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Bruno Schulz
Exceptional writer, painter, illustrator
and graphic artist. Born in 1892 in Drohobych; died there in 1942 in
tragic circumstances.
Bruno Schulz was born in Drohobych, a town of modest size located in
western Ukraine, not far from the city of Lviv. He spent nearly his
entire life there and was generally unwilling to travel. His voyages
outside of his native city were sporadic and brief. He viewed Drohobych
to be the center of the world and was a penetrating observer of life
there, proving himself an excellent "chronicler." His writings and his
art are both saturated with the realities of Drohobych. His stories are
replete with descriptions of the town's main streets and landmarks, as
well as with images of its inhabitants.
Schulz's output as a writer was relatively modest in terms of
quantity, but exceptionally rich in quality and subject matter. It
consists of two volumes of short stories - SKLEPY CYNAMONOWE / THE
STREET OF CROCODILES and SANATORIUM POD KLEPSYDRA / THE SANATORIUM UNDER
THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS - and a handful of texts the writer did not
include in the first editions of these two collections. Apart from the
stories, there is an unusually interesting set of letters, published in
the so-called KSIEGA LISTOW / BOOK OF LETTERS, as well as "critical
sketches" (primarily press reviews of literary works) that were only
recently collected and published in a separate volume.
It was from Schulz the writer of letters to friends and
acquaintances that Schulz the prose writer was born. Writer Zofia
Nalkowska, a close friend (the artist visited her many times in Warsaw),
played a fundamental role in this transformation of Schulz from humble
art teacher to artist. More fully to express his vision of the world and
his imagination, the author consciously enlivened his narrations and
descriptions, introduced quirky characters, used colorful language
replete with anachronisms, regionalisms and metaphors. As a result, one
reads his many-themed, multi-layered prose with growing interest. Recent
years have brought the growth of a worldwide fascination with Schulz's
literary works, confirmed in growing numbers of translations,
commentaries and critical studies, as well as in works of fiction that
take the author of THE STREET OF CROCODILES as their protagonist (see,
for example, American author Cynthia Ozick's short novel THE MESSIAH OF
STOCKHOLM). Admirers of Schulz's prose have included such notable
writers as Bohumil Hrabal, Danilo Kis and John Updike.
The protagonist of Schulz's stories is Jozef, who seems to be the
author's spokesman. Apart from Jozef there is Jakub - the protagonist's
father and a counterpart of the writer's own father. Jakub is an
unusually picturesque character, a teller of tales and demiurge, a
creator of the material world who has the wonderful power to transform
into various beings. Though at times he might seem to be a minor deity,
it is enough for a young woman to appear in his midst for him to forget
his creative abilities and succumb to her charms. Men, who in Schulz's
prose embody mental faculty, surrender to the allure of women, who the
author seems to equate with matter, that which is concrete and practical
rather than poetic and artistic. This opposition is the source of the
erotic bond the author draws between members of opposing genders. In the
end, in Schulz's writings, woman becomes a metaphor for an apocalyptic
vision of the world, a vision in which the world is dominated by
pragmatism rather than by art. This one possible interpretation does not
take account of other readings of Schulz's prose (e.g. those based on
psychoanalysis, reference to the Cabal, postmodern perspectives, or,
more recently, feminist ones).
Before the author turned to literature, however, he proved himself a
successful visual artist (he was self-taught, never having completed
the technical studies he embarked on, first in Lviv, then in Vienna).
Using the rare printing technique of cliche-verre, he produced, among
others, a series of drawings that focused on the subject of
sadomasochism, amassed in a portfolio titled XIEGA BALWOCHWALCZA / THE
BOOK OF IDOLATRY (c. 1920). Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz was one of the
first to praise the works from this portfolio, classifying their author
as a "demonologist." Most of these consist of grotesque scenes in which
women dominate men, the latter consenting to their role of subordinate
beings, adoring the women in all possible ways and ultimately raising
altars in their praise. In these works, Schulz draws a close link
between female sadism and male masochism.
Schulz was one of the first admirers of Witold Gombrowicz's novel
FERDYDURKE (1938) and produced the illustrations for the first edition
of the book, and also created illustrations for an edition of his own
collection of stories titled SANATORIUM POD KLEPSYDRA / THE SANATORIUM
UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS. He left behind several hundred
additional drawings created for a variety of purposes and thus ranging
widely in nature. Some of these are pencil studies and sketches for
etchings or works embodying the themes evident in his prose (the largest
collection of these, consisting of more than three hundred items, is in
the possession of the Adam --- Museum of Literature in Warsaw).
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For many years, information would
sporadically surface on canvasses by the author of THE STREET OF
CROCODILES. This would appear in the accounts of family members and
friends, as well as in rare photographs. An original composition,
however, did not appear at auction until 1992, which UNESCO named the
Year of Bruno Schulz (to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the
author's birth and the 50th anniversary of his death). At present, this
work is known under the title given to it during an expert examination
that preceded its sale: SPOTKANIE. ZYDOWSKI MLODZIENIEC I DWIE KOBIETY W
ZAULKU MIEJSKIM / THE MEETING - A YOUNG JEW AND TWO WOMEN IN AN ALLEY
(1920). The author often failed to title his works, THE BOOK OF IDOLATRY
being an exception. THE MEETING is a version of a motif explored often
by the artist: the meeting of two worlds, two conflicting spheres of
reality personified by women and men. The opposing nature of these two
spheres is underlined here through such means as spatial division and
differentiation in dress. The painting depicts a young Hassid (side
curls, black robe, and a wide-brimmed round hat) who bows, as is often
the case in Schulz's images, in an overly humble manner before two
equally young women dressed in art deco style. The scene plays out
against the buildings of a small town that lie below. The painting shows
Schulz to have had an able hand and significant experience as an
artist. His skillful rendering of shapes, original use of space, refined
choice of colors allows us to speak of him as one of the most
interesting painters of the inter-war years. This impression becomes
stronger when one notices the artist's apparent sensitivity to recent
and new tendencies in art (German Expressionism, Formism, Surrealism),
processed and transformed reminiscences of which can be seen in the
canvas. The unexpected appearance of THE MEETING generated the hope that
in favorable circumstances, additional paintings by the artist might
one day surface. The work was first presented to the public at the
Museum of Literature in Warsaw, during an exhibition titled AD MEMORIAM -
BRUNO SCHULZ 1892-1942, organized in 1992 to celebrate the 100th
anniversary of Schulz's birth and the 50th anniversary of his death. A
two-volume catalogue published on the occasion contains the most
comprehensive available information on the creative output of the author
of THE STREET OF CROCODILES.
The clarity and originality of the world presented by Schulz - be it
in his prose or in his art - has generated enduring interest in his
oeuvre, interest that continues to grow and has expanded to encompass
his biography. The latter has in itself proven to be intriguing and was
reconstructed many years ago by Jerzy Ficowski based on the memories of
family members and those who knew Schulz. It remains full of mysteries,
however. To this day, for example, it remains unknown whether the author
ever wrote a novel titled "Mesjasz" / "The Messiah," which he mentions
multiple times in his letters. No traces of this have yet been found.
The year 2001 brought the resolution of another mystery: a series of
murals painted by Schulz just before his tragic death (on November 19,
1942, the writer and artist was shot in the streets of Drohobych by a
member of the Gestapo) in "Landau's Villa" in Drohobych. Discovered (and
photographed) by German filmmaker Benjamin Geissler, for the preceding
fifty years it was thought that they had been destroyed. Unfortunately,
the discovery was partly destroyed when representatives of the Yad
Vashem Institute in Israel secretly removed significant fragments of the
murals and transported them outside of Ukraine. The pieces that
remained were transferred to the Drohobychina Museum in Drohobych and
were presented for the first time in Poland in 2003 as part of an
exhibition titled REPUBLIKA MARZEN / REPUBLIC OF DREAMS. Organized by
the Gdansk-based Kontakt Agency and the Museum of Literature in Warsaw,
the exhibit toured Warsaw, Wroclaw and Gdansk.
The international dispute that ensued reminded people around the
world of Schulz's links with Drohobych. This city now owes the author
its status as a "magical place" that - like Dublin, Prague or Trieste -
is recorded forever in the pages of world literary masterpieces.
Interest in Schulz's output has gown with the advent of subsequent
anniversaries in 2002: namely, the 110th anniversary of the artist's
birth and the 60th anniversary of his passing. A series of new
publications appeared on this occasion, including new editions of Jerzy
Ficowski's KSIEGA LISTOW / THE BOOK OF LETTERS and REGIONY WIELKIEJ
HEREZJI I OKOLICE / REGIONS OF GREAT HERESY AND THEIR SURROUNDINGS, and
the first-ever edition of the vast "Slownik wiedzy o Brunonie Schulzu" /
"Dictionary of Knowledge about Bruno Schulz."
Malgorzata Kitowska-Lysiak
Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin
Faculty of Art Theory and the History of Artistic Doctrines
January 2003
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