality of air.
The air became trapped inside the clepsydra when the top was covered, preventing the entry of water when the device was immersed;
when the top was uncovered again, the water entered the clepsydra,
replacing the air. Aristotle, who has transmitted the fragment in his
On Respiration (
), introduces the argument of
Empedocles:

,
! "# " , $ "
% & '" , !() #
*) & !+- ,."#/0" "-1) ,.#

/ "2) 3/ '"
)* 4 5- 1-,
1- "# ") &4 6
%, 5- 7
&*

8 2 6
%,
12-
)" 4 4 98 3
(Hett 1975: 444 = Aristotle, De respiratione 473a)
Jrg Schulte
380
(Empedocles says that inhalation and exhalation occur because there are
certain veins, which contain some blood but are not full of blood, and
have openings to the air outside, too small for solid particles, but large
enough for air; hence, since it is the nature of blood to move up and down,
when it is carried down, the air flows in and inhalation occurs, but when it
rises, the air is driven out and exhalation takes place. He equates this
process to what happens in water clocks; Hett 1975: 445)
Then he quotes twenty-five hexameters of Empedocles. Empedocless

first line extends the scope of the metaphor to all living creatures.
:7
4
1
43
; "
.866
8" ." ,

"
) 4 5+
<.!( "
,=*"
8, &7$
*" .
!!
7?
* "#
@+ " ,
&
12- @ A" "16-,
B7 0,
1
,=
C
4
98
2)
( 4D
B"# $/
"
7$4(4
& E 1
" 6),
$ 5667F" ( ,1"A6
F6 !-
G
%"
)1,
&*7
61
)<*3 $!

8"
( A"E-.
H 7 I- ,C7E-"#!( ( /
"/(- -(JK#

*,
&7 !-" F"8,
"
8 K"4)( 5 8-,
&*(",*7 B
1,!"
L
,
8" "

M
A"E-.
H 7 I- " *"6)-
?
*"#

@+")(*,
& $N </" ( A" /,
B7 0,
1
O
-.
(Diels 1906-1910: I, 200-201)

(This is the way in which all things breathe in and out: they all have
channels of flesh, which the blood leaves, stretched over the surface of the
body, and at the mouth of these, the outside of the skin is pierced right
through with close-set holes so that blood is contained but a passage is cut
for air to pass through freely. Then, when the smooth blood rushes away
from the surface, a wild surge of blustering air rushes through, and when
the blood leaps up, the air breathes out again. It is like a girl playing with
a clepsydra of shining bronze when she put the mouth of the pipe
The Phenomena of Breath and Wind in Schulzs Fiction
381

against her pretty hand and dips it into the smooth body of shining water,
no liquid yet enters the vessel, but the mass of air pressing from within
against the close-set perforations holds it back until she releases the
compressed current, and then, as the air escapes, a due amount of water
enters. Similarly, when she has water in the hollow of the bronze vessel
and the neck and passage are closed by human hand, the air outside,
pressing inward, keeps the water in at the gates of the harsh-sounding
strainer, controlling the defences, until the girl releases her hand; then, the
reverse of the former process as the air rushes in, a due amount of water
runs out before it. In the same way, when the smooth blood surging
through the body rushes back and inward, a flooding stream of air at once
comes pouring in, and when the blood leaps up, an equal amount [of air]
in turn breathes out again; Wright 1991: 244 = Aristotle, De Respiratione
473a15)
These lines contain the earliest extant Greek physiological theory of

respiration; they are later echoed in a famous passage in Platos
Phaedo (111d-112a). It is not unlikely that Schulz had read the
fragment by Empedocles in the first edition of Hermann Dielss
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Presocratics,
1903). There were four editions of Dielss book by 1922, and they
were generally recognized as a milestone in the field of classical
studies. But did the metaphor of the clepsydra play any role in
Schulzs invention of Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium Under
the Sign of the Hourglass) which has given its name to the story of
the same title and later to the whole cycle of thirteen stories? We may
already have too many explanations for the title, if we take into
account the fact that Polish klepsydra not only means hourglass but
also obituary. Nevertheless, I am going to present some arguments
in favour of an Empedoclean origin of the title. My first aim, however,
is to point out the ubiquity of the phenomena breath and wind in
Schulzs world.
It has long been acknowledged that Sanatorium Under the
Sign of the Hourglass pays homage to Thomas Manns Der
Zauberberg (Magic Mountain, 1924); however, the particular
character of the link between these two works has remained
unnoticed. The sanatorium for lung diseases on the Magic Mountain is
at the centre of a web of metaphors for human respiration. Hans
Castorp, who interrupts his work at the company Ocean Steamships in
order to cure an advancing lung disease, does not fail to notice the
wafting breath of the locomotive (de[n] hereinstreichende[n] Atem
der Lokomotive). Upon Castorps arrival, the distant air seems to
382
Jrg Schulte
him like a heavenly drink (die Fernluft [war] ein Trank) at a place
where he had never breathed before (wo er noch nie geatmet; Mann
1981: 9); he takes a deep breath of the strange air that does not tell
his soul anything yet (tiefen Atemzug in der fremden Luft [] sie
sagte der Seele nichts; 15). Then there are Castorps cigars, which
are alive, and, indeed, seem to breathe (eine Zigarre hat Leben. Sie
atmet regelrecht; 361). One of these cigars, which he has sent to the
sanatorium from Switzerland, burns down so regularly that, as Castorp
observes, it could have served the smoker as a flowing hourglass:
[] eine besonders gut gepflegte Sandblattzigarre namens Rtlischwur,
etwas gedrungener als Maria [Mancini], mausgrau von Farbe, mit einem
blulichen Leibring, sehr fgsam und mild im Charakter und zu
schneeweier, haltbarer Asche, in welcher die Adern des Deckblattes
stehenblieben, so gleichmig sich verzehrend, da sie dem Genieenden
statt einer flieenden Sanduhr htte dienen knnen. (651)
The use of the same metaphor (the clepsydra) by Mann in this

fragment might be a coincidence. Schulzs recreation of Manns
sanatorium by means of a classical metaphor for the process of
respiration seems to be a subtle reference to an already existing theme.
We will not, however, be able to unlock the implications of
the clepsydra until we follow the theme of respiration through
Schulzs work. I would like to begin with the title story, Sanatorium
Under the Sign of the Hourglass. In the train which carries him to the
location of the sanatorium, Joseph does not fail to notice persistent
draughts of cold air:
Przenosiem si
z wagonu do wagonu w poszukiwaniu jakiego
przytulnego k ta. Wsz
dzie wiao, zimne przeci gi toroway sobie drog
przez te wn
trza, przewiercay na wskro cay poci g [] Drzwi
przedziaw chwiay si
w przeci gu na przestrza otwarte. Nigdzie ani
jednego pasaera. [] Poci g powoli stawa, bez sapania, bez stukotu, jak
gdyby ycie powoli ze uchodzio wraz z ostatnim tchnieniem pary.
(Schulz 1989: 250).1
(I moved from coach to coach, looking for a comfortable corner. Draughts
were everywhere: cold currents of air shooting through the interiors,
piercing the whole train from end to end []. The open doors of the
compartments were swinging in the draughts. There was not a single
passenger left on the train. [] The train was coming slowly to a halt,

1
383

without puffing, without rattling, as if, together with the last breath of
steam, life were slowly escaping from it; Schulz 1998: 203)2
This is a particularly striking example for the equivalence of wind and

breath. The connection between wind and breath had figured
prominently in the Stoic notion of cosmic cohesion and life as ensured
by pneuma. The theme of a coercive, cosmic pneumatic power was
widespread in antique cosmological poetry, in which there are several
examples where pneumatic functions are attributed to the winds. The
identification of wind with pneuma is not surprising because winds
were commonly defined as moved or agitated air, while the cohesive
and life-conferring function of pneuma was attributed to the tension
(* ) produced by its centripetal and centrifugal movements. These
were sometimes called streams of air (
/" ). Pliny reports the
identification of pneuma with wind: Wind is the famous breath that
generates the universe by fluctuating to and fro as in a womb
(Rackham 1938-1963, I, 257 = Nat. Hist. I, 116). Aristotle asserts:
$#61P

N <- * QC R"
/" 6 .S6 # T-

/" U)4 2V

1- %) !"9)(* 6*" $ ,
W /
6 $ 6 4. X #

8" /"
") .
(For this [wind] is nothing but air moving in quantity and in a mass. It is
also called breath-pneuma. In another sense, breath means that substance
found in plants and animals and pervading everything that brings life and
generation. The breath that breathes in the air we call wind; Furley 1955:
366-367 = Aristotle, De mundo 394b)
The passage is paraphrased in Apuleius: Hunc spiritum dicimus, licet

spiritus ille etiam nominetur, qui animalia extrinsecus omnia [uitalia]
tractus sui uitali et fecunda ope uegetat (Beaujeu 1973: 130 = De
mundo X, 310, 17-21). Seneca states that providence has distributed
winds so that they might prevent the air from becoming stagnant and
by continual agitation make it wholesome and life-supporting for all
that will breathe it (non enim ex una causa uentos aut inuenit aut per
diuersa disposuit, sed primum ut aera non sinerent pigrescere, sed

2
384
Jrg Schulte
assidua uexatione utilem redderent uitalemque tracturis; Corcoran

1971-1972: II, 112-113 = Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones V, 18, 1).
A relative of the draught, which Joseph had felt in the train,
seems to blow in the hotel room where his father is lodged:
G
boki jego oddech wyadowywa cae pokady chrapania z g
bi snu.
Cay pokj zdawa si
by ju wyoony tym chrapaniem od podogi do
sufitu, a wci jeszcze przybyway nowe pozycje. Peen wzruszenia
patrzyem na wychudzon , zmizerowan twarz ojca pochoni
t teraz
cakiem przez t
prac
chrapania, twarz, ktra w dalekim transie
porzuciwszy sw ziemsk powok
spowiadaa si
gdzie na odlegym
brzegu ze swej egzystencji uroczystym wyliczaniem swych minut. []
Od okna ci gn
o przenikliwie zimno. Piec by nie opalony. Nie zdaj si
tu zbytnie troszczy o pacjentw mylaem sobie. Tak chory czowiek

wydany na pastw
przeci gw! (Op 254-255)
(His [Jacobs] breathing extracted layers of snoring from the depths of his
breast. The whole room seemed to be lined with snores from floor to
ceiling, and yet new layers were being added all the time. With deep
emotion, I looked at Fathers thin, emaciated face, now completely
engrossed in the activity of snoring a remote trancelike face, which,
having left its earthly aspect, was confessing its existence somewhere on a
distant shore by solemnly telling its minutes. [] Piercingly cold air blew
in through the window. The stove had not been lit. They dont seem to
care much for patients here, I thought. To expose such a sick man to such
draughts!; CW 210)
Upon his return to the room after his visit to the nearby city, Joseph is
again struck by the cold draught that comes from the window. Just
like his father, he spends most of his time sleeping:
pi
tak przez cae nieregularne przestrzenie czasu, dni, czy tygodnie,
podruj c przez puste krajobrazy snu, ci gle w drodze, ci gle na
stromych gocicach respiracji []. (Op 267)
(Thus I sleep for irregular stretches of time he continues, for days or
weeks, wandering through empty landscapes of sleep, always on the way,
always on the steep roads of respiration; CW 217)
Another metaphor for breath and an invention by Schulz as far as I

can see is the chimney on the roof of the fathers house. In the story
Wichura (The Gale), which is built upon a long tradition of
poetical storms and tempests, the gale in Drohobycz announces itself
as follows:
385

Przywoane rechotem naczy, rozplotkowanym od brzegu do brzegu,
nadeszy wreszcie karawany, nadci gn
y pot
ne tabory wichru i stan
y
nad noc . Ogromne obozowisko, czarny ruchomy amfiteatr zst
powa
zacz w pot
nych kr
gach ku miastu. I wybucha ciemno ogromn
wichur i szalaa przez trzy dni i trzy nocy. (Op 86)
(Summoned by the creaking of utensils, by their fulsome chatter, there
arrived the powerful caravans of wind and dominated the night. An
enormous black moving amphitheatre formed high above the city and
began to descend in powerful spirals. The darkness exploded in a great
stormy gale and raged for three days and three nights; CW 69)
We can again observe the close connection between wind, human

breath, and a state of inspiration:
Na niebie wydmucha wiatr zimne i martwe kolory, grynszpanowe, te i
liliowe smugi, dalekie sklepienia i arkady swego labiryntu. Dachy stay
pod tymi niebami czarne i krzywe, pene niecierpliwoci i oczekiwania.
Te, w ktre wst pi wicher, wstaway w natchnieniu, przerastay s siednie
domy i prorokoway pod rozwichrzonym niebem. Potem opaday i gasy,
nie mog c duej zatrzyma pot
nego tchu, ktry lecia dalej i napenia
cay przestwr zgiekiem i przeraeniem. (Op 87)
(The gale blew cold and dead colours onto the sky streaks of green,
yellow, and violet the distant vaults and arcades of its spirals. The roofs
loomed black and crooked, apprehensive and expectant. Those under
which the wind had already penetrated rose in inspiration, outgrew the
neighbouring roofs, and prophesied doom under the unkempt sky. Then
they fell and expired, unable to hold any longer the powerful breath,
which then moved further along and filled the whole space with noise and
terror; CW 70)
In the following paragraph a breathless neighbour ([z]ziajany

s siad) makes his way through the storm. The roof bending in the
storm is the metaphor for the lung. It is closely connected to the
chimney, which is mentioned for the first time:
Za ogniskiem kuchennym i czarnym szerokiem okapem komina
prowadzio par
stopni do drzwi strychu. Na tych schodkach siedzia
starszy subiekt Teodor i nasuchiwa, jak strych gra od wichru. Sysza,
jak w pauzach wichury miechy eber strychowych skaday si
w fady i
dach wiotcza i zwisa, jak ogromne puca, z ktrych uciek oddech, to
znowu nabiera tchu, nastawia si
palisadami krokwi, rs, jak sklepienia
gotyckie, rozprzestrzenia si
lasem belek, penym stokrotnego echa, i
hucza, jak pudo ogromnych basw. (Op 90)
386
Jrg Schulte
(Behind the kitchen range and the black broad eaves of the chimney, a few
steps led to the attic door. On these steps Theodore now sat, listening to
the attic shaking in the wind. He heard how, during the pauses between
gusts, the bellows of the rafter folded themselves into pleats and the roof
hung limply like an enormous lung from which air had escaped; then
again how it inhaled, stretched out the rafters, grew like a Gothic vault and
resounded like the box of an enormous double bass; CW 71)
We see the chimney again in the story Emeryt (The Old-Age

Pensioner), which is set during the season of the autumnal winds:
Ale potem zerwa si
wiatr. Wypad jak gdyby z tej jasnej luki nieba,
zakoowa i rozbieg si
po miecie. By cay zrobiony z mi
kkoci i
agodnoci, ale w dziwnej megalomanii udawa brutala i gwatownika.
Miesi, przewraca i m
czy powietrze, e umierao z bogoci. Nagle
usztywnia si
w przestworzu i stawa d
ba, rozpociera si
jak ptna
aglowe, ogromne napi
te klaskaj ce, jak z bata, przecierada,
zadzierzga si
w twarde w
zy, dr ce od napi
, ze srog min , jakby
chcia przytroczy cae powietrze do prni [] A czego nie wyrabia z
dymem kominw! Biedny dym ju sam nie wiedzia, jak unikn jego
aja, jak uchyli gow
, na prawo, czy na lewo od jego ciosw. Tak
panoszy si
po miecie, jak gdyby raz na zawsze statuowa chcia tego
dnia pami
tny przykad bezgranicznej swej samowoli. (Op 308-309)
(And then the wind rose. As if thrown from the clear gap in the sky, it
circled and spread all over the city. It was woven of softness and
gentleness, but it pretended to be brutal and fierce. It kneaded, turned
over, and tortured the air until it felt like dying from bliss. Then it
stiffened in space and reared, spread itself like canvas sails enormous,
taut, flapping like drying sheets tangled itself in hard knots, trembling
with tension, as if it wanted to move the whole atmosphere into a higher
space; [] And the dance of the wind led the chimney smoke! The smoke
did not know how to avoid its scolding, how to turn, whether left or right,
how to escape its blows. Thus the wind lorded it over the city as if on that
memorable day it had wanted to give a telling example of its infinite
wilfulness; CW 258)
It is only in Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on Tailors Dummies),

however, that the metaphor of the chimney becomes connected with
Josephs father, who is waiting for the life-giving breath of the spirit
([c]zekaj c na oywcze tchnienie ducha):
On jeden zna tajne wyjcie z tej matni, tylne kulisy kosmologii, i
umiecha si
skrycie. Podczas gdy wuj Edward alarmowa rozpaczliwie,
zatkany szmatami, ojciec wsadzi po cichu gow
do lufcika od pieca.
Byo tam gucho i czarno, e oko wykol. Wiao ciepym powietrzem,
387

sadz , zaciszem i przystani . Ojciec usadowi si
wygodnie, przymkn z
bogoci oczy. W ten czarny skafander domu, wynurzony nad dachem w
noc gwiadzist , wpada niky promyk gwiazdy i zaamany jakby w
szkach lunety, kiekowa wiatem w ognisku, zaczynia si
zal kiem w
ciemnej retorcie komina. [] Mzg zdawa si
by zachloroformowany,
g
boko upiony i przez sen bogo umiechni
ty. Dochodz c j dra tego
umiechu, ujrza ojciec poprzez zagmatwany rysunek powierzchni sedno
zjawiska i umiechn si
sam do siebie. Czego nie odkrywa nam wasny
zaufny komin, czarny jak tabaka w rogu! (Op 351-352)
(He was the only one who knew a secret escape from our trap, the back
door of cosmology. He smiled secretly to himself. While Uncle Edward,
choked with rags, was desperately sounding the alarm. Father silently put
his head into the chimney shaft of the stove. It was black and quiet there.
It smelled of warm air, of soot, of silence, of stillness. Father made
himself comfortable and sat blissfully, his eyes closed. Into that black
carapace of the house, emerging over the roof into the starry night, there
entered the frail light of a star and breaking as if in the glass of a telescope
lit a spark in the hearth, a tiny seed in the dark retort of the chimney. []
The brain seemed to have been chloroformed, deeply asleep, and
blissfully smiling in its sleep. Intrigued by its expression, my father saw
the essence of the phenomenon through the complex surface print and
again smiled to himself. There is no telling what one can discover in ones
own familiar chimney, black like tobacco ash; CW 96)
The father is not the only figure to receive a revelation through the
chimney. Aunt Perasia (who was named after the Greek goddess
Artemis Perasia)3 falls into a state of ecstasy after she has lit a paper in
the grate. The theme can be followed further in the story Kometa
(The Comet), where the chimneysweeps enter the scene, and
Josephs father once more draws his inspiration out of the chimney:
Czasem przerywa sobie w nieoczekiwanym punkcie eksperymentu,
stawa niezdecydowany z przymkni
tymi oczami i po chwili bieg
drobnym kroczkiem do sieni, gdzie wsadza gow
w lufcik komina. Byo
tam ciemno, gucho od sadzy i bogo jak w samym sednie nicoci, ciepe
pr dy w
droway w d i w gr
. Ojciec przymyka oczy i sta tak czas
jaki w tej ciepej, czarnej nicoci. Czulimy wszyscy, e ten incydent nie
nalea do rzeczy, wychodzi niejako poza kulisy sprawy, przymykalimy
wewn
trznie oczy na ten fakt pozamarginesowy, nale cy do zgoa innego
porz dku rzeczy. (Op 342)
(Sometimes Father interrupted himself at an unexpected point of the
experiment, stood up undecided, eyes half-closed, and, after a second, ran

3
See the appendix for more material on this theme.
388
Jrg Schulte
with tiny steps to the entrance hall where he put his head into the chimney
shaft. It was dark there, bleak from soot, cosy as in the very centre of
nothingness, and warm currents of air streamed up and down. Father
closed his eyes and stayed there for a time in that warm, black void. We
all felt that the incident had little to do with the matters at hand, that it
somehow occurred at the back stage of things; CW 89)
In August (Sierpie) the face of Josephs father seems to be

nothing more than the breath of a face a smudge which an
unknown passer-by had left in the air (CW 14; tchnienie twarzy
smuga, ktor nieznany przechodzie zostawi w powietrzu; Op 12).
The relationship between wind and breath, which we have observed in
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass and which is condensed
into the attributes of a breathless and windswept sky (CW 182) in
Mj ojciec wst
puje do straakw (My Father Joins the Fire
Brigade), reappears in Noc lipcowa (A Night in July):
Przez otwarte okno oddychaa noc w wolnych pulsach. [] Martwa
materia ciemnoci szukaa wyzwolenia w natchnionych wzlotach woni
jaminowej, ale nieobj
te masy w g
bi nocy leay wci jeszcze nie
wyzwolone i martwe. (Op 216)
(Through the open window the night was now breathing slowly. [] The
dead matter of darkness sought liberation in inspired flights of jasmine
scent, but the unformed depths of the night remained still dead and
unliberated; CW 180)
This is the introduction to a passage that could also be a description of

the sanatorium:
Z drugiej strony przytyka pokj pusty i ciemny do naszego pokoju, a za
nim sypialnia rodzicw. Nat
aj c ucho, syszaem, jak ojciec mj uwisy
u piersi snu dawa si
ponosi w ekstazie w jego napowietrzne szlaki, ca
istot oddany temu dalekiemu lotowi. piewne jego i dalekie chrapanie
opowiadao dzieje tej w
drwki po niewiadomych wertepach snu. Tak
wchodziy dusze powoli w ciemne apohelium, w bezsoneczn stron
ycia, ktrej ksztatw nikt ywy nie ujrza. Leeli jak umarli, rz
c
strasznie i pacz c, podczas gdy czarne zamienie leao guchym
oowiem na ich duchu. A gdy mijali wreszcie czarny Nadir, sam
najg
bszy Orkus dusz, gdy przewalczyli si
w miertelnym pocie przez
jego przedziwne przyl dki, zaczynay znw miechy puc wzbiera inn
melodi , rosn c natchnionym chrapaniem ku witowi. (Op 217)
(On the other side was an empty room, and beyond it the bedroom of my
parents. Straining my ear, I could hear how my father, on the threshold of
389

sleep, glided in ecstasy over its aerial roads, wholly dedicated to this
flight. His melodious and penetrating snoring told the story of his
wandering along unknown impasses of sleep. Thus did the souls slowly
enter the aphelion, the sunless side of life, which no living creature has
ever seen. They lay like people in the throes of death, rattling terribly and
sobbing, while the black eclipse held their spirits in bond. And when at
last they passed the black nadir, the deepest Orcus of the soul, when in
mortal sweat they had fought their way through its strange promontories,
the bellows of their lungs began to swell with a different tune, their
inspired snores persisting until dawn; CW 181)
It might even be said that the most important form of perception in the
stories is not seeing or hearing but breathing. Here is one more
example, taken from the story Pan:
Wszystko to, spl tane i puszyste, przepojone byo agodnym powietrzem,
podbite b
kitnym wiatrem i napuszczone niebem. Gdy si
leao w
trawie, byo si
przykrytym ca b
kitn geografi obokw i pyn cych
kontynentw, oddychao si
ca rozleg map niebios. (Op 51)
(The whole of this jungle was soaked in the gentle air and filled with blue
breezes. When you lay in the grass you were under the azure map of
clouds and sailing continents, you inhaled the whole geography of the sky;
CW 43)
In Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, a heady, rich, and

inebriating air seemed to obscure some parts of the view, to wash
away like a wet sponge some of the houses, a street lamp, a section of
a signboard (CW 210; T
gie i bujne powietrze, powietrze upojne i
bogate pochaniao miejscami cz
widoku, zmywao jak mokra
g bka par
domw, latarni
, kawaek szyldu; Op 258). For Schulzs
world, the perception of supposedly unreal phenomena the
momentary, unstable world of the nightly revelations, of the
mannequins or the birds bred by Josephs father is based on the
motif of moving air. In Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops)
the sky exposes its internal construction a construction made of
the tissue of dreams (CW 49) or maybe tkanka roje nocnych
(Op 60) should instead be translated as the Shakespearean thin air,
i.e., the stuff that dreams are made of. The history of this substance
in philosophy and poetry can only be sketched very briefly; in
commentaries on Platos Phaedo, the Neo-Platonists have developed a
sophisticated concept of the vehicle of the soul, the so-called F("
390
Jrg Schulte
/" . This substance was regarded as responsible for human

imagination ( ) and as the source of dreams. A key work for
the relationship between spirit (
/" ) and dreams is the De
Insomniis (On dreams) of Synesios of Cyrene (cf. De Pasquale
Barbanti 1998, Kessling 1922, Klein 1970),4 which was translated by
Marsilio Ficino into Latin in 1516. Through the mediation of Ficino,
the reflections on
/" or spiritus gained an important role in
Renaissance philosophy and poetry. Spirit, air, and wind have never
been coherently studied as a poetic theme though their importance has
been recognized for particular epochs, for example, Romanticism (cf.
Meyer 1971). Schulzs predecessor in Polish literature is without
doubt Juliusz Sowacki, who created his own mythology of the spirit
in Krl-Duch (King-Spirit, 1845-1849) and other works.
The Shakespearean thin air seems to come closest to this
substance and to Schulzs breath of the vast canvas which makes
the masks revive and grow, reveal[s] the illusory character of that firmament, cause[s] that vibration of reality which, in metaphysical
moments, we experience as the glimmer of revelation (CW 48;
oddech ogromnego ptna, od ktrego rosy i oyway maski,
zdradza iluzoryczno tego firmamentu, sprawia to drganie
rzeczywistoci, ktre w chwilach metafizycznych odczuwamy jako
migotanie tajemnicy; Op 59). We should also consider the ultimate
death of the hero in The Old-Age Pensioner the only death
narrated in the otherwise cyclical structure of both Sklepy
cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934) and Sanatorium pod klepsydr
(Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1938) is described not
as cessation of breathing but as a blowing away during a gale:
Z trudem przeprawiaem si
przez wichur
. Na rogach ulic, na
skrzyowaniu si
przeci gw, trzymali mnie koledzy za poy. Tak
przeprawiaem si
przez miasto i wszystko szo dobrze. Potem poszlimy
na gimnastyk
do drugiej szkoy [] wypchni
to mnie poza obr
b bramy
i w tej chwili porwao mnie [] Ju leciaem wysoko nad dachami. Lec c
tak bez tchu, widziaem oczyma wyobrani, jak koledzy moi w klasie
wyci gaj r
ce []. (Op 309)
(I made my way in the gale only with difficulty. On street corners, where
the crosswinds met, my schoolmates held me by my coat-tails. So I sailed
across the city and all was well. Later we went for gymnastics to the other

4
Cf. Verbeke (1945) for an introduction to the concepts of pneuma and spiritus.
391

school. [] I was pushed outside the gate and was immediately swept
away. [] I was flying high above the roofs. Breathless I saw in my
minds eye how my schoolmates raised their arms []; CW 258)
At the conclusion of what can only be a preliminary presentation of

the material, I would like to suggest that also the theme of cinnamon,
which appears in the title story of Schulzs second cycle of stories,
might belong to the web of aerial metaphors (cf. Detienne 1972: 3642). Especially in the account of Herodotus,5 cinnamon, which was
believed to be brought to Greece by the bird Phoenix, is an aerial
aroma. Like myrrh and incense, cinnamon was widely used in
religious ceremonies. Aristotle6 and Pliny7 report the same myth, but
5
As for cinnamon, they gather it in a fashion even stranger. Where it grows and what
kind of land nurtures it they cannot say, save that it is reported, reasonably enough, to
grow in the places where Dionysus was reared. There are great birds, it is said, that
take these dry sticks which the Phoenicians have taught us to call cinnamon, and carry
them off to nests built of mud and attached to precipitous crags, to which no man can
approach. The Arabian device for defeating the birds is to cut into very large pieces
dead oxen and asses and other beasts of burden, then to set these near the eyries,
withdrawing themselves far off. The birds then fly down (it is said) and carry the
pieces of the beasts up to their nests; which not being able to bear the weight break
and fall down the mountain side; and then the Arabians come up and gather what they
seek. Thus is cinnamon said to be gathered, and so to come from Arabia to other
lands (Godley 1957: II, 138-139 = Herodotus, Historiae III, 111).
6
The cinnamon is also said to be a bird by the people from those regions; they say
that what we call cinnamon is brought by this bird from somewhere and is made into
its nest. It nests on high trees and on the new shoots of the trees; but they say the
natives fix lead on their arrows and by shooting bring down the nests and so collect
the cinnamon from the debris (Peck 1965: III, 276-277 = Aristotle, Historia
animalium 616a).
7
In regard to cinnamomum and casia a fabulous story has been related by antiquity,
and first of all by Herodotus, that they are obtained from birds nests, and particularly
from that of the phoenix, in the region where Father Liber was brought up, and that
they are knocked down from inaccessible rocks and trees by the weight of the flesh
brought there by the birds themselves, or by means of arrows loaded with lead; and
similarly there is a tale of casia growing round marshes under the protection of a
terrible kind of bats that guard it with their claws, and of winged serpents these tales
having been invented by the natives to raise the price of their commodities. However,
there goes with them a story that under the reflected rays of the sun at midday an
indescribable sort of collective odour is given off from the whole of the peninsula,
which is given off from the whole of the peninsula, which is due to the harmoniously
blended exhalation of so many kinds of vapour, and that the first news of Arabia
received by the fleets of Alexander the Great was carried by these odours far out to
sea all these stories being false, inasmuch as cinnamomum, which is the same thing
Jrg Schulte
392
Aristotle calls the bird that builds its nest with cinnamon the
cinnamon bird (1"-"). This is not the only case where the
description and interpretation of metaphors for breath and wind is
complicated by the fact that the iconography of the invisible elements
and the theme of respiration in modern literature are still widely
unexplored.
Appendix: Aunt Perasia
The myth behind the marginal figure of Aunt Perasia may not be
directly related to the theme of respiration though it is another
example of how Schulz has carefully created his own myths on the
basis of classical sources. The ecstasy of Aunt Perasia is a part of the
story Cinnamon Shops:
Ale potem zapominalimy o wichurze, Adela tuka cynamon w
dwi
cznym modzierzu. Ciotka Perazja przysza w odwiedziny. Drobna,
ruchliwa i pena zabiegliwoci, z koronk czarnego szala na gowie,
zacz
a krz ta si
po kuchni, pomagaj c Adeli. Adela oskubaa koguta.
Ciotka Perazja zapalia pod okapem komina gar papierw i szerokie
paty pomienia wzlatyway z nich w czarn czelu. Adela, trzymaj c
koguta za szyj
, uniosa go nad pomie, aeby opali na nim reszt
pierza. Kogut zatrzepota nagle w ogniu skrzydami, zapia i spon .

Wtedy ciotka Perazja zacz
a si
kci, kl i zorzeczy. Trz
s c si
ze
zoci, wygraaa r
kami Adeli i matce. Nie rozumiaem, o co jej chodzi, a
ona zacietrzewiaa si
coraz bardziej w gniewie i staa si
jednym p
kiem
gestykulacji i zorzecze. Zdawao si
, e w paroksyzmie zoci
rozgestykuluje si
na cz
ci, e rozpadnie si
, podzieli, rozbiegnie w sto
paj kw, rozga
zi si
po pododze czarnym, migotliwym p
kiem
oszalaych karakonach biegw. Zamiast tego zacz
a raptownie male,
kurczy si
, wci roztrz
siona i rozsypuj ca si
przeklestwami. Z naga
podreptaa, zgarbiona i maa, w k t kuchni, gdzie leay drwa na opa i,
kln c i kaszl c, zacz
a gor czkowo przebiera wrd dwi
cznych
drewien, a znalaza dwie cienkie, te drzazgi. Pochwycia je lataj cymi
ze wzburzenia r
kami, przymierzya do ng, po czym wspi
a si
na nie,
jak na szczuda, i zacz
a na tych tych kulach chodzi, stukoc c po
deskach, biega tam i z powrotem wzdu skonej linii podogi, coraz
szybciej i szybciej, potem wbiega na awk
jodow , kutykaj c na
dudni cych deskach, a stamt d na pk
z talerzami, dwi
czn ,
drewnian pk
obiegaj c ciany kuchni, i biega po niej, kolankuj c na
szczudowych kulach, by wreszcie gdzie w k cie, malej c coraz bardziej,

as cinnamon, grows in Ethiopia, which is linked by intermarriage with the Cavedwellers (Rackham 1938-1963: IV, 63 = Pliny, Hist. nat. XII, 42).
393

sczernie, zwin si
jak zwi
dy, spalony papier, zetli si
w patek
popiou, skruszy w proch i w nico. (Op 90-91)
(And then we forgot the gale. Adela started pounding cinnamon in a
mortar. Aunt Perasia had come to call. Small, vivacious, and very active,
with the lace of her black shawl on her head, she began to bustle about the
kitchen, helping Adela, who by then had plucked a cockerel. Aunt Perasia
put a handful of paper in the grate and lit it. Adela grasped the cockerel by
its neck, and held it over the flames to scorch off the remaining feathers.
The bird suddenly spread its wings in the fire, crowed once and was
burned. At that Aunt Perasia began to shout and curse. Trembling with
anger, she shook her fists at Adela and at Mother. I could not understand
what it was all about, but she persisted in her anger and became one small
bundle of gestures and imprecations. It seemed that in her paroxysm of
fury she might disintegrate into separate gestures, that she would divide
into a hundred spiders, would spread out over the floor in a black,
shimmering net of crazy running cockroaches. Instead, she began
suddenly to shrink and dwindle, still shaking and spitting curses. And then
she trotted off, hunched and small, into a corner of the kitchen where we
stacked the firewood and, cursing and coughing, began feverishly to
rummage among the sonorous wood until she found two thin, yellow
splinters. She grabbed them with trembling hands, measured them against
her legs, then raised herself on them as if they were stilts and began to
walk about, clattering on the floor, jumping here and there across the
slanting lines of the floorboards, quicker and quicker, until she finished up
on a pine bench, whence she climbed on the shelf with the crockery, a
tinkling wooden shelf running the whole length of the kitchen wall. She
ran along it on her stilts and shrank away into a corner. She became
smaller and smaller, black and folded like a wilted, charred sheet of paper,
oxidized into a petal of ash, disintegrating into dust and nothingness; CW
72).
Although most sources for this passage are still unknown, it seems
likely that the myth of Aunt Perasia is at least partly based on the
classical records on the goddess Artemis Perasia. According to Strabo,
there was a temple of Diana Perasia at Castabala (: 4
Y 1 Z" [*), where, as it
was said, the priestesses walked with naked feet unhurt upon burning
coals (C
) [ 6)"4 4
7 ;
2
4 ; Meineke 1915: 755 = Geographica XII, 2, 7).
Iamblichus comments upon this tradition in his Divine Mysteries and
interprets it as an example for divine inspiration:
X"% # "63
6
)
") $
, $( \
") /
) $.

3
Jrg Schulte
394
# *"$ "1 ,*$/2V)2-

2. / .Y ["#
ON $
1 ,[
#

1 4 0 3 [] _' 6 $.
$ ". & 0
3 1 6 5 66
8" , &
/
/
8
"N
.,=
`Y 1 [ .Z
#8-
) a $
)/ T )4 ). , C I
-
I / 2V) 2- 2., 7 A L ?"%,
5 2- 1 ,7W

7W - ( .
(This is the greatest proof: many are not burned even though fire is
applied to them, for the fire does not touch them because of the divine
inspiration. And many, though they are burned, do not respond because
they are not living the life of a [mortal] creature. And some, while being
pierced with spits, and others, while striking their backs with sharp blades,
do not feel it. [] Their activities are in no way human for the
inaccessible things become accessible to those possessed by a god and
they throw themselves into fire, walk through fire, and pass through water
just like the priestess at Castabalis. From these examples it is clear that
those inspired by the Gods are not conscious of themselves; they live
neither a human life nor an animal life according to sensation or impulse,
but they have taken in exchange a more divine life from which they are
inspired and perfectly possessed; Des Places 1966: 104 = De mysteriis
110, 5 111, 2)
Bibliography
Beaujeu, Jean (ed.) 1973. Apuleius. Opuscules philosophiques. Paris: Les Belles
Lettres.
Corcoran, Thomas H. (ed.) 1971-1972. Seneca in Ten Volumes. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
De Pasquale Barbanti, Maria. 1998. Ochema-pneuma e phantasia nel neoplatonismo.
Aspetti psicologici e prospettive religiose. Catania: CUECM.
Des Places, douard (ed.) 1966. Iamblichus. De mysteriis. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Detienne, Marcel. 1972. Les jardins dAdonis. La mythologie des aromates en Grce.
Paris: Gallimard.
Diels, Hermann. 1906-1910. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Berlin: Weidmann.
Furley, David J. (ed.) 1955. Aristotle. On the Cosmos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Godley, Alfred Denis (ed.) 1957. Herodotus. In four volumes. Cambridge, MA:
Hett, Walter Stanley (ed.) 1975. Aristotle. On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kessling, C. R. 1922. The F("
/" of the Neoplatonists and the De insomniis
of Synesius of Cyrene in American Journal of Philology 43: 319-330.
395

Klein, Robert. 1970. Spirito peregrino in La forme et lintelligible. Ecrits sur la
Renaissance et lart moderne. Paris: Gallimard: 29-64.
Mann, Thomas. 1981. Der Zauberberg. Frankfurt: S. Fischer.
Meineke, August. 1915. Strabonis geographica. Leipzig: Teubneriana.
Meyer, Howard Abrams. 1971. Wiatr odpowiednik stanw duchowych. O pewnej
romantycznej metaforze in Pamitnik Literacki 62(4): 279-298.
Peck, Arthur Leslie (ed.) 1965. Aristotle. History of Animals. Cambridge, MA:
Rackham, Harris (ed.) 1938-1963. Pliny. Natural history. London: Heinemann.
Schulz, Bruno. 1989. Opowiadania, wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
bski).
Verbeke, Grard. 1945. Lvolution de la doctrine du pneuma. Du stoicisme saint
Augustin. Paris & Louvain: Descle de Brouwer.
Wright, M. R. (ed.) 1991. Empedocles. The Extant Fragments. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.

Thomas Anessi
Abstract: Bruno Schulz was intricately linked with Polands Skamandrite literary
center in Warsaw. His career as a writer began in Warsaw and was nurtured in
journals that carried the Skamander torch. His place in the literary milieu of the
interwar period cannot be understood without reference to his place within this center.
Important textual links between Schulz and the Varsovian literary milieu are the
essays, reviews, and stories he published in Polands most prominent literary journals,
including the Warsaw-based Tygodnik Ilustrowany (Illustrated Weekly), Wiadomoci
Literackie (Literary News), and Skamander, as well as Schulzs stories and essays
connected with his Polish homeland and, especially, the figure of Jzef Pisudski.
Introduction
Wychowany na guchej prowincji, w podkarpackim miasteczku dawnej
Galicji, w czasach, gdy wylot stamt d graniczy z fantazj nieoczekiwanych przypadkw, znajdowaem w jego ksi kach moje t
sknoty i
nadzieje, bodce i zachwyty, mio i urod
wiata, pierwsze sny o
pot
dze i pierwsze odjazdy w marzenie. (Wierzyski 1990: 91)
(Having been raised deep in the provinces, in a Subcarpathian town in
what was then Galicia, at a time when departure from there seemed almost
unimaginable, an unexpected event, I discovered in his books my longings
and hopes, stimulation and delight, the love and beauty of the world, my
first dreams of greatness, and my first excursions into dream.)
In the above passage from a speech delivered to the Polish Academy

of Literature in 1939, Drohobycz-born writer Kazimierz Wierzyski
focuses on his own roots in Polands southeastern provinces as he
pays homage to one of Polands most well-known Galician writers, a
man he called, using the language of apprenticeship, his mistrz master
craftsman. The author he is referring to is Leopold Staff, a native of
Lww, who Wierzyski also describes as helping to shape the
spiritual world from which I emerged (duchowy wiat, z ktrego
wyszedem; 92). His lofty praise of Staff is hardly surprising, since
398
Thomas Anessi
the latter acted as a mentor to the Warsaw-based Skamander group, of

which Wierzyski was a leading member. Staffs poetry, which
flirted, in turn, with Nietzschean dynamism, Decadentism, and
Classicism in a carefully crafted, yet unpretentious language, was one
of the models for the Skamandrites, whose works married a penchant
for classical allusion and a programmatic desire to modernize Polish
poetics.1
The five young poets who comprised the core of the
Skamander group Kazimierz Wierzyski, Antoni Sonimski, Jan
Lecho, Jarosaw Iwaszkiewicz, and Julian Tuwim promulgated
their aesthetic program through three journals edited by Mieczysaw
Grydzewski: Pro Arte et Studio (1916-1918), Pro Arte (1919), and
Skamander (1920-1928 and 1935-1939). Grydzewski also helped
organize one of the first Skamander cultural events, the opening of
Warsaws first poets cafe Cafe Pod Picadorem on November
29, 1918, just eighteen days after the end of the First World War. The
poster advertising the event exuded a mix of patriotic and artistic
exuberance that marked the groups early days:2
Rodacy! Robotnicy, onierze, dzieci, starcy, ludzie, kobiety i pisarze
dramatyczni! [] Sumienie modej Warszawy artystycznej! Wielka
Kwatera Gwna Armji Zbawienia Polski od caej wspczesnej literatury
ojczystej. Codziennie od 9-11 wielki turniej poetw, muzykw i malarzy.
Modzi artyci warszawscy czcie si
!!! (Kwiatkowski 2001: 54)
(Countrymen! Workers, soldiers, children, seniors, people, women, and
dramatic writers! The conscience of young artistic Warsaw! The Main
Quarters of the Army of Polish Liberation for all of the nations

1
These aesthetic interests led the group to name itself after the Trojan river
Skamander, which is described in Homers Iliad but also appears in Act II of
Wyspiaskis Akropolis (1903), where it mixes with the waters of the Vistuala River:
The Skamander glistens, / glittering with a wave from the Vistula (1985: 66;
Skamander poyska, / wilan wietl c si
fal ).
2
In principle, the Skamander poets sought to decouple Polish poetry from the
nationalist and patriotic traditions that dominated throughout the nineteenth century.
This desire is voiced in a well-known line from Jan Lechos poem Herostrates
(1917), in which he writes: And in the Spring Let me see Spring, and not Poland
(A wiosn niechaj wiosn
, nie Polsk
zobacz
; in Lam 1969: 22). Poland and its
fate, however, remained a theme in the groups work. For example, the volume of
Lechos poetry that included Herostrates, Karmazynowy Poemat (Crimson Poem;
1920), also contained the poems Pisudski and Polonez artyleryjski (Artillery
Polonaise), which hailed two military officers who played a key role in securing
Polands independence, Jzef Pisudski and Ottokar Brzoza-Brzezina.
399

contemporary literature. A great tournament of poets, musicians, and
painters, daily from 9-11 p.m. Young Varsovian artists, unite!!!)
The notices proclamatory tone of address and allusion to The

Communist Manifesto echoed the language of leftist political slogans
and manifestos of the day. Among these was a manifesto issued on
November 7, 1918, by the Provisional Government of Poland in
Lublin, which began: To the Polish People! Polish Workers,
Peasants, and Soldiers! Above a bloodied and tired humanity, a dawn
of peace and freedom is rising! (Do Ludu Polskiego! Robotnicy,
Wocianie, i onierze Polscy! Nad skrwawion i um
czon
ludzkoci wschodzi zorza pokoju i wolnoci!; Kumanicki 1924:
130). The mock-revolutionary language used by the Skamander poets
is indicative of how their call to create Polish poetry anew overlapped
with their active support for the building of a modern nation state in
newly-independent Poland. A key indicator of this engagement was
their support for Pisudski and his politics, evidenced in the groups
close relationship with the Marshalls aide-de-camp Gen. Bolesaw
Wieniawa-Dugoszowski, and in Grydzewskis work as a government
press officer.3
Not long after the opening of the Cafe Pod Picadorem, the
Skamander poets settled into a more permanent home at Cafe
Ziemiaska, where they and Grydzewski had a special table reserved
for themselves and their guests. Writers from various parts of Polands
literary scene paid visits to the cafe, a sign of the Skamandrites
openness to artistic exploration. Visitors included avant-gardist Adam
Wayk, Futurist Aleksander Wat, and Young Poland legend Stefan
eromski, as well as two writers of modernist prose often associated
with Bruno Schulz, Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz and Witold
Gombrowicz (Shore 2006: 10-11).4 As the Skamander poets evolved
in their aesthetics during the 1920s and 1930s, they continued their
association with figures from across the literary spectrum, as well as
with journals run by Grydzewski, who as founder and editor of both

3
Wieniawa was a regular at Cafe Ziemiaska as well as Skamander-affiliated cabarets

such as Quid Pro Quo (Groski 1978: 36).
4
In their anti-programmatic manifesto, the Skamandrites equate their literary
project with Columbus voyage of discovery, noting that the explorer guided his
galleons by the pale stars in order to extra-programmatically discover America (jaki
by program Kolumba, wiod cego swe galeony przy bladych gwiazdach, aby
nadprogramowo odkry Ameryk
; Lam 1969: 105).
400
Thomas Anessi
Skamander and Wiadomoci Literackie (Literary News) would carry

the Skamander torch right up to the outbreak of the Second World
War.5
The cosmopolitan Warsaw-based literary establishment
described above does not appear at first glance to share much in
common with Bruno Schulz and his prose. As a focal point on one
pole (no pun intended) of the Warsaw-Krakow axis around which the
Polish interwar literary scene revolved, Cafe Ziemiaska and its
artistic milieu contrast sharply with the Galician provincial town of
Drohobycz, in which both Schulz and his literary world had their
roots. Yet, Schulz did share much in common with the Skamander
poets. Among these commonalities are features often used by critics
as markers of Schulzs place on the margins, including his origins in
Drohobycz (shared with Wierzyski) and his Jewish heritage, shared
by three of the movements founders (Tuwim, Sonimski, Lecho) and
Grydzewski. The connections, however, extend much further. As this
article aims to demonstrate, both Schulzs literary career and certain
thematic aspects of his writing were closely tied to the birth and
maturation of the Skamander center of Warsaws and to a great
extent Polands interwar literary milieu.
Schulzs links to the Skamander group are present in all three
objects of study that have dominated Schulzological criticism: the
writers biography, his fiction, and his essays. In terms of Schulzs
life, Skamander writers and publications were among his greatest
supporters and were key in providing him with venues for publication.
In his fiction, the arrival of the Skamandrites onto the Polish literary
scene is echoed in Schulzs age of genius, especially in The
Republic of Dreams, where he utilizes a Pisudski-like figure to
depict a mythic hero. In Schulzs essays, the link is two-fold. First,
three of these essays explore the Pisudski legend, including reviews
of two works by writers with links to the Skamander group, Kazimierz
Wierzyskis Wolno tragiczna (Tragic Freedom, 1936) and Juliusz
Kaden-Bandrowskis Pod Belwederem (At Belweder, 1936).
Secondly, the reviews he published in Skamander journals provided
Schulz with exposure and financial support, both of which he sought
as he carried out plans (which were ultimately unsuccessful) to
physically move himself into this Varsovian literary center. What all

5
The last edition of Wiadomoci Literackie was predated September 3, 1939, two
days after Germanys invasion of Poland.
401

these levels of inquiry reflect in common is a direction in Schulzs life
and work after 1933, when he deliberately moves his writing beyond
the world of his fiction, rooted in family biography and the local
topography of Drohobycz, in order to better establish himself and his
work within Polands and Europes literary milieux. Although
Schulzs ultimate ambitions were to reach audiences beyond Polands
borders, the outbreak of World War Two abruptly cut short his literary
project. In spite of this, during the five-year period from 1934 to 1939,
Schulzs connections with the Skamandrites and their journals helped
him successfully enter into the community of Polands leading
modernist literary voices, from which he received a generally
enthusiastic reception, as well as recognition that grew over time,
culminating in his receipt of the Zoty Wawrzyn Polskiej Akademii
Literatury (Gold Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature) in 1938.
Schulz in the Skamandrite Center
Although Schulzs place in the Skamandrite Varsovian center has
been underrepresented by critics, it has not been ignored. For
example, in his introduction to the 1989 edition of Schulzs stories,
letters and essays, Jerzy Jarz
bski notes that after the publication of
Cinnamon Shops, Schulz became a public figure with the doors to the
Warsaw literary and artistic world (drzwi do warszawskich
rodowisk literacko-artystycznych) open to him although the
attention he received from critics, the public and other artists had
scant effect on him during his lifetime (zaszczyty spyway na za
jego ycia sk po; 1989: xi). Rather, he adds, it was Schulzs
humdrum life as a school teacher in the provinces that provided both
the foundation for the milieu of his stories, as well as the conditions
for shaping the personality and psyche of the author (zesp
uwarunkowa ksztatuj cych osobowo i psychik
pisarza; 1989: v).
These claims are undoubtedly accurate if we limit our understanding
of Schulzs literary production to his stories, which are, indeed, best
understood, as Jarz
bski notes, as a whole with layers of meaning
running through all his texts simultaneously (warstwy
znaczeniowe, przebiegaj ce przez wszystkie teksty jednoczenie;
1989: iv); this, he says, is how Schulzs prose has been studied
critically for years. Running counter to this dominant paradigm is the
fact that every chronology of Schulzs literary career, as well as his
402
Thomas Anessi
own comments in letters, indicates that after the release of Sklepy

cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934), he made the decision to
actively cultivate this career, dedicating more resources to his writing
than to his visual art and maintaining an active presence on the pages
of Polands most prominent literary journals. And while his success
and limited fame may not have gone to his head, it did embolden him
to become active in public literary discourse, even to the point of
taking on an ego like Gombrowiczs in public, using a voice that was
much more self-confident and assertive than his relatively deferent
private epistolary self.
To better understand Schulzs links to Polands literary center,
we need to begin in Warsaw in the first months of 1934, following the
publication and unexpected positive reception of Cinnamon Shops.
The books release was promoted by the publication of the story
Ptaki (Birds) in Wiadomoci Literackie in December of 1933,
which marked Schulzs literary debut. The book was positively
received by the Varsovian literary world, and with the help of his
patron Zofia Nakowska, Schulz soon began developing relationships
with major literary figures in it, including Cafe Ziemiaska regulars
such as Julian Tuwim, Adam Wayk, and Aleksander Wat. He also
received letters of praise from a number of established writers, among
which were Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (the two had become
acquaintances years earlier in Zakopane), Leopold Staff, Bolesaw
Lemian, Wacaw Berent, and Jzef Wittlin (Ficowski 2003: 214-15).
Schulz had been hungry for a chance to engage other writers,
as evidenced by his enthusiastic and detailed response to Stefan
Szuman in 1932 after receiving a self-published collection of poems
from the psychology professor. In the letter, Schulz speaks of how he
values being accepted into the family of creative spirits, feeling that
[his] world borders, touches other worlds, that on these borders these
worlds mingle and intersect (przyj
cie do rodziny twrczych
duchw, [] poczucie, e wiat mj graniczy, dotyka si
z innymi
wiatami, e na tych granicach wiaty te przenikaj si
i krzyuj ;
Schulz 2002: 33). Having fostered a career as a visual artist from his
home in Drohobycz for more than a decade with only limited success,
his shift toward becoming a writer in 1934 increased his incentive to
pull up his roots in the provinces. As a visual artist, Schulz could build
a reputation around a smaller audience of patrons and collectors, and
required of the city merely access to other artworks and galleries; as a
403

writer, he had to maintain regular contact with Warsaws literary
milieu, not only to be among kindred spirits, but also because he
needed its publishers and their journals and presses to reach a wider
reading public. Living in Drohobycz made it hard to keep in contact
with the Varsovian literary scene which largely revolved around
socializing in cafes and parties so in spite of his generally reserved
nature and meager financial resources, from 1934 through 1938,
Schulz made numerous trips on the long and relatively poor rail
connection with Drohobycz and spent most of a six-month leave of
absence in 1936 in Warsaw (Ficowski 2003: 217).6 During that long
stay in the capital, Schulz redoubled his efforts to move to the city, a
decision that can be attributed not only to his desire to be with his
fianc, Jzefina Szeliska, who had moved to Warsaw, but also to
further develop his relationship with other writers there.
Intertwined with all of these journeys to Warsaw is an
immense amount of correspondence between Schulz and Varsovians,
including in particular Jzefina Szeliska and Romana Halpern, as
well as with numerous individuals from the literary elite. Although his
correspondence with Szeliska has been lost, Ficowski describes him
as sending letter after letter (list za listem) to her (in Schulz 2002:
16). Schulzs letters to Halpern, which begin after the writers return
to Drohobycz in mid-1936 and continue into 1939, is the most
numerous collection of extant correspondence to a single recipient,
totaling thirty-nine letters. Their close friendship and her role in
arranging matters in Warsaw for him played no small part in the
frequency of his letters. Her living in the cultural center provided him
with a permanent dependable contact in the city as well as a friend
with whom he could swap gossip about his interactions with others in
the literary world. During the years of their correspondence, her help
in maintaining contacts with this world was frequent and often
productive, even if Schulz was ultimately unsuccessful in his goal
for both personal and professional reasons of moving to the capital
city himself.
Other correspondence further illuminates Schulzs growing
familiarity with Warsaw and its literary mileu. In sheer numbers, at
least nine of Schulzs 24 addressees in Ksiga listw (The Book of
Letters) lived or worked in Warsaw, outnumbering the number of

6
The journey today still requires one to travel via Krakow.
Thomas Anessi
404
fellow Galicians. But more significant are his comments in letters to

and about other writers and, especially, his publishers, which in
general, show his growing familiarity within this community. One
such example are Schulzs letters to Ludwik Lille, a painter he had
met in Paris. These show that by 1938 Schulz felt at home in the role
of a Warsaw insider who could provide tips on how to deal with
publishers in the city. In one letter from 1938, he expresses himself in
a surprising cavalier manner in his discussion of Wacaw Czarski, the
editor of Polands most prestigious literary journal, Tygodnik
Ilustrowany (Illustrated Weekly). In his advice to Lille on how to get
payment for a previously published article, he writes:
Niech Pan jednak jeszcze nie upomina i pole dalsze artykuy, moe
wywiady z rnymi osobistociami, choby fikcyjne (kto to skontroluje?).
Potem b
dzie Pan musia mie kogo w Warszawie, kto te pieni dze
wyegzekwuje od Czarskiego (Schulz 2002: 124).
(Stop reminding them and send more articles, perhaps interviews with
various personages, even if they are made up (who will check?). Then you
will have to have somebody in Warsaw to collect the money from
Czarski.)
In two letters to Czarski himself, one from early 1936 and another
from 1938, Schulz engages the editor himself in a familiar, jovial tone.
This ranges from joking about his pupils in the first letter to calling
Paris a real Babylon and recommending the editor publish Lilles
articles in the second, sent from the French capital.
Dreams of the Republic
But it is much more than Schulzs social networking that ties him to
the Varsovian Skamander center. Throughout his prose, readers are
introduced to fantastical notions of time, among which is a mythical
past time, an age of genius. This archetypal chronotope can be tied
down in many cases to a time in the narrators youth, a time whose
outward form appears to have been inspired by the Messianic moment
of Polands rebirth and heroic rise of Pisudski, a time that coincided
with a magical moment in Polands literary history. Anchoring
Schulzs mythologizing in the real-life realization of a centurys worth
of prophesizing Polands re-birth provides another common tie
between Schulz and the Skamander group, which was closely linked
405

both to the initial enthusiastic reactions to Polish independence and
the rise of modernist poetry following the end of the First World War.
While both share a fascination with the legendary Pisudski at the time
of his death in 1935, it is the Pisudski-inspired Skamander poetic
world that appears to in part power Schulzs age of genius.
It was in these early postwar years that Schulz became
actively engaged in artistic work, joining an artistic circle called
Kalleia (Greek for beautiful things) and beginning work on his art
(Ficowski 2003: 209-10). In 1918, when the Skamander poets made
their debut as the youthful hope of Polish literatures future, Schulz
was twenty-six, just two years older than Tuwim, Wierzyski, and
Iwaszkiewicz, and three years older than Sonimski. Schulz looked
back to these years in his written response to a letter from Tuwim
praising Cinnamon Shops in 1934. In it Schulz says a reading by
Tuwim in the early 1920s intoxicated me, gave me a feeling of
superhuman strength (daway upojenie, przeczucie nadludzkich
triumfalnych si) inspiring a feeling of a past, mythical age of
genius, when one took in the whole sky, with a single breath, like a
gulp of pure ultramarine (1990: 51; cae niebo wchaniao si
jednym westchnieniem, jak haust czystej ultramaryny; 2002: 46). He

credits Tuwims verse with educating him on the power of
mythmaking in poetry to inspire profound metaphysical experience:
Pan mnie nauczy, e kady stan duszy, dostatecznie daleko cigany w
g b, prowadzi poprzez cieniny i kanay sowa w mitologi
. Nie w
zastyg mitologi
ludw i historyj ale w t
, ktra pod warstw
nawierzchni szumi w naszej krwi, pl cze si
w g
biach filogenezy,
rozga
zia si
w metafizyczn noc. (2002: 46-47)
(You taught me that every state of the soul, pursued to sufficient depths,
leads through the straits and canals of the word to mythology. Not in the
frozen mythology of people and history but to that which under the
surface layer rumbles in our blood, gets tangled up in the depths of
phylogeny, branches out into the metaphysical night; 1990: 51)
Schulzs flattery may have been overblown, but it ties Tuwims recital
to a concept introduced in Ksi
ga (The Book), the first story in
Hourglass, 1937), which serves as a conceptual compass for
navigating the rest of the book: Have we to some extent prepared the
reader for the things that will follow? Can we risk a return journey
406
Thomas Anessi
into our Age of Genius? [] In Gods name, then lets embark and
go! (2008: 128;7 Czy przygotowalimy w pewnej mierze czytelnika
do rzeczy, ktre nast pi , czy moemy zaryzykowa podr w epok
genialn ? [] W imi
Boe tedy wsiadamy i odjazd!; 1989: 120).8
This call to the reader, which marks the end of the chapter, is
reminiscent of similar entreaties in the early work of the
Skamandrites, in which readers were brought into worlds, not so
unlike those of Schulzs prose, where the mythical and everyday came
together in a distinctively literary space with just enough reference to
the external world to express a timeless relevance. Tuwims most
famous early work, Wiosna (Spring, 1918) illustrates another
thematic link between Schulz and the Skamander poets: a shared
thematic focus on life forces and sexual energies, the vital impetus
(lan vital) of Bergsons L'volution cratrice (Creative Evolution,
1907). Among the Skamandrites, this was often expressed in the form
of the dithyramb, a poem to Dionysus best evidenced in early works
like Tuwims Spring or Wierzyskis piew dionizyjski
(Dionysian Song). Schulzs prose, in contrast, teems with images of
vegetative growth, reproduction energy, degenerated life, and vital
forces.
Although it is unclear exactly when most stories in
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (1937) were originally
written, a number of stories that were not included in the collection
were clearly written after 1935, including Republika marze (The
Republic of Dreams), which begins in Warsaw, and Ojczyzna
(Fatherland), which describes an artists exhaustion after having
been working to succeed as an artist for a number of years. In
addition, three essays concerning Pisudski were clearly written after
his death in 1935. All of these are connected with Schulzs
relationship to the notion of homeland, which as will be made
evident, leads him to reflect upon both universal and national
questions. These links to the Polish nation and its recent independence
are linked not only to his wider aesthetic aims concerning myth and
poetic language, which overlap with those of the Skamander group,
but also with Schulzs desire to establish a place himself in the
Varsovian center of modern Polish social and artistic circles.

7
8

407

The first line of The Republic of Dreams, published in Tygodnik
Ilustrowany in 1936, places the reader in the heat and urban din of a
sweltering summer day in Warsaw, but quickly moves via the
imagination to a distant realm, a self-contained microcosm
(samowystarczalny mikrokosmos) set in a landscape that is both
concrete (that lone spur sticking up among swarthy Hungarian
vineyards/ta odnoga wsuni
ta samotnie mi
dzy smage w
gierskie
winnice) almost certainly part of the former Austro-Hungarian
Empire and fantastically abstract (an anonymous plain []
nameless and cosmic like Canaan / anonimowa rwnina []
bezimienna i kosmiczna, jak Kanaan). The description then moves
from this Biblical chronotope to a fully mythological one, and then to
a town that has regressed into essence (SC 315-16; zst pio w
esencjonalno; Op 325-26). Following these paradoxical images,
Schulz asks rhetorically How to express this in words? (Jak to
wyrazi?). The answer is to go progressively deeper into the realm of
myth through poetic language. He begins by moving just beneath the
surface to where events have roots sunk into the deep of things and
penetrate the essence (SC 316; maj korzenie w g b rzeczy i
si
gaj istoty; Op 326). He describes how lush weeds have spread
and overgrown the landscape of the town. The narrator and his family
take flight and head out of town. Suddenly the narrative reframes the
setting as a time far off in the past and describes the political and
artistic program of a group of boys to proclaim a republic of the
young (republika modych):
Tu mielimy ukonstytuowa prawodawstwo nowe i niezalene, wznie
now hierarchi
miar i wartoci. Miao to by ycie pod znakiem poezji i
przygody, nieustannych olnie i zadziwie. Zdawao si
nam, e trzeba
tylko rozsun bariery i granice konwenansw, stare oyska, w ktre
uj
ty by bieg spraw ludzkich, aeby w ycie nasze wama si
ywio,
wielki zalew nieprzewidzianego, powd romantycznych przygd i fabu.
(Op 329)
(Here we would form an autonomous legislature, erect a new hierarchy of
standards and values. It was to be a life under the aegis of poetry and
adventure, never-ending signs and portents. All we needed to do, or so it
seemed to us, was push apart the barriers and limits of convention, the old
markers imprisoning the course of human affairs, for our lives to be
invaded by an elemental power, a great inundation of the unforseen, a
flood of romantic adventures and fabulous happenings; SC 318-19).
408
Thomas Anessi
The aim of the boys is, in essence, to build a republic based on the
same principles as those promoted by the Skamander poets, who also
felt the torrent of the fabulating element, this inspired onrush of
historical events, [were] carried away by its surging waves (SC 319;
temu strumieniowi fabulizuj cego ywiou, natchnionemu przypywowi dziejw i zdarze i da ponie si
tym wezbranym falom;
Op 329). The narrative, however, moves further from reality into the
boys imagination. They travel out to the countryside, where they
abandon their adult guardians and proceed to build an imaginary kingdom constructed from the fables, novels and epics from which they
have gleaned the material of their imaginations. The childrens play is
a gothic adventure full of wolves, bandits, mysterious strangers; they
are joyously self-aware as they brood over romantic entanglements
(deliberowalimy nad romantycznymi zawikaniami). They are
living in a world without a clear dividing line between reality and
fiction, where the plot spun from these stories jumped out of the
narrative frame and stepped among us, live and hungry for prey (SC
320; intryga przenikaj ca te opowiadania wyst
powaa z ram
narracji, wchodzia mi
dzy nas; Op 330-31). Numerous critics and
Schulz himself have commented on his use of his own youth as a
major source of inspiration for his stories. In the passages above, the
boys in the republic of the young are inspired to set up a parliament
within their imaginative landscape. If we understand young to represent youth rather than childhood, then in the case of Schulz it would
have occurred either during or shortly after World War One. Given the
radical differences in Schulzs wartime and postwar environments, it
does not seem unreasonable to equate this era with that when Tuwims
poetry gave him a feeling of superhuman strength.
The differences between these two literary landscapes bring to
mind Vicos division of his two ages of the imagination into an Age of
Gods and an Age of Heroes (1968 [1725]). The first being a source of
myth and metaphor, and the second a time in which these values direct
the course of life through poetic language. The third of Vicos ages,
the Age of Man, ushers in the reign of reason and philosophical
abstraction, where law and civic culture replace a more authentic
sense of community. Both Schulz and the Skamander poets implicitly
look back to an Age of Gods as a source for their project to introduce
an Age of Heroes. The difference between the two is that Schulzs
Age of Gods is not the ancient world and its metaphors, but the worlds
409

found in dreams and gothic romances, the progenitor of the modern
novel. Schulz also lacks the naivet required to unironically call for
society to join him in ushering in this age of literature-as-life. The
reader learns as much when the narrator leaves these labyrinthine
convolutions to re-enter the world of the present, noting, as if
snapping out of a waking dream:
Nie bez przyczyny powracaj dzi te dalekie marzenia. Przychodzi na
myl, e adne marzenie, choby nie wiedzie jak absurdalne i
niedorzeczne, nie marnuje si
w wszechwiecie. W marzeniu zawarty jest
jaki gd rzeczywistoci, jaka pretensja, ktra zobowi zuje
rzeczywisto, ronie niedostrzegalnie w wierzytelno i w postulat, w
kwit duny, ktry domaga si
pokrycia. (Op 331)
(Today those remote dreams come back, and not without reason. The
possibility suggests itself that no dreams, however absurd or senseless, are
wasted in the universe. Embedded in the dream is a hunger for it own
reification, a demand that imposes an obligation on reality and grows
imperceptibly into a bona fide claim, an IOU clamouring for repayment;
SC 320)
What follows is the reification of the dream. This time we are in a

Republic of Dreams led not by an autonomous parliament of young
boys, but by a blue-eyed man who speaks with the voice of Noah and
is capable of acting in harmony with a grand design rooted in the
workings of nature, a director of cosmic landscapes and sceneries
(2008: 321; Reyserem krajobrazw i sceneryj kosmicznych; 1989:
332). Schulz returns in this final section to the Biblical topoi with
which he began the story. In heralding the Blue-eyed One
(B
kitnooki) as the embodiment of the mythic, Schulz emphasizes
the shared, dynamic nature of his project, which invites us to join in,
to keep working on, fabricating, jointly creating (2008: 322; do
kontynuacji, do budowania, do wsptwrczoci; 1989: 333). This
final scene offers the inverse of the Skamander aim of remaking
society by giving it a (re)newed poetic voice; Schulzs vision for
renewal is to recover through language Vicos Age of Gods, the point
from which the poetic voice and an authentic metaphysical
relationship with art originate.
Ojczyzna (Fatherland, 1938) offers another angle on poetic
return to youth: a longing look back from an adult present in which
artistic ambitions and prosaic life comforts pull at a narrator who is
410
Thomas Anessi
worn down by years of struggle. The description of his situation feels

eerily like that of Schulz late in his career:
Nie byo niemal czasu na dziwienie, wraz z t pomyln pass moich
losw przyszed zarazem jaki pogodzony fatalizm, jaka boga bierno i
ufno, ktra kazaa mi podda si
bez oporu grawitacji wypadkw.
Zaledwie odczuem to jako zadouczynienie dugo niezaspokajanej
potrzeby, jako g
bokie nasycenie wiecznego godu odtr conego i
nieuznanego artysty, e tu wreszcie poznano si
na moich zdolnociach.
[] [W]szedbym jakby na podstawie dawno nabytego prawa w najlepsze
towarzystwo [] (1989: 355-56)
(There was scarcely time for astonishment: the happy turn in my fortunes
went hand in hand with a compliant fatalism, a blithe passivity and trust
that bade me to submit to the gravitational pull of events with no
resistance. I had barely registered all this as the fulfillment of a longunsatisfied need, the profound gratification of the unrecognized and
rejected artists perennial hunger, when my gifts found appreciation at
long last. [] I entered the best society by what seemed like a longstanding privilege; 2008: 330)
The setting of the story is neither a metropolis nor a provincial

backwater, but rather a tourist town with an impressive cathedral
towering over it from just beyond its residential districts, and therefore
just barely physically beyond the borders that mark the domain of the
citizenrys domestic lives. The sublime image of the ancient cathedral
with jeweled stained glass, crafted over generations, is contrasted with
the petty-bourgeois townspeople, living easy lives selling sugar and
tourist trinkets, including kitschy porcelain with images of the
cathedral painted on them by girls studying at the local art school. In
Fatherland, the tension between art and markets is played out on a
physical landscape that embodies the limits of transcendence in an
affluent capitalist society. Greatness is reduced to common kitsch in
order to provide a commodified experience to the masses. The story
ends with the narrator first retreating from a party to contemplate
peace in death, and then finally arriving home with his wife to his own
castle, his personal fatherland, an apartment he knows well enough to
maneuver in the dark to settle onto his bed, where he holds his
spouses hand, communicating in the silent language of utter familiarity. What makes Fatherland unique is that the story takes the reader
far from the youthful perceptions that power most all of Schulzs
prose, instead offering a world rooted in maturity, experience,
411

compromise and acceptance. While it contains themes common to
many of Schulzs stories including dreamscapes and landscapes
dense with significance it is stripped of vitality, offering a narrative
counter-point to the bulk of his oeuvre. The story provides a good
example of how his artistic journey, and especially his experiences
among Warsaws literary world, filtered into his creative output.
Critical Center: Literature and Myth
In agreeing to Grydzewskis proposal to become a regular contributor
of reviews in Wiadomoci Literackie, Schulz expanded his role as a
critic, one he had adopted earlier to present himself to Polands
literary circles. Over a period of five years (1934-1939), Schulz signed
his name to 27 pieces in the journal (including seven of his stories),
more than Wierzyski himself. If one adds Schulzs contributions to
Polands oldest and most prestigious literary review, Tygodnik
Ilustrowany, in which he published three of his stories and several
reviews, including the three on Pisudski, the Drohobyczan writer
could be found every second or third month in one of the two journals,
each of which had a circulation of ten to fifteen thousand. He also
published his stories and essays in the Warsaw-based Skamander and
Pion, as well as in Studio, Sygnay (Signals), and Kamena.
Schulzs desires to establish a place in the literary center can be
seen in the kinds of reviews he wrote in Wiadomoci Literackie and
Tygodnik Ilustrowany, which were arbiters of literary tastes, comprising the heart of the mainstream of literary high culture in Warsaw
and beyond during the interwar decades. Schulzs presence in these
journals was relatively high profile and appears to have been well
managed by the author himself. For example, although Schulz split his
publication of stories from Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass between both publications (and others), he dedicated more time
to the reviews and essays he wrote for the more prestigious Tygodnik
Ilustrowany, which included a key essay on Kuncewiczowas psychological novel Cudzoziemka (The Foreigner, 1936) and all three essays
on the national hero Jzef Pisudski. He produced a larger volume of
more banal commentary on relatively unremarkable translations he
was assigned to regularly review for Wiadomoci Literackie. These
tend to be limited to a discussion of themes, a critique of technique
and a cursory evaluation of the translators work, usually using the
412
Thomas Anessi
summary terminology of the Polish school systems grading scale:

good, very good. The translated works critiqued do not appear to have
been selected by the author himself, or if so, not chosen for their
literary merit, as his evaluations are often quite harsh, and he finds
mediocrity to be more common in them than exceptionality, proof of
Schulzs ability to critically navigate and explicate a wide variety of
texts, discerning between good and bad novels. The reviews also
required him to engage world literature, discussing issues wider than
the experiences of many Polish readers, including Socialist Realism
and Surrealism. In Schulzs reviews and essays in the Skamandrite
Wiadomoci Literackie and the venerable Tygodnik Ilustrowany, four
themes can be distinguished in the writers selection and explication
of texts: (1) engagement with the psychological novel (including two
long articles on Kuncewiczowa); (2) public discourse with wellknown modernist writers: Witkacy and Gombrowicz; (3) display of
editorial and critical skill; (4) explication of his own ideas about myth
and rooting Polish national experience, in particular via the living
legend of Pisudski.
All four parts can be seen as components of Schulzs project
to gain entrance into the Varsovian center. The first point includes his
critical essays on Kuncewiczowas The Foreigner, about which he
published three pieces in leading journals, and a long essay on Zofia
Nakowska in Skamander in 1939, as well as some of his shorter
essays in Wiadomoci Literackie. The second consists of open dialogs
with Witkacy and Gombrowicz. Although on good terms with both
men, with whom he shared a mutual respect, Schulz was
uncharacteristically unapologetic in his strong opinions (his review of
Ferdydurke) and as a rival for literary and intellectual high ground
(his reply to Gombrowiczs provocative open letter). In the case of
Witkacy, Schulz displays his competence as a critical reader of
innovative prose literature. With Gombrowicz, he desires to highlight
affinities and mutual recognition, going to the point of daring to
attempt to better Gombrowicz at his own game of upupienie, after
he provokes Schulz from behind the mask of a small-minded petitbourgeois housewife, for which he is in turn himself unmasked.
The last set of texts that links Schulz to the Skamander group
are his reviews and essays focused on Pisudski. The first of these
three critical works, Powstaj legendy (The Formation of Legends,
1935), was published shortly after Pisudskis death. The two other
413

were written as reviews of works by writers associated with
Skamander, the poet Kazimierz Wierzyski and Juliusz KadenBandrowski.
The first Pisudski essay, The Formation of Legends, was
published in Tygodnik Ilustrowany just weeks after the Marshalls
death. The essay is interesting not only because it provides a clearer
explication of Schulzs thoughts on Polands most recent history and
its roots in legend, but also contrasts these with the relationship
between scientific knowledge and the loss felt in modern society due
to the rupture with metaphysical experience rooted in ritual, belief and
myth, in line with Witkacys theories. At the heart of the essays
argument is humanitys tendency toward small-mindedness the ideal
of which would be petit-bourgeois creature comforts unless a
powerful force can act to create a sense of greatness. The key to
Schulzs argument is the manner in which he distinguishes Pisudski
from Napoleon. Whereas Napoleon embodied history, Pisudski
embodies destiny, and while the former inspired action, he was also
consumed by that which he unleashed. Georg Lukcs writing in Der
historische Roman (The Historical Novel, 1937) illustrates this. In it
he makes the argument that the historical novel was impossible before
Napoleon because the wars and social revolutions the French general
unleashed upon Europe gave people across the continent the feeling of
seeing history in the making. This direct contact with a historical
narrative that transcended the framework of previous conflicts in scale
and impact created the material conditions necessary for the
development of a historical consciousness, which could then be put to
work in the aesthetic realm, with writers able to embody in characters
the specificities of the thinking of a given historical moment, and
readers the desire to vicariously re-live historical moments through
these characters in fiction. Napoleon was therefore all presence and
moment (1990; 328; caa obecno i chwila; 1993: 24), whose
impact on the imagination ended once he had been removed from
power.
Pisudski, on the other hand, was burdened by history in the
way a prophet carries generations of tales predicting his arrival and
path. The blue-eyed general, however, is simultaneously a mysterious
other tamten the other one, whose arrival is not predicted, but
whose failure to arrive cannot be conceived. Whereas Napoleon
transubstantiated himself (przeistacza si
), draped himself in
414
Thomas Anessi
history as in a royal cloak (1990: 327-28; [u]bra si

w histori
jak
w paszcz krlewski; 1993: 25), Pisudski embodies Poland
paradoxically, as both the son and father of the nation. The Formation
of Legends posits that the death of the general signals a return to
people of ordinary caliber and the usual course of history (1990:
326; ludzi zwykej miaryi zwyczajne dzieje; 1993: 19), where the
small-minded politicians, historians, and others will go to work
both dissecting and co-opting this greatness, either trying to cloak
themselves in its authority or belittle it, so that they can return to a
more comfortable state of mediocrity. Schulz uses as examples of the
antithesis to greatness, history, psychology, and the philosophy of
pragmatism. Scientific humanisms antithetical relationship to belief
makes these disciplines the enemy of greatness, which cannot exist as
a maxim or common defining characteristic, and is both rare and
universally desirable, meaning those who have pretensions to
greatness must necessarily be doubted, forced to project themselves
beyond the inertia of a sea of skepticism.
In his brief review of Kaden-Bandrowskis collection of
essays entitled Pod Belwederem (At Belveder, 1936), Schulz continues
a pattern found in all three Pisudski essays, contextualizing the book
through his own theories about history and myth. As in The
Formation of Legends, he contrasts a flash of greatness and action
personified with the belittling power of its articulation in the rational
language of science and reason. He praises Kaden-Bandrowski for
bucking this tendency in his magical portrait of Pisudski, which
rather than portray the man, embodies the means by which through
him the great and nameless forces of history arrange for themselves
as a rendevous leading to epoch-making enterprises (Prokopczyk
1999: 52). The book, he says, captures a strange borderland where a
man becomes a myth and myth the man by allowing the portrait of
the man to dissolve, revealing the unfathomable face of history
(52). Schulzs words resonate with messages found throughout his
prose, but they also seek to recover a moment, nearly twenty years in
the past, before Pisudski had been drawn into nasty political disputes
that laid his humanity bare in the decades that followed Polands
independence.
In his review of Wierzyskis paean to Pisudski, Wolno
Tragiczna (Tragic Freedom, 1936), Schulz describes the success of
the work as being on a par with Polands greatest myth-maker,
415

Mickiewicz, because Wierzyski manages not to sever the umbilical
cord of the myth, not to enclose it prematurely within an unequivocal
and definite form! Because the base of the myth must communicate
with the incomprehensible and preverbal, if it is to stay alive and
remain rooted in the dark mythical fatherland (in Prokopczyk 1999:
44). The equation of this Skamander with Polands great romantic
poet is no accident. Schultzs focus on origins and myth places him
closer to Wierzyski than their prose style would suggest. What
separates the two is not just the physical distance between Drohobycz
and Warsaw but Wierzyskis psychic distance to his former home,
from which he once dreamed of escape. Schulz draws artistic
inspiration from a reality that in its immediacy provides easy access to
his childhood and his own roots. For him, the Varsovian center is the
hub of a literary machine whose workings he must master, while the
provinces are his true artistic center.
Conclusion
In Prowincja Centrum (Province of the Center), Jerzy Jarz
bski
keenly notes that for Schulz the center was more likely to be a marital
bed than a national capital, and that likewise, nothing could be more
banal than placing the writer and his work at the margins merely due
to his lifelong association with Drohobycz (2005: 109). This rings
true, on the one hand, because the center and margins are difficult to
position in relation to interwar Poland after all Drohobycz is just a
short ride from the former Austro-Hungarian regional capital of
Lww, and Warsaw was then (much as now) firmly in the cultural
shadows of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Yet, his critique rests more
squarely on the fact that Schulzs use of the city and the provinces is
so rooted in a universalist literary project within which their power to
signify is so wide-ranging as to become meaningless as a fixed point
of measure or orientation. Drohobycz is an ideal location for his
literary center simply because it can hold all that signifies the
human condition dreams, family, youth, age, commerce, erotic
compulsion, etc. in tidy bundles, without distractions or site-specific
expectations. Moreover, Schulz can borrow from his authentic lived
experiences there to ground his ideas in a physical and social milieu as
he stretches reality at times almost beyond recognition to fashion it to
his artistic needs.
416
Thomas Anessi
For these reasons, any effort to place Schulz and his work in
any one place at almost any time in his career carries great risk. His
tendency toward introversion, and at times depression, often left him
feeling dissatisfied, yet it is almost certainly these negative emotions,
this mild alienation, that pushes him creatively forward. His arrival
onto the Varsovian literary scene was a major event for this reason
because it provided him with the hope of long sought-after artistic
recognition and success, the possibility of making a living from his
art. At the same time, his life after 1933 did not change radically, as
evidenced in a letter to Romana Halpern from mid-1937, roughly a
year after he returned to Drohobycz from his sabbatical in Warsaw:
Zdaje mi si
, e wiat, ycie, jest dla mnie zawsze wany jedynie jako
materia twrczoci. Z chwil gdy nie mog
ycia utylizowa twrczo
staje si
ono dla mnie straszne i niebezpieczne, albo zabijaj co-jaowe.
Utrzyma w sobie ciekawo, podniet
twrcz , oprze si
procesowi
wyjaowienia, nudy oto najwaniejsze zadanie. Bez tego pieprzu ycia
popadn
w letarg mierci za ycia. Sztuka przyzwyczaia mnie do swych
podniet i ostrych sensacji. Mj system nerwowy ma wybredno i
delikatno, ktra nie dorosa do wymaga ycia pozbawionego sankcji
sztuki. Obawiam si
, e ten rok pracy szkolnej mnie zabija. [] Jestem
teraz dojrzalszy i bogatszy ni wwczas, kiedym pisa Sklepy cyn. Nie
mam ju tylko tej naiwnoci, tej beztroski. Nie czuem wtedy adnej
odpowiedzialnoci na sobie, adnego ci
aru, pisaem dla siebie. To
bardzo uatwia. [] Prawda, e w Warszawie nie miabym tej samotnoci
twrczej. Ale za to nie groziaby mi tam mier z nudy, zanudzenie,
straszliwe wymioty z jaowoci ycia. Po pewnym czasie usun bym si
w
cisz
, eby pisa. Temu, co mwi
, mona zarzuci wiele sprzecznoci,
ale Pani mnie zrozumie, jeeli si
wmyli w moj sytuacj
. (2002: 146-47)
(It seems that the world, life, is always important to me solely as raw
material for writing. The moment I cannot make creative use of life, it
becomes either fearsome and perilous to me, or fatally tedious. To sustain
curiosity, creative incentive, to fight the process of sterilization, boredom
these are my most important and urgent tasks. Without the zest to life I
would fall alive into lethal lethargy. Literary art has accustomed me to
its stimuli and sharp sensations. My nervous system has a delicacy and
fastidiousness that are not up to the demands of a life not sanctioned by
art. I am afraid this school year may kill me. [] I am richer and more
mature than I was when I wrote Cinnamon Shops. I lack only that naivet,
that insouciance. Back then I felt no responsibility on my shoulders, no
burden, I wrote for myself. That make it much easier. [] It is true that in
Warsaw I wouldnt have this creative isolation. On the other hand, I
wouldnt face death by tedium. After a certain time, I would remove myself to a place of quiet to write. One can accuse me of many contradictions
417

in what I say, but you will understand me if you put yourself in my
situation mentally; 1990: 151)
Schulzs long description of his feelings about where he can continue

to function creatively makes it clear that Warsaw continues to
maintain a strong hold on him long after he had become familiar with
it and its literary world. In order to master it, he placed himself among
those who were in charge, the writers and editors who by the 1930s
had been bronzed by their association with the Skamander poetry
that dazzled Polands literati in the first years of Polands
independence.
Although the association between Schulz and the group might
appear to have been one merely of convenience, for they were the
gatekeepers to the nations best literary journals, Schulzs engagement
in the subject of Pisudski and his reviews of Wierzyski and KadenBandrowskis books make it clear that his links go deeper. The
relative disconnect from Polands twentieth-century reality in his two
volumes of stories most of which were written, at least in some
form, before his initial literary success in 1934 becomes less
definitive of Schulzs writing once one includes essays and stories he
published later, where one can feel a response to the groundbreaking
literary and historical events that surrounded him. The formation of
the legend of Schulz at the margins may, in large part, be symptomatic
of the marginal role of the center of Polands interwar literary world,
which was cosmopolitan and to a large extent Jewish in a nation most
often defined (both within and without) by its parochialism and
Catholicism. The heresy is therefore not that Schulz was in the
Varsovian center but the recognition that this center was tailored for
an assimilated, non-practicing Jew and was comprised of many like
himself. His warm reception into this center, like his desire to enter
into it, is indicative of a moment in Polish literature when Bruno
Schulz and his innovative and ambitious aesthetic project were
artistically a model of the center itself.
Bibliography
Bartosik, Marta. 2000. Bruno Schulz jako krytyk. Krakw: Universitas.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 2003. Regions of the Great Heresy (tr. T. Robertson). New York:
W.W. Norton & Company.
Groski, Marek Ryszard. 1978. Jak w przedwojennym kabarecie: Kabaret
418
Thomas Anessi
Warszawski, 1918-1939. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa artystyne i filmowe.

Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 2005. Prowincja centrum: przypisy do Schulza. Krakw:
Kumanicki, Kazimierz. 1924. Odbudowa Pastwowoci Polskiej: Najwaniejsze
dokumenty 1912 stycze 1924. Warszawa-Krakw: Ksi
garnia J.
Czerneckiego.
Kwiatkowski, Jerzy. 2001. Dwudziestolecie midzywojenne. Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Lam, Andrzej (ed.) 1969. Polska awangarda poetycka. Programy z lat 1917-1923, v.
II: Manifesty i protesty. Antologia. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Prokopczyk, Czesaw Z. (ed.) 1999. New Documents and Interpretations. New York:
Peter Lang.
bski).
. 1993. Powstaj legendy: trzy szkice wok Pisudskiego (ed. S. Rosiek).
Krakw: Oficyna Literacka.
. 1998. Collected Works of Bruno Schulz (ed. J. Ficowski). London: Picador.
. 2002. Ksiga listw (ed. J. Ficowski). Gdask: slowo/obraz terytoria.
York: Penguin.
Shore, Marci. 2006. Caviar and Ashes: a Warsaw Generations Life and Death in
Marxism, 1918-1968. New Haven: Yale UP.
Vico, Giambattista. 1968 [1725]. The New Science of Giambattista Vico (tr. T. Bergin
and M. Fixch). Ithaca: Cornell UP.
Wierzyski, Kazimierz. 1990. Szkice i portrety literackie. Warszawa: Biblioteka
Wi
zi.
Wyspiaski, Stanisaw. 1985. Akropolis (ed. E. Miodoska-Brookes). Wrocaw:
Zakad Narodowy im. Ossoliskich.
The Ukrainian Reception of Bruno Schulzs Writings:

Paradox or Norm?
Oksana Weretiuk
Abstract: This essay analyzes the paradox and difficulties of the reception of Bruno
Schulzs prose in the place of its origin. It points out the objective (social and
historical) and subjective (personality-dependent) reasons for these difficulties and
formulates logically justified conclusions regarding its paradoxical nature. More
specifically, it examines the dynamics and nature of the reception of Schulzs writings
by Ukrainian scholars, critics, writers, and the public.
Introduction
Seven decades of the existence of Bruno Schulzs prose have
determined the distinctive features of its reception in Ukraine. It is
time to understand and interpret the meaning of these features.
Schulzs road to Ukraine was paradoxically complicated for several
reasons. When his works finally entered the country, they were not
unanimously received by Ukrainian readers. In the following article, I
will try to present the relationship between Ukraine and Schulz by
examining the dynamics and character of the reception of Schulzs
writings by Ukrainian scholars, critics, authors, and public activists.
A Thorny Way to His Own Home
Bruno Schulz was born into a family of assimilated Galician Jews in
the town of Drohobych, in the province of Galicia. He spent the entire
fifty years of his life in his native town. The affiliation of Drohobych
in terms of its statehood was ever-changing: it was part of the AustroHungarian empire at the time of Schulzs birth and Polish at the time
of his youth, adulthood, studies, and creative work, which is why he
chose to write in Polish. Drohobych was Soviet (Soviet Ukraine) after
the outbreak of World War II until July 1, 1941, when the town was
420
Oksana Weretiuk
occupied by Germans. Schulz was killed in German-occupied

Drohobych. Hence, the writer, without ever leaving Drohobych, lived
in four states and three empires. Drohobych, an ancient Ukrainian
town with deep roots in Ukrainian history, is no longer Polish, nor
Austrian, nor Soviet, nor German it is Ukrainian again and has been
since Ukraines independence in 1991. So why did it take such a long
time for Schulz and Drohobych to meet each other?
Schulzs prose was first translated into English and Hungarian
(1958, 1963),1 then into Serbian (1960), German (1961), Spanish and
Swedish (1962), Italian (1963), Danish and Norwegian (1964),
Finnish (1965), and even into Japanese (1967). The first Russian
translation of a story by Schulz appeared in 1985 ( 1985),
whereas the Ukrainian translation of Sklepy cynamonowe
( ) by Ivan Hnatiuk was published four years
later (February 1989) in Zhovten (October). Ukrainian literary life
from 1930 to 1989, despite the countrys frequent political and
ideological upheavals, prompted Schulzs paradoxically late reception
in his native town Drohobych.
What is really puzzling is the initial lack of acceptance of
Schulz by the Ukrainian literary elite of Galicia, not to mention the
wider Ukrainian readership. Both Schulz and his supposed reading
public are located in the same geographical and historical area. In
1933, Schulz made his debut in Warsaws Wiadomoci Literackie
(Literary News), the most popular liberal literary newspaper, with the
short story Ptaki (Birds). The following year the publishing house
Rj published Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops), and in 1937,
Hourglass). Critical reviews and notes on his works appeared in
multiple publications: Wiadomoci Literackie (1934, 1938), the
popular informative paper ABC (1934), Warsaws Kurier Poranny
(Morning Courier, 1934, 1936, 1938), the biweekly ZET (1934),
Nowa Ksika (New Book, 1934), Tygodnik Ilustrowany (Illustrated
Weekly, 1935), Studio (1936), Lvivs Sygnay (Signals, 1934, 1936,
1938). At the same time, Wiadomoci Literackie and ZET published
translations, critical reviews, and notes on Ukrainian literature. For
example, Wiadomoci Literackie contained the review of Volyn by
Ulas Samchuk, the Ukrainian writer who was closely connected to the

1
This and subsequent bibliographical information is

http://www.brunoschulz.org/wydania.htm (consulted 27.06.2008).
taken
from
The Ukrainian Reception of Schulzs Writings
421

Ukrainian literary life of Lviv, Warsaw, and Prague, and whose debut
actually took place in Poland (cf. Weretiuk 2002, 2001: 3539, 104-106). ZET, in the years 1933-35, published in Polish
Ukrainian writers such as Taras Shevchenko (twice), Oleh Olzhych
(three times), Pavlo Tychyna (four times), Yevhen Malaniuk (six
times!) and many other Ukrainian writers.2 It also published notes
about Khrystia Alchevskas works, Malaniuks poetry, and a critical
review of his Zemna Madonna (Earthly Madonna) as well as
information about Samchuks Volyn and Kronika Ukraiska
(Ukrainian Chronicle). In the mid-1930s, the Ukrainian writer Stepan
Tudor contributed to Sygnay (cf. 2001), a periodical which
dedicated a whole issue to Ukrainian literature in 1934. The same
Warsaw publishing house, Rj, published a Polish version of
Samchuks Volyn in 1938 (compare: Sklepy cynamonowe in 1934 and
Sanatorium pod klepsydr in 1937). Why did Ukrainian and Polish
authors not meet despite the small distance and cultural closeness
between Warsaw and Lviv? It seems that ideological and ethnic
differences dominated in spite of geographical, historical, and cultural
proximity. Ukrainian-Polish international relations during the interwar
period (i.e., 1918-1939) reached the apogee of their tension at the time
of the debut and literary activity of Polish writer Schulz. Tired and
furious with polonization, pacification, and numerous ethnic
suppressions, the nationally-biased Ukrainians did not even trust their
sworn Polish brothers in Lviv and Warsaw, as stated by Lvivs Polish
author Wodzimierz Pietrzak in his correspondence to Jerzy
Stempowski, in 1936:
Robi
rone wysiki, aby si
dosta mi
dzy Ukraicw, niezupenie
uwieczone rezultatami. Bywam na niektrych imprezach, rozmawiam
s zewn
trznie serdeczni, lecz pod t serdecznoci ld. Nie wiem, co
myl , co ich nurtuje i pali. (Pietrzak 1936: Rps BWU)
(I make various efforts to break into the Ukrainian community, but frankly
they are not always successful. I attended some events, had
conversations Outwardly they are warmhearted, but behind this
friendliness theres ice. I do not know what they think, what interests
and inspires them.)

2
Some other notable writers include: Mykola Bazhan, Hrytz Chuprynka, Mykhaylo
Kotsiubynskyj, Bohdan Lepkyj, Wasyl Stefanyk, Leonid Mosendz.
422
Oksana Weretiuk
The Jewish origin of Polish-speaking Schulz did not weaken his

isolation from Ukrainian intelligentsia. People still remembered the
recent murder of the ideological leader Simon Petlura3 (1879-1926) by
Samuil Schwartsbard. The Jewish suppressions in 1919-20 in
Proskuriv, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, Rivne, Fastiv, Korosten, and
Bakhmach was directed at many Jewish representatives among the
Bolshevik authority; the ethnic conflicts in Lviv also made the
situation even more difficult. Ukrainian Galician writers of a leftist
orientation primarily Communist literary men who shared the
opinion of the leftist Jewish community were puzzled by Schulzs
symbolism and mythology, his phantasmagoric, whimsical, and
strangely created world. His peculiar manner of scurrilous storytelling
and total nonconformity did not fit within the strict limits of Socialist
Realism and was reflected in the first Soviet rejection of the PolishJewish literary artist: the Moscow Publishing House of Foreign
Literature refused to publish Schulz. From the Polish-language Soviet
journal Nowe Widnokrgi (New Horizons, 1941-46; in 1942 edited by
Wanda Wasilewska), Schulz received a short answer: Prousts not
needed! For the Soviet Ukraine, shivering with Stalins terror, dying
of starvation, mourning the loss of its national elite under the
totalitarian horror (1917-39), Schulz was simply unattainable, fenced
off by the rivers Zbruch and Buh. Being a citizen of Polish Ukraine, he
was far away both geographically and ideologically from Soviet
Ukraine.
However, Schulz himself was also partially responsible for the
hollowness of the West-Ukrainian reception of his prose. He was
known to be an assimilated Galician Jew. At the time of the
Ukrainian-Polish civil war, Schulz joined the Jewish art group Kalleia
and fully agreed with its political ideology determined by Jewish
political parties and the kahal, all of which was in complete contrast to
his introspective and peaceful nature. Let us remember that Galician
Jews, in spite of their political and religious convictions and level of
assimilation, took a neutral position in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict of
1918-19.4 As referenced by Iakov Khonigsman, a scholar of Jewish
social and cultural movements during interwar Poland, among the

3
Cf. (2001: 78-79) for a discussion of the resonance among the Ukrainian
creative youth who were challenged by the murder of Petlura.
4
Such tactics were suggested by the European Committee of Civil Security (Y. Eiler,
. Ringel, ". Parnas, and others) in 1918-19 (cf. #$% 2003).
423

Jewish intelligentsia there was an influential group of Jewish
assimilators in 1860-70s. The activists for the national liberation of
the Polish people, representatives of the scholarly and cultural elite,
were the members of the assimilation movement. Brought up in the
tradition of Polish culture and national customs, they considered
themselves to be Polish of Jewish denomination, trying to penetrate
into the Polish elite. Often in the heat of patriotism for the
Motherland-Poland, some of them became Catholic. The assimilated
Jews contributed many famous people of profound talent and intellect
who enriched Polish culture: scholars, artists, civil leaders, such as
Szymon Aszkenazy who was co-founder of the Assimilators Party, an
established historian of international renown, a walking library, a
Lviv University professor, and a Polish foreign minister to the
Peoples League in Geneva (1920-23).5 Schulz was actually interested
in such a civil and cultural position in part because his assimilation
was complete: he broke ties with the Jewish religious community, and
although he did not become Catholic, he could easily enter a Roman
Catholic Church or cross himself while passing a church. It is obvious
that the writers polonization during the difficult period of the
Ukrainian liberation movement was not only disapproved of but also
condemned by the Ukrainian nationalistic intelligentsia who were
opposed to anything Polish.
Only a small part of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were aware of
the fact that the subdued cultural traditions of a long suppressed nation
could hardly compete with a much stronger national tradition of a
people who gained independence much earlier. This group, despite its
openness to his ethnic otherness, was still unable to understand the
odd Schulz. Thus, it was not strange that his Polish compatriot from
Drohobych, Andrzej Chciuk, could not understand him either: Mj
Boe, po polsku, a nic z tego czowiek nie rozumie (1969: 59; My
goodness! It's in Polish, but you cant understand a thing). What is
still mysterious to me as a scholar of Polish-Ukrainian interliterary
contacts during the interwar period was the attitude of Mykhajlo

5
Others contributed by the assimilated Jewish community include but are not limited
to: Marian Hemar who was Lvivs poet, satirist, translator, and the author of cabaret
texts; Ostap Ortwin, an essayist, literary and theatrical critic in Lviv; Juliusz Kleiner,
a professor at Lviv University, a prominent historian, literary theorist, and expert on
Sowacki; Ludwik Finkel who was a historian at Lviv University; Samuel Dickstein
a mathematician, pedagogue, and science historian.
424
Oksana Weretiuk
Rudnytskyj, the editor of Lvivs Ukrainian Journal Nazustrich

(eeting alfway), toward Schulz (cf. 2001: 28-31).
Rudnytskyj was completely open to otherness, well-educated and
experienced in contemporary experimental prose, always drawing
together cultures, and meeting halfway. Why then did he omit
Schulz from the journal? Was it accidental or intentional? Or was it
common practice of a Ukrainian during the Ukrainian liberation
movement to disregard Polish assimilated Jews? This was most likely
the case. Moreover, the point to note here is that generally Ukrainians
in Drohobych simply did not know Schulz and his prose because at
that time Ukrainian readership was very poor, both in his native town
and in Lviv. According to the interwar census, Ukrainians tended to
live mostly in villages at the time.
While some Ukrainians found Schulz puzzling, his own
attitude toward Ukrainians was likewise perplexing: he absolutely
accepted the Polish cultural tradition, and although he lived next to
Ukrainians, he obviously fenced himself off from them. He did not
know the Ukrainian language and did not include it in his literary
activities, unlike many other Polish writers from South-Eastern Poland
which is now the western part of Ukraine.6 It was probably the
uniquely personalized world of Schulzs writings rather than
ethnocentrism that would explain the Ukrainians reluctance to accept
his work in the inter-war period and may also be responsible for the
lack of enthusiasm with regard to studying his prose among some in
modern Ukraine.
Schulz was distanced even further from the Ukrainian reader
because of the Second World War and all the social and political
changes it caused. Astonishingly, the Polish reader was deprived of
Schulz because of these same ideological changes. Jerzy Ficowski
recollected:
Pierwszy mj szkic mia si
ukaza w 1946 roku w wydawanym w
Poznaniu yciu Literackim pod redakcj Wojciecha B ka; do druku nie
doszo [] W 1949 r. podj em znw prb
opublikowania rozszerzonej
wersji mego eseju o yciu i twrczoci Schulza tym razem w
krakowskim Dzienniku Literackim. W dniu 17 padziernika owego roku
otrzymaem w tej sprawie list od Wilhelma Macha, ktry pisa []:
Artyku [] mia i, ale ze wzgl
dw taktycznych [] zostal

6
Andrzej Chciuk, Zygmunt Haupt, Leopold Buczkowski, Andrzej Kuniewicz,

Mieczysaw Jastrun, and Jzef obodowski are the most important examples.
425

wstrzymany. [] Nietrudno si
domyle, na czym polegay owe
taktyczne wzgl
dy redakcji: nadchodzi okres b
dw i wypacze w
polityce kulturalnej, o Schulzu mona byo odt d przez kilka bardzo
dugich lat albo pisa le, albo milcze. (Ficowski 2002: 14)
(My first profile was supposed to appear in 1946, in Literary Life, edited
by Wojciech B k, published in Pozna; it was not published. In 1949, I
tried again to publish an expanded version of my essay about the life and
creative work of Schulz, this time in the Literary Daily. On the 17th of
October the following year, I received a letter about this from Wilhelm
Mach, who wrote: The article () was supposed to run, but it was held
for tactical reasons. It is not difficult to figure out what constituted
tactical reasons for the publisher. The times of the mistakes and
distortions were approaching in cultural politics. From then on, for
several long years, one was allowed to write about Schulz either
negatively or not at all.)
The second option (not to write about Schulz) was chosen by

Ficowski, Wladyslaw Panas, and their Polish colleagues. The first
Russian translator of the author of Sklepy cynamonowe, Asar Eppel,
had a similar fate. In 1965, he suggested his Russian translations of
prose of an odd and extremely Polish writer Bruno Schulz (*++
1990) to the then nationwide (or, rather, state-wide) Soviet literary
journal Inostrannaya literatura (Foreign Literature), which finally
published the translations after twenty-five years, in 1990. Thus, in
Soviet Drohobych, Schulz was not completely unknown, as noted by
Drohobychs literary scholar, the recently deceased Leonid Golberg:
Naley jednak powiedzie, e Schulz nie by cakowit tajemnic dla
drohobyczan. Przynajmniej sam fakt, e mieszka w miecie i miasto to
opiewa, sprawia, e stawa si
coraz bardziej znany dla
zainteresowanych tym, co powstawao przed II wojn wiatow na
przedwojennym Pograniczu Galicyjskim. O artycie wiele opowiada
wi
tej pami
ci drohobycki adwokat i erudyta Lew Fris, a take dawni
uczniowie Brunona: Alfred Szrajer, Edmund Werner, Artur Kligler (2008)
(We have to say that Schulz was not completely unknown in Drohobych.
At least more and more people interested in the cultural achievements of
the prewar Galician borderlands got to know about the fact that he lived in
and eulogized this town. About the artist much was told by Drohobychs
lawyer, the erudite Leo Frish, and also by Brunos disciples: Alfred
Szrajer, Edmund Werner, Artur Kligler.)
However, Schulz was discovered for his countrymen by Ficowski,

thanks to his numerous research and promotional trips to the writers
426
Oksana Weretiuk
native town. Golberg (2006) determined the date of the outbreak of

Schulzs reception by the Ukrainians of Drohobych: in 1988 in the
newspaper Radianske slovo (The Soviet Word) and in 1989 in Lvivs
literary and artistic journal Zhovten (October) an article entitled The
Surprising World of Bruno Schulz (<>@$\@^ `%$ {) by
Mykhailo Shalata, a philologist from Drohobych, appeared.7 In 1989,
the last year of its existence under the name Zhovten, the journal
published the first Ukrainian translation of Sklepy cynamonowe,
translated by Hnatiuk ( 1989). At that time, a memorial plaque
was placed on the house where the Schulzes lived before the war, and
one of the streets in Drohobych was named after Schulz. The public
memorialization of the writer (the plaque, the name of the street) was
proposed and brought about by Drohobychs Polish and Jewish
communities. The literary and scholarly writings of Schulz were
researched and studied by a more extensive Ukrainian intellectual
community with the help of close contacts with Polish scholars. As
happened much earlier in Poland, Schulz became a bright
phenomenon in the literary sphere, right after radical political
changes.
The year of the 100th anniversary of Schulzs birth, 1992, was
internationally declared as the Year of Bruno Schulz by UNESCO.
New translations of Schulzs stories appeared in Inostrannaya
literatura (Foreign Literature), in Kievs Suchasnist (Modernity), and
in the Ukrainian Independent Culturological Journal (Yi) (
1992a; 1992b). The first international conference dedicated to
Schulz was organized and held by the united efforts of Drohobychs
inhabitants and the academic and cultural elites of Polands Lublin
and Warsaw. Golberg recollected:
Od tej pory mona nie tylko powiedzie, e Schulz powrci we wasn
przestrze, ale rwnie, e sta si
niezaprzeczalnym elementem procesw
kulturowych Drohobycza i caej Galicji, mimo sprzeciww pewnych
miejscowych mao wanych postaci. (2008).
(We can say since that time that Schulz has not only returned to his own
space but also become an undeniable element of the cultural processes in
7
Golberg made a mistake. Shalatas article was republished in the journal Dzvin (The
Bell, formerly Zhovten') in 1992 (11-12) under the title Bruno Schulzs Chimerical
Drohobych Novel (<$|$}>{ +$@^\-~>^ `%$ {).
427

Drohobych and Galicia notwithstanding the resistance of some local and
little important people.)
In 1993, Schulzs books were published in Russian (in Eppels

translation). They became available to the Ukrainian reader, and two
years later the whole spectrum of Schulzs prose with a special
appendix, i.e., The Glossary of the Writers Strange Words was
published in Ukraine ( 1995).
The rapid explosion of the Ukrainian reception of Schulzs
writings took place in 2002-06. For the most part, events honoring
Schulz were held in his native town. An international literary
symposium, Returning Bruno Schulz (1892-1942), was held in
Drohobych on November 17-19, 2002, the writers 110th
anniversary.8 At the time, the plaque was also changed to include an
inscription in Jewish and the writers portrait. In the same year, a
bilingual edition of Sanatorium pod klepsydr was published; the
Ukrainian translation was done by Andriy Pavlyshyn ( 2002).
In the following year, a similar session concluded with the opening of
a museum at the site of Schulzs former study room, which, in 2004,
was the site of both a regular academic symposium (November 19-20)
and the First International Bruno Schulz Festival with an intensive and
interesting program (July 12-18) initiated by the Polish Education and
Information Centre (<$$ 2004). The program of the seminar
was directed at comprehending Schulzs profound prose. On
November 19, the day of the 62nd anniversary of Schulzs tragic death,
the head of Drohobych Judaic community, Josef Karpin, said his
prayers near the place of the writers death (his portrait is on the wall).
The year 2004 was The Year of Poland in Ukraine. The
project aimed at popularizing the creative work of famous Polish
people, such as Karol Szymanowski and Bruno Schulz, who were
born in Ukraine. The steps taken by the project, connected with the
study and popularization of Schulzs creative heritage, went far
beyond the limits of Drohobych. This project was conducted by the
cultural, scientific, and economic establishments of Poland and
Ukraine. The articles dedicated to the research of Schulzs writings

8
The co-organizer and the soul of this literary and cultural event from the Ukrainian
side was the Polish Education and Information Centre, created for the purpose of the
110th anniversary of Schulz and headed by Ihor Meniok of Drohobych University.
428
Oksana Weretiuk
appeared in the Ukrainian newspapers and journals (cf. \{ 2004,

{{% 2004, >@$^%^ +$~$> 2004).
During the Editors Forum in Lviv on September 16-19, a
thematic discussion Bruno Schulz and Ukraine was organized; the
presentation of the second complete edition of Schulzs prose in
Ukrainian was suggested. The first complete edition consisted of
translations by Andriy Shkrabiuk and was published in Lviv by
Prosvita. In contrast, the second edition included the best Ukrainian
translations of Schulzs prose by different translators: Taras Vozniak,
Mykola Yavoryna, Hnatiuk, and Shkrabiuk.
The Second International Festival of Bruno Schulz took place
two years later, on November 13-19, 2006, under the name of Bruno
Schulz and the Culture of Borderlands. Lvivska Gazeta (Lvivs
Newspaper) summed up the international, national, and local
significance of the Polish and Jewish writer as well as the final
realization of his importance by the average Ukrainian:
<%^ \ @$ %{|{{> $|$}>{%{, $ $$
^\^ @$%> { ^ {%> {%{\{|$>%$|$ `%$
|$\ \^~ \: @^ $|${ $ }%{, @^ >{|$ $
$^$. $ { $$ >@{ \@^$%% ^ +\^%>>
|$$%{>, ^ @{$, { +% ~%^ ^%\>, $ @\> +^,
> @>^\ %{ ^ ^, {\>%{ %{$ \+^%$ %$
\+{>%>, % \{\%$|$ {%\$|$ %$|$ +$\,
^@%$ ^ \@^$@$|$ (#$}| 2006).
(The days of Schulzfest reminded the people of Drohobych in what
celebrated town they live. How the land of chimerical Bruno attracts
people from different places: from Stockholm to Melbourne, from
Chicago to Tokyo. Step-by-step, the ordinary people and government
representing their interests start realizing that every fruit grown in this
land is a part of our common cultural heritage, an element of both
modern Ukrainian and world process.)
The Festival proved that not only Schulz experts, literary scholars, and
artists are interested in and study Schulz. The participants included
many Polish and Ukrainian scholars.9 Schulz managed to join together
many of his numerous fans actors, producers, theatrical critics,
translators, editors, and publishers. He persuaded even those narrow
9
Polish scholars included Jerzy Jarz

bski, Aleksander Fiut, Jerzy wi
ch, Wojciech
Lig
za, as well as others. Ukrainian scholars were represented by Mark Golberg,
Valentyn Vandyshev, Yevgen Pshenychnyj, Vira Meniok, and others.
429

minded Ukrainian provincials that his Polish-Ukrainian heritage is a
valuable part of Ukrainian culture and that Drohobych was his home,
too. Respect for Schulz initiated courageous discussions between
Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. The purpose of the Festival, as expressed
by the head of the Polish Education and Information Centre, Vira
Meniok, was returning Schulz to his own authentic, creative and
personal space, the only place in the world (Jzefczuk 2006). This
task was successfully accomplished. After years of effort, it is now
possible to embrace the scope of Schulzs heritage both through the
Festival and at the site of Schulzs death, which was marked by a
copper memorial plaque sponsored by the Janusz Palikot Foundation
and designed by Andrzej A. Widelski. The inscriptions in Ukrainian
and Polish say: In this place in November 19, 1942, the Great Artist
of Drohobych, Bruno Schulz, was killed by a Gestapo agent. The
plaque was stolen in 2008.
Unfortunately, it is still difficult to find Schulzs books in the
bookshops of Drohobych. We can still hear occasional discordant
voices of zealous Ukrainian patriots who say: Schulz was implanted
in us by foreigners. Big deal! One has to remember about an
anniversary of Franko. We need to care about ours. I completely
understand the envy of disfranchised people who for many centuries
remained without any rights in their own country, were deprived of
their own language And suddenly Schulz, previously unknown to
them, appears with his enormous universe and his Polish-JewishUkrainian origins, drawing the whole worlds attention to Drohobych
and Ukrainian culture, the so-called Galician melting pot of
cultures. A comparison of Schulz with contemporary Ukrainian
artists and the literary scene will help define the creative style of all
involved. Ukrainian writers of the younger generation who have
already started work in the direction of the Galician literary heritage
include Yurko Prohasko and Taras Vozniak. Although the first
Ukrainian book about Drohobych and Schulz (%>~ 2006) is not
perfect with regard to its comparative attempts, as the author himself
confessed, it does at least exist. The book tries to comprehend
objectively the difficult relations between Schulz and Ukraine with
respect to both Schulz and Franko. It concludes:
^\$@> %{^ \+$\%% , $$ \@>>, $
`.{ <$|$}> >@ %^}> $$ @^ \@$~ >^@,
+$\$|$ +>\%%>{ {%^ <$|$}>{ +$\$ >,
430
Oksana Weretiuk
$ {\, . {%{ \~$+%$ {}\$%$ ^%> {\+
+$}{>>: \$^{%$-+$^>%>, +${\> %{^$%{%>. ^
$}{> ($\, \$%, |$>%%>{ %{ {^) @ $}$~ +>\%%>^@
@>$% {}\$%$ ^%^ %^: `.{ @$%> +{ %{
%^@\{^{^ $+$@^^ $ $^^@ ^$$|^%$|$ {\ {
+$\$, { @{%{ {%{ $}{> ^ $%%$-{^\>%^, ~
\>@$^{ $@%{ % }{{%% %^@\{^@{> +$^, {
${^@{> (%>~ 2006: 99).
(Summing up our observations we can state that Drohobych as depicted
by Schulz lives as if separated from its inhabitants. The citizens of
Drohobych, as depicted by the Polish author, are simply people, whereas
Franko grasps an absolutely different aspect of the problem: their sociopolitical, to some extent, nationalistic features. The same characters
(Roman Catholic Church, the sun, the clock on town hall) perform
different functions. In Schulzs writing they take on dimensions of
mythological proportions, while as described by Franko, these characters
are concrete and realistic. Their symbolism is caused not by the desire to
universalize the event but to locate it.)
This exactly explains the universal, all-embracing, readily available

fame of Schulz, as opposed to the inward-looking, locally oriented
Ukrainian artists, whose work reaches the world more slowly.
Modern Ukrainian reception of Schulzs prose can roughly be
divided into several pathways. Divergence within the first two large
pathways is caused by geographical, historical, and political
differences: Schulz is more widely known in Western Ukraine
because this part of the country has been historically and politically
more open to the West and its culture. Because of the remnants of its
historical Habsburg memory, Galicia is a part of the worlds cultural
community. Schulz is less popular in Eastern Ukraine a territory
distanced from the West by the iron gates of the Russian Empire,
and even now it is more inclined toward Russian literature. Within
each pathway, there are different critical attitudes: from those offering
an apology and glorification of Schulz to those that are completely
ignorant of him. As a rule, the active propagandist of Schulz is a
member of the liberally and democratically oriented, creative, young
Ukrainian intelligentsia, the intellectual vanguard. The ignorant are
those who do not read anything, even Shevchenko, and repeat blindly
that Shevchenko is a great Kobzar. The nationalistic Ukrainians do not
care about the Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian writer. Regardless of their age,
they consciously hinder bringing back Schulz, and after reconciling
themselves with his presence, jealously perceive his fame. Formerly
431

from Lviv, now an inhabitant of Moscow, Igor Klekh, one of the first
Russian translators of Schulz, schematically accentuated the polarity
of the Ukrainian reception of the Polish and Jewish writer (~
2004). This is the actual multicultural reality of what is left nowadays
of the Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian borderlands.
Conclusion
The objective (social and historical) and subjective (personalitydependent) reasons specified in this article seem to be responsible for
the paradoxically vast reception difficulties of Bruno Schulzs prose in
the place of its origin. The actual position of Schulz in present-day
Ukraine is also paradoxically controversial. On the one hand, there are
an increasing number of famous international festivals celebrating the
writers life and work in Drohobych, but on the other hand, there are
also events such as the theft (in 2008) of the commemorative plaque
from the place of his death. There is, however, a growing number of
Ukrainian translations of Schulzs prose, which shows progress
despite the fact that these volumes are not currently available in the
bookshops of Drohobych, Ternopol, and even Lviv.
The historical logic regarding the paradoxical nature of the
Ukrainian reception of Schulzs writings seems to give us the right to
consider it both normal and abnormal. Schulzs road to the Ukrainian
reader was long and hard; furthermore, the road of todays Ukrainian
reader to him is not always straight and easy either. Still, the most
important thing is that Schulz is finally back in Ukraine. He is there,
notwithstanding the paradoxes of the objective and subjective past,
and todays capricious, multi-faceted edicts. Famed festivals
commemorating Schulz as well as the increasing number of the
translations of work by the Polish-Jewish writer from Drohobych
attest to his presence in Ukraine.
Bibliography
Chciuk, Andrzej. 1969. Atlantyda. Opowie o Wielkim Ksistwie Baaku. Londyn:
Polska Fundacja Kulturalna.
Ficowski, Jerzy. 2002. Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Bruno Schulz i jego
mitologia. Sejny: Pogranicze.
432
Oksana Weretiuk
Golberg, Leonid. 2006. Spniony Powrt. Wielki Bruno w dzisiejszym

Drohobyczu (tr. A. azar). On line at: http://ww.iam.pl/pl/site/px_percepcja_
schulza.doc (consulted 21.03.2007).
Jzefczuk, Grzegorz. 2006. Tablica dla Schulza w Drohobyczu in Gazeta Wyborcza
(11 November 2006).
Pietrzak, Wodzimierz. 1936. [The correspondence to J. Stempowski. November, 22,
1936] in Rkopis BWU 1525. Korespondencja Jerzego Stempowskiego.
Schulz, Bruno. 1989. Opowiadania, Wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
bski).
Weretiuk, Oksana. 2002. Prawda i legenda o Polsce w yciu i twrczoci Uasa
Samczuka in Przegld Humanistyczny 2: 81-88.
, \{%{. 2001. "# $%#%*# +%%< +=> @$"\
(^_<. @%%. "-`$"" $%#%* %%).
%$+^: .
#$}|, $%^. 2006. <${> {\: {@>@\ \>@{ `%$ { in
{"" |}#% (22 November 2006).
#$%, {\>. 2003. @ @ {\ %{^$%{%$-${>%$ @$^ %{
{~^%>~ {%\>~ ~ (1918-1919) in <$< =#>"~ |_
#%$" % ~_ ` `#> `$ %$%%<.
%#$ ## (6-28 #`< 2003 ). On line at:
http://www.judaica.kiev.ua/Conference/Conf2003/06.htm
(consulted
20.04.2007).
<$$, \^. 2004. ^\ %^@ ^ `%$ in ^>
(12 July 2004).
~, |$. 2004. @$\+>>> `%$ { @$\$% .
\+%> %{ %{$%$ \>+$> >\\@> `%$
{ @ %{%$ > $\$%$ "@$+ in < @$" 4. On line
at: http://www.novpol.ru/index.php?id=219 (consulted 22.05.2007).
%>~, ${%. 2006. | * *$". <$|$}>-: $$.
>@$^%^ +$~$> +^ \+^%% >+%@$ %$^. 2004. @%<| 76 (22 July
2004).
\{, ^{. 2004. `%$ : @^ +$$$^ @ {> in @%*` (11 October
2004).
{{%, >{. 2004. `%$ +$@{\. <|{ $\^% $|$}>{%>%{
in ^#> (5 >\$+{{ 2004).
, `%$. 1985. >%$\@$ (tr. . }{$@>) in % +*$ 6.
. 1989. >%{$%$@^ {%>^ (+%; {@^%\@$; {~>; {%%>;
{{ +$ {%%>. $$@%%; {{ +$ {%%>. {^%%%;
$; {%; {% {$, >%{$%$@^ {%>^; > $$>^@;
{|{%>; `; ^ @>$|$ \$% (tr. . #%{) in %#" 2: 37-69.
. 1990. {@{%> (tr. . *++) in %< $%#%* 12: 10-14.
. 1992a. {%{$^ ^ +\>$; <|{ $\^%; {~> (tr. . $@>%{)
in *%" 10: 28-41.
. 1992b. {%{$^ ^ +\>$ (tr. . $@>%{) in 5. On line at:
http://www.brunoschulz.org/sklepy.html (consulted 20.04.2007).
. 1995. . %> @_ $#`_ (tr. . {}).
@^@: $\@i{.
433

. 2002. Sanatorium pod klepsydr / %> `_ $#`_ (tr. .
{@>>%). @^@: \@^%^ \\%> %.
*++, \{. 1990 # > $% @\$|$ {~$\ in %<
$%#%* 12:5-6.
Text and Theater. The Ironic Imagination of Bruno

Schulz
Micha Pawe Markowski
Abstract: Two sets of imagery govern Brunos Schulzs universe. The first one draws
its adjectives from the traditional reservoir of (rabbinic) textual exegesis, the second
one from the popular (low-culture) realm of the masque theater. Perceived through the
lenses of both families of images, reality appears simultaneously as a text to be
intellectually deciphered and as a spectacle to be sensually enjoyed. This double
structure, bifurcated on the ontological level, reflects another split in Schulzs
universe, that between the true and the artificial, and undermines its traditional status.
In Schulz, the unavoidable clash of textual and theatrical imagery ironically
deconstructs the apparent metaphysical dualism of true essence versus merely
beautiful appearance(s).
Introduction
In this article, I plan to question the traditional criticism of Schulz
which draws its resources from the unstoppable drive to offer an easygoing interpretation of Schulzs philosophy, be it Jewish, Greek,
metaphysical, or aesthetic. I will argue that literature itself is the most
effective instrument for questioning this traditional account. The
literary text, in its singularity, cannot be subsumed under any clear
and distinct idea, and it also disables any attempt to make monolithic
claims of conceptual discourse. My point is that Schulzs output,
revealing the self-reflective character of literary illusion, makes
fruitless every effort to reduce this illusion to truth. In short, literature,
according to Schulz, with its unlimited perspective, ambiguity,
metaphorical expansiveness (Schulz 1990: 164;1 nieskoczona
perspektywiczno, wieloznaczno i ekspansywno metaforyczna;
Schulz 1964: 491)2 is the most efficient weapon against the arrogance

1
2
All further references will be given as LD.

All further references will be given as P.
436
of persistent and imposing theories, regardless of their discursive

disguises. This claim follows the enthusiastic defense of the aesthetic
made by Murray Krieger whose critical work has long been focused
on the resisting power of the aesthetic against the dominant cultures
attempt to impose its institutions by claiming a natural authority for
them (2000: 226). Nothing is natural and everything is arbitrary
in Schulz, and this is why his work may be justifiably regarded as the
literary (and thus political) critique of any one-sided interpretation.3
Threat of Time
To begin, I will quote an almost randomly chosen passage from
Wiosna (Spring):
Wtedy wiat nieruchomia na chwil
, stawa bez tchu, olniony, chc c
wej cay w ten zudny obraz, w t
prowizoryczn wieczno, ktr mu
otwierano. Ale szcz
liwa oferta mijaa, wiatr ama swe zwierciado i
czas bra nas znw w swe posiadanie. (P 198)
(The world stood motionless for a while, holding its breath, blinded,
wanting to enter whole into that illusory picture, into that provisional
eternity that opened up before it. But the enticing offer passed, the wind
broke its mirror, and Time took us into his possession once again; 1988:
156)4
As we can see, in the world of Schulz, Being is incessantly corrupted

or violated by Time, whose promising illusion-making ability is
threatened by an unexpected disenchantment. This is the reason why
Being, notwithstanding its desire to be purified from any changing
element, cannot reach its extra-temporal, eternal, and glassy
plenitude, and why it is also exposed to the process of systematic
undermining, brought into the world by Times disjointed condition.
Time, in Schulz, as in Heidegger, is a synonym for the ecstatic
existence, which makes the human desire to stabilize ones identity
altogether impossible. The obscure text of existence is given to

3
However, in reviewing Ferdydurke, Schulz does not reproach Gombrowicz for his
one-sidedness because as he says, [e]very great system of thought is one-sided and
has the boldness of this one-sidedness as well (LD 163-164; [k]ady wielki system
mylowy jest jednostronny i ma odwag
swej jednostronnoci; P 490). Let us not
overlook this small adjective: great.
4
Text and Theater. The Ironic Imagination of Schulz
437

laborious deciphering, which, unfortunately, never approaches the
final account. The human being, thrown into the world possessed by
Time, is unable to grasp his true essence in much the same way that he
is unable to recognize the shapes and contours of the seemingly
familiar world. There inevitably comes a moment of painful
disillusionment, in which what was expected to be solid and deeply
rooted in being becomes ruined, and what was taken for granted
discloses its transitory and fugitive status.
The Schulzian characters endlessly drift in the labyrinth, not
even being able to recognize the closest neighborhood. In Wichura
(The Gale), the senior shop assistant Theodore and Josephs brother
volunteered to help the Father, who was cut off in his office by the
blowing wind. Their mission failed very quickly: They could not
reach the shop, they said. They had lost their way and hardly knew
how to get back; the city was unrecognizable and all the streets looked
as if they had been displaced (SC 85; Nie mogli doj do sklepu,
zgubili drog
i ledwo trafili z powrotem. Nie poznawali miasta,
wszystkie ulice byy jak przestawione; P 142). Notice that Schulz
does not say that the streets were displaced, but he underlines the
illusionary character of what happened. This as if indicator marks
the fictional status of not only this passage but also the entire universe
spreading before our eyes. Nothing happens for sure; everything
comes up as if. The narrator of the story titled Cinnamon Shops,
sent home by his mother to bring back the forgotten Fathers wallet,
becomes bewildered by the miraculous demonstration of false signs:
There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are
doubles, make-believe streets (Otwieraj si
w g
bi miasta, eby
tak rzec, ulice podwjne, ulice sobowtry, ulice kamliwe i zwodne),
which multiply, becoming confused and interchanged
(zwielokrotniaj si
, pl cz i wymieniaj jedne z drugimi) due to
the inexhaustible inventiveness of the night (SC 61; noc w
niewyczerpanej swej podnoci; P 110-111). You cannot trust your
perception because what is shown immediately reveals its misleading
and treacherous composition. It is as if Being, contaminated by Time,
realized the futility of its attempts to enclose its substance in the
crystal ball of the perfect essence and came to realize that there is no
way to gather its attributes and cut them off from the unfinished and
growing [life] (LD 223; nie gotowe jeszcze i rosn ce [ycie]; P
408).
438
The Logos Lost

Given this ontological displacement, built into the very substance of
Being, we understand promptly that the full and unambiguous
understanding of meaning is not possible in Schulz. This is at least the
lesson drawn from the joint reading of two crucial texts by Schulz
concerning the hermeneutical enterprise: Schulzs essay Mityzacja
rzeczywistoci (The Mythologizing of Reality), written in 1936, and
the famous seventeenth paragraph of Wiosna (Spring).
In both pieces, the universe is structured as a complex text
through which one has to peer in order to find the univocal origin of
meanings. As everybody knows, there are two kinds of words for
Schulz: the Logos, or primeval word (pierwotne sowo) which
was a great universal whole (wielka uniwersalna cao), and the
common word, a mosaic piece (mozaikowe sowo) which was
detached from this universal Sense by the pragmatic needs of
humankind. Nevertheless, this second kind of word, as separated from
the Logos in everyday linguistic practice, possesses a capacity to
regenerate and complete itself in full meaning (LD 115; do
regeneracji, do uzupenienia si
w peny sens; P 443). This
opposition between the Logos and everyday speech faithfully follows
the modernist demarcations between the magical poetic language fully
endowed with meaning and the hollow prosaic statements totally
deprived of real substance (cf. Markowski 2003a). If only the poetic
speech participates in Sense, then the ordinary word immersed totally
in a mundane life should incline itself to recapture its lost symbolic
capacity, and this is how the poetry comes to life:
[T]
d no sowa do matecznika, jego powrotn t
sknot
, t
sknot
do
praojczyzny sownej, nazywamy poezj .
Poezja to s krtkie spi
cia sensu mi
dzy sowami, raptowna
regeneracja pierwotnych mitw. (P 444)
(This striving of the word toward its matrix, its yearning for the primeval
home of words we call poetry.
Poetry happens when short-circuits of sense occur between words, a
sudden regeneration of the primeval myths; LD 115).
There are then two orders of words: the mythical one, which consists
of eternal stories about human fate, and the everyday one, which is
unconsciously comprised of these forgotten stories. The only way for
439

writers to participate in the Sense is to return to what has been lost, to
pave their way through the ruins of language and retrieve the ancient
epic. If so, the poetic, or, to put it in a broader way, literary creation,
must be a kind of regression, of stepping back to the Logos, where the
writer would experience the plenitude of meaning.
Schulz seems to follow here the same optimistic tradition that
Heidegger and Ricoeur do (cf. Markowski 2003b). The Sense the
Logos was in the beginning and only in the beginning, and the only
way to find a place in the world is to know how to re-create the lost
fables and myths. This re-creation then, which is called literature, is
supposed to name reality and to impart meaning to the world, which
remains meaningless until it gets told.
Schulz, however, brings quite a new meaning to the image of
the Logos in his long story called Spring. This story, concerned with
the narrators childhood, is a kind of extended and convoluted
commentary to a spring as such, read as a text built on the other text,
called its horoscope:
Oto jest historia pewnej wiosny, wiosny, ktra bya prawdziwsza, bardziej
olniewaj ca i jaskrawsza od innych wiosen, wiosna, ktra po prostu
wzi
a serio swj tekst dosowny, ten manifest natchniony, pisany
najjaniejsz , wi teczn czerwieni , czerwieni laku pocztowego i
kalendarza, czerwieni owka kolorowego i czerwieni entuzjazmu,
amarantem szcz
liwych telegramw stamt d [] Tak nieobj
ty jest
horoskop wiosny! Kto moe jej wzi za ze, e uczy si
ona go czyta na
raz na sto sposobw, kombinowa na olep, sylabizowa we wszystkich
kierunkach, szcz
liwa, gdy jej si
uda co odcyfrowa wrd myl cego
zgadywania ptakw. Czyta ona ten tekst w przd i na wspak, gubi c sens i
podejmuj c go na nowo, we wszystkich wersjach, w tysi cznych
alternatywach, trelach i wiergotach. (P 191-192)
(This is a story of a certain spring, that was more real, more dazzling and
brighter than any other spring, a spring that took its text seriously: an
inspired script, written in the festive red of sealing wax and of calendar
print, the red of colored pencils and of enthusiasm, the amaranth of happy
telegrams from away [] How boundless is the horoscope of spring! It
tries to read it in a thousand different ways, interpret it blindly, spell it out
at will, happy to be able to decipher anything at all amid the misleading
divinations of birds. The spring reads this text forwards and backwards,
loses its sense and finds it again in many versions, in a thousand
alternatives; SC 150-151; translation modified)
440
According to Schulz, reality is nothing but a commentary on a deeper

text lying under it, and the process of storytelling is a commentary on
the second degree, both being subjected to the series of conjectures
marked by hints, ellipses, lines (SC 151; znaczony [] cay w
domylnikach, w niedomwieniach, w elipsach; P 192). But what is
that underlying text whose deciphering makes the reality possible?
Schulz tries to answer this question in the long paragraph intended
primarily as a description of a springs dusk. Having complained that
the miracle of dusk is beyond any reach and totally unspeakable, he
develops a long metaphoric image of a dual descent into the
Underworld.
The first movement leads us inside, and Schulz calls it a return
journey into ourselves (SC 168; powrotna w
drwka do siebie; P
215). This introversive descent is characterized in purely
psychoanalytic terms, as a total regression (regresja na caej
linii), retreat into self (cofanie si
w gab), journey to the root
(powrotna droga do korzeni; P 215) and can be treated as a perfect
example of, according to Ricoeur, an archeological hermeneutics.
Schulz, like Freud and Nietzsche, makes us think that it is only above
ground, in the light of day, that we are a trembling, articulate bundle
of tunes (tylko w grze, w wietle [] jestemy dr c
artykuowan wi zk melodii) because deep down, in the depth we
disintegrate again into black murmurs, confused purring, a multitude
of unfinished stories (SC 168; w gebi rozsypujemy si
z powrotem
w czarne mruczenie, w gwar, w bezlik nieskoczonych historyj; P
216).
Skipping over a few passages and coming to the conclusion, I
would say that Schulz, in the seventeenth paragraph of Spring,
seems to follow faithfully the main aporia inscribed in Freuds project
of interpreting dreams. It is worth remembering that Freuds desire to
interpret was structurally divided. On the one hand, the analyst wants
the dream to be interpreted without any residue, without anything left
of meaninglessness. On the other hand, however, he is quite aware
that this kind of transparency is just a wish. In the seventh chapter of
Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899), Zur
Psychologie der Traumvorgnge (The Psychology of the DreamProcesses), Freud, using a classical metaphor of the journey, which is
taken up by Schulz as well, says that every path he has traveled so far
led us towards the light towards elucidation and fuller
441

understanding. And now he adds in the same paragraph as soon
as we endeavor to penetrate more deeply into the mental process
involved in dreaming, every path will end in darkness (1900: 511).
There is no more explanation because in order to explain one must
have access to something already known to which what is to be
explained must be traced back. And in the case of dreams, there is an
impenetrable darkness, Dunkel, which is at the end of every attempt of
interpretation.
This image of essential obscurity reappears a few pages later
with another now famous metaphor, that of the navel:
There is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream
which has to be left obscure; this is because we become aware during the
work of interpretation that at the point there is a tangle of dream-thoughts
which can not be unraveled and which moreover adds nothing to our
knowledge of the content of the dream. This is the dreams navel, the spot
where it reaches down into unknown. (1900: 525)
Having used the same metaphor of Dunkel in his hermeneutic journey

to the unspeakable, Schulz seems to complicate it. At first, words in
their regression toward the Logos, return to their etymology, re-enter
their depths and distant obscure roots (SC 167; wraca w sw
etymologi
, wchodzi z powrotem w g b, w ciemny swj korze; P
214). Descending into the Logos hidden in the dark, getting into the
other side, is analogous to the process of psychoanalytic elucidation:
it aims at the luminous moment of Aufklrung, at the translucent
epiphany of Sense when everything will become meaningful and
legible. But what happens then, at the roots (u korzeni), at the
lining of things (u podszewki rzeczy), at the very bottom (na
samym dnie)? What does the Logos consist of? It consists of the
countless bunch of stories; its luminous residence is replaced by hazy
smoking rooms of fables and tales (SC 169; mgliste fajczarnie
fabu; P 217). Instead of an epiphany of transparent meaning, what
we encounter at the bottom is the crowd of stories referring
interminably to other stories. A tangle of dream-thoughts which for
Freud led to the unknown and then the unspeakable, for Schulz takes
the shape of the fabulous reservoir of stories and tales. There is no
access to reality except the detour made between texts. It means that,
as in Hegel, there is no room for the Unspeakable because everything
speaks in this world of necessary mediations. The nameless does not
442
exist for us (LD 115; Nienazwane nie istnieje dla nas; P 443), says
Schulz in The Mythologizing of Reality; thus, he repeats faithfully
the Hegelian lesson.5 Contrary to the traditional view of the Logos as
the unmediated because it is divine origin of any language, Schulz
offers a different reading. The Logos as the Primordial Word is
nothing but a story or, even better, a collection of stories already
shaped albeit in a somewhat shabby manner and thus already
interpreted. And if Schulz says in one of his stories that events are
not ephemeral surface phantoms (zdarzenia nie s efemerycznym
fantomem na powierzchni) and that they have roots sunk into the
deep of things (maj korzenie w g b rzeczy) and penetrate the
essence (LD 217; si
gaj istoty; P 401), or that we can come
closest to the being itself (LD 38; najblisi bytu; 2002: 35), then
these statements must be considered in the light of the Logos
philosophy (or rather philology) as developed in Spring. This
reading brings any conclusive account of Sense to failure. Contrary to
appearances, there is no pure, unmediated essence in Schulzs
universe; there is no regression to essence (LD 217; zst pio w
esencjonalno; P 401) in this world. Consequently, there is no room
for any one-sided reading, even the most insightful of ones. If there is
a single rule in this world, then it is that there is no single rule.
Irresistible Irony
This ironic, or even self-contradictory, statement of Schulz leads us to
the most interesting comment ever made by the author regarding his
own work. It is placed in a well-known essay written for Witkacy, in
which Schulz discloses his philosophy of panmasquerade
(panmaskarada):
Rzeczywisto przybiera pewne ksztaty tylko dla pozoru, dla artu, dla
zabawy. Kto jest czowiekiem, a kto karakonem, ale ten ksztat nie si
ga
istoty, jest tylko rol na chwil
przyj
t , tylko naskrkiem, ktry za
chwil
zostanie zrzucony. Statuowany tu jest pewien skrajny monizm
substancji, dla ktrej poszczeglne przedmioty s jedynie maskami. []
Dlatego z substancji tej emanuje aura jakiej panironii. Obecna tam jest
nieustannie atmosfera kulis, tylnej strony sceny, gdzie aktorzy po
zrzuceniu kostiumw zamiewaj si
z patosu swych rl. W samym fakcie

5
Cf. Hyppolite (1997) for a discussion of this issue.
443

istnienia poszczeglnego zawarta jest ironia, nabieranie, j
zyk po
bazesku wystawiony. (P 682-683)
(Reality takes on certain shapes merely for the sake of appearance, as a
than masks. The life of the substance consists in the assuming and
consuming of numberless masks. [] Thus an all-pervading aura of irony
emanates from this substance. There is an ever-present atmosphere of the
stage, of sets viewed from behind, where the actors make fun of the pathos
of their parts after stripping out their costumes. The bare fact of separate
individual existence holds an irony, a hoax, a clowns stuck-out tongue;
LD 113)
Schulz, in an incomparable manner, puts together here two seemingly

inconsistent languages. The metaphysical language of the two
worlds splits reality into two incompatible halves: the essence and
appearances, the substance and its attributes. Another language
heavily draws from the reservoir of theatrical metaphors pointing to a
frivolous character of reality. No matter how serious the claim to
separate the essence from its appearances (since shape does not
penetrate essence), we already know that the essence cannot remain
uncontaminated by the gestures of illusions. In fact, there is no way to
tear off the masks of the substance just as one cannot get into the nontextual stratum of the Logos. If at the bottom of reality one
encounters only the brood of bibles, then the masks worn by essence
belong to it so closely that they introduce the moment of artificiality in
the very core of it. Nothing in this world remains secured against the
hoax which does not come from the outside but is inscribed in the
very essence of reality. And this is why Schulz uses the term irony
to describe this permanent fissure in the heart of things.
As we can clearly see, Schulzs imagery is thickly woven of
the images of two sorts: textual and theatrical. Reality is perceived
both through the lenses of a text to be deciphered and the spectacle to
be attended.6 Having touched lightly the opaque layers of text, we

6
Thus we can answer the question asked by Jerzy Jarz

bski, what, actually, does
theatricality mean in Schulz (co to jest waciwie teatralno u Schulza; 2005:
140). Schulzs theatricality happens not between people but inside the substance. It is
mainly the ontological reason of the world which puts everything in motion and does
not permit it to coagulate.
444
have now to engage with the sensuously seductive theater. The world
compared to theater is condemned to be deceptive because the
conventional difference between theatrical artificiality and natural
authenticity (reflecting the classical metaphysical difference between
Wesen and Schein) collapses, as we witness in the story called Druga
jesie (A Second Autumn):
Jesie ta jest wielkim, w
drownym teatrem kami cym poezj , ogromn
kolorow cebul uszcz c si
patek po patku coraz now panoram .
Nigdy nie dotrze do adnego sedna. Za kad kulis , gdy zwi
dnie i
zwinie si
z szelestem, ukae si
nowy i promienny prospekt, przez chwil
ywy i prawdziwy, zanim, gasn c, nie zdradzi natury papieru. I wszystkie

perspektywy s malowane i wszystkie panoramy z tektury i tylko zapach
jest prawdziwy, zapach wi
dn cych kulis, zapach wielkiej garderoby,
peen szminki i kadzida. [] I ta popieszna gor czka, ten zdyszany i
pny karnawa, ta panika nadrannych sal balowych i wiea Babel masek,
ktre nie mog trafi do swych szat prawdziwych. (P 290-291)
(Fall is a great touring show poetically deceptive, an enormous purpleskinned onion disclosing ever new panoramas under each of its skins. No
centre can ever be reached. Behind each wing that is moved and stored
away new and radiant scenes open up, true and alive for a moment, until
you realize that they are made of cardboard. All perspective are painted,
all the panoramas made of board, and only the smell is authentic, the smell
of wilting scenery, of theatrical dressing rooms, redolent of grease paint
and scent. [] And there is an atmosphere of feverish haste, of belated
carnival, a ballroom about to empty in the small hours, a panic of masked
people who cannot find their real clothes; SC 221)
What does this poetical deception inherent to the world mean? By

introducing the aesthetic into the very structure of metaphysics,
Schulz suggests that separating reality (or nature) from art relies on a
false distinction imposed upon artistic experience by the theoretical
minds which would like to denigrate art by placing it in a secure
position contrasted with true reality. Thus, the deceptive character
of reality, supported by the persisting images of a belated carnival,
flamboyant irresponsibility, and mocking buffoonery, points to the
impossibility of maintaining this opposition and, consequently, to the
gesture of liberating art from the ideological accusation of being
totally disinterested and indifferent toward reality. The aesthetic
appearance is not deprived of being effective. In fact, it is quite the
contrary: the all-pervasive presence of artificiality mirrors the inability
445

to catch the true meaning of a text, and it subsequently marks the
insecure position of the subject.
The Moss Thrown Away
In a story called Emeryt (The Old-Age Pensioner), from
Hourglass, 1937) we read:
[J]estem troch
niepewny w nogach i musz
stawia powoli i ostronie
stopy, stopa przed stop , i bardzo uwaa na kierunek. Tak atwo jest
zboczy przy tym stanie rzeczy. Czytelnik zrozumie, e nie mog
by zbyt
wyranym. Moja forma egzystencji zdana jest w wysokim stopniu na
domylno, wymaga pod tym wzgl
dem wiele dobrej woli. [] Tylko
adnej romantyki. Jest to kondycja jak kada inna, jak kada inna nosz ca
w sobie znami
najnaturalniejszej zrozumiaoci i zwyczajnoci. []
Wielkie otrzewienie tak mgbym nazwa mj stan, wyzbycie si
wszystkich ci
arw, taneczna lekko, pustka, nieodpowiedzialno,
zniwelowanie rnic, rozlunienie wszelkich wi
zw, rozprz
gni
cie si
granic. [] [D]awno przestaem ju zagrzewa miejsce pod sob . (P 361365)

(I am little shaky on my feet and must put one before the other slowly and
cautiously and watch where I go. It is so easy to stray under such
circumstances. The reader will understand that I cannot be too explicit.
My form of existence depends to a large degree on conjecture and requires
a fair amount of goodwill. [] No sentimentality please. It is a condition
like any other, and therefore capable of being understood and treated
naturally. [] You sober up this is what is characteristic of my
situation: you are unburdened, feel light, empty, irresponsible, without
respect for class, for personal ties, for conventions. [] I stopped
gathering moss a long time ago; SC 282-284).
The end of this passage is especially remarkable. In using the idiom

to gather moss, which changes the Polish version into an altogether
different register, the translator unwillingly, but perspicuously, reveals
some Greek connotations hidden in the concept of the subject. The
subject, or hypokeimenon, means almost exactly to gather moss
under (hypo) oneself. Sub-jicere has these connotations as well. The
subject means: because I want to make myself comfortable in my
standing, I put some moss under myself in order to stabilize my
position. By doing this, he builds himself up as the subject whose only
aim is to stop moving, to extinguish existence, to gather moss in order
446
to prevail. Thus, the very act of construing the subject (because the
subject is always constructed and not given) forbids being
uncomfortable with oneself. Furthermore, there is no way for the
subject to suffer from the lack of comfort. Any discomfort in the place
taken over by the subject presses him to rearrange this position in
order to regain what has been lost. This is why the transcendental
subject is less a construction than a series of re-locations aimed at
finding the most appropriate position, or Setzung.
If, however, we turn the table, then what is clearly
recognizable is the insecure status of existence which contradicts the
subjectivity as described above. I am a little shaky on my feet, says
the narrator, but he can, he seems to say, travel lightly, with no burden
on his back.7 To quit gathering moss is to stop paying attention to
subjectivity as the governing principle of existence and to loosen up
the ties which firmly determine his position. In some sense, one is
permitted to say that the tightly circumscribed existence contradicts
itself or, more precisely, narrows itself down to esse, or essentia. In
Schulz, however, the essence is loosened up as well, which means that
there is no possibility to fly away from the unstable ground of
existence. This inability to gather moss under oneself is explicitly
stated in a fragment that has already been quoted above:
No centre can ever be reached. Behind each wing that is moved and stored
away new and radiant scenes open up, true and alive for a moment, until
you realize that they are made of cardboard. All perspective are painted,
all the panoramas made of board.
For the Schulzian subject, no centre can ever be reached, which

means that the very possibility of stabilizing both the position of the
subject and the true meaning of the world is endlessly postponed. One
of the principal reasons for this semantic delay lies in the fact that it is
not art which imitates reality (this relationship being based on the
separation between them) but reality which imitates art. In Schulz,

7
One should note, however, how much this account differs from the actual existence
of Schulz. His letters to friends reveal the totally opposite attitude to life, filled with
mundane worry (codzienna troska) and melancholy: One must, for instance,
fence off ones inner life, not permit the vermin of ordinary cares to infest it (LD
190; Trzeba np. odgrodzi swe ycie wewn
trzne, nie dopuszcza, by tam
zagniedzio si
robactwo pospolitych trosk; P 643). This image of fencing the inner
life off from reality is repeated many times in Schulzs letters.
447

reality follows the aesthetic gesture of not closing off art in the
separate field of false aestheticism. Instead, reality opens art up to the
world. In this sense, art in Schulz cannot imitate nature. This is reality
itself which betrays [or rather displays] with all its cracks its
imitative character (SC 73; wszystkimi szparami zdradza sw
imitatywno; P 127). It must be stressed once again that by this
inscribing of the aesthetic into the whole fabric of reality, Schulz
eschews the commonsensical accusations of promoting the selfreferential, purely autonomous model of art, contrasted with actual
reality as it is. For him, this intensive promotion of the aesthetic has
openly displayed the existential dimension.
Simulation
As the traditional, rhetorical definition maintains, irony is a sort of
discrepancy between what is said and what is intended, or more
precisely, it is a kind of indeterminateness between the manifest
meaning and the latent one. Using this term in a more ontological
way, we could say that irony is based on the incompatibility of two
realms: the true essence (in rhetoric: the true meaning) and false
appearances, but instead of sustaining this opposition, it unfastens its
rigid structure.
Irony, then, is structured as an insoluble tension between the
surface and the deep, the false and the true, or the Logos and the Lie.
Schulz developed the best account of this double structure of irony in
his afterword to the Polish translation of Kafkas Der Proze (The
Trial, 1925). Kafkas reality, according to Schulz (and this is the most
justifiable and persuasive basis for any comparison between these two
writers) is of a dual nature; he sees the realistic surface of existence
with unusual precision, but this is just a loose epidermis without
roots. This is why
[h]is attitude to reality is radically ironic, treacherous, profoundly illintentioned the relationship of the prestidigitator to his raw material. He
only simulates the attention to detail, the seriousness, and the elaborate
precision of this reality in order to compromise it all the more thoroughly.
(LD 88)
One cannot overestimate the value of this passage for any reading of
Schulz. The power of simulation defies any simple interpretation,
448
considered as a straightforward allegorical reading. Kafkas books,

Schulz continues, present neither allegory, nor analysis, nor exegesis
of a doctrine (LD 88), and this is what the effective reading should
be: neither analysis nor exegesis of a doctrine. Instead of reading
allegorically, Schulz brings in the idea of ironical, or double reading,
which perfectly fits his entire paradoxical attitude. This presupposed,
although not explicitly stated, concept of multifaceted reading,
unsealing the ironic potential of the text, refers openly to Friedrich
Schlegels theory of irony. According to Schlegel, irony is the form
of paradox (1991: 6) which enables us to avoid any form of dualistic
thinking. As a transcendental buffoonery, Schlegels irony
combines the freedom of spirit which elevates itself above every
determination (exactly as poetry does in Schulz) and the mimic style
of an averagely gifted Italian buffo (Schlegel 1991: 6). If the Kantian
term transcendental suggests the stabilized position of der
selbsetzende Subjekt, then the buffoonery and universal masquerade
attached to him undermine this position, making it more unstable and
unexpected and putting him on the verge of losing his footing. This
loss, if we want to translate it into critical language, implies that
reading strives not for the well-rounded meaning but for the
mechanism of its production. In this sense, the ironical reading of
Schulz aims at revealing what puts his entire work into motion. The
ironical reading of Schulz can reveal nothing but his encompassing
irony.
Metaphysical Puppetry
Reality presented by Schulz has the explosive impact of the scandal
(LD 223; eksploduj ca sia skandalu; P 393). The ontological
scandal reveals the contaminated, impure character of the essence,
which cannot resist its unavoidable degradation into existence, or to
put in other way, it cannot avoid turning itself into its own parody.
Theatrical existence in Schulz is contagious: no meaning can avoid
being distorted, and no sense can resist miscomprehension. The point
is that this parodic stance does not spring from human imperfection. It
belongs to reality itself, and this belonging results in the loss of any
firm grasp of it. It means that in Schulz the radical ambivalence of
reality finds its analogue in the interpretative lack of conclusion.
449

In a letter to his close friend, Anna Pockier, written in June,
1941, Schulz, remaining under the spell of [her] charming
metamorphoses (pod urokiem [jej] uroczych metamorfoz),
explained his own interpretation of them:
Jest tak, jak gdyby kto cichaczem podsuwa kogo innego, zamienia
Pani , a Pani braa j za siebie sam i graa swoj rol
dalej na nowym
instrumencie, nie wiedz c, e to ju inna porusza si
na scenie. Naturalnie
przejaskrawiam spraw
i przeci gam j do paradoksu. (P 666)
(Its as though somebody substituted another person to take your place on
the sly, and you, as it were, accepted this new person, took her for your
own, and continued playing your part on the new instrument, unaware that
someone else was acting onstage. Of course I am exaggerating the
situation toward the paradoxical; LD 206)
This is a common strategy in Schulz: to exaggerate everything toward

the paradoxical. In this case the paradox (which has another name,
that of irony, of course) consists of splitting the personality into two
characters and showing their reciprocal play within the dimensions of
a single person (w skali jednej osoby). Schulz calls this internal
staging a metaphysical puppetry (metafizyczna marionetkowo),
mobilizing in this expression his entire philosophy of irony which, as
we can see, defines also the human personality, which is exposed to
the internal puppet show. As such, as an internal staging of
differences, the human condition does not differ substantially from
literature. In both cases, under each skin or each layer of a text, one
finds another one and another one and so on. All things referred to
other things, which in turn called further things to witness, and so on
ad infinitum (LD 225; Kada rzecz odsyaa do innej rzeczy, tamta
powoywaa si
na dalsz i tak bez koca; P 395). And then, against
these moving horizons, we all look like the masked people who, in
panic, cannot find their real clothes. The problem is, Schulz says, that
the real clothes have been already stolen at the origin. Due to this
original theft, not only literature, but also our existence, can be
possible. This is the lesson we can draw from Schulz.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. 1900. The Interpretation of Dreams. SE, 4: 1-338; 5: 339-625.
Hyppolite, Jean. 1997. Logic and Existence. An Essay on Hegels Logic (tr. L.
Lawlor, A. Sen). Buffalo: SUNY.
450
Jarz
bski, Jerzy. 2005. Prowincja centrum: przypisy do Schulza. Krakw:
Krieger, Murray. 2000. My Travels with the Aesthetic in Clark, Michael P. (ed.)
Revenge of the Aesthetic. The Place of Literature in Theory Today.
Berkeley: University of California Press: 208-236.
Markowski, Micha Pawe. 2003a. Poetry and Modernity in Identity and
Interpretation. Stockholm: Stockholm University, Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures: 73-97.
. 2003b. The Two Faces of the Logos. Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, and the
Hermeneutic Tradition in Wierciski, Andrzej (ed.) Between Suspicion and
Sympathy: Paul Ricoeurs Unstable Equilibrium. Toronto: The
Hermeneutical Press: 357-369.
Schlegel, Friedrich 1991. Philosophical Fragments (tr. P. Firchow; foreword R.
Gasch). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Schulz, Bruno. 1964. Proza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1988. The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Hourglass (tr. C.
Wieniewska). London: Picador.
Bruno Schulzs Intimate Communication: From the

True Viewer of Xiga bawochwalcza to the True
Reader of Ksiga
Theodosia Robertson
Abstract: Bruno Schulzs Xiga bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book) existed in a
dual form, as loose graphics and bound portfolios. Many of its images depict minidramas similar to erotic role play. Both these aspects reflect the intimate and
participatory experience of erotic art: art directed not to a general public, but to a true
viewer/receiver. With its flexible form and its scenes of erotic role play, The
Idolatrous Book engaged artist and audience in a shared experience. When Schulz
turned to writing the notion of a true viewer/receiver persisted, becoming the notion
of the true reader which found its ultimate formulation in Ksi
ga (The Book).
Introduction
The erotic dimension of Bruno Schulzs Xiga bawochwalcza (The
Idolatrous Book, 1920-1922) has challenged critics from reviews of its
first showings in the 1920s until today. What artistic sources and
tradition inform the pervasive erotic elements of the graphics in The
Idolatrous Book? How to characterize the psychosexual phenomena
that find visual expression there? Reviews of the earliest shows of
Schulzs art that included prints from The Idolatrous Book sought to
address these questions. Critics Alfred Bienenstock (in 1922) and
Artur Lauterbach (in 1929) noted both the artistic influences upon the
graphics (Goya, the rococo, Flicien Rops, and Toulouse-Lautrec) and
also their fantastic-erotic ideas and thematic exclusivity (Ficowski
1988: 7-9, 12-13). In 1935 Stanisaw Ignacy Witkiewicz added
Edvard Munch and Aubrey Beardsley as formative for The Idolatrous
Book and categorized Schulz as a demonologist, pronouncing the
central node of his eroticism to be female sadism linked to male masochism (in Schulz 1988: 108-109). Interpretive comments by Witold
Gombrowicz and Ola Watowa cemented the view that Schulz worked
out his own private sexuality in The Idolatrous Book (Kitowska-
452
Theodosia Robertson
ysiak 2003: 424). Two decades later, in his 1956 essay Rzeczywisto zdegradowana (The Degraded Reality), critic Artur Sandauer
transposed the idea of masochism to Schulzs fiction in an interpretive
theory that weighed heavily upon readers understanding of Schulzs
writing for many years. In his 1988 edition of The Idolatrous Book (its
title translated in the English version as The Booke of Idolatry), Jerzy
Ficowski developed the kindred concept of fetishism for the graphic
cycle (1988: 19-21). Meantime, accumulating biographical details of
Schulzs life, such as the reminiscence of Irena Kejlin-Mitelman (in
Schulz 1984) and anecdotal information about the sexual activities of
Schulz and his friend Stanislaw Weingarten, both confirmed and
complicated suppositions about the personal nature of the erotic in
Schulzs art and especially in his Idolatrous Book (Jarz
bski 2003:
408-409).
Since the 1990s critical focus has shifted focus away from a
displaced sexuality in The Idolatrous Book and toward its larger
cultural context. Art historians such as Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak
and Halina Kasjaniuk have pursued the many technical and thematic
antecedents and connections in Schulzs art (some of which had been
noted by early critics in the 1920s). In these studies eroticism is
mediated, for example, through the influence of artistic and cultural
tradition such as the grotesque and early Modernism. In the case of the
grotesque, its long and multifarious tradition supplies the fantastic,
hybridizing forms of pagan eroticism; the Renaissance melded the
grotesque of antiquity with folkloric motifs of north Europe and
introduced commedia dellarte elements popularized in the prolific
illustrations of the seventeenth- century French engraver and printer,
Jacques Callot, master for Francesco Goya (Kitowska-ysiak 2003:
132-138). The grotesque mingled easily with the sexual topoi of early
Modernism at the turn of the twentieth century. In this view, the
trappings of masochism in Schulzs visual art can be understood as a
quoting of popular motifs extracted from literary and artistic
tradition, as well as from the iconography of turn of the century mass
culture. Rather than representing clinical states, Schulzs art represents
a sophisticated play with the modernist context in which the female
organizes and hierarchizes the space; man, subject to her, exists at the
periphery while she is at the center. Males and females belong to two
different worlds (Bolecki 2005: 114-119).
Schulzs Intimate Communication: From True Viewer to True Reader 453

Despite shifts of focus, over eight decades of commentary
have culminated in considerable critical consensus and at the same
time revealed some divergence of opinion about the role of the erotic
in Schulzs Idolatrous Book.1 The consensus among scholars is that
Schulzs art seems to have been almost immune to newer trends of his
day, a reflection of the past rather than a precursor of the future.
Above all, Schulz was faithful to his erotic themes. What are the
consequences of this faithfulness to erotic themes for an evaluation of
Schulzs art? Here, the critics are less unanimous. Some have
maintained that through interpreting his own erotic obsessions,
Schulzs art transforms libido, raising it to myth and sacralizing
trauma (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 424).
Others remain skeptical about the positive value of the erotic
in Schulzs art. His erotic themes fail to transcend the narrowness of
his private obsessions and their repetition courts boredom; Schulzs
art ultimately falls short of the universal vision of his writing.2 The
skeptics echo, in fact, Lww reviewer Alfred Bienenstock who
observed in 1922 that [t]his thematic exclusiveness of Schulzs
artistic inspiration is his strongest and in some ways his weakest
point.3 The skepticism is understandable. The eroticism in Schulzs
Idolatrous Book does present something of a paradox. Although
thematically the graphics repeatedly assert the erotic power of
particular incarnations of the female, the effect of monotony from
these visual reiterations appears inescapable. I suggest that this
paradox the repeated theme of female erotic power and the
consequent monotony repetition may induce involves two evident
but underestimated aspects of The Idolatrous Book. These aspects, in

1
The many entries by Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak in the 2003 Sownik schulzowski

(edited by Wodzimierz Bolecki, Jerzy Jarz
bski and Stanisaw Rosiek) are invaluable
for the current understanding of Schulzs art.
2
Jerzy Ficowski and Wojciech Chmurzyski are proponents of the greatness of
Schulzs art. In contrast, Jerzy Jarz
bski concludes that Schulz is a writer of universal
vision while his art is more narrow; there, Schulz remained within the confines of his
private obsession (Jarz
bski 1989: XXX, 2003: 320). Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak
(2003: 322) observes that scenes of naked women and adoring men repeat to the point
of boredom.
3
For Alfred Bienenstocks review, see excerpts in Ficowski (1988: 8). The review
was originally published in Chwila, 1922, nr. 1213. Cf. Kitowska-ysiak (2003
Wystawy: 419).
454
Theodosia Robertson
turn, illustrate another way to understand its nature and its

significance for Schulzs creative output.
The Dual Life of The Idolatrous Book
The first underestimated aspect of The Idolatrous Book is its dual
existence as a collection of some twenty-eight loose graphics (plus
covers and frontispieces) that we know today and as a handful of
finished portfolios surviving in the national museums of Warsaw and
Krakow, the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, and in private
collections (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 420). Critics routinely note the
significance of Schulzs choice of the archaic spelling of Xiga for the
collection and its implications for the concept of the book in Schulzs
prose. In practice, the complete number of graphics termed The
Idolatrous Book functioned as a reservoir from which a selection of
graphics some ten or twelve to a maximum of twenty could be
made. Having this reservoir allowed Schulz to create several dozen
individual books with specific recipients in mind. The Idolatrous
Book lived a double life as the larger collection (never bound) and as
the bound portfolios, the individualized teki entitled The Idolatrous
Book (Chmurzyski 1990).
At the time Schulz was creating the graphics of The
Idolatrous Book, 1920-1922, he was working on bookplates (1919 to
1921) for a private collection of erotica belonging to his Drohobycz
friend Stanisaw Weingarten (1920) and for Lww bibliophile,
Maksymilian Goldstein (1920-22). Highly personal artistic
conceptions designed for particular recipients, the bookplates were
also the genesis of the clich-verre process that Schulz ultimately
employed for the prints of The Idolatrous Book.4 He began making the
teki around 1924; he created a cover and a title page or frontispiece for
each portfolio-book which he bound himself (Ficowski 1988: 6).

4
Schulzs use of discarded photographic plates for the clich-verres of The Idolatrous
Book bridged high and low culture (as we so often see in his fiction). The Idolatrous
Book literally grew from tandeta trash since Schulz availed himself of discarded
commercial photographic plates to produce his own clich-verres. Research into the
technical side of Schulzs graphic work shows how literally Schulzs art emerged
from popular culture: ordinary commercial photographic plates and refuse from the
waste bins of Bertold Schenkelbachs photography studio (Leszczewska-Wodarska
and Wodarski 1995: 223).

Certain graphics consistently provided opening and closing
frames for the bound individual portfolios. The opening graphic was
entitled Dedykacja (Dedication), followed by a doublet of graphics
now identified as Odwieczna ba (The Eternal Fairy Tale I/The
Eternal Fairy Tale II); closing graphics were the doublet Xi
ga
bawochwalcza (The Booke of Idolatry/The Booke of Idolatry I)
(all reproduced in Ficowski 1988). Within this frame, however, the
sequence of images was variously arranged. The frontispiece of the
surviving portfolio in the National Museum of Warsaw contains a list
of nineteen graphics titles, with ten lined out. Lists of titles did not
always reflect the actual portfolio contents. Schulz sometimes gave
different titles to the same graphic, or different graphics got the same
title (Ficowski 1988: 16-17).
The sequential order for the graphics between the covers,
frontispieces, and Dedication and the closing graphics is something
of a reconstruction. As Ficowski wrote in 1988, [Schulz] seems not
to have had any established order in mind, with the exception of the
first and last print the remaining prints may be arranged at
random. Steadfastly opposing the notion of some hidden narrative to
be deciphered, Ficowskis view was that the sequence depends upon
the order of the graphics creation. We can see only that some
technically inferior ones were probably created earlier (Ficowski
1988: 17). To produce a complete, contemporary version of Schulzs
Idolatrous Book, Ficowski assembled twenty-six graphics according
to the Warsaw National Museum order, supplementing them with
seven other prints not included in this portfolio but distributed
according to [Ficowskis] own judgement throughout the book. The
result was the 1988 Interpress edition of Xiga bawochwalcza in its
English version entitled The Booke of Idolatry (Ficowski 1988: 53).
For the 1992 centenary celebrations honoring Bruno Schulz,
another assembly of prints was made for the Warsaw Museum of
Literature exhibit. In the Ad Memoriam catalog to that exhibit, curator
Wojciech Chmurzyski reiterates that the portfolios had no
established order. He characterizes the complete set as an ideal:
Schulz supplied all his graphics with authorial title, often in different
sounding versions and together with his signature he placed them onto
cardboard surfaces upon which he pasted the actual prints. Individual
portfolios with covers decorated with drawings porte-folio as well as
drawn title pages were compositions worked up individually for each set.
456
Theodosia Robertson
These sets were treated very freely: from several to a maximum of 20
graphics in a set (teka). Some themes of the Book have different versions,
sometimes differing only in details, sometimes taking a completely
different form. For our exhibit we show the ideal, never before in this
completed set, all 30 possible themes and variations, from Introduction
or Dedication to the graphic closing the cycle entitled in two
completely differently developed forms. (Chmurzyski 1995: 15)
The graphics of The Idolatrous Book have also been

organized into clusters according to the types of females represented:
the androgynous ingnue, the mature Undula, and finally the sexual
tormentor/temptress of Bestie (The Beasts).5 The increasing
intensity of the female images from ingnue to dominatrix implies a
sequence, while the first graphic, Dedication, functions as an
interpretive key (alas, ambiguous) that is rooted in Schulzs own
sexual identity (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 420-421).
Lists of titles diverging from portfolio contents, different titles
for the same graphic, different graphics with the same title, thematic
clusters, and above all no set order for the prints suggest that The
Idolatrous Book was a fluid entity. Since there seems never to have
been a portfolio that contained all the graphics, the entire collection
the ideal offered certain possibilities. Its flexibility meant that the
collection of graphics could function in a more protean way than a
book in the conventional sense of a fixed and finished product. Within
its frame of opening and closing graphics, the complete set of the
Idolatrous Book was a source from which Schulz culled images to
engage particular aficionado recipients. Clusters of variations on
erotic themes in the graphics enabled him to make individualized
choices. Personalizing the portfolios in selection and sequence
allowed the collection both to respond to its creators needs (Schulzs
self-portrait appears in almost all prints) and to be adjusted to please
the erotic preferences of a recipient (perhaps including some of the
recognizable Drohobyczans portrayed).
Schulz probably made several dozen portfolios; technically,
he would have been able to reproduce several dozen graphics from
each individual plate in the entire cycle (Leszczewska-Wodarska and
Wodarski 1995: 223). When the publisher Rj made an offer to

5
Cf. Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak (1994: 134-138) and also Sulikowski (1994: 185188); Magorzata Kitowska-ysiak finalized her concept in her entries in Sownik
schulzowski (2003). See also Kuryluk (1987: 145-9) and Dijkstra (1998).

Schulz for ten to twenty-one folios (not a large number), he declined.
In an April 1934 letter to Zenon Waniewski Schulz explained his
reasons succinctly: first, the process was costly (perhaps in Schulzs
financial circumstances), and secondly, it was laborious the
technique was not for mass production (Schulz 1988: 73). If by
1934 Schulz had already exhausted the number of impressions that
could be made from the first plates, he would indeed have to make
new ones, but the several hundred zloty offered by Rj would recoup
some expenses. Time was surely a factor; early 1934 was a peak
period of activity and change: Cinnamon Shops had been published;
the romance with Zofia Nakowska was on, and Schulz had met
Jzefina Szeliska the year before (Jarz
bski 1999: 223-224). He was
anxious to produce more fiction that would capitalize on his success
with Cinnamon Shops.
Nevertheless, Schulzs explanation seems uncharacteristically
resolute, even disingenuous. His letter avoided the obvious practical
consideration: he could not risk the notoriety of any publication of
erotic art that would jeopardize his job. Moreover, publication of The
Idolatrous Book would change its nature: it would fix the graphics
sequence and fluidity would end. Printing would remove Schulzs
personal experience with, and control over, the content. He would not
be able to present personalized portfolios as gifts. Intimacy of
communication would evaporate a complaint that appeared after the
publication of Cinnamon Shops when he was laboring to complete a
second volume of stories. Even though Schulzs circle of portfolio
recipients dwindled and prints were sold off separately, he still
returned to these works; some personal satisfaction working on the
collection did not abate. He changed the prints in the series, added
new compositions, and altered some titles. In short, both as the larger
number of graphics and as the smaller portfolios, The Idolatrous Book
remained a living work.
What does this dual life of The Idolatrous Book as a living
creation in two forms, an ideal collection and individual portfolios
say about the concept of Schulzs artistic book? It suggests a
parallel with Schulzs fiction: just as his two slim volumes of short
stories are parts of Schulzs larger imaginative world, never
completely formulated in prose, so too the bound portfolios are parts
of his larger erotic vision that of all the graphics, loose and not
bound, open and changeable, thus bearing a hallmark of true creation.
458
Theodosia Robertson
In Schulzs fiction the narrator discovers many books but seeks the
Authentic from which the apokryfy and falsyfikaty derive (Schulz
1989: 105). Schulzs Idolatrous Book exists in an analogous duality
where its portfolios are individual incarnations of an ideal Idolatrous
Book, a larger, changing vision with its shifting variations on erotic
themes.
In this dual existence of The Idolatrous Book, as we might
expect, it is only in the covers, frontispieces, and closing two graphics
that we find images of bound, folio-like books (see Covers II, III, IV,
Frontispiece V, and The Booke of Idolatry version I and II in
Ficowski 1988: 58, 60, 62, 65 and 92, 93). Two covers and one
frontispiece (and perhaps a second) allude to holy books; their thick
ruffled pages frame the entire collection (see Covers The Booke of
Idolatry II [58] and The Booke of Idolatry IV [62]). In the covers
and frontispieces, the males, including Schulzs self-portrait, are
garbed as priests; some wear hats associated with Jewish elders.6
Between the covers or frontispieces and the closing doublet The
Booke of Idolatry (versions I and II) that is, internally, so to speak,
within the entire collection and the portfolios no books appear. The
graphic Undula u artystw (Undula with the Artists) shows the
female Undula perusing not a book but unbound portfolio leaves
which lay on the floor as if discarded. She seems unaffected by them,
indifferent. When a bound book does appear in the closing graphics, it
is the offering of Schulz, dressed not as a priest (as in the covers) but
as an ordinary craftsman-artist. The portfolios aspire to be an earthly,
human offering to a fickle idol.7

6
As Jan Boski observed, Schulzs idolatry means religious adoration, the table of
ritual and the well, and their opposite, the profanity of the female foot and basin.
These sets of associations, spiritual and carnal, mingle in Schulzs art. While the
woman may signify a sinful distraction for the elders, for Schulz the artist she is
present as an alternative object of study, equivalent in perfection to the traditional
object of study for Jewish males, Torah. In interior scenes, a basin frequently appears
at the bed of the coveted woman, a reminder of the well and ritual washing (Bloski
1993: 54-68).
7
Kris Van Heuckelom (2006) treats the Idolatrous Book as an autoreferential artifact
[that] arouses reflections about its own artistic genealogy.

Erotic Role Play
The second underestimated aspect of The Idolatrous Book is the
similarity between many scenes of its graphics and visual enactments
typical of erotic role play. In addition to their numerous cultural and
artistic allusions, graphics such as Jej garderobiana (The Dresser),
Zabawa w ogrodzie (Merrymaking in the Garden), or wi
to
wiosny (Rite of Spring) also resemble erotic role play in which
participants act out highly formalized erotic scenes. Such scenes are
governed by rules and rituals; participants employ a particular
vocabulary of poses, props, costume, and setting. Enactments are
scripted visually (and to a lesser degree, verbally), and they may have
an audience of viewers.8 Just as actual erotic role play involves
participants and viewers familiar with the script, the scenes in the
graphics in The Idolatrous Book imply a true viewer. The true
viewer understands the visual vocabulary, the erotic rhetoric, of the
scene both its sexual connotations here and now and the rich,
centuries-long tradition of their representation in art. The true viewer
can appreciate the degree of variation or originality that Schulzs
graphics contribute to (or play with) the artistic tradition.
Schulzs particular predecessors in the tradition, the genre of
the erotic series, have been researched by art historians (Kasjaniuk
1993; Kitowska-ysiak 1994a, 1994b). It is a genre where lesser and
greater artists meet. Schulzs line in this genre includes the AngloSwiss graphic artist Johann Heinrich Fssli (Henry Fuseli, 1741-1825)
who illustrated William Blake, the Belgian symbolist engraver,
Flicien Rops (1833-1898), who illustrated selections from Charles
Baudelaire, and Aubrey Beardsley who illustrated Oscar Wildes
Salome (1894), well-known in Poland. Other artists in the latter
nineteenth century linked their art with general literary themes and
produced a series: Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), Gustave Moreau
(1826-1898), Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), Gustav Klimt (1862-1918),
and Klimts student, the notorious Egon Schiele (1890-1918).
8
In the world of BDSM typical scenes are: slaves (males pulling carts or chariots),
mistresses, corporal punishment, doctors, nurses, office. Scenes are highly scripted
with sets, costume, props, some dialogue; they are accessible today through the
internet. See also the work of documentary photographer Susan Meiselas that shows
an elite New York salon on Fifth Avenue (August et al. 2001).
460
Theodosia Robertson
In addition to these artists, fin de sicle erotic art was invigorated by the appearance of Japanese Shunga or erotic prints. The Japanese artists asymmetry, color contrast techniques, and frankly sexual
scenes inspired the artwork (including erotic) of artists such as Edgar
Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.9 For sophisticated connoisseurs of the 1920s like Schulzs friend Stanisaw Weingarten, a personal erotic series for private or semi-private delectation combined
psychological dimensions with refined aesthetic tastes cognizant of a
long, rich tradition.
Schulzs erotic mini-dramas of masochism and fetishism, their
generic titles, characters, plots, costumes, and props are clichs of
erotic role play that belong to a subculture as lively in the twenty-first
century as it was in Schulzs time and centuries before. However
flourishing in the literary and art worlds (and wherever else) such
practices were in the 1920s and 1930s, conventional society labeled
them abnormal or perversions. In contemporary psychosexual terminology they are categorized as compulsive sexual behaviors, variations along a continuum of sexual practices, part of the repertoire of
human psychosexual practices considered unusual relative to cultural
norms.10 Fetishism and masochism are much more visible in popular
culture today than a century ago; the secrecy and scandal associated
with them has dissipated substantially. Compulsive sexual behaviors
often cause no particular stress or disruption of normal functioning
(non-paraphilic); when they do cause stress and disruption of normal
functioning (paraphilic), they may be accompanied by depression,
anxiety, and somatic disorders conditions that chronically afflicted
Schulz. The female slippers, feet, whips, leashes, collars, hats, carriages, and horses of his Idolatrous Book all derive from a standard
repertoire of sexually-charged fetish objects readily recognizable in
their culturally conventional forms.11 Their universality confirms

9
In 1891 Goncourt published a volume on one of the first Shunga artists to be widely
known in fin de sicle Europe, Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806). Works by this color
print master were exhibited in Paris in 1894.
10
Whether the sole condition of sexual satisfaction or a necessary preliminary to it,
masochism also refers to the deriving of pleasure from being offended, mistreated,
scolded, dominated, and embarrassed or the tendency to court such treatment. It also
refers of any sort of destructive tendencies inward upon oneself. In many cases
orgasm ensues (English and English 1970).
11
Schulz was aware of Freud, although evidently not Jung, to whose understanding of
reality Schulz seems so similar (Jarz
bski 1999). Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), Freuds

Schulzs choice of titles for his graphics as the eternal or the
eternal idol for a dynamic that exists both beyond and within timebound associations particular to different eras and societies.12 The
fetish-triggered erotic enactment is a ritual: it happens over and over
with small variations, but is essentially the same. As reliable as magic,
fetishism and masochism exist eternally on multiple levels: human
sexuality, religion, myth, art.
Whatever Schulzs personal erotic predilections may have
been, clinical descriptions of compulsive sexual behavior aid us in
decoding more accurately (and more frankly) the representations in

less famous contemporary, describes the masochist-fetishist in his seven-volume The
Psychology of Sex (1897-1928) in a way that evokes Schulz: His most sacred ideals
are for all those around him a childish absurdity, or a disgusting obscenity, possibly a
matter calling for the intervention of the policeman. We have forgotten that all these
impulses which to us seem so unnatural the adoration of the foot and other despised
parts of the body, the reverence for the excretory acts and products, the acceptance of
congress with animals, the solemnity of self-exhibition were all beliefs and
practices which, to our remote forefathers, were bound up with the highest
conceptions of life and the deepest ardors of religion Yet, regarded as a whole and
notwithstanding the frequency with which they witness to congenital morbidity, the
phenomenon of erotic symbolism can scarcely fail to be profoundly impressive to the
patient and impartial student of the human soul. They often seem absurd, sometimes
disgusting, occasionally criminal, they are always when carried to an extreme degree,
abnormal. But of all the manifestations of sexual psychology, normal and abnormal,
they are the most specifically human. More than any others they involve the potently
plastic force of the imagination. They bring before us the individual man, not only
apart from his fellows, but in opposition, himself creating his own paradise. They
constitute the supreme triumph of human idealism (in Gerald and Caroline Greene
1995: 219-220; italics mine).
12
The sexual significance of feet and footgear is common to many human societies. In
modern European culture, fashions and conventions have determined the details of the
fetish object. In eighteenth-century painting, females extend their small feet encased
in curve-heeled shoes; their rococo footwear dangles from swings and peeks out from
beneath rustling skirts in the ftes galantes of Antoine Watteaus Island of Cythera.
Watteaus prototype appears in Schulzs favorite female shoe, a style again popular in
the 1920s and 1930s. Not surprisingly, Schulz used the Island of Cythera as a title for
one of his drawings. In Watteaus work, the shimmering satin-shod and arched feet
are miniaturized in relation to the womens broad hats and billowing dresses. Scenes
within scenes depict the Italian comedy of ancien rgime France with aristocrats
costumed as the traditional characters Harlequin and Columbine acting out lessons
in love. Countless prints were made of these paintings, many by Watteau himself,
since he was an engraver. As an erotic object, the shape and terminology of the shoe
replicates the female body its waisted heel, curved breast and bow or cockard
concealing the cleavage between the toes. Some of this iconography and
terminology was noted in Kasjaniuk 1993.
462
Theodosia Robertson
his art. They confirm the contradiction at the heart of the eroticism we
find in The Idolatrous Book, namely, that this form of sexual
expression combines fantasy and formula. As Jerzy Jarz
bski (1999:
112-113) notes, the similar erotic scenes repeat as if the artist
continually tried again and again from the beginning, persistently to
capture something that is impossible to grasp and whose essence does
not lie in precision of form but in the whole concept, in emotion which
accompanies the very process of creation. Crafted by a very
particular artist working out his emotions in the process of creation,
The Idolatrous Book requires a very particular viewer to complete the
combined sensual and aesthetic frisson which is the ultimate success
of the erotic portfolio. If the scenic enactments are repeated for the
combined sensual and esthetic power they exert on viewers who share
the psychosexual sensibility, it matters little that such repetition entails
monotony for viewers who do not.13
How, might we ask, does the true viewer participate? Within
the graphics the Schulz self-portrait is often approaching from behind
the female, toward the back of her foot; other males approach or view
the females at an angle, from the side or from behind. The eyes of the
avid males and bored, distracted female or females do not meet:
enactment and not communication is what counts (Sulikowski: 1994).
Schulzs self-portrait sometimes looks out at us, seeking the viewer
outside the scene (Dedication, Undula w nocy (Undula at Night),
Procesja (Procession)). Females may gaze distractedly outward as
well. Meantime, the eye of a third party, the viewer, travels along the
lines of the figures placement to a point where the lines in the whole
composition converge: the focus of the action, the female foot or shoe.
The viewer, outside the graphics, is invited into fetishism, to share an
imagined worship of the depicted scene itself. The visual participation
of a complicit audience for a scene of intimate activity creates the
final tension of delectation.
The faces and bodies of the females in the erotic scripts of The
Idolatrous Book tend toward schematic depiction without grotesque
deformation. Whether nude, in transparent shifts, or costumed as sexy
maids in aprons and black stockings, the self-absorbed females are
unmoved by the men around them. Passive foci for active males, the
females acquiesce disdainfully to the male adoring an extended female

13
Clinicians estimate that compulsive sexual behavior affects about 5% of the

population (Coleman, Raymond, McBean 2003).

leg or kissing a female foot which has tossed off one delicate shoe.
Male and female figures appear in variations of similar poses with
repeating foci (feet, shoes, stockings, or objects like whips or
household substitutes like a wicker carpet beater) so familiar in the
psychology of sexuality as fetishes. The male in the form of a realistic
but grotesque dog-man, dwarfish or servile (often Schulzs selfportrait), is poised for abasement before one or more women. Multiple
heads of similar males suggest movement, perhaps even a sequence of
positions involving the same man. Schulzs self-portrait may appear
more than once, as a kind of divided self.
The female faces are little individualized, and even allowing
for changing conventions of beauty, the women are not particularly
attractive. Although the women are depicted whole and entire, the
artist does not seem to study them and often they are somewhat flat
and incompletely rendered (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 17). They are
perfection to the male because the fetish object he needs attaches to
them and because they acquiesce to the staging of his erotic
enactments. They dominate and determine the spatial arrangement (as
Wodzimierz Bolecki and others have noted) simply by being present
and in character. The male half man, half dog or tiger (a nocturnal
hunter) gazes at the females accoutered with the requisite whips,
stockings, and high heels, adjuncts to abasement and the foot, and
depicted as highly stylized repetitions. The crouching, grotesque male
is placed low, crawling forward, approaching in anticipation with
mouth open and tongue poised to kiss or suck an extended female foot
often just pulled out of a shoe.14 Some males appear so overwrought
that they are curled up, fetal and gibbering on the floor.
As erotic fantasies that are little dramas, the recurring erotic
scenes of The Idolatrous Book reflect the high theatricality of this
compulsive sexual behavior (Kulig-Janarek 1994: 161-166). In many
graphics of The Idolatrous Book, peeping alternates with proclaiming,
and the artists private fantasies are shared by a gaggle of other males.
Recognizable details of Schulzs town provide a backdrop for groups
of people passing one another in the street or town square. The town

14
The most prominent fetish but not the only one is the foot fetish or retifism
(from the eighteenth-century French novelist, Nicolas Edm Retif). Sexual allure
resides in the enactment of a fantasy. Gloves, shoes, handkerchiefs, or body parts
(such as feet, locks of hair, ears) may stimulate sexual arousal. An extended female
leg is a symbolic phallus; a tiny foot encased in a delicate shoe, a symbolic vulva.
464
Theodosia Robertson
may witness in the distance to the action in the interiors (Chmurzyski

1992: 16). The mingling of private space and public space allows
scenes of erotic activity to have many viewers inside, behind closed
doors, while private rituals pour out onto the public square or street.
Private sexuality is raucously proclaimed to the public and the viewer
in the graphic Procession. People meet in the open town spaces,
join ritual-like processions of men of various ages, often older and
sometimes blind (a Freudian symbol of castration of which Schulz
must have been aware); males peep at or crowd around a naked
female. Night provides cover but not threat. In only one graphic do the
males really seem capable of harming the female, Undula idzie w
noc (Undula Walks into the Night).15
When Schulz turned to writing around 1925 with Noc lipcowa
(July Night, completed between 1925 and 1927), the graphics of The
Idolatrous Book had been done, but he was still working on the covers
of the individual portfolios. Schulzs 1934 letter to Zenon Waniewski
indicates that even a decade later The Idolatrous Book was still fresh
in his mind (Schulz 1988: 73). As Schulz wrote in his exchange with
Witkiewicz the next year, writing allowed him to express himself
more fully, to expand beyond the circumscribed audience of erotic
art but his subject matter remained a given (Schulz 1988: 111-112).
Schulzs given appears in his fiction where some of the
females of The Idolatrous Book seem to have counterparts; the saucy
maid and Undula can be seen as counterparts to Adela and the
Infantka to Bianka (Kitowska-ysiak 2003: 421). However, the fully
depicted recumbent nudes and local beauties of The Idolatrous Book
are absent from the stories. Instead, Schulz renders his fictional
females through deformation he formerly reserved for men in the
visual art of The Idolatrous Book. Whereas women had appeared
whole and entire in The Idolatrous Book, in Schulzs fiction they
emerge verbally through grotesque fragments of synecdoche (a part
for the whole, or partialism) or metonymy (an associated detail, or
fetishism). The partialism of the foot fetish in The Idolatrous Book has
now become partialism of other body parts or dress in the stories.
Females are reduced to eyelashes (cashier in Noc lipcowa/July

15
Here the top hats typical of Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas males in the demi-monde
are placed on two sinister faces. The demi-monde of Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas
combined the public and private; scenes of music hall, ballet, and brothel allowed
depiction of scantily clad females viewed by fully dressed males.

Night), a dcolletaged, gold-toothed, painted torso (cashier in
Wiosna/Spring), dusky women with ingratiating smiles (Druga
jesie/A Second Autumn), enamel eyes, leather and garter buckles
(Manekiny/Tailors Dummies), a lacy, black shawl on stilts
(Wichura/The Gale) just to list a few examples of faceless and
disembodied female characters.
Schulzs fiction also expands the range of male sexual
paraphilias beyond what we see in The Idolatrous Book. Father
exhibits the klismaphilia of the enema and chamber pot
(Nawiedzenie/Visitation) and can be reduced to submission by
Adelas tickling (Traktat o manekinach/Treatise on Tailors
Dummies).16 In Genialna epoka (The Age of Genius) a revelatory
childhood experience of art merges with sexuality, signaled by the
appearance of Shloma whose thievery of female articles is a hallmark
of compulsive sexual behavior. Commonplace manifestations typical
of Schulzs time appear as well: small, cheap photographic images for
the mass market called postcards (although it was actually illegal to
send them through the mail) appear in Sierpie (August). The
young narrator finds himself viewing such pictures on cards,
concealed, then brought out and held in cousin Emils hand. Examples
could be multiplied.
From True Viewer to True Reader
As Schulz formulated his larger imaginative world in writing, the
distinctive features of erotic art its dual existence as an ideal vision
and as individual portfolio-incarnations, its intimacy and reliance
upon a shared understanding with its particular audience did not
disappear. The true viewer essential to full appreciation of The
Idolatrous Book found a subsequent analogue in Schulzs larger
verbal world as the true reader or czytelnik prawdziwy whom
Schulzs narrator posits and addresses in the story The Book. As we
read there, some ten years after The Idolatrous Book,

16
Fetish paraphilia may also gravitate toward the elemental where their range spans
diaperism, feces, smells, and body odors. The variant termed undinism focuses on
urine; in the variant termed klismaphilia, medically unnecessary enemas provide
sexual gratification. In a category related to fetishism termed partialism, a person
obtains arousal from observation of or sexual contact with parts of a human body
(such as feet, breasts, or buttocks).
466
Theodosia Robertson
czytelnik prawdziwy, na jakiego liczy ta powie, zrozumie i tak, gdy mu
spojrz
g
boko w oczy i na dnie samym zalni
tym blaskiem. W tym
krtkim a mocnym spojrzeniu, w przelotnym cini
ciu r
ki pochwyci on,
przejmie, odpozna i przymknie oczy z zachwytu nad t recepcj
g
bok . Bo czy pod stoem, ktry nas dzieli, nie trzymamy si
wszyscy
tajnie za r
ce? (Schulz 1989a: 105)
(any true reader and this story is only addressed to him will understand
me anyway when I look him straight in the eye and try to communicate
my meaning. A short, sharp look or a light clasp of his hand will stir him
into awareness, and he will blink in rapture at the brilliance of The Book.
For, under the imaginary table that separates me from my readers, dont
we secretly clasp each others hand?; Schulz 1989b: 117)
Communication with a true receiver who understands, shares,

and participates in his imaginative world was essential to Schulzs
creative work, regardless of medium. Only the true viewer who is
responsive to particular kinds of erotic art could fully appreciate The
Idolatrous Book. Seeking such a receptive other is a leitmotif of
Schulzs fiction, his voluminous correspondence, as well as his most
important personal relationships, especially those with women,
throughout his life.
Schulz considered his creative work to be rooted in a unity. At
the peak of his creative powers in 1934-35, he characterized that unity
in an essay for Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Describing the
fundamental images of his graphic work and its relation to Cinnamon
Shops, Schulz invoked an analogy with a tangle of threads, a cord of
life, and a web of reality. Visual images function like
nitek w roztworze, dokoa ktrych krystalizuje si
dla nas sens wiata.
[S]ztuka nie rozwi zuje tego sekretu do koca. Pozostaje on
nierozwikany. W
ze, na ktry dusza zostaa zasuplana, nie jest
faszywym w
zem, rozchodz cym si
za poci gni
ciem koca.
Przeciwnie, coraz cianiej si
zw
la. Manipulujemy przy nim, ledzimy
bieg nici, szukamy koca i z tych manipulacyj powstaje sztuka [] W
dziele sztuki nie zostala jeszcze przerwana p
powina cz ca je z caloci
naszej problematyki, kr y tam jeszcze krew taj
mnicy [] W jaki
sposb doznajemy g
bokiej satysfakcji z tego rozlunienia tkanki
rzeczywistoci, jestemy zainteresowani w tym bankructwie realnoci.
(Schulz 1975: 63-65).
(threads in the solution around which the significance of the world
crystallizes for us. [] Art [] does not resolve that secret completely.
The secret stays in a tangle. The knot the soul got itself tied up in is not a

false one that comes undone when you pull the ends. On the contrary, it
draws tighter. We handle it, trace the path of the separate threads, look for
the end of the string, and out of these manipulations comes art [] In a
work of art the umbilical cord linking it with the totality of our concerns
has not yet been severed, the blood of the mystery still circulates [] In
some sense we derive a profound satisfaction from the loosening of the
web of reality; we feel an interest in witnessing the bankruptcy of reality;
Schulz 1988: 110-113).
The erotic representations in Schulzs art which have

analogues in human psychosexual experience constitute a strand in the
same thread that Schulz so positively asserted to run throughout
both his art and fiction. From the 1922 Idolatrous Book, through the
true reader of the 1935 Ksi
ga (The Book), to the June 1941
letters to Anna Pockier, warning her of his complexes and an abyss
that was deeply his own, eroticism and sexuality were inextricably
part of Schulzs life and work. Schulzs tangled secret linked every
aspect of his life.17 In general, however, critics have striven to cordon
off Schulz from dicey sexuality, to keep his genius dignified and
private. Whether compensating for charges of pornography leveled at
his art in the 1920s and 1930s or reflecting a conservative critical
climate, critics maintain that Schulzs eroticism is far from
pornography, that his erotic subjects belong to his private world,
unfulfilled and deeply coded in his subconscious (Chmurzyski 1995:
19). Yet the mingling of private and public in an erotic scene, so
characteristic of the graphics in The Idolatrous Book, toys with
scandal and the illicit. Playing with the shock of public revelation is
part of the erotic thrill. In Schulzs graphics the town becomes the
bedroom and the intimate boudoir/bedrooms are spied upon from the
wings or outside by males. Rococo-inspired scenes such as On
Cythera or The Bench, carnivalesque street scenes of The Infanta
and her Dwarfs, Circus, Rite of Spring, and Procession combine
a highly theatrical sexual paraphilia with Schulzs theatrical vision in
general (Kulig-Janarek 1994: 157, 159).18 Curtains and stages and

17
Schulz objected that psychoanalytical labels eliminated individual uniqueness in art

(Schulz 1988: 157, 159; Kulig-Janarek 1993: 47; Jarz
bski 1989: LXI). Eroticism and
sexuality likewise submerge everyone, even artists and writers, into the great
aggregate of humankind.
18
In Schulzs other works, see the background of his portrait of Stanisaw
Weingarten. Commedia dellarte characters and situations appear in two-thirds of
Schulzs extant artwork. For the theatrical in Schulzs art see Kitowska-ysiak (2003
Theodosia Robertson
468
public streets and squares of the town seem to be all sets in a larger
theatre, a theatrical cosmos constantly revealing its inner mysteries,
particularly its erotic ones. Shielding Schulzs art from charges of
pornography misses a powerful element in the creative power of his
artwork.
Conclusion
The two aspects of Schulzs Idolatrous Book explored here its
duality of form and its similarity to erotic role play enrich our
understanding of Schulzs work because they recognize the relevance
of the dynamics of erotic art. Although Schulzs prose introduces
many more themes, characters, and models of erotic behavior, The
Idolatrous Book constitutes Schulz's first and fundamental book
because the notion of a true viewer/true receiver was first worked out
there. Erotic art epitomized the intimate and participatory experience
that marked all Schulzs creativity. With its fluid and flexible form,
The Idolatrous Book engaged both artist and audience. Today we
might term this form interactive. Although writing gradually
supplemented, even supplanted The Idolatrous Book, it remained a
harbinger of Schulzs larger imaginative book, its concept
formulated more generally in the story The Book. There Schulzs
narrator says:
Nazywam j po prostu Ksi
g , bez adnych okrele i epitetw, i jest w
tej abstynencji i ograniczeniu bezradne westchnienie, cicha kapitulacja
przed nieobj
toci transcendentu, gdy adne sowo, adna aluzja nie
potrafi zalni, zapachnie, spyn tym dreszczem przestrachu,
przeczuciem tej rzeczy bez nazwy, ktrej sam pierwszy posmak na kocu
j
zyka przekracza pojemno naszego zachwytu. C pomgby patos
przymiotnikw i napuszysto epitetw wobec tej rzeczy bez miary,
wobec tej wietnoci bez rachuby. Czytelnik zreszt , czytelnik
prawdziwy, na jakiego liczy ta powie, zrozumie i tak [] (Schulz
1989a: 105)
(I am simply calling it The Book without any epithets or qualifications,
and in this sobriety there is a shade of helplessness, a silent capitulation
before the vastness of the transcendental, for no word, no allusion, can
adequately suggest the shiver of fear, the presentiment of a thing without a

wiat-teatr: 261) and Chmurzyski (1992): #27 (p. 45 Cyrk, 1920-22), #106 (p.
129), #137 (p. 160), #264 (p. 305). Allusions to theatre pervade Schulzs fictional
world (cf. Robertson 1991: 119-126).

name that exceeds all our capacity for wonder. How could an
accumulation of adjectives or a richness of epithets help when one is faced
with that splendiferous thing? Besides, any true reader and this story is
only addressed to him will understand me anyway []; Schulz 1989b:
117)
No longer confined to the erotic as in the visual art of The

Idolatrous Book, in verbal art the Book has become everything
enormous, boundless, inclusive of all reality.19 Nevertheless, those
who understand and appreciate The Book remain a select few, the true
viewers and true readers who can complete the circle of
understanding. For these faithful few, the word, the image, and the
erotic converge in a symbol of all knowledge, the book, which serves
as the most ancient metaphor for the world (and worthy of its archaic
spelling): open, changeable, amenable to the desires of its creator and
its true recipient alike.
Bibliography
August, Richard et al. 2001. Pandoras Box. New York: Trebruk Publishing.
Boski, Jan. 1993. On the Jewish sources of Bruno Schulz in Cross Currents. A
Yearbook of Central European Culture 12: 54-68.
Bolecki, Wodzimierz. 2005. Gender and Sex in Early Polish Modernism:
Przybyszewski, Irzykowski, Witkacy, Schulz in Grimstad, Knut Andreas
and Ursula Phillips (eds). Gender and Sexuality in Ethical Context. Ten
Essays on Polish Prose (Slavica Bergensia 5). Bergen: University of
Bergen, Department of Russian Studies, IKRR: 98-123.
Chmurzyski, Wojciech. 1990. Catalog to Bruno Schulz---40 rysunkw. Lublin:
Galeria Sztuki Sceny Plastycznej KUL.
(ed). 1992. Bruno Schulz 1892-1942: Rysunki i archiwalia ze zbiorw Muzeum
Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie. Warszawa: Muzeum
Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie.
. 1995. Bruno Schulz 1892-1942. Ad memoriam. Koncepcja i ukad wystawy in
Chmurzyski, Wojciech (ed.) Bruno Schulz 1892-1942: Katalog-Pamitnik
Wystawy Bruno Schulz. Ad Memoriam w Muzeum Literatury im. Adama
Mickiewicza w Warszawie. Warszawa: Muzeum Literatury im. Adama
Mickiewicza: 11-20.
Coleman, Eli, Nancy Raymond and Anne McBean. 2003. Assessment and Treatment
of Compulsive Sexual Behavior in Minnesota Medical Association 86: 4247.
Dijkstra, Bram.1998. Idols of Perversity. Fantasies of Feminine Evil in fin de sicle
Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19
As Jan Boski observed, there is one great Book which has endless Commentary
(1993: 54-68).
470
Theodosia Robertson
English, Horace B. and Ava Champney English. 1970. A Comprehensive Dictionary

of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms. A Guide to Usage (10th ed.)
New York: McKay.
Ficowski, Jerzy (ed.) 1988. The Booke of Idolatry. Warsaw: Interpress.
Greene, Gerald and Caroline. S-M. The Last Taboo. 1995. New York: Blue Moon
Press.
Jarz
p in Schulz (1989a): III-CXXV.
. 1999. Schulz. Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnol skie.
. 2003 Rysunek, Weingarten Stanislaw in Bolecki, Wodzimierz, Jerzy
Jarz
bski and Stanisaw Rosiek (eds). Sownik schulzowski. Gdask:
sowo/obraz terytoria: 318-323; 408-409.
Kasjaniuk, Halina. 1993. Rodowody i symbole w grafikach Schulza in Teatr
pamici Brunona Schulza. Gdynia: Uniwersytet Gdaski: 10-25.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata. 1994a. Bruno Schulz Xiga bawochwalcza: wizja
forma analogie in Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata (ed). Bruno Schulz. In
memoriam. 1892-1942. Lublin: Wydawnictwo FIS: 133-151.
. 1994b. Wizje kobiecoci w Xidze bawochwalczej in Jarzebski, Jerzy (ed).
Czytanie Schulza, Krakw: T.I.C.: 251-263.
. 2003. Groteska, Xi
ga bawochwalcza, Akt, Pierrot, Wystawy in
bski and Stanisaw Rosiek (eds). Sownik
schulzowski. Gdask: sowo/obraz terytoria: 131-138; 420-425; 14-19; 259261; 416-419.
Kulig-Janarek, Krystyna. 1993. Schulzowska mitologia: Motywy, w tki, inspiracje w
Xidze Bawochwalczej in Kresy 14: 37-49.
. 1994. Erotyka groteska ironia kreacja in Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata
(ed.) Bruno Schulz. In memoriam. 1892-1942. Lublin: Wydawnictwo FIS:
153-177.
Kuryluk, Ewa. 1987. Salome and Judas in the Cave of Sex. The Grotesque: Origins,
Iconography, Techniques. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press.
Leszczewska-Wodarska, Magorzata and Zbigniew Wodarski. 1995. Xiga
bawochwalcza Brunona Schulza. Kilka uwag o technologii i praktyce
techniki clich verre in Chmurzyski, Wojciech (ed.) Bruno Schulz 18921942. Katalog-Pamitnik Wystawy Bruno Schulz. Ad memoriam w
Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza w Warszawie. Warszawa:
Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza: 222-223.
Robertson, Theodosia. 1991. Bruno Schulz and Comedy in Polish Review 2: 119126.
Schulz, Bruno. 1975. Bruno Schulz. Ksiga listw (ed. J. Ficowski). Krakw:
. 1984. Listy, fragmenty. Wspomnienia o pisarzu (ed. J. Ficowski). KrakwWrocaw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1988. Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz with Selected Prose (ed. J.
Ficowski, tr. W. Arndt and V. Nelson). New York: Harper & Row.
. 1989a. Opowiadania. Wybr esejw i listw (ed. J. Jarz
. 1989b. The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz. New York: Walker and
Company.

Sulikowski, Andrzej. 1994. Schulzowskie sytuacje komunikacyjne in Jarz
bski,
Jerzy (ed.) Czytanie Schulza. Krakw: T.I.C.: 231-250.
Bruno Schulzs Xiga Bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Booke). Image and
Narrative. Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative 15 (Nov. 2006). On line
at http://www.imageandnarrative.be/iconoclasm/heuckelom.htm (consulted
28.01.2007).
Witkiewicz, Stanisaw Ignacy. 1988. Interview with Bruno Schulz (1935) in
Ficowski, Jerzy (ed.) Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz with Selected
Prose. (tr. W. Arndt and V. Nelson). New York: Harper & Row: 107-110.
Bruno Schulz: Between Avant-Garde and Hasidic

Redemption
Alfred Sproede
Abstract: Bruno Schulzs stories have been repeatedly interpreted in the context of
Judaism. Instead of tracing further parallels pointing to the Old Testament, kabbalah,
or other written sources, this article investigates less dignified, even partly ostracized,
popular strands of East European Jewish culture. The new focus is on a set of customs
and rites that are strikingly consonant with Schulzs euphoric tales and their narrative
enactment. In fact, the central source (Sitz im Leben) of the narrative gestures by
which the author tries, as it were, to charm his imagined audience is Hasidic
celebration forms of semi-religious, semi-mundane festivity specific to Galician
Jewish communities.
Institutions of Narrative. The Location (Sitz im Leben) of

Schulzs Stories
In past and present research, the work of Bruno Schulz is frequently
praised for its daring metaphorical procedures and for an original
contribution to the traditions of fantastic literature. Whatever approach
is chosen whether it is readings in the light of psychoanalysis
(Speina 1976) or with respect to decentered images (Lachmann
1992) the style of his stories invariably falls, and justly so, under the
category of a lyrical prose operating beyond the limits of traditional,
mimetic conceptions of literature. The bid for accommodating these
readings to Derridean deconstruction did not come as a great surprise.
Thus, a study published shortly after Schulzs centenary offers new
interpretations highlighting figures of dissemination and inexhaustibleness (Stala 1993: passim). Schulz certainly defies any kind of
interpretive closure; the complexity of his prose is not a philological
artifact. The difficulty of coming to terms with his lyrical roaming is
real.
However, before embarking on exalted metaphors, grand horizons, and the starry sky as, for instance, in the narrators ravished
474
Alfred Sproede
wandering through the blue night of the story Sklepy cynamonowe

(Cinnamon Shops) Schulz frequently ventures a gesture of rescue,
as if he wanted to compensate himself and his readers for an impending insecurity. He seems to be conscious of what Walter Benjamin, in
his groundbreaking article Der Erzhler. Betrachtungen zum Werk
Nikolai Lesskows (1936), called the dilemma of the narrator devoid
of counsel (1968: 86). Schulz actually has the resources to address
this dilemma. The insecurity or instability of his narrative semantics
has a counterpoint in a certain set of narrative institutions. The wanderings under the blue sky are, in fact, controlled transgressions,
escapes from a distinct semantic and pragmatic order.
The order underpinning Schulzs storytelling surfaces whenever
the narrator affirms or rather conjures familiarity with his audience
and tries to get in touch with his reader. The story entitled Wiosna
(Spring) has this comment after the first lyrical outburst: But we
have not finished yet; we can go deeper. There is nothing to fear. Give
me your hand, take another step: we are at the roots now (Schulz
1987: 43;1 Ale nie tu koniec jeszcze, zst
pujmy g
biej. Tylko bez
strachu. Prosz
mi poda r
k
, krok jeszcze i jestemy u korzeni;
Schulz 1989: 159).2 Other stories can step down into the regions of the
fantastic because the narrator, beforehand, has assured his reader
against all risks and dangers:
[C]zytelnik prawdziwy, na jakiego liczy ta powie, zrozumie i tak, gdy
mu spojrz
g
tym blaskiem. W tym
krtkim a mocnym spojrzeniu, w przelotnym cini
ciu r
ki pochwyci on,
przejmie, odpozna i przymknie oczy z zachwytu nad t recepcj
g
bok . Bo czy pod stoem, ktry nas dzieli, nie trzymamy si
wszyscy
tajnie za r
ce? (Op 105)
([A]ny true reader and this story is only addressed to him will
understand me anyway when I look him straight in the eye and try to
communicate my meaning. A short sharp look or a light clasp of his hand
will stir him into awareness, and he will blink in rapture at the brilliance
of The Book. For, under the imaginary table that separates me from my
readers, dont we secretly clasp each others hand?; San 1)
The fictitious situation in which Schulz places this communicative act

seems to be in keeping with the central thesis of his literary

1
2

Between Avant-Garde and Hasidic Redemption
475

manifesto, Mityzacja rzeczywistoci (The Mythologizing of
Reality). According to this text, all human utterances are produced in
the framework of compelling linguistic and thematic forms. The
interlocutors who hold each others hand under the table owe their
mutual understanding and the meaningfulness of their utterances to an
unexplained but imperative institution, to a fundamental myth or a
network of symbolic forms. Every utterance is framed in a set of
language games and Schulz conceives of them as forms of
existence, defining the horizon of what can be expressed at all.3 The
aim of this article is to describe these forms and to identify some of
the institutions on which Schulz can lean as a storyteller.
Since the time when the term was first developed in Protestant
theology under the auspices of a history of biblical forms, the notion
of a location in life (Sitz im Leben) was meant to seize the
existential embedding of biblical texts according to their function as
historical relations, edifying tales, sermons, songs, or codes of conduct
for the religious community.4 In an analogous perspective, we can
determine a set of cultural institutions when looking into the lifeworldly embedding of Schulzs texts. These institutions, in turn,
should offer forms of compensation for the storytellers propensity for
semantic indetermination. In his letter to Witkiewicz, Schulz warns
his readers against any attempt to decipher the philosophical credo of
Cinnamon Shops (credo filozoficzne Sklepw cynamonowych; Op
444); distrusting all forms of explanation of his tales, he advises
readers and scholars rather to describe the reality (opis rzeczywistoci; Op 444) of the stories. And it is this very task a description of
the texts reality or pragmatic dimension my essay is about.
It is a commonplace of scholarship that we cannot circumscribe the location of Schulzs stories without addressing Jewish
tradition. The authors transformation of themes borrowed from the
Old Testament, his interest in heretical movements and messianism
has been broadly discussed (cf. Goldfarb 1993, Lewi 1989,
Lindenbaum 1994, Panas 1997). My article will deal with a closely
affiliated issue, which has drawn much less attention, namely the
tradition of Hasidism. Although Schulz frequently turns to this
tradition suffice it to mention his numerous drawings between 1930

3
Fragments of this quasi-theory can be gathered from the manifesto The

Mythologizing of Reality and from Schulzs 1935 letter to Witkacy.
4
Cf. Berger (1987: 156-161) for a succint presentation of this method.
476
Alfred Sproede
and 1935,5 we still lack (as far as I can see) detailed research on how
his narrative art relates to Hasidism. I consider the Hasidic
background to be relevant to Schulz and to his stories in several
respects. The central issues are: (1) the atmosphere of Hasidic
celebrations and entertainment; (2) the narrative and rhetorical
institutions connected to and embedded in these celebrations; (3) the
fantastic genres of Hasidic popular literature and, finally, (4) Schulzs
attitude toward sexuality, toward the evil propensities (Hebr. yetser
hara) and the world of impurity. As a conclusion to my article, I
will try to grasp Schulzs attempt at a literary transformation of
Messianism and his attitude toward avant-garde literature.
Let me start with a series of remarks about the specific culture
of Hasidic celebration and some of its social and, especially, narrative
institutions.6
Schulz, the Pragmatics of Storytelling, and Hasidism
Hasidism originated in the Eastern provinces of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth (the kresy) around the middle of the eighteenth
century; it can be defined as a movement of practical, popular piety
opposing the dogmas of the learned elites in the name of individual
religious experience and personal communion with God (devekut).
After the crises and the wars of the seventeenth century (the era of the
Deluge), this movement captures, transforms, and pacifies the
growing messianic expectations; against the apocalyptic mood of the
times, it celebrates the sanctity of everyday life. One of the decisive
themes of the Hasidic movement passionately combated by the
Gaon of Vilna, the formal authority of rabbinic Judaism in Eastern

5
Four of these are reproduced in Sownik schulzowski (Bolecki, Jarz

bski and Rosiek
2006: 213, 293, 322): Chasydzi przy studni (Hasidim at the Well; ca. 1930),
Chasydzi na miejskim placu (Hasidim at the Town Square; before 1933),
Chasydzi przy stole biesiadnym (Hasidim at the Festive Table; ca. 1933), and
Chasydzi na ulicy (Hasidim on the Street; before 1934); however, Ficowskis
standard edition of Xiga bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book) indicates different
titles for the second and the fourth of the drawings: W Jerozolimie (In Jerusalem)
and ydzi (Jews). Cf. Kitowska-ysiak (1994: 120) for an untitled further drawing
supposedly representing a Hasidic assembly.
6
For the following paragraphs I draw mainly on Dubnow (1982 [1931-1932]),
Haumann (1990: 48-56), Jacobson (1989), Mandel (1963), Scholem (1954: 325-350;
1971: 78-141, 176-227), and Tollet (1992: 129-41, 189-200).
477

Europe is the conviction that the believer does not gain proximity to
God by studying the Torah or by observing Talmudic Law, but rather
in moments of joy and wordly exaltation; this ecstatic side of Hasidic
religious practices admits also dancing and other forms of emotional
elevation.
On the other side in a way reminiscent of German Pietism
Hasidic culture advocates a mystical, inner worship which stands in
opposition to established forms of Church piety. This does not imply a
complete rejection of the Rabbinic Law but a weakening of a number
of traditional institutions: the Talmudic school (yeshiva), ritual
slaughter and, finally, the Synagogue as the hitherto exclusive place of
worship. The Hasidic community gathers around the charismatic
figure of the Tsaddik (i.e. the righteous man, the just one), who gives
not only religious but also practical advice. In many cases the Tsaddik
is celebrated for miraculous healings, the force of his amulets, or other
magical performances. The most famous Tsaddiks acting frequently
in a sort of dynastic descendancy are famous for their ways of
holding court and of attracting pilgrims from distant regions for the
Jewish Holidays. The Tsaddiks constituency assembles around his
table in illuminated spiritual conversation; alcohol, by the way, is not
excluded from these pious banquets. Descriptions of Hasidic
assemblies already appearing in legends about the Baal Schem Tow
(1700-1760), the founding father of the Hasidic movement relate
scenes where worshippers embrace the Torah rolls and lead them onto
the dance floor.7
The secularized perception of Hasidic poetry and celebration
can be illustrated by a text which Robert Musil published in 1922 after
attending a stage presentation of the Vilna theater company, famous
for its adaptation of Hasidic themes:
[A]us der Umwelt chassidischer Sagen, einer phantastischen Welt, die
[] ein Gemisch der aller Mystik gemeinsamen Vorstellungen mit
schweren Trumen und einem etwas negerhaften Geisterglauben ist. Aber
diese Mischwelt von Religion und Aberglaube ist ein guter Boden fr
schauspielerische Leistungen, welche den Geist traumhaft entfhren. Es
singt und psalmodiert leise und unaufhrlich in alten Riten zwischen den

7
Cf. the story The Master joins in the dance, which is retold in Martin Bubers The
Tales of the Hasidim (1949: 134). A more recent literary portrait of Hasidic everyday
life is to be found in Julian Stryjkowskis novel Austeria (1966); on the position of the
Tsaddik, cf. also Mandel (1963: 166-183).
478
Alfred Sproede
Kulissen dieser Spiele, hebt sich zu vollem Gesang und versinkt wieder in
die halbe Melodie eines Sprechers, so da man nie wei, wo die
Wirklichkeit aufhrt, der Traum, vielleicht auch nur ein fremdes Gebet
beginnt, oder schon wieder die gewhnliche Wirklichkeit weiterluft: es
ist in dieser Kunst ein fortwhrendes Passieren nach zwei Richtungen,
zwischen Profanem und Religisem, so wie es auch in den Menschen ist,
die sie schildert als Menschen, die in ihrem wohlgeflligen Hndlerdasein
nicht intimer zuhause sind als in einem bergeordneten Geistesdasein, das
sie ebenso sehr zu frchten, wie zu lieben scheinen. Die Truppe besitzt
[] einen Sprecher [] Vielleicht sollte ich ihn einen Snger nennen,
denn die Grundlage seiner Klanggebilde ist zweifellos eine
Tempelliturgie, aber so wie rhythmische Prosa nicht blo ein Vers minus
irgend etwas ist, sondern ein selbstndiges Kunstgebilde, ist sein
Sprachgesang ein wundersames, aus ihm aufsteigendes, sich in der
Einsamkeit wiegendes Gewchs, das in der weiten Welt nirgends sein
Vorkommen hat als in ihm. [D]ieser Schauspieler [] lt langsam seine
Worte steigen, sich verschlingen und wieder in ein Huflein Stille
zusammensinken. [M]an wird von einem aufregenden Verlangen erfat,
diesen Wortarchitekten von Klangmrchenschlssern sich an anderen
Aufgaben erproben zu sehn [] (1922: passim)
For a reader of Schulzs tales, this description of the Hasidic passage

between the profane and the religious may render a familiar echo:
the performance of actors who takes our mind to distant places, the
psalmodizing, which heaves itself up to full song before
descending into the half-litany melody of a speaker, so that you never
know where reality ends and where begins a dream or only the prayer
of another person. Musil comments on the term litany
(Sprachgesang) by evoking a lonely vegetation swaying its branches,
which actually occurs nowhere in the world and the verbal
architects of sonorous fairy castles. This is the atmosphere in which
Schulzs incantations and cantilenas seem to have their origin.
Remember the opening lines of Cinnamon Shops, the hymn
in praise of autumn and the discourse on Adela, who on those luminous mornings [] returned from the market, like Pomona emerging
from the flames of day, spilling from her basket the colorful beauty of
the sun (Schulz 1977: 25;8 Adela wracaa w wietliste poranki, jak
Pomona z ognia dnia rozagwionego, wysypuj c z koszyka barwn
urod
soca; Op 3). If we had to designate a characteristic feature of
Schulzs prose besides the winks (migi; Op 65; mrugni
cie;
Op 15; wymowne spojrzenie; Op 37; ciche znaki porozumiewaw
8
479

cze; Op 97) and other gestures of a narrator eager to find accomplices
in his audience we would inevitably have to think of the high-strung
tone of excitement, of the eulogy of the visible world. How much
enthusiasm the narrator shows when first seeing a newly born little
dog, that scrap of life called Nemrod (SC 73; Op 46, 50); how much
rapture takes possession of his mind in the face of a magnificent sky
(SC 86; Op 58) or of an impressive winter landscape by night (SC 96;
Op 68); how much ecstasy throbs in the heart of the age of genius
(Genialna epoka) or in the republic of dreams (Republika
marze)! Under the sky illuminated by a comet (Kometa/The
Comet), the high-pitched spirit of the juvenile, later of the adult,
narrator joins the emotion of the whole city:
Co odwi
tnego wlao si
w nasze ycie, jaki entuzjazm i arliwo,
jaka wano i solenno wesza w nasze ruchy, rozszerzya nasze piersi
kosmicznym westchnieniem. Glob ziemski wrza nocami od uroczystej
wrzawy, od solidarnej ekstazy tysi
cy. (Op 348)
(Something festive had entered our lives, an eager enthusiasm. An
importance permeated our gestures and swelled our chests with cosmic
sighs. The earthly globe seethed at night with a solemn uproar from the
unanimous ecstasy of thousands; SC 154)
At any time, Schulzs stories suddenly flare up into an

inspired mood, which has a tangible origin in reality but almost
regularly takes some supernatural, fantastic, or magic turn: On such a
night, unique in the year, one has happy thoughts and inspirations, one
feels touched by the divine finger of poetry (SC 97; W tak noc,
jedyn w roku, przychodz szcz
liwe myli, natchnienia, wieszcze
tkni
cia palca boego; Op 69). As in the case of Hasidic practices,
Schulz rejects the separation of a sphere of holiness from the profane
world and its humble everyday routine; his poetic-religious elevation
starts from the scraps of tabloid newspapers, from modern musical
kitsch (Ksi
ga/The Book), or from looking at a stamp album.
Whenever the divine spirit steps down into this world, the narrator
breaks out into transports of joy, which vibrate like fervent prayer:
Oh, that shedding of the film, oh, that invasion of brightness, that
blissful spring, oh, Father the narrator cries out, his eyes turned
toward a virgin dawn of divine colors, toward a miraculous moistness
of purest azure (San 1; wzrok schodzi, mdlej c, w dziewiczy wit
boych kolorw, w cudown mokro najczystszych lazurw. O, to
480
Alfred Sproede
przetarcie si
bielma, o, ta inwazja blasku, o boga wiosno, o
ojcze; Op 106).
At times, Schulz seems to emulate Nikolai Gogols
descriptions of Ukrainian nights and their starry skies: Oh, you skies
of these days, full of luminous signs and meteors []! O starry arena
of the night []! (SC 155; O, niebiosa tych dni, cae w sygnaach
wietlnych i meteorach []! O, gwiezdna areno nocy []!; Op 349).
But then, the reading of an illustrated book, nay, of newspaper scraps,
can have the same overwhelming effect:
O, te rysunki wietliste [], o, te przejrzyste kolory i cienie! [] O, te
b
kity mro ce oddech [], o, te zielenie zielesze od zdziwienia, o, te
preludia i wiegoty kolorw dopiero przeczutych, dopiero prbuj cych si
nazwa! (Op 123)

(Oh, those luminous drawings []! Oh, those transparent colours and
shadows. [] Oh, those blues that stop your breath []. Oh, those greens
greener than wonder. Oh, those preludes of anticipated colors waiting to
be given a name!; San 16)
For the young reader taken by enthusiasm, the printed fragments

found in his parents cupboard are a token of Gods creation at large.
Admiration passes into prayer:
Co za olniewaj cy relatywizm, co za czyn kopernikaski, co za pynno
wszystkich kategorii i poj
! Wi
c tyle dae sposobw istnienia, o Boe,
wi
c taki Twj wiat jest nieprzeliczony! Jest to wi
cej ni w
najmielszych marzeniach roiem. (Op 144)
(What a dazzling relativism, what a Copernican deed, what a flux of all
categories and concepts! Oh God, so there were uncounted varieties of
existence, so your world was indeed vast and infinite! This was more than
I had ever imagined in my boldest dreams; SC 33)
However, Schulz is indebted to the Hasidic tradition not only for his
tone of enthusiasm and the illuminated gestures celebrating Gods
ubiquity. His familiarity with Hasidism reaches well beyond a broad
perception of piety and of its expressive manifestations.
Schulz has recourse to Hasidic traditions for giving shape and
consistency to his narrators role, in other words, in adapting specific
narrative and rhetorical conventions. The first interesting instance here
481

is the role of the schadkhn, the Jewish wedding jester (cf. Meier Ydit
1983: 70). This hilarious little man who is in charge of matchmaking
presents himself as the eternal loser, good-for-nothing except for the
role of a go-between. In order to enliven parties, he must quite like
the showman of a carnival booth deliver big talk and heap
exaggerated praise on presumptive candidates. After the shadkhen has
accomplished his mission, another entertainer gets on the stage:
accompanied by klezmer music, an actor called badkhn presents funny
tricks and all kinds of linguistic fireworks (Roskies 1995: 298 and
passim). The usual form of this merry-making is a sort of laughing
ballad or an exalted poem, in which the bride, the bridegroom, and
their families are humorously praised for their real and imaginary
qualities and merits (Meier Ydit 1983: 72).
Thus, Hasidic wedding customs and the culture of the shtetl
offer strongly conventionalized institutions and practices of fibbing or
yarning forms of storytelling with alleviated truth conditions (cf.
Polish blaga, bajanie; German Flunkern). The utterances making up
these stories may be termed quasi-illocutionary acts.9 The stories,
poems, and anecdotes are meant neither to cheat nor to effect any
change in the ongoing communication; they are simply intended as a
pastime.
There are other occasions where these practices are welcome;
besides the cases already mentioned, we may think of the night before
the Sabbath, when believers use to keep their children awake by
games, little poems, jokes, and tales. In Schulzs biography we find an
amusing trace of those scenes; according to his pupils, when
overwhelmed by boisterous classes, Schulz, in order to calm their
spirits, now and then told fantastic stories on improvised themes
(Schulz 1984: 53, 70). Storytelling in all times used to be play,
pastime and advice. In the context of Schulzs school teaching, it
assumes an unexpected practical and pedagogical function: not only as
a civilizing tool but also as a gesture of charm and conjuration.
Before addressing further formal and thematic borrowings that
make Schulz resemble a Hasidic storyteller, I will briefly restate his
interest in Hasidic narrative performance. Schulz tries to re-enact
modes of narration in which melancholy, inebriated enthusiasm, and

9
Cf. Sproede (1999: 144-146) for the issue of quasi-illocutionary acts in Schulzs
prose and of the writers possible familiarity with theories developed in the Lww
philosophical circles.
482
Alfred Sproede
humour come together. Where the Hasidic tales do not yet offer a note
of cunning and dialectics, Schulz makes them deviate from their
edifying use by different strategies of fibbing and mystification. In his
story Spring, Schulz explicitly deals with this type of narrative,
commenting on lying, willful mystification (blaga, umylna
mistyfikacja) and masquerade (San 52; maskarada; Op 172).
Let us now pass on to the legendary and mythological material
that Schulz seizes upon for his stories, mainly borrowings from
Hasidic lore and from tales about miraculous rabbis and
metempsychosis.
Elements of Hasidic Lore: Thaumaturgy and Redemption
Through Sin
First and foremost, Schulz is interested in thaumaturgy, specifically
the legends about miraculous rabbis. Adapting these stories and
ironically leading their plots astray is one and the same operation. The
behaviour of the narrators father is a case in point. Disappointed by
the failure of his bird breeding experiences, Jacob seizes upon the
Golem plot in two contradictory ways: on the one hand, he assumes
the role of an heresiarch in order to breathe a soul into the tailors
dummies (Tailors Dummies); on the other hand, he transforms
uncle Edward, one of his human guinea-pigs, into an electric device,
for, as he says,
czowiek by oscyluj c strzak , czonkiem tkackiego warsztatu,
strzelaj cym to tu, to tam wedle jej woli. [] Czowiek wedug tej teorii
by tylko stacj przejciow , chwilowym w
zem mesmerycznych
pr dw, pl cz cych si
tam i sam w onie wiecznej materii. (Op 341)
(man was nothing more than an oscillating arrow, the shuttle of loom,
darting here or there according to Natures will. [] According to his
theory, man was only a transit station, a temporary junction of mesmeric
currents, wandering hither and thither within the lap of eternal matter; SC
146)
Hasidic piety knows a second narrative convention, which Schulz

could draw on: a type of animal story, based on mythological
conceptions of metempsychosis (Hebr. gilgul). Before the particles of
the divine light are redeemed from their dispersion in this world that
is, until the Messiah comes to perform the act of universal
483

restitution (Hebr. tikkun) the divine sparks are wandering from one
body to another in order to expiate their errors and sins. After physical
death, but also during mans sleep, the soul sets out for an uncertain
peregrination, which is in the image of the elected peoples exile. The
soul returns into man when the offences are atoned for; until that time
it dwells in plants, stones, and animals. In order to reach the tikkun,
the soul must pass through the hierarchy of living beings.
Fuelled by kabbalistic speculation, these motifs inspire a rich
popular tradition of tales on revenants and fantastic animals (cf.
Grzinger 1987: 93-112; Grzinger 1994: 101-126, esp. 101-103;
Scholem 1971: 46-48, elaborated in Scholem 1992: 97-102; Scholem
1954: 280-284). This field of literary genres seems to offer a more
plausible explanation of Schulzs animal motifs than the speculation
about a possible influence of Franz Kafka. The Hasidic tales about
damned souls or souls incarnated in animals (dybuk) are probably one
of the common sources for both authors.10
At that time, my father was definitely dead. He had been
dying a number of times, always with some reservations that forced us
to revise our attitude (San 174; W tym czasie ojciec mj umar by
ju definitywnie. Umiera wielokrotnie, zawsze jeszcze nie doszcz
tnie, zawsze z pewnymi zastrzeeniami, ktre zmuszay do rewizji tego
faktu; Op 313) this passage points clearly toward the empire of
revenants and chastised souls. Whether the narrators father is
transformed into a crab, as in Ostatnia ucieczka ojca (Fathers Last
Escape), into a bird (Nawiedzenie/Visitation; Ptaki/Birds), or
into a huge fly (Martwy sezon/Dead Season), the metamorphosis
always pertains to the canonic motifs of the gilgul, Gods anger and
punishment be it in grotesque substitutes as in Visitation, where
the narrator sees the face of Jehovah, swollen with anger and spitting
out curses (SC 40; twarz Jehowy, wzd
ta gniewem i pluj ca
przeklestwa; Op 16).11
Even the story Nimrod, which does not at first sight invite
mystical readings, is unmistakably based on the kabbalistic motif of
the dispersion of the divine sparks (cf. Scholem 1971: 45-48). The
10
Chajim Blochs 1925 collection Kabbalistische Sagen contains two exemplary
tales: The Dybuk and The Wandering Soul (Die Seelenwanderung).
11
The horse which is talking to the narrator of Cinnamon Shops (SC 96-97; Op 68)
may have been inspired by one of the presumptive legends about the Baal Shem Tov;
cf. The little horses death commented on in Mandel: 134-136.
484
Alfred Sproede
story carries this theme to a point where the metaphors of the

breaking of the vessels (schevirat ha-kelim), of the dispersion of the
divine light and of the exile of the souls are connected into a kind of
litany with multiple variations.12 The young dog is an example of the
riddle of life, a manifestation of the eternity of life: it promises to
reveal the human being to man itself (SC 73; Byo to nad wyraz
interesuj ce, mie na wasno tak odrobink
ycia, tak cz steczk
wieczystej tajemnicy, w postaci budz cej respekt sekretny sw

obcoci , niespodzian transpozycj tego samego w tku ycia, ktry i
w nas by; Op 46). Schulz implies the idea of a line of anterior
existences and the image of souls wandering in exile when he
describes the dogs irrational fits of melancholia: the dog would
dip into the fount of his memory, the deep-seated memory of the body,
would search blindly [] the wisdom of generations, deposited in his
plasma, in his nerves. (SC 74; daje nura w swoj pami
, w g
bok
pami
ciaa, i szuka omackiem [] m dro pokole, zoon w jego
plazmie, w jego nerwach; Op 48).
Thus, the context of Hasidism permits us to decipher some of
the premises of Schulzs poetical metamorphoses. When
metamorphosis is dreamt of or effected by the demiurgic operations
of the father, it is rooted in the legends about miraculous Rabbis;
when metamorphosis is suffered, as in the stories about human souls
banned into an animals body, the motif comes from the Jewish tales
about gilgul, or metempsychosis.
From the atmosphere of piety and celebration, from
institutions of storytelling and thaumaturgic motifs Schulz could find
in Hasidic tradition, I will now pass on to a more disturbing aspect of
Hasidism the temptation of radical mysticism and antinomism.

12
Cf. Panas (1997) for a discussion of this motif. Unfortunately, the interpretations,
even when not postponed to later chapters (121, 159, 161, 186, 188), rarely go
beyond promises and sketches of future projects of reading as in the case of the
speculations about the lost manuscript of the novel Mesjasz (Messiah) (195).
According to Panas, Schulzs narrative project is part and parcel of a messianic
process; Messianism (is) the basic strategy of his artistic practices (221, 214). This
central claim of the book, featured with an amazing grandiloquence, is largely
untenable. It ignores Schulzs paradoxical aestheticism and his playful
transformation of the pragmatics of storytelling; more specifically, it does not grasp
the ironic neutralization of Messianism, which Schulz practices throughout his
narrative work (cf. the last section of my article).
485

Schulz does not eschew the dark side of Hasidism. On the contrary, he
makes it an essential reference for the figure of the paternal
Heresiarch, his contact with the world of the impure, and the
images of sexuality, which are so pervasively present in the narrative
as well as in the graphic work. Artur Sandauer has suggested reading
Schulzs presumed masochism as a reaction to social distress, which
therefore reaches beyond an openly confessed perversion (Sandauer
1981 [1956]: 561-576).13 Other investigations consider the
spectacular enactment of a psychological theme and the
aggressive demonstration of masochistic behaviour as part of a
consciously constructed mythopoetics meant to reflect deviant
models of the world (Lachmann 1992: 441 ff).
Schulzs models of the world, although deployed in a
mythopoetic or fantastic dimension, have a historically tangible
address. They hark back to Hasidism and to the antinomic
movements, which precede and prepare Hasidism and continue their
existence under its protection. Numerous themes decisive for Schulz
can be traced back to the mystical doctrine of redemption through
sin (for the following argument cf. Scholem 1971: 78-141). This
doctrine makes its first Eastern European appearance among the
radical disciples of Sabbatai Zwi (1626-1676) and his prophet
Nathan of Gaza (1644-1680). Rooted in seventeenth-century heretical
versions of Lurianic kabbalism, it starts with speculations on the idea
of universal restitution (tikkun), thought of as a reunion of the particles
of the divine light dispersed in the material world (cf. Scholem 1954:
311-313, 265-268). When the Messiah does not manage to collect the
dispersed sparks, which are supposed to unite into Gods supreme
luminosity (shekhina), he must descend into the places of the impure
and break the vessels of evil (kelipoth) from the interior. Heiko
Haumanns History of the Eastern Jews has a description of this
radicalized tikkun:
The Messiah takes unending pains to restitute harmony on earth. He cedes
to the evil forces in order to overcome them from the interior. Becoming
himself impure, he can purify the impure. For this reason he is not under
the reign of the Tora, and he is permitted recourse to forbidden deeds.
Even apostasy, the sacrifice of his faith, can be part of the process of
redemption. (Haumann 1990: 48-49; see also Scholem 1954: 287-324)

13
The recent book-length study by Janis Augsburger (2008) basically elaborates on

Sandauers view.
486
Alfred Sproede
These ideas, which initially were supposed to justify the apostasy of

Sabbatai Zwi (his conversion to Islam), later gained a huge resonance
in Podolia and Eastern Galicia. Sabbataism imposed itself in the long
run as a movement with far-reaching consequences ruinous for
rabbinic Judaism. The mystical sanctification of profane life and the
concomitant profanation of sacredness (Mandel 1963: 48-49) had
been a positive motif for the Jews in exile. It now turned into an
aggressive profanation of holiness. In practice, this meant contempt
of the rabbinic law and a subversion of the traditional cult in the name
of bizarre and, on occasion, provocatively debased ritual practices.
Haumann comments:
In a certain sense the sabbataist movement degenerated into a religious
myth of nihilism. Sustained by Nathans teaching, this process led
especially to conceptions of the holiness of sin. He who sins is a good and
righteous man in Gods eyes, for impurity attracts the spirit of holiness. Or
even, in a more extremist version: Sabbatai Zwi is thought to have abolished
evil, henceforth everything is pure, nothing can be abject any more.
(Haumann 1990: 49)
These ideas could be easily accommodated with the pneumatic

interpretations of the persecutions and pogroms since the times of
Bohdan Chmelnyckyj (cf. Haumann 1990: 38-51; Tollet 1992: 85-93,
129-134); they finally consolidated into a special line of teaching,
according to which Jewish self-abasement will provoke the ultimate
salvatory catastrophe the summons to the coming of the Messiah.
Both Sabbataism and the Hasidic movement are the fruit of
Lurianic speculation and linked to the latter by numerous aspects of
continuity in doctrine and audience (cf. Scholem 1954: 330-334;
Mandel 1963: 92-96). But they disagree over the attitude to be
adopted in the face of an impending apocalypse. The Hasidic believers
de-escalate the crisis by transposing the drama of redemption into
the believers soul. The experience of the divine shall be attained
through practices of individual piety (devekut) exempt of all
apocalyptic tension. Sabbataism, on the contrary, concentrates on the
doctrine of collective redemption and fosters messianic expectations.
This tendency increases massively following the appearance of Jakub
Lejbovic Frank (1726-1791), who, from 1755 on, claimed to be
Gods messenger and gained a broad audience and numerous
followers between Kamienec Podolski and Lww (Tollet 1992: 132-
487

35). Like the Hasidim, Franks followers practice enthusiastic prayer,
but their intoxication has a new significance: in their conventicles,
religious elevation systematically passes over into sexual excitement.
He who crosses the gates of indecency will be admitted to the
house of holiness this is the justification of a life in sin,
according to Franks Words of Our Lord (Sowa Paskie). The
orgiastic celebrations of the Frankists, marked by well-planned,
organized scenes of promiscuity under the direction of the Master,
imply a complete degradation of the human personality and
intentionally so, for he who has sunk to the uttermost depths is the
more likely to see the light (Scholem 1954: 318).14
Let us return to Bruno Schulz. My hypothesis concerning
links between Schulz and specific currents of mystic-heretical Judaism
is relevant only to his literary affiliations and has no biographical
dimension whatsoever. We can hardly imagine our author as a witness
to (and much less as a participant of) forbidden parties. True, one of
Schulzs correspondents, Ella Schulz-Podstolska, remembers the
author mentioning a visit he paid to a Tsaddik in order to ask for a
family horoscope (Schulz 1984: 60). But Schulzs personal contact
with Hasidic culture, even if this visit may indicate a propensity to
superstition, is above all the sign of a fundamentally bookish life
or, as French poets have it, fait pour finir dans un livre. The decline
of Hasidic culture, though, makes Schulzs effort of bookish
conservation worthwhile: the storyteller conserves and saves this
culture through a chronicle of legendary sinners, false pretenders, and
perverse Messiahs preaching redemption in the middle of sexual
temptations, and he tells stories about apostasy, humiliation, and
ordeal.15
In his story entitled Spring, Schulz introduces us to this field
of motifs. In the course of a revolt against Kaiser Franz Joseph,
against his anointed office, and against a state that has degenerated

14
Even Jan Doktrs 1991 study on Frank, couched in a sociological language cautiously marked off against all moralizing, cannot entirely keep the reader from a reflex
of disgust over Franks anti-rabbinic politics, disguised under an opportunistic
quasi-Catholicism prepared to betray and to side with police informers at any time
(Tollet 1992: 133-135; Doktr 1991: 55-57), over the sexual excesses planned in
detail and staged in Franks Cz
stochowa jail, over his cynical manipulation of the
followers and of their family ties, and over the phallic-religious mania flaring up now
and then in his autobiographical fragments (see Doktr 1991: 87-90, 91-108).
15
The issue of dgradation-preuve is discussed in Mandel 1963: 105.
488
Alfred Sproede
into a vulgar Empire of prose, God Himself takes sides with the
insurgents who want to bring about a mystical apocalypse; the narrator
praises Godfather, who rejects his own vicar on earth:
O Boe, [], wtedy powstae w szumi cym paszczu mrz i kontynentw i
kam mu [Franciszkowi Jzefowi] zadae. Ty, Boe, wzi e wtedy na
siebie odium herezji i wybuchn e na wiat tym ogromnym kolorowym i
wspaniaym bluznierstwem. O herezjarcho wspaniay! (Op 145)
(Oh God [] You rose wearing a flowing cloak of seas and continents and
gave him [Franz Joseph] the lie. You, God, took upon Yourself the odium
of heresy and revealed this enormous, magnificent, colorful blasphemy to
the world. Oh splendid Heresiarch!; San 34)
The three stories framing Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on

Tailors Dummies) now and again cross the borderline between
mystical heresy as a purely speculative idea on the one side and a
much more physical form of deviance (the Odium) on the other
side; the theurgic rapture of the Father regularly borders on states of
sexual excitement (SC 56, 63-65; Op 31, 36-40). The temptations to
which the founder of the new religion submits voluntarily turn
frequently into self-humiliation and ordeal.
Other stories delving into the world of the impure and the
evil propensities draw on Hasidic legends of a more innocuous kind,
most of which are based on conventional plots suited for edifying
purposes. Thus, the tales about the shadow business near the
Cinnamon Shops and on the Street of Crocodiles are probably inspired
by a legend about the Baal Shem Tov entitled A Desecration of the
Sabbat (Bloch 1990: 24-26, 51-53). In this legend the famous
Tsaddik leaves the assembly of his believers, requests a horse carriage
and, while the night of the Sabbat is in full swing, drives to the street
of depravity. When the pupils of the Besht find out that their master
has disappeared in a brothel (the place of the demoniac Lilith), the
Besht already steps out of the infamous place: he just saved a young
woman who had fled from her parents to work as a prostitute.
Now, it goes without saying that Schulz would not have
needed Hasidic stories or kabbalistic myths about Lilith in order to
refurbish the ambiguous atmosphere of his tales; the field had been
too well prepared by the steamy prose of Leopold von SacherMasoch, Stanisaw Przybyszewski, and the like. In fact, the
productions of the era of literary Decadence including Slavic
489

literatures are crowded with demonic femmes fatales prefiguring
tyrannical Magda Wang (San 9; Op 114), the humiliations invented by
a capricious Bianca (San 71; Op 198), or the cold young ladies we
encounter in Tailors Dummies and Sanatorium pod klepsydr
(Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass; San 127; Op 265).
Schulz, however, makes an important difference because he is
constantly eager to draw on metaphysical or speculative guaranties
when entering the terrain of eroticism. Think of the story The Age of
Genius, where the theft of Adelas fetishized high heels is followed
by a circumstantial quasi-theological commentary (San 23; Op 132133). There is a word for this blend of soaring rhetoric and the
stirring-up of impure impulses: charlatanism. Schulzs narrator is
fascinated by all forms of this communicative behavior as a way of
obscuring or even extinguishing the meaning of the words.
Yet Schulzs holy sinners and messianic prophets are not just
charlatans or sophists. They are also a surface of projection on which
Schulz celebrates his creative individuality and defines himself in
contrast to rival literary movements and authors. Whereas in his
images of erotic-religious deviancy and of messianic sinners Schulz is
indebted to traditions of decadence, Hasidic piety and songs, on the
other hand, give him the means to address more recent artistic
tendencies, primarily, the problem of literary avant-garde.
Art and Time Horizon: Schulz and the Literary Transformation
of Messianism
The significance of Hasidism for Schulzs storytelling is not only a
matter of narrative devices, readers response, and folk-tale motifs. It
has to do and very fundamentally so with the way Schulz
conceived the relationship between Art and (historical) Time. A last
function of Hasidic tradition for his work can be defined in the
following terms: Schulz adopts Hasidism from the perspective of a
neutralization of the messianic idea and a humoristic deconstruction of
avant-garde literature. Hasidism as such, as I mentioned earlier, can be
considered as a mobilization of personal piety in order to resist
apocalyptic over-heating. The neutralization of the messianic
element is not an explicit doctrine of Judaism (cf. Scholem 1971:
176-202; Scholem 1954: 329-330; Jacobson 1989: 55-63); it rather
results surreptitiously from the insistence of the Hasidic believers on a
490
Alfred Sproede
perspective of individual salvation; the messianic tension is relaxed

not only because it is powerless against the promises and satisfactions
of a sanctified everyday life but also because it ignores the sweetness
of the mystical communion with God Hasidic devekut. As I love
God, what is the use of a world to come? this is a saying of the
Baal Shem Tov, according to a Hasidic legend (Buber 1949: 133-134).
Rabbi Mejr of Przemyl has as similar reasoning: If the Messiah is to
come in the calm, then he may come and we will wait for him with
longing. But if he wants to come in a storm and bring us suffering and
hardship, then he should leave us alone, then we dont need him and
we renounce to his presence! (in Bloch 1990: 246-248).
We have seen that Schulz knows the Hasidic devekut; in the
exuberant richness of his world, we can identify the echo of a mystical
conception of Gods presence and of the idea of a sanctified everyday
life. This conception defies any interpretation affirmatively relating
his work to gnosticism. The thesis according to which Schulz
devaluates matter in a gnostic way (Jocz 1996: 169 and passim)
fundamentally misrepresents the writers fascination for everything
living. Renate Lachmann has pointed out that Schulz makes matter
the object of an incredible glorification and that he hyperbolically
reverts the supposed negativity of matter while presenting an
ephemeral reality which apes and, at the same time, overcomes the
Gnostic myth (Lachmann 1992: 450-451). This thesis is also
concerned with Schulzs attitude toward the avant-garde as the
promise of liberation or secular redemption. Schulz mimics the
gestures of heresy and revolt, he pictures a world exposed to
messianic consequences. But the imaginary impulse which is at work
in his stories is not heading for a world to come.
Artur Sandauer has pointed out that Schulz, born in 1892, was
a contemporary of the dynamic and futurist generation, who entered
the scene and presented their work after the First World War. But, as
Sandauer continues, provincial life, conserving, as is well-known, not
only tailors fashions, but artistic forms as well [], made his work
look outdated in a peculiar way (1981 [1957]: 570). The proximity
between the outmoded, old-fashioned elements in Schulzs work and
his futurism can be illustrated by many stories. In the collection of
tales Cinnamon Shops and in two of his stories not included in his
narrative cycles (The Republic of Dreams, The Comet), the author
operates with almost all conceptions and slogans circulating among
491

intellectuals and artists between Jugendstil and the beginning
totalitarian movements. His style navigates between labels and
programmatic attractions like decadence and Young Poland; art
nouveau and fashion; progress, the cult of the machine, and avantgarde. As Schulz shows in his stories, modern times have brought
industrial plants and capital to his region, transforming the town into a
wild Klondike (SC 101; Op 72). The serious traders and
shopkeepers like Jacob, who are wont to surround their clients with an
anachronistic ceremony of advice and negotiation are confronted with
an invasion of pseudo-Americanism, of a culturally indifferent flow of
accelerated merchandizing traffic, and the trashy rhetoric of
newspaper advertisement. The serious habits and the severity of
the traditional traders and townspeople slowly resign in the face of a
world of ephemeral commercial phenomena exuded by the Street of
Crocodiles and by dubious suburbs (The Republic of Dreams).16
Against this background swarming with phantoms (ibid.),
the upsurge of new youth movements gains a particular significance
as if the world of trash and commercial intrigue called for a
compensation in dreaming and generosity, in the grand departure for
the republic of dreams or in the putsch of the palace guard launched
in the story Spring. Schulz was certainly conscious of the fact that
the myth of a rejuvenated world (cf. the Soviet slogan kommunizm
molodost mira) was, since the 1920s, ferociously disputed
between left- and right-wing movements. However unequivocal we
may judge Schulzs attempt to install Pisudski in the heart of this
myth and to make it a basis for charismatic politics cf. his article
Powstaj legendy (The Formation of Legends, 1935) his stories
do not leave the slightest doubt as to the ambivalence of this myth:
W tych dniach dalekich powzi
limy po raz pierwszy z kolegami ow
myl [], aeby pow
drowa jeszcze dalej, poza zdrojowisko, w kraj ju
niczyj i boy, w pogranicze sporne i neutralne, gdzie gubiy si
rubiee
pastw, a ra wiatrw wirowaa b
dnie pod niebem wysokim i
spi
trzonym. Tam chcielimy si
oszacowa, uniezaleni od dorosych,
wyj zupenie poza obr
b ich sfery, proklamowa republik
modych. Tu
mielimy ukonstytuowa prawodawstwo nowe i niezalene, wznie now
hierarchi
miar i wartoci. Miao to by ycie pod znakiem poezji i

16
I cannot discuss here Schulzs closeness to Rainer Maria Rilkes poetic critique of
the modern commercial object and his concomitant protest against the vanishing of
ornament, authenticity, and aura.
492
Alfred Sproede
przygody, nieustannych olnie i zadziwie. Zdawao si
nam, e trzeba
tylko rozsun bariery i granice konwenansw, stare oyska, w ktre
uj
ty by bieg spraw ludzkich, aeby w ycie nasze wama si
ywio,
wielki zalew nieprzewidzianego, powd romantycznych przygd i fabu.
(Op 329)
(In those far-off days our gang of boys first hit on the [] notion of
straying even farther, beyond that inn, into no-mans- or Gods-land, of
patrolling borders both neutral and disputed, where boundary lines petered
out and the compass rose of the winds skittered erratically under a higharching sky. There we meant to dig in, raise ramparts around us, make
ourselves independent of the grown-ups, pass completely out of the realm
of their authority, proclaim the Republic of the Young. Here we would
form a new and autonomous legislature, erect a new hierarchy of
standards and values. It was to be a life under the aegis of poetry and
adventure, never-ending signs and portents. All we needed to do, or so it
seemed to us, was push apart the barriers and limits of convention, the old
markers imprisoning the course of human affairs, for our lives to be
invaded by an elemental power, a great inundation of the unforeseen, a
flood of romantic adventures and fabulous happenings; Schulz 2008: 318319)
Schulz masters also the detail of avant-garde rhetoric and

poetics (for a retrospective synthesis cf. Poggioli 1994). He evokes
meteors (meteory) when talking of books which are aflame with
daring messages and which expose their epoch to the sudden light of
novelty before shedding their extinct pages (wystyge stronice) to
ashes (San 10; Op 115-116). He clearly alludes to the formulas of
futurist manifestoes, such as the statements authored by Velimir
Khlebnikov. There is, however, a decisive nuance; in contrast to the
texts of the Russian budetlyanin, the racing meteor in Schulzs picture
is not associated with the efficiency of poetic action but with
common old books and with childrens literature as an object of
adult nostalgia. Thus, the axiology of Khlebnikovs metaphor is
reversed to its contrary.
This witty iconoclasm is symptomatic of Schulzs general
attitude toward the avant-garde movement. In the opening lines of the
story The Comet, the spectacular beginning of a grand future is
ironically compared to the straw-fire of a purely imaginary
apocalypse: The predictions in the calendar flourished in red in the
snowy margins of the morning. (SC 139; Kolorowe wrby
kalendarza zakwitay czerwono w niegu na rubiey porankw.; Op
333). Elsewhere, Schulz comments on the tailors dummies made of
493

inferior materials and the second-rate homunculi that have become the
favorite pastime of the narrators father:
Nie zaley nam [] na tworach o dugim oddechu, na istotach na dalek
met
. Nasze kreatury nie b
d bohaterami romansw w wielu tomach. Ich
role b
d krtkie, lapidarne, ich charaktery bez dalszych planw. Cz
sto
dla jednego gestu, dla jednego sowa podejmiemy si
trudu powoania ich
do ycia na t
jedn chwil
. [] [T]wory nasze b
d jak gdyby
prowizoryczne, na jeden raz zrobione. (Op 35)
(We are not concerned [] with long-winded creations, with long-term
beings. Our creatures will not be heroes of romances in many volumes.
Their roles will be short, concise; their characters without a background.
Sometimes, for one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort to
bring them to life. [] [O]ur creations will be temporary, to serve for a
single occasion; SC 61)
These sentences aim at the pretended torrents of innovation

and the ritual of challenging and knocking out rival artistic
movements, which had been installed as first-rate cultural events for
new literary and artistic audiences. We shall have this proud slogan
as our aim: a different actor for every gesture. For each action, each
word, we shall call to life a different human being. Such is our whim,
and the world will be run according to our pleasure (SC 61; Nasz
ambicj
pokada b
dziemy w tej dumnej dewizie: dla kadego gestu
inny aktor. Do obsugi kadego sowa, kadego czynu, powoamy do
ycia osobnego czowieka. Taki jest nasz smak, to b
dzie wiat
wedug naszego gustu; Op 35) these are malicious clins dil
aiming in the same direction. The story The Comet addresses once
more the futuristic theories of absolute novelty and with a good
portion of humour brings down to earth the creations and dreams
which the avant-garde movement linked to these theories:
Epoka staa pod znakiem mechaniki i elektrycznoci, i cay rj
wynalazkw wysypa si
na wiat spod skrzyde geniuszu ludzkiego []
Filozoficzny pogl d na wiat obowi zywa. Kto przyznawa si
do idei
post
pu, wyci ga konsekwencje i dosiada welocypedu. Pierwsi byli
naturalnie koncypienci adwokaccy, ta awangarda nowych idei, z
podkr
conymi w skami [], nadzieja i kwiat naszej modziey. (Op 336338)
(It was the age of electricity and mechanics and a whole swarm of
inventions was showered on the world by the resourcefulness of human
genius [] An outlook based on philosophy became obligatory. Whoever
494
Alfred Sproede
admitted to a belief in progress had to draw the logical conclusion and ride
a velocipede. The first to do so were of course the lawyers apprentices,
that vanguard of new ideas, with their waxed moustaches [], the hope
and flower of youth; SC 142)
Schulz arms his progressive folks with irrefutable theories

(and with bicycles), but, after all, these people are simply stepping out
of the over-coat of Monsieur Homais, the obtusely modern-minded
hero in Flauberts Madame Bovary (1857); and the Grand Final Day
they dream of is in the image and likeness of its petty-bourgeois, if not
philistine origins. One day, the narrators brother returns from school
with the incredible but veracious news, that the worlds end is
drawing close (SC 153; brat mj, wrciwszy ze szkoy, przynis
nieprawdopodobn a jednak prawdziw wiadomo o bliskim kocu
wiata; Op 346-347). After a first shock the enlightened townspeople
begin to take the message with serenity, as the event is supposed to
produce itself without a period or exclamation mark, without a last
judgment or Gods Wrath in an atmosphere of friendly
understanding, loyally, by mutual agreement (SC 153; bez kropki i
wykrzyknika, bez s du i gniewu boego niejako w najlepszej
komitywie, lojalnie, podug oboplnej umowy; Op 346-347):
Nie, nie by to eschatologiczny, od dawna przez prorokw
przepowiedziany, tragiczny fina i akt ostatni komedii boskiej. Nie, by to
raczej bicyklowo-cyrkowy, hopla-prestidigitatorski, wspaniale hokuspokusowy i pouczaj co-eksperymentalny koniec wiata wrd aplauzu
wszystkich duchw post
pu. (Op 347)
(No, it was not to be an eschatological, tragic finale as forecast long ago
by the prophets, nor the last act of the Divine Comedy. No. It was to be a
trick cyclists, a prestidigitators, end of the world, splendidly hocuspocus and bogus-experimental accompanied by the plaudits of all the
spirits of Progress; SC 153)
Schulz makes the supposedly apocalyptic scenario run aground in

purest verbiage. We remember this procedure from the numerous
passages in which a suggestion of certain facts is hardly put in place
when a whim of the narrator or of any speaker at hand hurries to
give it the lie (cf. he would [] try to turn the whole incident into a
joke; SC 50; stara si
ten incydent obrci w art; Op 25). In The
Comet, the end of the world does not take place because the celestial
object supposed to crush down on the town is being outdistanced by
495

the fashion of the season before withering away and vanishing into
the abyss of the universe: What has become of the end of the world,
that splendid finale, after the magnificently developed introduction?
Downcast eyes and a smile. (SC 159; Jak to, a c stao si
z
kocem wiata, co z tym wietnym finaem po tak wspaniale
rozwini
tej introdukcji. Spuszczenie oczu i umiech; Op 353). Schulz
is careful not to flatly ridicule the utopian tension or the messianic
hunger of his contemporaries. He instead places the avant-garde in a
new light, by transplanting it into the culture of a Jewish shtetl,
separated from the big cities by a centurys distance.
In this Jewish life-world, futurist action encounters a specific
atmosphere of humoristic, anti-dogmatic, sometimes self-ironical,
discourse. As a consequence, the bids and proclamations of avantgarde authors are collapsed into a series of fibbing quasi-utterances.
The mystical and political speculation characteristic for Judaism
especially the sabbataist and Frankist heresy shares with avant-garde
programs the hope of redemption and the expectation of a Grand
future. Schulz for his part cultivates the atmosphere and the narrative
tone of Hasidism in order to attain a neutralization of the messianic
gesture. Enacting the role of an avant-garde author, he becomes, in
fact, an inefficient sophist, taking revenge on the spectacular action
of modern advertisement. Schulz fakes persuasion, he belies the
emphatic enflure of futurist manifestoes; all of his eloquence turns
into a discourse subtly defeating itself.
I hope I have made clear how this discourse and the
corresponding narrative project evolve between avant-garde and
Jewish tradition. Schulz knows the poets who thought their calling to
be a martyrdom of the future, but he also knows the Tsaddikim, the
Hasidic righteous men. Venturing theoretical shorthand derived from
the genealogy of prose genres, one may say that his narrator stands
half-way between Lukcss modern hero exposed to transcendental
homelessness (transzendentale Obdachlosigkeit) and the oldfashioned character Walter Benjamin so suggestively describes in his
Storyteller essay. Featuring the tales of Nikolai Leskov, Benjamin
conjures up the authority of a character conveying an auratic
personal experience a man who has counsel for his readers (cf.
Benjamin Benjamin 1968: paragraph iv-v, xiii-xv).
Schulz reaches out to the tradition of the Hasidic righteous
men, but he keeps aloof of edifying conclusions and words of wisdom.
496
Alfred Sproede
Righteousness and the prospect of redemption are performed, so to

speak, in small cast. Following this reading, we may also keep in mind
that several of the texts were written in the course or on the margins
of a correspondence with a lover, a correspondence which
frequently borders on a kind of self-therapy. I compared Schulzs
stories to conjurations or incantations. This is one more way to
stress how far the texts go beyond the domain of belles-lettres and
artistic contemplation. By affirming an intention of effectiveness, the
creative and communicative practices echo one of the central theses of
the avant-garde, namely the programmatic openness of aesthetics
toward the sphere of our life-world and toward politics.
Schulzs narrative roaming takes place in an area dominated
by a set of specific traditions: his experimental writing is embedded in
conventions of everyday life and religious practices which were
cultivated by Jewish communities in Poland since the eighteenth
century. It is by opening his tales toward this world that Schulz can
elevate his inspired and humoristic hymns, soaring into regions where
the sense of the words becomes evasive and borders on the ineffable.
The institutional frame in which this play with indeterminacy and
semantic suspension can be enacted is the life-world of Hasidism.
Bibliography
Augsburger, Janis. 2008. Masochismen. Mythologisierung als Krisen-sthetik bei
Bruno Schulz. Hannover: Wehrhahn.
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai
Leskov in Sontag, Susan (ed.) Illuminations. New York: Schocken: 83-109.
Berger, Klaus. 1987. Einfhrung in die Formgeschichte. Tbingen: Francke Verlag.
Bloch, Chajim. 1925. Kabbalistische Sagen. Leipzig: Verlag der Asia Major.
. 1990. Chassidische Geschichten. Mnchen: Eugen Diederichs Verlag.
Buber, Martin. 1949. Die Erzhlungen der Chassidim. Zrich: Manesse Verlag.
Doktr, Jan. 1991. Jakub Frank i jego nauka ne tle kryzysu religijnej tradycji
osiemnastowiecznego ydostwa polskiego. Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk.
Dubnow, Simon. 1982 [1931-1932]. Geschichte des Chassidismus (2 Bde).
Knigstein/Ts.: Jdischer Verlag.
Goldfarb, David A. 1993. Czytaj c Schulza: Noc wielkiego sezonu in Kresy 13:
15-21.
Grzinger, Karl Erich. 1987. Himmlische Gerichte, Wiedergnger und
Zwischenweltliche in der ostjdischen Erzhlung in Grzinger, Karl Erich et al
(eds). Kafka und das Judentum. Frankfurt a.M.: Jdischer Verlag/Athenum: 93112.
497

. 1994. Kafka und die Kabbala. Das Jdische im Werk und Denken von Franz
Kafka. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.
Haumann, Heiko. 1990. Geschichte der Ostjuden. Mnchen: dtv.
Jacobson, Yoram. 1989. La pense hassidique (tr. C. Chalier). Paris: Ed. du Cerf.
Jocz, Artur. 1996. Bruno Schulz a gnostycyzm in Poznaskie Studia Polonistyczne
(seria literacka III (xxiii), Innowiercy odszczepiecy herezje): 165-72.
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata (ed.) 1994. Bruno Schulz. In memoriam. 1892-1942.
Lublin: Wydawnictwo FIS.
Schulz' Prosa in Psychopoetik. Beitrge zur Tagung Mnchen 1991 (Wiener
Slawistischer Almanach, Sonderband 31): 439-461.
Lewi, Henri. 1989. Bruno Schulz ou les stratgies messianiques. Paris: La Table
Ronde.
Lindenbaum, Shalom. 1994. Wizja mesjanistyczna Schulza a jej podoe mistyczne
in Jarz
bski, Jerzy (ed.) Czytanie Schulza. Materiay midzynarodowej sesji
naukowej Bruno Schulz w stulecie urodzin i w pidziesiciolecie mierci.
Uniwersytet Jagielloski 1992 r. Krakw: T.I.C.: 33-67.
Mandel, Arnold. 1963. La voie du hassidisme. Paris: Calmann-Lvy.
Meier Ydit, Max. 1983. Schadchen, Schul und Schammes. Aus dem osteuropischen
Gemeindeleben in Brocke, M. (ed.) Beter und Rebellen. Aus 1000 Jahren
Judentum in Polen. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Koordinierungsrat der
Gesellschaften fr Christlich-Jdische Zusammenarbeit: 51-78.
Musil, Robert. 1922. Die Wilnaer Theatertruppe in Wien (8. Dezember 1922) in
Kritisches und Theoretisches. Reinbek: Rowohlt: 1955 (Rowohlts Klassiker der
Literatur und Wissenschaft/ Deutsche Literatur, Bd. 16): 138-139.
Lublin: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwa Naukowego KUL.
Poggioli, Renato. 1994. The Theory of the Avant-Garde (tr. G. Fitzgerald).
Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.
Roskies, David G. 1995. A Bridge of Longing. The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling.
Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.
Sandauer, Artur. 1981 [1956]. Rzeczywisto zdegradowana. (Rzecz o Brunonie
Schulzu in Zebrane pisma krytyczne. T. 1. Warszawa: PIW: 557-580.
Scholem, Gershom. 1954. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken
Books.
. 1971. The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality.
London: George Allen & Unwin.
. 1992. Le messianisme juif. Essais sur la spiritualit du judasme. Paris:
Calmann-Lvy.
Schulz, Bruno. 1977. The Street of the Crocodiles (tr. C. Wieniewska). New
York/London: Penguin.
. 1984. Listy, fragmenty. Wspomnienia o pisarzu (ed. J. Ficowski). Krakw/
Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
. 1987. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (tr. C. Wieniewska). New
York/London: Penguin.
498
Alfred Sproede
York: Penguin.
Speina, Jerzy. 1976. Bruno Schulz wobec psychoanalizy in Czaplowa, Kazimiera
(ed.) Studia o prozie Brunona Schulza (Prace naukowe Uniwersytetu l skiego w
Katowicach 115). Katowice: Uniwersytet l ski: 17-30.
Sproede, Alfred. 1999. Exprimentations narratives aprs la fin de lAvant-garde.
Bruno Schulz, son lecteur et ses incantations in Konicka, Hanna and Hlne
Wodarczyk (eds). La littrature polonaise du XX sicle. Textes, styles, voix.
Colloque International l'Universit de Paris IVSorbonne-Nouvelle.
Paris: Institut dEtudes Slaves: 135-165.
Tollet, Daniel. 1992. Histoire des Juifs en Pologne du XVIe sicle nos jours. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.
Poetical Fluidization and Intellectual Eclecticism in

Bruno Schulzs Writings
Janis Augsburger
Abstract: This article examines the strategy of poetical fluidization in Bruno Schulzs
fiction and positions it in relation to the intellectual debates of his time. The concepts
regarding fluid identity in contemporary ontology prepared the ground for Schulzs
aesthetics of dissolution and transgression. Schopenhauers energetic system of
metaphysical will is introduced as one of these concepts which is consonant with
Schulzs dialectics of a monistic substance versus a panmasquerade. Nonetheless,
attempts to disambiguate Schulzian metaphysical allusions in his prose as well as in
his aesthetics seem to constantly fail. Schulzs ironic distance is rooted in an
intellectual eclecticism that states his genuine method of heresy.
Introduction
Schulzological quotations bear a certain degree of reiteration. They
might even create a dja-vu effect. Nevertheless, the play of
interpreting Bruno Schulzs comparatively small oeuvre has not come
to an end. Analogous to myths, any interpretation of Schulzs work
generates new varieties through repetition. One reason that his texts
and illustrations are still discussed may be found in Schulzs
intellectual perceptions of not only Polish-Jewish identity but also
European intellectual and artistic disputes at the turn of the century.
Difficult economic and political circumstances in the Polish interwar
period, the rise of anti-Semitism and a complex family drama,
including pauperization, illness, and even suicide among its members
leave their marks in Schulzs work. It holds a melancholic trait
founded in early twentieth-century history, in which perception is
dependent on the readers openness to respond to historical
vibrancies. This essay, however, does not intend to present Schulzs
500
Janis Augsburger
work primarily as a necessary reaction to social pressure even though

its provenance in Polish-Jewish interwar history cannot be neglected.1
This essay explores a poetic strategy in Schulzs fiction that
contains fragments of contemporary intellectual debates. Poetical
fluidization, i.e., the dissolution of semantic orders by transforming
conventional meaning, helps regain possession of creative agency,
which might have been lost in the political sphere. A striking
characteristic of Schulzs fiction is its transgressive poetics or its
occasional abrupt shifts to different layers of (anti-)realism. In a letter
to St. I. Witkiewicz, Schulz wrote that to loosen the tissue of reality,
to show it in the state of constant ferment, germination, hidden life
helps to sustain the immediate reality. Schulz here pleads for the
bankruptcy of reality (bankructwo realnoci; Schulz 1989: 442446) One could suggest that this responds to the real insolvency of the
familys business, the political instability of the Second Republic,
anti-Semitism; the poetic strategy of fluidization turns passive
historical experiences into creative assertiveness.
Schulzs poetical fluidization is based on a degree of
intellectual openness that might be called eclecticism. However,
there is a common dualistic structure contained in the intellectual
systems to which Schulz might refer: one of fluid identity vs.
unrecognizable truth. This structure is rooted in an ontological trend in
modern thought, in the fluidization of identity. In Schulzian terms this
structure becomes transformed into the dialectics of panmasquerade
vs. substance. This structure can be applied Schopenhauers
metaphysical system and will be further analyzed in this essay as a
possible reference for poetical fluidization.
Concepts of fluid identity2 were circulating in the spheres of
neo-romantic, symbolist, and esoteric modernism and were easily
reaching Schulzs horizon. These concepts not only doubt if the term
identity applies to the material world but also articulate the dilemma
of representation within the spheres of the divine, sublime, or
unconscious. They declare that via aisthesis (perception) and language

1
Artur Sandauers 1956 essay Rzeczywisto zdegradowana (1964 [1956]) may still
be considered an actual interpretation of the interrelation between sociology and
literature. His study was somewhat neglected in further studies on Schulzs work.
2
As will be shown, this term is paradoxical. Fluid identity reminds of Heraclitus who
said that one could not step twice in the same river. The dilemmatic notion of identity
within fluidity comes to the fore.
Poetical Fluidization and Intellectual Eclecticism in Schulzs Writings
501

only a superficial knowledge of a preliminary, fluid sphere of reality
can be gained whereas there is no direct aesthetic and linguistic access
to the spheres of the divine, the sublime, and the unconscious.
Likewise, fluidization of identity concerns the inner disruption of the
modern individual and thereby states a new conditio humana. The
psychic status of this new human oscillates between feelings of ironic
triumph and melancholic loss in the face of uncertainty and instability
of the self and fluid truth. This ambiguity of crisis and potentiality
seems to be inherent to the reflection of fluid identity3 and becomes a
characteristic of Schulzs fiction.
Panmasquerade and Substance
The often cited panmasquerade, a metaphor referring to the
semantical field of carnival and stage, introduced in Schulzs response
to Witkiewiczs interview, bears the traits of this modern
ambivalence. The universalizing greek prefix pan- within
panmasquerade suggests, that there is no escape from the sphere of
play and deception. This idea comes close to the modernist reception
of the Hinduist concept of a veil of Maya, which Schopenhauer
(1996: 568) for instance understands as mere appearance within the
Platonical world of shadows.4
Schulz writes that his prose is ruled by this very concept of
panmasquerade. Having been asked to describe a philosophy that
motivates his prose, he first doubts if any dissection of literature is
possible without finally demoting its meaning. Schulz then describes a
prolific ontological structure: he conceives panmasquerade as the
endless and contingent motion of forms within art, and as being the
emanation of a monistic substance (Schulz 1989: 444-445). This
paradoxical construction is highly significant because it applies to
fluid ontology. Schulz raises the question, whether the ontological
substance (meaning identity or universal meaning) is representable

3
Cf. Lyotard (1990: 46) who considers the postmodern dilemma of representation as
resulting into the ambivalence of melancholia and venture. Also see Richard Rortys
insistence on the ironic constitution of the postmodern man.
4
See later in this article. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche refer to only one sense of
Hinduism, where the deity Maya (originally the goddess of illusion, inspiration and
dream) becomes the principle of deception. Her veil obscures the unitary identity
(brahman) from which all illusions spring and therefore leads to a misconception of
reality.
502
Janis Augsburger
within language. Schulz does not specify what kind of monistic

substance he is thinking about; therefore, the notion of it remains
overly general. The relationship between substance and
panmasquerade is described as neither logical nor natural. Its
dialectics seem to be anti-teleological; thus, the process of the
panmasquerade emanating from a monistic substance remains fluid
and open to interpretation. However, Schulz created a literary
realization that seemed to encode monistic substance: The Book,
also called the original in the story with the same title (Schulz 1989:
115 ff.). The unsuccessful search for this missing original text, the
autentyk, leads to a congenial hermeneutics of a degraded, secondary
scripture dominating not only the storys plot but also the interpreters
effort to decode Schulzs literature.
Because Schulz is aware of this interpretative desire, he
addresses the reader, sometimes directly, sometimes covertly and
plays hide and seek with their intents to domesticate his eruptions of
fantasy.5 Intriguingly, most interpretations of Schulzs work, including
the following, reveal to a great extent the commentators positions,
interests, and preliminary knowledge. Taken to the extreme, Schulzs
fiction serves as a projection surface for the absent original that
interpreters are trying to rediscover; however, this means that the
reception of Schulzs work increasingly becomes an in-depth
hermeneutics of contemporary intellectual history. Because the
structure of monistic substance versus panmasquerade applies to
various intellectual and religious constructs, it seems crucial for
Schulz studies that the search for the adequate translation of his
monistic substance remains subject to the problem of the

5
Besides the strategy of ironic distancing, the narrator also pursues an alliance with
the reader, for instance in Ksi
ga (The Book), where Schulz writes of an
immediate understanding (depicted as an exchange of gazes): Czytelnik zreszt ,
czytelnik prawdziwy, na jakiego liczy ta powie, zrozumie i tak, gdy mu spojrz
gl
tym blaskiem. W tym krtkim a mocnym
spojrzeniu, w przelotnym cini
ciu r
ki pochwyci on, przejmie, odpozna i
przymknie oczy z zachwytu nad t recepcj g
bok . Bo czy pod stoem, ktry nas
dzieli, nie trzymamy si
wszyscy tajnie za r
ce? (Schulz 1989: 105; Besides, any
true reader and this story is only addressed to him will understand me anyway
when I look him straight in the eye and try to communicate my meaning. A short,
sharp look or a light clasp of his hand will stir him into awareness, and he will blink in
rapture at the brilliance of The Book. For, under the imaginary table that separates me
from my readers, dont we secretly clasp each others hands?; Schulz 2008: 115).
503

hermeneutic circle. But does that mean, therefore, that Schulz studies
are bound to an interpretive relativism?
Intertextuality and Eclecticism
In accordance with this interpretative indecisiveness, the German
Slavicist Renate Lachmann asserts that no single origin (such as The
Book) can be fixed in Schulzs literature; instead, a combination of
intertextual matrices constitutes his heterodox ludism (Lachmann
1999). Schulzian hints toward an original meaning can be
understood as allusions to Gnostic cosmogony, to pantheist
romanticism, or to Jewish kabbalah, yet none of these systems of
knowledge provides the ultimate solution of the enigmatic substance
from which emanation in panmasquerade evolves. Each
interpretative approach had since widened the scope of historical and
intellectual knowledge concerning Schulzs fiction. At least, all those
different, even contradictory statements in interpretations of Schulzs
work supply a specific Schulzian sound, or atmosphere whereas
the sense still resists interpretive domestication. The search for it
has yielded the subtlest conclusions concerning the essence of the
Book. Can this effect be ascribed to a genuine Schulzian intellectual
eclecticism?
Focusing on intertextuality suggests a structural reading of
implied knowledge in literature. Schulzian intertextuality can be
understood as the effect of intellectual eclecticism, eclecticism arising
as a possible consequence of modern diversification and pluralization
of knowledge. With regard to the colloquial use of eclecticism, the
prevailing notion of the term is negative, referring either to
methodological assembling, non-systematic montage, and above all,
unoriginality to the point of plagiarism. This belief is well founded in
the history of the concept (Albrecht 1994) but neglects its inherent
ambivalence. A negative opinion on eclecticism stresses the aspect of
unoriginality and indecisiveness. However, eclecticism can also be
seen as a conscious selection based on intellectual autonomy and
skepticism, and therefore dissociated from orthodox and irremovable
truth. From this perspective, eclecticism becomes an attitude which is
opposed to orthodox authority and fundamentalism. It then bears a
freeing dimension because it highlights the autonomous intellectual
choice that is not bound to any school of thought and abandons
504
Janis Augsburger
orthodox soteriology. Schulz realizes this attitude in Jacobs

secondary creation of his Traktat o manekinach (Treatise on
Tailors Dummies), where imperfect and essentially amorphous
beings, without internal structure, products of the imitative tendency
of matter, are publicized as the last refuge of artistic creation and
where senile, addled Jacob is named an inhabitant of the regions of
great heresy. Hence, there is an alliance between eclectic assemblage,
Schulzs aesthetics of the panmasquerade and Jacobs Second
Genesis. All these phenomena aim at artistic and intellectual
liberation; they oppose any kind of religious, philosophical, or
aesthetic orthodoxism. Even though Lachmanns theoretical focus is
on intertextuality, her term heterodox ludism seems to indicate the
eclectic aesthetic strategy in Schulzs writing. Consequentially, while
asking for its possible soteriological dimension, she comes to the
conclusion that it emerges in the process of formal artistic creation.
Schulzian eclecticism implies a conscious strategy of divergent
origins, the effect of which might be found in the intertextuality of his
prose. Furthermore, it can be understood as a trial to obscure the traces
of reading experiences by concealing or confusing fragments of
contemporary knowledge. By means of this eclectic distancing, his
texts gain intellectual and artistic freedom. Their liberating potential
can be noticed in the exalted expressions of his prose. Nevertheless,
they point at the loss of a last, perfect instance, the Book, and tell
about its compensatory substitutes.
It is interesting that in the last years Schulz studies
nonetheless focused to a great extent on the sense of the Schulzian
monistic substance. The consideration of Jewish mysticism in
Schulzs work contributed to a completely new direction of
interpretation. In his exegesis, the late scholar Wadysaw Panas found
Jewish Messianism as the inherent soteriological sense in Schulzs
work (Panas 1997, 2001). His suspenseful hermeneutics of messianic
announcement as a leitmotiv not only in the literary but also in the
graphical work of Bruno Schulz has inspired scholars to regard the
Jewish origin and knowledge of the artist more than ever before.
Panas investigates Schulzs work in order to identify the underlying
method that rules this artistic creation. For example, the exalted
atmosphere in his prose can be understood as rooted in the Hasidic,
Galician culture (Sproede 2002), and Schulzs Cinnamon Shops can
be considered to be composed as a visualization of the Jewish
505

calendar (Schulte 2003, 2004). It is interesting that Panas refers to
Gershom Scholems history of Jewish esoterism, i.e., Lurianism
(Sholem 1980: 267-355). Its threefold cosmogony of zimzun (Gods
self-restriction in order to let the cosmos appear), shebirat ha-kelim
(the burst of the vessels), and tikkun (understood as messianic
restitution of the burst fragments) has been used as a model for
different interpretations. While Panas concentrates on the aspect of
messianic tikkun, Marta Bartosik also considers Schulzs essay
Mityzacja rzeczywistoci (The Mythologizing of Reality) to be
influenced by this Lurian model. She draws parallels between the
fragmented (scientific, analytical) modern language that has been
criticized by Schulz and the shebirat ha-kelim, and at the same time
she sees Schulzs systematic restoration of language through poetry as
analogous to the process of tikkun (Bartosik 2000: 90 ff). In contrast,
Boena Shallcross, while taking into account the possible JewishMessianic allusions, asserts that in Schulzs prose there is no
messianic intention in the strictest sense but a play with mystical
allusions and meanings. She is following Harold Bloom, who in his
canonical The Anxiety of Influence stated that literature raises the
question of existential meaning and therefore must in some way refer
to the mystical traditions (Shallcross 1997: 270-281). Monistic
substance might thus remain enigmatic, mystical. Panmasquerade is
easier to decipher because it parallels fluid identity: the eternal
transgression and transformation of forms.
Fluidization of Identity and of the Self
Identity was a much-discussed problem in the aesthetics of the early
twentieth century. The term is derived from Latin identitas. It is now
mainly used in two contexts: logic and psychology. With regard to
logic, identity is defined by the criterion of indistinguishableness, yet
if this same criterion is transposed to the physical world, a number of
philosophical problems arise: can spatial-temporal objects be identical
at all if they are permanently subject to physical force effects of time?
How is it, then, that a term designates an object in general as identical
if this very object is subject to permanent change in the physical
world? From this follows that identity is a logical abstraction. In the
history of philosophy this problem mostly led to idealistic solutions,
which share an essential structure: the separation of two different
506
Janis Augsburger
ontological spheres. In the sphere of the physical world, the forms of

being are understood as not identical but dynamic and thus inferior.
Hence, any reliable cognition must start from the superior sphere of
the identical.
A prototypical and idealistic solution of the identity problem
can be found in the Platonic doctrine in which the sphere of ideas is
conceptualized as the sphere of identical substance that is equated
with divinity, validity, and moral good because ideas eternally remain
the same. This idealistic solution, however, still leads to conceptual
problems because ideas cannot be recognized by ordinary perception
(which is always part of the physical world) but must be presumed in
a speculative manner by the logos. An epistemic dilemma follows: the
objects in the physical world are too fluid to be identical and the
presumed identical ideas are not recognizable in the world. The sphere
of identity remains a heuristic abstraction of the logos. Hence,
approaches to the monistic substance in Schulzs aesthetics remain
speculative. Nonetheless, by the end of this essay, there will be one
more attempt to decipher it via Schopenhauers concept of the will.
Similar problems can be seen in the psychological use of the
term identity. The unity of personality, how personal identity could
be described, must be sufficiently open in order to be able to integrate
a persons development and experience. The concept of personal
identity seems to imply a dialectics of a nucleus of identity
(sometimes called the self) and the changing personal experience or
development of a person. Henri Bergson treats this problem in his
Introduction to Metaphysics (1993: 188-225). According to Bergson,
any personal experience can, from the perspective of physical
psychology, be analyzed only as a series of different psychological
and sensory impressions, which are arranged on a continuous timeline.
Bergson calls this sequence the stream of experience. In this stream
one state simply follows another, but because this sequential
perspective does not conform to the perception of personal identity
and internal coherence, Bergson introduces the term duration. The
experience of duration within the stream of experience is equivalent to
the self, i.e., the unity of a person in the multiplicity of his or her
experiences. Duration and memory, then, seem to hold the concept of
identity together. However, this concept resists analytical approaches
because it appears only as imagination or intuition or even
abstraction.
507

This schematic demonstration shows that the term identity is
problematic. It seems to produce a splitting of two spheres: one of
unrecognizable unity and the other of perceptual multiplicity.
However, this split of identity is a main topic in modern literature.
Modern inner conflicts, experiences of estrangement are producing the
notion of lost integrity and identity. This conflict is also the heart of
Schulzs prose. In his A Description of the Book Cinnamon Shops
(originally written in German), Schulz distinguishes between an
inferior sphere of biographical facts and a deeper one of a spiritual
dimension, the myth that guarantees coherence and identity:
It is the authors conviction that there is no way to plumb the deepest level
of biography or make out the true shape of personal destiny either by
describing the external curriculum vitae or by psychological analysis,
however deeply the latter might probe. The ultimate given data of human
life, he submits, lie in a spiritual dimension, not in the category of facts
but in their transcendent meaning; likewise, a curriculum vitae that aims
to elucidate its own semantic structure, that is honed to be sensitive to its
own spiritual significance, amounts to myth. That murky, portentous
atmosphere, that aura which condenses around every family history and
illuminates it, as it were, with mythic flashes as if it embodied the
ultimate secret of blood and kinship is the poets way of glimpsing that
historys other face, its profounder gestalt. (Schulz 1990: 153)
In his essay The Mythologizing of Reality, Schulz already

formulated this distinction between banal facts and deeper sense:
Istot rzeczywistoci jest sens. Co nie ma sensu, nie jest dla nas
rzeczywiste. Kady fragment rzeczywistoci yje dzi
ki temu, e ma
udzia w jakim sensie uniwersalnym. [] Poezja to s krtkie spi
cia
sensu mi
dzy sowami, raptowna regeneracja pierwotnych mitw. []
Poezja odpoznaje te sensy stracone, przywraca sowom ich miejsce, czy
je wedug dawnych znacze. U poety sowo opami
tuje si
niejako na
swj sens istotny, rozkwita i rozwija si
spontanicznie wedug praw
wasnych, odzyskuje sw integralno. Dlatego wszelka poezja jest
mitologizowaniem, d y do odtworzenia mitw o wiecie. (Schulz 1989:
385)
(The essence of reality is Meaning or Sense. What lacks Sense is, for us,
not reality. Every fragment of reality lives by virtue of partaking in a
universal Sense. [] Poetry happens when short-circuits of sense occur
between words, a sudden regeneration of the primeval myths. [] Poetry
recognizes these lost meanings, restores words to their places, connects
them by the old semantics. In the poets mind, the word remembers, so to
speak, its essential meaning, blossoms, unfolds spontaneously according
508
Janis Augsburger
to its own inner laws, regains its wholeness. Thus all poetry is
mythologizing and strives to restore myths to the world; Schulz 1990:
115-116)
As we learn from this citation, the sphere of myths is connected with

an experience of sense that is absent in everyday life but can be
restored by poetic language. In this context, sense should be seen as
coherence which refers to regularity, contiguity, and even truth. The
philosopher Alasdayr MacIntyre in his well-known After Virtue
(1981) stated that personal identity is a result of a coherent narration
of ones own life, which seems to come close to Schulzs conception
of mythical biography even though in his prose there are passages that
surprisingly and apparently dissolve coherence and sense. There is a
permanent changeover between the illusion of identity and (sometimes
psychic) panmasquerade.
Schulz wrote of a certain mental disorientation in a letter to
Tadeusz Breza:
Zostaj
w Drohobyczu, w szkole, gdzie nadal haastra b
dzie wyprawiaa
harce na moich nerwach. Trzeba bowien wiedzie, e nerwy moje
rozbiegy si
sieci po caej pracowni robt r
cznych, rozprzestrzeniy si
po pododze, wytapetoway ciany i oploty g

st plecionk , warsztaty i
kowado. Jest to znane w nauce zjawisko pewnego rodzaju telekinetyki,
moc ktrej wszystko, co dzieje si
na warsztatach, strugnicach itd., dzieje
si
poniek d na mojej skrze. (Schulz 2002: 50)
(Im still in Drohobycz, in the school where the gang will go right on
playing fast and loose with my nerves. For you must realize that my
nerves have been stretched thin like a net over the entire handicraft center,
have crept along the floor, smothered the walls like tapestry and covered
the shops and the smithy with a dense web. This phenomenon is known to
science as telekinesis, which makes everything that happens in the shops,
the planing shed, and so on seem to happen on my skin as well; Schulz
1990: 55)
While Schulz practiced telekinesis in an apparently involuntary

manner, it was a well-known phenomenon in French Surrealism,
where states of psychic disintegration, dreaming, and other states of
unconsciousness were considered to be a prolific resource for artistic
creation. By examining these extraordinary psychic dimensions, fluid
identity can be reviewed from a psychological perspective.
Following Roger Caillois who in his article Mimicry and
Legendary Psychasthenia examines the decaying distinction between
509

a creature and its environment, Rosalind Krauss proposes the term
insectoid psychosis: Caillois explained psychotic states as resulting
from a sudden decrease of psychic energy. It occurs within some
insect species, for example, when mantises are adapting their
appearance in accordance to environmental conditions. For Krauss,
the mantis is a perfect example of camouflage or delusion; it is
indiscernible whether it is a dead object or a living creature (in Krauss
1998: 179).
The collapse of the distinction between the I and its
environment can also occur within extreme, traumatic situations, when
a decrease of energy results in a psychotic desire to dissolve oneself
into the environment in order to protect the individual from a
threatening stimulus satiation. As a result, the individual is confronted
with a loss of internal coherence, with an uncanny extension of its
self:
To these dispossessed souls, space seems to be a devouring force. Space
pursues them, encircles them, digests them in a gigantic phagocytosis. It
ends by replacing them. Then the body separates itself from thought, the
individual breaks the boundary of his skin and occupies the other side of
his senses. (Krauss 1998: 179)
Because psychotic perception, or any other psychically influenced

perception, bursts static ideas of what is normal, states of psychic
disintegration were appreciated in the Surrealist movement. In these
states, as well as in dreams or in trance, new pictures, meanings, and
combinations of thoughts were generated and justified in the realm of
art. Outside that frame of artistic creation, however, the delimitation
of the normal remained sanctioned. The psychotic drug-induced crisis
of Antonin Artaud was treated in hospital. The ambivalence of crisis
and potentiality in fluid identity becomes obvious as well from the
perspective of psychology.
Fluidization of the self also appears in the context of
masochism.6 Not only in the early graphic art of his Xiga
bawochwalcza (The Idolatrous Book) does Schulz follow a
masochistic aesthetics that is loaded with quasi-religious significance.
The main strategy in masochistic aesthetics is the introduction of the
moment of suspense, which is a medium for creating a presence that is

6
Cf. Augsburger (2008) for a detailed study on masochism in Schulzs work.
Janis Augsburger
510
ruled by the notion of something absent and missing. The state of

masochistic adoration implies an unfulfilled desire whereas the pain of
masochism that is brought on stage in Schulzs graphical work serves
as a paradoxical affirmation of a precarious masculine self. In Xiga
bawochwalcza, the dialectics of monistic substance and
panmasquerade is transformed into a mythologized concept of
gender. The sphere of (alleged) integrity in Schulzs graphics belongs
to an empowered femininity whereas panmasquerade and
deformation becomes a trait of adoring masculinity. The pain of the
unfulfilled masochistic desire equals Josephs pain that was triggered
by the missing Book.
Poetical Fluidization
In summary, the confrontation of statements in Schulzs aesthetic
program with passages of his prose leads to a contradiction between
the metaphysical justification of art and concrete deformation and
tendencies toward dissolution in his literary work. While in his
theoretical statements Schulz often refers to a concept of metaphysical
sense that in his opinion is encoded in the ancient and modern myths,
his literary narrations at the same time practice poetical fluidization.
In his stories, Schulz tells of the illness, poverty, and ridiculousness of
human existence, enriching his narrations with grotesque elements and
coloring them with a melancholic tone. One can easily provide
examples, such as the figure Jacob who is presented in a fragile
psychic and physical condition. His status changes several times
between dead and alive. He appears as a condor as well as a roach or a
cancer. Ostatnia ucieczka ojca (Fathers Last Escape) starts with:
Byo to w pnym i zatraconym okresie zupenego rozprz
enia, w
okresie ostatecznej likwidacji naszych interesw. [] W tym czasie
ojciec mj umar by ju definitywnie. Umiera wielokrotnie, zawsze
jeszcze nie doszcz
tnie, zawsze z pewnymi zastrzeeniami, ktre
zmuszay do rewizji tego faktu. (Schulz 1989: 312)
(It happened in the late and forlorn period of complete disruption, at the
time of the liquidation of our business. [] At the time, my father was
definitely dead. He had been dying a number of times, always with some
reservations that forced us to revise our attitude toward the fact of his
death; Schulz 2008: 307)
511

Wichura (The Gale) contains several transgressions and is
a perfect example of poetic fluidization. The story begins with a
fantasy. During a furious storm, there is an uncontrollable awakening
of junk in the attics. The narrator animates the objects and presents
them forming a military formation that suddenly explodes and then
floods the town. A black parliament of jars (czarne sejmy
garnkw) with its blithering and empty discussion (wiecowania
gadatliwe i puste) becomes a dark tumult of the vessels (ciemny
zgiek naczy) that together with the baggage of the wind (tabory
wichru) finally rages in the town for three days and nights (Schulz
1989: 85-86). Schulz is using verbs with destructive notions: to
degenerate (wyradza), to shoot (wystrzela), to outpour (wyla), to
flow (pyn), to swarm (mrowi si), and to push (napiera). By
introducing these explosive metaphors, he creates a Dionysian
atmosphere. In the following second section, this Dionysian tension is
contrasted by the reasonable considerations of the practical mother,
who demands: You wont go to school today, [] theres a gale
blowing (Schulz 2008: 78; Nie pjdziesz dzi do szkoy, [] jest
straszna wichura na dworze; Schulz 1989: 86).
Schulz ascribes the practical and reasonable behavior in his
prose to female housekeeping. The Gale contrasts this safe and
reasonable sphere of female domestic economy with a Dionysian
world outside. Thus, it is not surprising that in this scene the father
Jacob is outside the house. The storys plot consists of three events.
The first event is when the assistant Theodore and the first-person
narrators brother bring Jacob his meal. The second event is the arrival
of some exhausted visitors who are excitedly talking about the storm.
The third event is the unexpected visit of Aunt Perasia and her
argument with Adela about how to cook a chicken, which culminates
in Perasias furious rage. Perasia carries the Dionysian atmosphere
into the rational domestic sphere. The furious storm becomes her
furious rage. It is pictured by means of a strategy typical of Schulz
that Krzysztof Stala in his On the Margins of Reality called the
realization of metaphor (Stala 1993: 90 ff.) It is the metaphorical
fuming and boiling rage that is now described as a real occurrence. In
the following example, the metaphorical language (it seemed as if)
abruptly materializes:
Zdawao si
, e w paroksyzmie zoci rozgestykuluje si
na cz
ci, e
rozpadnie si
, podzieli, rozbiegnie w sto paj kw, rozga
zi si
po
512
Janis Augsburger
pododze czarnym, migotliwym p
kiem oszalaych karakonich biegw.
Zamiast tego zacz
a raptownie male, kurczy si
, wci roztrz
siona i
rozsypuj ca si
przeklestwami. (Schulz 1989: 90)
(It seemed that in her paroxysm of fury she might disintegrate into
separate gestures, that she would divide into a hundred spiders, would
spread out over the floor in a black, shimmering net of crazy running
cockroaches. Instead, she began suddenly to shrink and dwindle, still
shaking and spitting curses; Schulz 2008: 81-82)
Perasia starts to shrink physically and turn into smoke. The

description of her dissolution is completed by circus metaphors:
Perasia is acrobatically dancing on stilts but then losing control over
her motor skills, which is characteristic of clownish figures. Perasia
decays into dust and nothingness (w proch i w nico; Schulz
1989: 91), which indicates the disappearance of the storm. This scene
is described from an objective distance. There is only a short moment
of embarrassment among the family, a painful sympathy
(ubolewanie). But the following relaxation (pewna ulga), the cool
acceptance of the uncanny and impossible, reminds one of Kafkas
Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915). After the physical
dissolution of Perasias identity, her literal fluidization, the family
returns to normal.
In this story, two directions of fluidization can be
distinguished. First the animation of lifeless objects, i.e., the tableware
in the attic, then the dissolution of a creature into matter. The borders
between things and creatures are blurred. Both metamorphoses are
induced by the theme of the furious storm. Schulz induces a moment
of ecstatic frenzy, which in his work seems to be inspired by the
image of Maenadian Bacchanalia. As is well known, this Dionysian
procession was a theme in one of Schulzs drawings with the same
title which presents a female procession accompanied by an anxious
looking figure the Pierrot. The impact is highly symbolic because
the picture depicts the ambivalence of Dionysian ecstasy, in which
according to the legends crimes were committed by the Maenads,
where a matriarchal power was reinforced, threatening male identity
concepts. In Schulzs texts, however, the function of his fluidization
strategy is to create a parallel between the inner sphere of
consciousness and the outer sphere of spatial-temporal reality. This
poetic strategy can be seen as a late figuration of states of
disintegration, by which the author regains control and freedom.
513

The Other Dimension
As was shown, fluid identity concepts were strikingly apparent in the
intellectual disputes of the early twentieth century as well as in the
work of Schulz, and his strategy of poetic fluidization has been
roughly situated within these discussions. However, if one considers
Schulzs insistence on a monistic substance, as mentioned in his
letter to Witkiewicz, or on myth as a sphere of sense and coherence,
and if one additionally regards the universal metaphor of The Book,
fluid identity appears as just one dimension of the Schulzian
intellectual and artistic system. The other dimension of his work has
been characterized as a quasi-religious nostalgia (Stala 1993: 123).
These nostalgic Schulzian concepts, i.e., substance, myth, sense, as
well as his poetic metaphor The Book, all have something in
common: they seem to relate to the discourse of Negative Theology
with its inherent critique of the representation of the divine. Negative
Theology consists of the idea that God can be described only by
negation there is no positive linguistic access to God. If the idea of
God or alternatively a divine sphere of integrity is maintained, then
this position of Negative Theology leads to mystical consequences.
The sphere of the divine, the universal meaning and, one might
postulate, the messianic tikkun are not yet realized in the ordinary
world but traces of them can be experienced by epiphany and
revelation. As a consequence, the epistemic realization of the sphere
of the divine switches from a discursive to an iconic layer (Stala 1993:
100).
Nevertheless, iconic or metaphorical allusions to this realm of
integrity imply a suspension ad infinitum, such as in the metaphor of
The Book. The original remains absent, but its text can be
rediscovered in the ordinary journal with its advertisements. It is
questionable whether this suspension of negative theology should be
understood as strictly logical (as beyond human comprehension) or if
it even bears a temporal dimension. If so, the other Schulzian
dimension could be referred to as utopian rather than nostalgic, so
that the messianic interpretations of Schulzs work indeed appear to be
justified.
514
Janis Augsburger
Fluid Identity in Schopenhauer

Although fluid identity had been realized in different aesthetic and
philosophical debates, even the notion of this quasi-religious integrity,
including its problematic dilatory representation, diverged into the
various neo-religious and esoteric movements of the early twentieth
century. Carl Gustav Jung, in a lecture on the problem of soul in
modern man held in 1928, asserted that since the sixteenth and
seventeenth century there was no comparable increase of general
interest in spirituality, astrology, theosophy, and parapsychology. This
esoteric trend was developed in the course of the modern critique of
religion since the Enlightenment. Accordingly, Jung explained the
increasing interest in esotericism as a result of freed religious
energy that has flown back from obsolete (monotheistic) religions
(Jung 1986: 100). Under this condition of secularization, the religious
systems of the Far East offered orientation. The first European studies
on Asiatic Religion came into existence in the late eighteenth century.
In London, the Royal Asiatic Society edited Hindu scriptures,
including the translation of fifty Upanishads into Latin by Abraham
Hyacinthe A. Du Perron (Ltkehaus 2004: 44). In Germany the
Romantic movement capitalized on The Language and the Wisdom
of the Indians, which was also the title of a work by Friedrich
Schlegel. The Prussian state philosopher G.W.F. Hegel even stated
that in the culture of Buddhist meditation there emerges a state of
complete indetermination and indifferentism, which in its infinitude
comes close to his concept of the Absolute (Ltkehaus 2004: 42). A
more detailed elaboration of early twentieth-century esoteric
movements and their foundations in European Indology cannot be
provided here.7 However, regarding the abovementioned Schulzian
nostalgia for a sphere of integrity, there are still a few more
observations to be made, for it seems that Schulz knew very well the
vocabulary of European spiritualism.
Thus, in Ksi
ga (The Book), in the advertisement for the
dubious Magda Wang, who claims to treat male misbehavior, it is
pointed out that her alleged diary, Z purpurowych dni (The Purple
Days), has been edited in the Publishing House of the
Anthroposophical Institute in Budapest (Schulz 1989: 117). Another

7
Cf. Washington (1993) for a discussion of the American theosophic context.
515

passage alludes to anthroposophical issues regarding a type of human
that happened to be changed into arctoid creatures by Anna Csillags
hair remedy. Mr. Bosco from Milan, another figure in this collection
of salvatory announcements, is presented as master of dark magic.
Nevertheless, these esoteric allusions are obviously highly ironic: for
example, when Schulz notes that we must become completely
esoteric for a while (Tu zmuszeni jestemy sta si
na chwil
cakiem ezoteryczni; Schulz 1989: 118) in order to understand Mr.

Boscos cryptic signs. The narration is charged with allusions to the
transcendent, to reincarnation, to prophecy, exegesis, and
salvation. Yet The Book seems to be paradigmatic for the
Schulzian strategy of covering the traces of his knowledge.
The sphere of transcendence is somehow invoked but at the
same time its description underlies the dilatory movement of the
signs (Stala 1993: 47). The suspension of the transcendent can also
be observed in Kometa (The Comet), yet this story provides us
with a slightly more obvious philosophical context. Schopenhauers
principium individuationis is mentioned several times, and
additionally, the Heraclitian Panta Rhei and the term mesmerism
are evoked briefly. Jacob, who is enthusiastic with his physical
transformation experiments, declares that Principium individuationis
furda! (Schulz 1989: 339).
In two substantial passages it is said that a certain ignorance
of the principium individuationis bears the quasi-magic potential of
which Jacob becomes aware in his experiments. The reference to
Schopenhauer is apparent, but besides its reasoning for poetical
fluidization, what other conclusions can be drawn from this reference?
If we also bear in mind that Schulz avoids definite assertions that
concern a possible religious or philosophical discipleship, the question
emerges of whether Schulzs reference to Schopenhauer is just
another matrix within multiple layers of intertextuality. And indeed,
this could be asserted. The Schulzian dialectics of panmasquerade
and substance in many respects applies to Schopenhauers ontology of
pure energy (will), objectifying itself in various ranges of form. This
models possible origin in Indian theology has often been shown. The
discussion of a Hindu-Buddhist version of principium
individuationis as a domain of deception spread from mid- and latenineteenth-century European Indology, and after Schopenhauers
prominent reception, it became an instrument in bourgeois
516
Janis Augsburger
Kulturkritik, e.g. it found a prominent place in Nietzsches Birth of

Tragedy. In Polish modernism and expressionism, Nietzsches
philosophy became an important reference, based on the Polish
translation of Nietzsches entire work at the beginning of the twentieth
century (Kunicki 2002). Nietzsches concepts of existential tragedy,
Dionysian celebration of life, his criticism of (Christian and
bourgeois) morality, and his favoring the individuals freedom and
self-determination radically influenced European literature and
promoted experimental forms in aesthetics. During the early twentieth
centurys Schopenhauer and Nietzsche boom, the fluidity of material
forms and states of consciousness as Veil of Maya had been
conjoined with a celebration of life as a transgressive carnival. This
aesthetic idea had a great impact on reforming concepts of identity. In
Schopenhauers doctrine, however, central themes of the Schulzian
intellectual horizon seem to converge. If one recalls the questions
which are comprised in The World as Will and Representation,
concepts such as will (as pure, blind energy), objectification (of will in
physical forms and cognitions), representation (deceitful, or
enlightened as recognition of the will) ought to be mentioned as well
as the notions of affliction, pessimism, and aestheticism.
Schopenhauer identifies the noumenon (as the transcendent condition
of phenomena) via the will, which he specifies as electricity and
gravity. Uncle Edwards transformation into an electric bell refers
ironically to this idea.
Principium individuationis can be described as the idea of the
separation of individual forms. In Schopenhauers work as well as in
Schulzs fiction, it is a pejorative notion because the idea of
individuation is seen as illusive. Hence, revealing the deceptive veil
of Maya was comprehended as the revelation of a deeper truth that
expresses one simple doctrine: Tat swam asi (Thou art that); i.e.,
the mystical Hindu insight that Brahman, the transcendent grounding
of reality, and Atman, the nucleus or self of a person, are identical.
This identity allows us to explain the meaning of the Schulzian
monistic substance. Bearing this in mind, fluid identity becomes less
tragic because the sequence of forms, impressions, and occurrences
become encompassed by the will that unifies the phenomena. Hence,
the lack of prejudices regarding principium individuationis (brak
uprzedze co do principium individuationis; Schulz 1989: 343) not
only permits poetical fluidization but also delivers substantial
517

theoretical justification for the Schulzian panmasquerade. Poetical
fluidization comprises methods of poetical dispersion, flow, eruption,
conversion, and transgression. It is the realization of the concept of
panmasquerade. Fluid identity concepts prepared the ground for
loosening the tissue of reality, while the other metaphysical
dimensions in Schulzs aesthetics agree with various (quasi)religious
and mystical concepts. This generalization of meaning derives from
the eclectic knowledge of Schulz, who was familiar with the esoteric
soteriological systems of his time but refuses to privilege one
definitely. As Schulz pleads for heresy, even the Schopenhauerian
allusions might be part of his heterodox ludism, by which the
interpretative openness of his fiction will be sustained for further
essays.
Bibliography
Albrecht, Michael. 1994. Eklektik. Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.
Augsburger, Janis. 2008. Masochismen. Mythologisierung als Krisen-sthetik bei
Bruno Schulz. Hannover: Wehrhahn.
Bartosik, Marta. 2000. Bruno Schulz jako krytyk. Krakw: Universitas.
Bergson, Henri. 1993. Denken und schpferisches Werden. Hamburg: Europische
Verlagsanstalt.
Jung, Carl Gustav. 1986. Das Seelenproblem des modernen Menschen in
Gesammelte Werke (Bd. 10). Zrich: Rascher: 91-113.
Krauss, Rosalind. 1998. Das Photographische. Eine Theorie der Abstnde. Mnchen:
Fink.
Kunicki, Wojciech (ed.) 2002. Nietzsche i pisarze polscy. Pozna: Wydawnictwo
Poznaskie.
Lachmann, Renate. 1999. Der Demiurg und seine Phantasmen in Drubek-Meyer,
Natasha, Peter Kosta and Holt Meyer (eds). Juden und Judentum in Literatur
und Film des slavischen Sprachraums. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 131-153.
Ltkehaus, Ludger (ed.) 2004. Nirwana in Deutschland. Von Leibniz bis
Schopenhauer. Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.
Lyotard, Francois. 1990. Beantwortung der Frage Was ist postmodern? in
Engelmann, Peter (ed.) Postmoderne and Dekonstruktion. Leipzig: Reclam:
33-48.
MacIntyre, Alisdair. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press.
Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL.
. 2001. Bruno od Mesjasza. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.
Sandauer, Artur. 1964 [1956]. Rzeczywisto zdegradowana (Rzecz o Brunonie
Schulzu) in Schulz, Bruno, Proza. Krakw: Wydawnictwo Literackie: 7-43.
518
Janis Augsburger
Scholem, Gershom. 1980. Die jdische Mystik in ihren Hauptstrmungen.

Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
Schopenhauer, Artur. 1996. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Frankfurt/Main: dtv.
Schulte, Jrg. 2003. Wielka kronika kalendarza in Midrasz 3(2003): 12-15.
. 2004. Eine Poetik der Offenbarung. Isaak Babel, Bruno Schulz, Danilo Ki.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
bski).
Fromm.
York: Penguin.
Retextualization of the Kabbalah in East European Politics and Societies 2:
270-281.
Sproede, Alfred. 2002. Eine verlorene Art jdischen Erzhlens in Hahn, HansHenning and Jrn Stbing (eds). Jdische Autoren Ostmitteleuropas im 20.
Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang: 253-275.
Washington, Peter. 1993. Madame Blavatskys Baboon: Theosophy and the
Emergence of the Western Guru. London: Secker & Warburg.
Index
A
Abraham, Julie, 284, 287
Abraham, Karl, 364, 365
Alberti, Leon Battista, 225, 228, 236
Albrecht, Michael, 503, 517
Alchevska, Khrystia, 421
Allen, Carolyn, 284, 287, 497
Anderson Imbert, Enrique, 174
Apuleius, 383, 394
Aquinas, Thomas, 68-70, 73, 80
Aristotle, 379, 381, 383, 391, 394,
395
Artaud, Antonin, 509
Aszkenazy, Szymon, 423
Augsburger, Janis, 485, 496, 499,
509, 517
August, Richard, 459, 469
B
Bachelard, Gaston, 149
B k, Wojciech, 425
Bakan, David, 366, 370, 374, 376
Baker, Suzanne, 176, 191
Bakua, Bogusaw, 177, 191
Banks, Brian, 295, 296, 303, 304
Baraczak, Stanisaw, 156, 170
Barbey DAurevilly, Jules, 204
Barnes, Djuna, 267-276, 279-288
Barrs, Maurice, 256
Barthes, Roland, 215-217, 336, 337
Bartosik, Marta, 417, 505, 517
Bartoszyski, Kazimierz, 23, 328,

337
Battistini, Matilde, 226, 236
Baudelaire, Charles, 51, 215, 459
Baudrillard, Jean, 329, 332, 336, 337
Beardsley, Aubrey, 14, 200, 234, 269,
270, 275, 281, 288, 451, 459
Beaujeu, Jean, 383, 394
Becker, Jan, 13, 20
Bndite, Leonce, 253
Benjamin, Walter, 27, 45, 46, 59, 64,
167, 169, 170, 307, 320, 371, 474,
495, 496
Benstock, Shari, 280, 283, 287
Berent, Wacaw, 402
Berger, Klaus, 475, 496
Bergson, Henri, 49, 190, 406, 506,
517
Berman, Nina, 54, 64
Bhabha, Homi, 174, 191
Biaoszewski, Miron, 135-139, 141146, 148-151
Bieczyk, Marek, 308, 309, 313, 314,
321, 325
Bienenstock, Alfred, 451, 453
Blake, William, 459
Bloch, Chajim, 483, 488, 490, 496
Bloch, Ernst, 33
Boski, Jan, 29, 46, 73, 80, 458, 469
Bloom, Harold, 64, 505
Bocheski, Tomasz, 330, 331, 336,
337
Bolecki, Wodzimierz, 9, 10, 12, 14,
15, 20, 21, 71, 72, 80, 84-87, 90,
Index
520
91, 94, 131, 138, 151, 192, 199,
200, 216, 217, 234, 237, 265, 331,
335-338, 376, 452, 453, 463, 469,
470, 476, 496
Bolvar, Simn, 181
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 413
Borges, Jorge Luis, 155, 190, 319
Botticelli, 211
Boucher, Franois, 199
Breza, Tadeusz, 508
Brod, Max, 33
Broe, Mary Lynn, 287, 288
Brooke-Rose, Christine, 182, 191
Brown, Russell E., 12, 21, 154, 170,
204, 207, 213, 215, 217
Bruno, Guido, 279
Brzozowski, Stanisaw, 51
Buber, Martin, 27-29, 32-43, 46, 47,
54, 477, 490, 496
Buber, Paula, 32
Buczkowski, Leopold, 424
Budrecka, Aleksandra, 85, 105, 106,
131
Budurowicz, Bohdan, 138, 151
Bukwalt, Miosz, 153, 154, 158, 163,
170
Burek, Tomasz, 11, 21
Burke, Carolyn, 273, 279, 287
Byron, George, 328
Chabowska-Brykalska, Teresa, 145,

151
Chagall, Marc, 54, 64, 196
Chaplin, Charlie, 162
Chciuk, Andrzej, 423, 424, 431
Chmelnyckyj, Bohdan, 486
Chmurzyski, Wojciech, 217, 238,
258, 264, 453-456, 464, 467-470
Chotomska, Wanda, 145, 151
Chwin, Stefan, 12, 21, 49, 55, 63, 64,
71, 80
Ciesielczuk, Stanisaw, 137
irli-Straszyska, Danuta, 155, 170
Claretie, Jules, 259, 265
Cleopatra, 204
Coleman, Eli, 462, 469
Coleman, Emily, 272
Coleridge, Samuel, 328
Corcoran, Thomas H., 384, 394
Cortzar, Julio, 190
Craig, Gordon Edward, 293, 294, 301
Cranach, Lucas, 196, 200
Crane, Stephen, 279
Currie, Mark, 92, 131
Czabanowska-Wrbel, Anna, 15, 21
Czaplejewicz, Eugeniusz, 186, 192
Czarski, Wacaw, 404
Czechowicz, Jzef, 136
D
C
Caillois, Roger, 508, 509
Callot, Jacques, 452
Calvino, Italo, 213
Camus, Albert, 341-345, 349, 352354, 356, 359
Carpentier, Alejo, 174, 190
Carrel, Alexis, 71
Cassouto, Nella, 219, 237
Cather, Willa, 267, 287
Cavanagh, Clare, 177, 192
D browska, Krystyna, 85, 131

D browski, Mieczysaw, 13, 21, 307
Dan-Bruzda, Stanisaw, 141, 142, 151
Danow, David K., 185, 192
David, Jacques-Louis, 201
De Bruyn, Dieter, 9, 18, 83, 85, 111,
119, 132
de Falla, Manuel, 256, 265
de Man, Paul, 177, 192, 309, 320,
321, 325
Index
521

De Pasquale Barbanti, Maria, 390,
394
de Sica, Vittorio, 174
Degas, Edgar, 460, 464
del Pino, Rafael, 256, 265
Delacroix, Eugne, 197, 259
Deleuze, Gilles, 229, 237, 312
Delgado de Baviera, Elena, 255
Deli, Jovan, 153, 163, 170
Derrida, Jacques, 169, 229, 237, 291,
304, 314, 319, 473
Des Places, douard, 394
Detienne, Marcel, 391, 394
Dickstein, Samuel, 423
Diederichs, Eugen, 34, 496
Diels, Hermann, 379-381, 394
Dijkstra, Bram, 456, 469
Doktr, Jan, 487, 496
Dorofte, Oleksi, 427, 432
Dos Passos, John, 280
Dostoevskii, Fdor, 341, 359
Doughty, Frances, 272, 273, 287
Dreiser, Theodore, 279
Dresdner, Karol, 13, 21
Drozdowski, Piotr Joran, 85, 132
Dubnow, Simon, 476, 496
Dubowik, Henryk, 11, 21
Duchartre, Louis, 273
Drer, Albrecht, 200
Durix, Jean-Pierre, 175, 192
Dybel, Pawe, 334, 338, 362, 364,
376
Dziekoski, Albin, 137
E
Ehrenpreis, Marcus, 36, 258, 265
Eile, Stanisaw, 16, 21, 84, 85, 132
El Greco, 251, 255
Elbanowski, Adam, 174, 177, 183,
185, 190, 192
Eliade, Mircea, 139, 140, 151
Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 304

Ellis, Henry Havelock, 460
Empedocles, 379-381, 395
English, Horace B. and Ava
Champney, 460, 470
Eppel, Asar, 425, 427, 432, 433
F
Faulkner, William, 180, 192, 193
Fernandez, Renate Lellep, 264, 265
Fetting, Rainer, 195
Ficino, Marsilio, 390
Ficowski, Jerzy, 11, 13, 21, 24, 43,
47, 66, 81, 133, 151, 195, 197,
217, 219, 221, 237, 238, 251, 265,
269, 271, 274, 277, 278, 288, 304,
338, 359, 376, 377, 395, 402, 403,
405, 417, 418, 424, 425, 431, 450455, 458, 470, 471, 476, 497, 518
Fik, Ignacy, 10, 21
Finkel, Ludwik, 423
Fiut, Aleksander, 153, 155, 170, 428
Flaubert, Gustave, 206, 217, 494
Foucault, Michel, 181, 192, 450
Frank, Jakub Lejbovic, 486, 495
Franko, Ivan, 429, 430
Freud, Sigmund, 234, 285, 287, 310,
334, 361-368, 370-374, 376, 377,
440, 441, 449, 460
Fris, Lew, 425
Frydryczak, Beata, 307, 310, 325
Fuentes, Carlos, 190
Fssli, Johann Heinrich, 459
G
Garca Mrquez, Gabriel, 173, 174,
176-181, 184-193
Garcia, Amaya, 255, 265
Gazda, Grzegorz, 173, 180, 192, 338
Gebser, Jean, 254
Index
522
Gowacka, Dorota, 15, 21, 174, 192
Gowiski, Micha, 85, 132
Godley, Alfred Denis, 391, 394
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 99,
117, 232, 237
Gogol, Nikolai, 480
Golberg, Leonid, 425, 426, 428, 432
Goldfarb, David, 29, 36, 46, 56, 64,
359, 475, 496
Gombrowicz, Witold, 10, 12, 15, 2022, 24, 57, 63, 86, 87, 89, 120,
131, 133, 136, 233-237, 255, 257,
258, 292, 362, 364, 377, 399, 402,
412, 436, 451
Gomuka, Wadysaw, 145
Gon, Maksim, 422, 432
Goncourt, Edmond de, 460
Gondowicz, Jan, 220, 222, 237
Goodman, Nelson, 164, 168, 170
Golicki-Baur, Elisabeth, 11, 21
Gottlieb, Maurycy, 53
Goya, Francisco, 14, 197, 200, 204,
234, 256, 265, 269, 451, 452
Greene, Gerald and Caroline, 461,
470
Groski, Marek Ryszard, 399, 417
Grzinger, Karl Erich, 65, 371, 376,
483, 496
Grnewald, Matthias, 200
Grydzewski, Mieczysaw, 398-400,
411
H
Habib, Andr, 299, 301, 304
Hahn, Hannelore, 180, 192, 518
Halevi, Z'ev Ben Simon, 75, 81
Halpern, Romana, 57, 63, 330, 403,
416
Harris, Wilson, 174
Harshav, Benjamin, 27, 31, 32, 46
Hart, Ray, 355
Haumann, Heiko, 476, 485, 486, 497

Haupt, Zygmunt, 64, 424
Heckel, Erich, 201
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 235,
441, 442, 449, 514
Heidbrink, Ludger, 307, 325
Heidegger, Martin, 436, 439
Hemar, Marian, 423
Heraclitus of Ephesus, 76, 500
Herodotus, 391, 394
Herring, Philip, 268, 287
Hett, Walter Stanley, 379, 380, 394
Hinchliffe, Arnold P., 341, 359
Hirano, Yoshihiko, 228, 237
Hnatiuk, Ivan, 193, 420, 426, 428
Hoffmann, E.T.A., 285, 294
Huxley, Aldous, 362
Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 210, 211, 215,
217
Hyde, George, 15, 21
Hyppolite, Jean, 442, 449
I
Iamblichus, 393, 394
Ibsen, Henrik, 98
Ingold, Felix Philipp, 55, 61, 64, 155,
170
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 201
Irzykowski, Karol, 18, 24, 83-85, 8789, 91, 92, 94, 96-102, 109, 110,
116, 118-120, 123, 125, 127, 129133, 234, 469
Iser, Wolfgang, 314
Iwaszkiewicz, Jarosaw, 398, 405
J
Jabonowski, Wadysaw, 101, 132
Jacobson, Yoram, 476, 489, 497
Janion, Maria, 177, 192
Jankowski, Leszek, 299
Index
523

Jarz
bski, Jerzy, 11, 13-15, 21, 23,
46, 47, 49, 57, 60, 64, 65, 71, 80,
81, 138, 140, 151, 152, 157, 158,
170, 171, 189, 190, 192, 193, 216,
217, 237, 265, 325, 327, 328, 333,
338, 359, 362, 376, 377, 395, 401,
415, 418, 428, 432, 443, 450, 452,
453, 457, 460, 462, 467, 470, 471,
476, 496, 497, 518
Jastrun, Mieczysaw, 424
Jaworski, Roman, 204, 205, 217
Jesus, 52, 162, 227, 282
Jocz, Artur, 490, 497
Joyce, James, 83, 155
Jzefczuk, Grzegorz, 429, 432
Jung, Carl Gustav, 69, 70, 81, 190,
362-364, 366, 460, 514, 517
K
Kaden-Bandrowski, Juliusz, 400, 413,
414, 417
Kafka, Franz, 27, 33, 43, 59, 65, 177,
180, 181, 192, 193, 213, 215, 342,
359, 370, 371, 376, 447, 448, 483,
496, 497, 512
Kaivola, Karen, 284, 287
Kalaga, Wojciech, 320, 325
Kania, Ireneusz, 151, 369, 372, 376
Kannenstine, Louis, 282
Kant, Immanuel, 229, 448
Kantor, Tadeusz, 264, 265, 289, 292296, 301, 304
Kara, Ewa, 296, 297, 304
Karkowski, Czesaw, 11, 22, 49, 63,
64
Karpin, Josef, 427
Karpowicz, Agnieszka, 145, 151
Kasjaniuk, Halina, 14, 22, 220, 237,
452, 459, 461, 470
Kakw, Robert, 56, 64
Kasperski, Edward, 157, 170, 192,

193
Kato, Ariko, 14, 22, 219
Kaufer, David S., 177, 192
Kauffmann, Angelika, 129
Kejlin-Mitelman, Irena, 236, 263, 452
Kessling, C. R., 390, 394
Khlebnikov, Velimir, 492
Khnopff, Fernand, 459
Khonigsman, Iakov, 422
Kierkegaard, Sren, 331, 338
Kirchner, Hanna, 151
Ki, Danilo, 65, 66, 153-156, 161,
163-171, 518
Kisiel, Marian, 137, 151
Kitowska-ysiak, Magorzata, 13, 14,
22, 47, 65, 151, 152, 192, 197,
208, 217, 220, 222, 226, 237, 238,
251, 252, 265, 337, 338, 452-454,
456, 459, 463, 464, 467, 470, 476,
497
Kak, Zofia, 124, 132
Klein, Robert, 390, 395
Klein, Stacy, 297, 298, 304
Kleiner, Juliusz, 423
Kleist, Heinrich von, 293, 294, 301
Klekh, Igor, 431, 432
Kligler, Artur, 425
Klimt, Gustav, 459
Kosiski, Krzysztof, 11, 22, 90, 91,
125, 132
Konarzewska, Marta, 328, 338
Kornhauser, Julian, 156, 171
Korzeniowski, Jzef, 328
Koschmal, Walter, 153, 171
Koselleck, Reinhart, 307, 325
Kosko, Allan, 13, 22
Kony, Witold, 15, 22
Kossowska, Irena, 220, 237
Kossowski, ukasz, 220, 237
Kozakiewicz, Stanisaw, 143, 151
Krasiski, Zygmunt, 328
Index
524
Krauss, Rosalind, 509, 517
Krieger, Murray, 436, 450
Kristeva, Julia, 316
Krivokapi, Boro, 155, 171
Kubin, Alfred, 190, 215, 459
Kuczyska-Koschany, Katarzyna,
254, 265
Kulig-Janarek, Krystyna, 14, 22, 219221, 226, 234, 237, 463, 467, 470
Kumanicki, Kazimierz, 399, 418
Kuncewiczowa, Maria, 363, 411, 412
Kunicki, Wojciech, 516, 517
Kuprel, Diana, 157, 171, 353, 355,
358, 359
Kuryluk, Ewa, 277, 278, 456, 470
Kuniewicz, Andrzej, 424
Kumicki, Andrzej, 70, 71, 81
Kwiatkowski, Jerzy, 133, 398, 418
L
Lachmann, Renate, 15, 22, 56, 58, 64,
100, 132, 155, 167, 168, 171, 473,
485, 490, 497, 503, 504, 517
Lahowska, Aga, 255, 256
Laing, Carol, 286, 288
Lam, Andrzej, 398, 399, 418
Lanckoroski, Karol, 253
Landauer, Gustav, 33
Lanfranco, Giovanni, 210
Lange, Antoni, 57, 254
Lasker-Schler, Else, 53, 54
atuszyski, Grzegorz, 162, 171
Lauterbach, Artur, 13, 23, 451
Lavers, Annette, 216, 217
Lawson, Hilary, 156, 171
Leal, Luis, 174
Lecho, Jan, 398, 400
Legeyska, Anna, 149, 151
Leskov, Nikolai, 474, 495, 496
Lemian, Bolesaw, 49-57, 62-66,
137, 264, 265, 402
Leszczewska-Wodarska, Magorzata,
454, 456, 470
Lewi, Henri, 56, 57, 65, 475, 497
Lig
za, Wojciech, 428
Lille, Ludwik, 404
Lindenbaum, Shalom, 29, 47, 475,
497
Lipiska-Iakowicz, Krystyna, 333,
338
Lipiski, Jacek, 85, 132
obodowski, Jzef, 424
Looby, Robert, 175, 192
Lpez, Alfred, 176, 192
opuszaski, Piotr, 51, 65
Louis VII, 254
Lwenthal, Edmund, 219, 220, 224
Lucie-Smith, Edward, 198, 199, 217
Lukcs, Georg, 33, 413, 495
Luria, Isaac, 75, 77, 483
Ltkehaus, Ludger, 514, 517
Lyotard, Jean-Franois, 316, 325,
501, 517
M
Mach, Wilhelm, 425
MacIntyre, Alasdayr, 508, 517
Macpherson, James, 328
Magritte, Ren, 196
Maiakovskii, Vladimir, 61
Malaniuk, Yevhen, 421
Mandel, Arnold, 476, 477, 483, 486,
487, 497
Manet, Edouard, 197
Mann, Thomas, 43-45, 47, 190, 207,
208, 214, 215, 217, 381, 382, 395
Marcus, Jane, 270, 274, 280, 284, 288
Marcuse, Max, 234, 235, 238
Markowski, Micha Pawe, 15, 23,
374, 376, 435, 438, 439, 450
Marquard, Odo, 314, 321
Maszewski, Zbigniew, 180, 192
Index
525

Matisse, Henri, 196
Mauclair, Camille, 253, 259, 265
McBean, Anne, 462, 469
McBurney, Simon, 294, 295, 305
Meier Ydit, Max, 481, 497
Meineke, August, 393, 395
Meiselas, Susan, 459
Mendes-Flohr, Paul, 33, 34, 35, 47
Meniok, Ihor, 427
Meniok, Vira, 428, 429
Messerli, Douglas, 275, 287, 288
Meyer, Howard Abrams, 390, 395
Meyer-Fraatz, Andrea, 49, 54, 56, 59,
65
Meyrink, Gustav, 190, 365
Michaowski, Piotr, 185, 192
Michel, Frann, 284, 288
Mickiewicz, Adam, 13, 237, 415
Miklaszewski, Krzysztof, 11, 23, 292
Millati, Piotr, 335, 338
Miosz, Czesaw, 73, 81, 170, 357,
359
Mnich, Roman, 429, 430, 432
Modigliani, Amedeo, 196
Moked, Gabriel, 63, 65
Monet, Claude, 206
Moore-Gilbert, Bart, 174, 192
Moreau, Gustave, 459
Munch, Edvard, 200, 234, 451
Musil, Robert, 357, 477, 478, 497
N
Nabokov, Vladimir, 155, 161
Nacht, Jzef, 64, 233, 235, 238
Nakowska, Zofia, 57, 63, 362, 402,
412, 457
Napierski, Stefan, 10, 24
Nathan of Gaza, 485
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 69, 71, 72, 98,
190, 310, 331, 440, 501, 516, 517
Norwid, Cyprian Kamil, 136, 147
Novalis, 328
Noyes, John K., 226, 238
Nycz, Ryszard, 84, 132, 192, 193
O
ONeill, Eugene, 272
Obehelman, Harley D., 180, 193
Ochman, Jerzy, 74, 81
Okopie-Sawiska, Aleksandra, 158,
171
Olchanowski, Tomasz, 155, 171
Olzhych, Oleh, 421
Oprecht, Emil, 254
Ortwin, Ostap, 423
Owczarski, Wojciech, 180, 193, 264,
265
P
Paderewski, Ignacy, 256, 264
Panas, Wadysaw, 11, 14, 23, 29, 47,
51, 56, 60, 61, 65, 67, 74, 75, 81,
192, 217, 237, 338, 366, 369, 371,
372, 376, 425, 475, 484, 497, 504,
505, 517
Panti, Mihajlo, 163, 171
Pasternak, Boris, 55
Pavlyshyn, Andriy, 427
Pawowska-J drzyk, Brygida, 87-92,
119, 120, 132
Pawyszyn, Marko, 176, 182, 193
Peck, Arthur Leslie, 391, 395
Peiper, Tadeusz, 136
Prez de Ayala, Ramon, 262
Petlura, Simon, 422
Pietrzak, Wodzimierz, 421, 432
Pijanovi, Petar, 154, 155, 171
Pilpel, Mundek, 49
Pisudski, Jzef, 397-400, 404-406,
411-414, 417, 491
Pindel, Tomasz, 174, 193
Index
526
Plato, 381, 389
Pleniarowicz, Krzysztof, 292, 294,
304
Pliny, 383, 391, 392, 395
Pockier, Anna, 449, 467
Ploetz, Dagmar, 174, 179, 180, 184,
193
Podgrniak, Alexandra, 176, 193
Poe, Edgar Allan, 130, 215, 230, 287,
328
Poggioli, Renato, 492, 497
Pol, Wincenty, 328
Poulet, Georges, 314
Prohasko, Yurko, 429
Prokopczyk, Czesaw Z., 21, 414,
415, 418
Prokop-Janiec, Eugenia, 29, 31, 47,
63, 65, 366, 377
Proust, Marcel, 155, 207, 214, 215,
217
Prudil, Irena, 145, 151
Przybo, Julian, 136
Przybylski, Ryszard, 52, 57, 65
Przybyszewski, Stanisaw, 72, 131,
469, 488
Pshenychnyj, Yevgen, 428
Q
Quay, Stephen and Timothy, 289,
292, 299, 301, 304
R
Rachwa, Tadeusz, 13, 23
Rackham, Harris, 383, 392, 395
Rawdon Wilson, Robert, 182, 193
Raymond, Nancy, 462, 469
Retif, Nicolas Edm, 463
Ricoeur, Paul, 439, 440, 450
Riffaterre, Michael, 169, 171
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 190, 251, 253,

254, 265, 491
Rilke-Westhoff, Clara, 253
Ritz, German, 15, 23, 94, 132, 265
Robertson, Theodosia, 12, 23, 59, 65,
304, 417, 451, 468, 470
Rops, Flicien, 14, 200, 234, 451, 459
Rorty, Richard, 161, 162, 171, 501
Rosenfeld, Alvin H., 169, 171
Rosenzweig, Franz, 28
Rosiek, Stanisaw, 14, 21, 138, 151,
237, 265, 338, 376, 418, 453, 470,
476, 496
Roskies, David G., 481, 497
Roth, John K., 341, 343, 344, 359
Rubens, Peter Paul, 197, 200
Rudnytskyj, Mykhajlo, 424
Rybicka, Elbieta, 15, 23
Rymkiewicz, Jarosaw M., 55, 65
S
Sabbatai Zwi, 485, 486
Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von, 198,
200, 213, 215, 219-222, 224-238,
278, 488
Said, Edward, 53
Salamon, Joanna, 257, 265
Samchuk, Ulas, 420, 421
Samojlik, Czesaw, 11, 23
Sandauer, Artur, 11, 23, 85, 88, 135138, 145, 152, 238, 328, 338, 362,
377, 452, 485, 490, 497, 500, 517
Sanders, Julie, 289
Sangree, Constance L., 260, 265
Sargent, John S., 252, 265
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 340, 341, 359
Saulnier, Ren, 273
Schaeder, Grete, 33, 47
Schiele, Egon, 196, 459
Schlegel, Friedrich, 177, 309, 328,
448, 450, 514
Index
527

Schmid, Herta, 49, 63, 65, 171
Scholem, Gershom, 27, 64, 75, 81,
367, 371, 372, 377, 476, 483, 485487, 489, 497, 505, 518
Schnle, Andreas, 13, 15, 23, 120,
124, 126, 133, 145, 152
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 34, 69, 70, 81,
98, 499, 500, 501, 506, 514-518
Schulte, Jrg, 29, 47, 50, 56, 58, 60,
66, 379, 505, 518
Schulz, Bruno
A Night in July, 388
A Second Autumn, 209, 444, 465
August, 63, 120, 128, 203, 209,
310, 329, 334, 376, 388, 465
Birds, 58, 76, 93, 111, 402, 420,
483
Cinnamon Shops, 93, 120, 259,
310, 389, 392, 474, 478, 483
Cockroaches, 206
Dead Season, 483
Dodo, 120
Eddie, 120, 201
Fathers Last Escape, 59, 188,
510
Fatherland, 406, 409, 410
Loneliness, 179, 180, 262
Mr. Charles, 311, 316
My Father Joins the Fire Brigade,
388
Nimrod, 483
Pan, 23, 63, 120, 263, 389
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the
Hourglass, 61, 93, 120, 181,
317, 381, 382, 388, 389, 489
Spring, 15, 40, 43, 63, 78, 79, 93,
100, 111, 115, 181, 189-191,
211, 226, 254, 256, 260, 311,
314, 316, 321, 322, 329, 406,
436, 438-440, 442, 465, 474,
482, 487, 491
Tailors Dummies, 94, 284, 290,

465, 482, 489
The Age of Genius, 15, 39, 100,
106, 465, 479, 489
The Book, 15, 38, 39, 100, 178,
186, 278, 311, 329, 353, 405,
451, 465, 467, 468, 479, 502,
514, 515
The Comet, 71, 76, 93, 335, 387,
479, 490, 492, 493, 494, 515
The Gale, 59, 384, 437, 465, 511
The Night of the Great Season,
29, 113, 329, 330, 335
The Old-Age Pensioner, 120,
292, 386, 390, 445
The Republic of Dreams, 43,
298, 400, 406, 407, 479, 490,
491
The Street of Crocodiles, 93, 120,
128, 135, 140, 141, 145, 150,
186, 209, 300, 303, 311, 330,
332, 335
Treatise on Tailors Dummies,
15, 58, 59, 63, 71, 107, 126,
153, 156, 161, 166-169, 315,
321, 329, 332, 333, 335, 386,
465, 488, 504
Visitation, 58, 465, 483
The Idolatrous Book, 60, 61, 197199, 205, 219-224, 226-228,
236, 264, 269, 274, 276-278,
284, 285, 302, 303, 451-454,
456-459, 462-469, 476, 509
Schulz-Podstolska, Ella, 487
Schwartsbard, Samuil, 422
Schwarz, Marek, 258
Seneca, 383, 394
Shakespeare, William, 254
Shalata, Mykhailo, 426
Shallcross, Boena, 14, 15, 24, 29,
47, 56, 66, 350, 360, 505, 518
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 328
528
Shevchenko, Taras, 421, 430
Shklovskii, Viktor, 175
Shkrabiuk, Andriy, 428
Shore, Marci, 399, 418
Showalter, Elaine, 286, 288
Sikorski, Dariusz, 15, 24, 56, 66
Simmel, Georg, 33
Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 61, 337
Skrczewski, Dariusz, 177, 193
Slemon, Stephen, 174-176, 182, 193
Slessor, Catherine, 269, 288
Sonimski, Antoni, 366, 398, 400, 405
Sowacki, Juliusz, 390, 423
Sucki, Arnold, 67-70, 75-79, 81
Speina, Jerzy, 11, 24, 157, 171, 362,
364, 377, 473, 498
Spiegel, Nathan, 258
Spieker, Sven, 355, 357, 360
Spinoza, Baruch, 164
Sproede, Alfred, 20, 56, 57, 59, 66,
118, 133, 473, 481, 498, 504, 518
Staff, Leopold, 397, 398, 402
Stala, Krzysztof, 12, 15, 16, 24, 56,
66, 86, 133, 157, 171, 174, 193,
195, 205, 209, 217, 238, 290, 304,
367, 374, 375, 377, 473, 498, 511,
513, 515, 518
Stalin, Iosif, 137, 145, 422
Starobinski, Jean, 320
Steinhoff, Lutz, 12, 24
Stempowski, Jerzy, 421, 432
St
pnik, Krzysztof, 85, 133
Stojanovi, Branislava, 9, 154, 155,
171
Stone, Rochelle, 51, 55, 66
Strabo, 393
Stryjkowski, Julian, 477
Subotin, Stojan, 155, 171
Sulikowski, Andrzej, 11, 24, 456,
462, 471
Susak, Vira, 428, 432
wi
ch, Jerzy, 428
Index
Swieawski, Stefan, 68
Szafran, Willy, 364-366, 373, 377
Szary-Matywiecka, Ewa, 88, 99, 102,
116, 133
Szeliska, Jzefina, 333, 403, 457
Szrajer, Alfred, 425
Szuman, Stefan, 402
Szymanowski, Karol, 427
Szymaski, Wiesaw Pawe, 11, 24
T
Tanemura, Suehiro, 228, 238
Taran, Lyudmila, 428, 432
Taylor Sen, Colleen, 11, 24, 84, 85,
133
Thompson, Ewa M., 177, 193
Tissot, James, 206
Titian, 195, 198, 204
Todorov, Tzvetan, 184, 193
Tollet, Daniel, 476, 486, 487, 498
Tolstoi, Lev, 341
Tomkowski, Jan, 372, 377
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 206, 451,
460, 464
Tudor, Stepan, 421
Turina, Joaqun, 255
Tuwim, Julian, 57, 137, 366, 398,
400, 402, 405, 406, 408
Twain, Mark, 279
Tychyna, Pavlo, 421
U
Unterman, Alan, 75, 81
Updike, John, 154, 171
Utamaro, Kitagawa, 460
V
van der Meer, Jan, 13, 24
Index
529

Van Heuckelom, Kris, 9, 14, 24, 56,
61, 66, 132, 205, 217, 228, 239,
277-279, 288, 302, 303, 305, 458,
471
van Rijn, Rembrandt, 197, 204
Vandyshev, Valentin, 428
Velazquez, Diego, 197
Verbeke, Grard, 390, 395
Verlaine, Paul, 51
Verne, Jules, 130
Vico, Giambattista, 408, 409, 418
Vladiv-Glover, Slobodanka, 156, 172
Vogel, Debora, 13, 24, 31, 36, 57,
258, 264, 333
Volkening, Ernesto, 184, 193
Vozniak, Taras, 428, 429
W
Wachholz, Leon, 233, 239
Washington, Peter, 514, 518
Wasilewska, Wanda, 422
Waniewski, Zenon, 457, 464
Waszak, Tomasz, 15, 24
Wat, Aleksander, 57, 233, 399, 402
Watowa, Ola, 233, 239, 451
Watteau, Antoine, 461
Waugh, Patricia, 92, 133
Wayk, Adam, 399, 402
Weigel, Sigrid, 169, 172
Weingarten, Stanisaw, 60, 229, 272,
452, 454, 460, 467, 470
Weretiuk, Oksana, 19, 419, 421, 422,
424, 432
Werner, Andrzej, 64, 85, 133
Werner, Edmund, 425
Westley, Helen, 272
Widelski, Andrzej A., 429
Wiegandt, Ewa, 158, 172
Wieniawa-Dugoszowski, Bolesaw,
399
Wieniewska, Celina, 47, 81, 133, 171,

193, 265, 269, 288, 325, 359, 377,
418, 450, 497, 498, 518
Wierzbycki, Jan, 156, 172
Wierzyski, Kazimierz, 397, 398,
400, 405, 406, 411, 413-415, 417,
418
Wilde, Oscar, 270, 459
Witkiewicz, Stanisaw Ignacy
(Witkacy), 10, 12-15, 20, 22, 24,
43, 44, 57, 61, 63, 73, 81, 86, 87,
89, 97, 99, 118, 128, 131, 133,
199, 200, 204, 210, 216, 217, 233,
234, 237, 239, 292, 336, 349, 351,
357, 399, 402, 412, 413, 442, 451,
464, 466, 469, 471, 475, 500, 501,
513
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 311, 325
Wittlin, Jzef, 57, 402
Witz, Ignacy, 13, 24
Wodarski, Zbigniew, 454, 456, 470
Wood, Thelma, 272
Wright, M. R., 381, 395
Wyka, Kazimierz, 10, 24, 85, 101,
133, 135-137, 142, 152
Wyskiel, Wojciech, 11, 25, 59, 66
Wysouch, Seweryna, 14, 25
Wyspiaski, Stanisaw, 398, 418
Y
Yavoryna, Mykola, 428
Z
Zagajewski, Adam, 148, 152
Zengel, Ryszard, 85, 133
eromski, Stefan, 399
Zieliski, Jan, 251, 254, 265
Zuloaga y Zabaleta, Ignacio, 197,
251-256, 259-265
urek, Sawomir Jacek, 67, 81

Dieter de Bruyn and Kris Van Heuckelom-Unmasking Bruno Schulz

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Dieter de Bruyn and Kris Van Heuckelom-Unmasking Bruno Schulz

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

(UN)MASKING BRUNO SCHULZ

J.J. van Baak

(UN)MASKING BRUNO SCHULZ

DIETER DE BRUYN AND KRIS VAN HEUCKELOM

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009

Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff

NEW COMBINATIONS: LITERATURE

SAWOMIR JACEK UREK

NEW COMBINATIONS: ART

JERZY JARZ BSKI

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

the Polish interwar period, Schulzs stories, immediately after their

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

Despite this structuralist turn, a closer look at the growing

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

range of art-related entries in the Bruno Schulz dictionary (Bolecki,

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

problematic reception of Schulzs fiction. In his groundbreaking

What Stala suggests here is that Schulzs stories merely evoke

Eile seems to signal that such readings often misuse Schulzs

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

acculturated, de-racinated Jews to which Schulz belonged

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

The last part of the book, Ultimate Reintegrations, attempts

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

. 1984. Czasoprzestrze mitu i marzenia w prozie Brunona Schulza in Powie

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Dieter De Bruyn & Kris Van Heuckelom

Introduction: Seven Decades of Schulzology

Ecstasy and Heresy: Martin Buber, Bruno Schulz, and

Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. All chose to engage that tradition in

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

references throughout Schulzs work to elements of Jewish mysticism

The other involves striving both to create and to inhabit an intellectual

All further references will be given as Op.

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

If we accept this perhaps too-easy dichotomy, then Schulz clearly

In order to help elucidate the context for Schulzs particular

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

What Landauer responded to in Bubers collection of Hasidic tales,

the so-called Ostjuden a negative epithet which referred to

As Mendes-Flohr points out, the call that Buber made to his

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

As part of this shift in perception, Hasidic legends and

for modern and modernist literature, in its many incarnations in

Indeed, Schulzs exposure to Hasidic culture, and to the Hasidic oral

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

Buber writes: The Orient perceives that [] the primally intended

spontanicznie [] odzyskuje sw integralno . (Op 385)

Buber describes a particular type of individual (variously described as

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

Buber presents the heritage of Jewish myth and legend as a

We are reminded of Schulzs principle question: Where is Truth to

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

Remythologization and Modernity: Divergent Paths

Ecstasy and Heresy: Buber, Schulz, and Jewish Modernity

Where it diverges from Bubers, I suggest that Schulzs conception of

SAWOMIR JACEK UREK

. 1984. Czasoprzestrze mitu i marzenia w prozie Brunona Schulza in Powie

spontanicznie [] odzyskuje sw integralno. (Op 385)

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian

Exposing and Concealing Jewish Origin: Schulz and Lemian