Born: Drohobycz, Ukraine, in 1892. Education: Educated at schools in Drohobycz; studied architecture in Lvov, 1911-14, and fine arts in Vienna. Career: Art teacher in gymnasium, Drohobycz, 1924-39; illustrated own works and Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz, q.v. Awards: Polish Academy of Letters Golden Laurel award, 1938. Died: Shot in Drohobycz ghetto by German officer, 1942.
Publications
Collections
Proza, edited by Artur Sandauer and Jerzy Ficowski. 1964; revised edition, 1973.
The Complete Fiction, translated by Celina Wieniewska. 1989.
Collected Works of Bruno Schulz, edited by Jerzy Ficowski. 1998.
Fiction
Xiega balwochwalcza. 1922; as The Booke of Idolatry, edited by Jerzy Ficowski, translated by Bogna Piotrowska, 1988(?).
Sklepy cynamonowe. 1934; as The Street of Crocodiles, translated by Celina Wieniewska, 1963; as Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories, translated by Wieniewska, 1963; as The Fictions of Bruno Schulz, translated by Wieniewska, 1988.
Sanatorium pod klepsydrq. 1937; as Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, translated by Celina Wieniewska, 1978.
Ptaki, as Birds: A Tale, translated by Celina Wieniewska. 1980.
Other
Ksiega Listow [A Book of Letters], edited by Jerzy Ficowski. 1975.
Listy, fragmenty, wspomnienia o pisarzu [Letters, Fragments, and Reminiscences about Writing], edited by Jerzy Ficowski. 1984.
Letters and Drawings, with Selected Prose, edited by Jerzy Ficowski, translated by Walter Arndt and Victoria Nelson. 1988.
Opowiadania, wybor esejow i listow [Stories, Selections, Essays, and Letters], edited by Jerzy Ficowski. 1989.
The Drawings of Bruno Schulz, edited by Jerzy Ficowski. 1990.
Ilustracje do wlasnych utworow, edited by Jerzy Ficowski. 1992.
Critical Studies:
”Masochistic Motives in the Literary and Graphic Art of Bruno Schulz” by Henry Wegrocki, in Psychoanalytical Review, 33, 1946; ”Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles: A Study in Creativity and Neurosis” by Olga Lukashevich, in Polish Review, 13, 1968; ”Childhood Revisited: The Writings of Bruno Schulz” by Coleen M. Taylor, in Slavic and East European Journal, 13, 1969; DieProsa von Bruno Schulz by Elisabeth Baur, 1975; ”Metamorphosis in Bruno Schulz,” in Polish Review, 30, 1985, ”Schulz’s Sanatorium Story: Myth and Confession,” in Polish Perspectives, 30, 1987, ”Bruno Schulz: The Myth of Origins,” in Russian Literature, 22, 1987, ”Bruno Schulz and Franz Kafka: Servant Girls and Other Temptations,” in Germano-Slavica, 6, 1988, ”Bruno Schulz and World Literature,” in Slavic and East European Journal, Summer 1990, and Myths and Relatives: Seven Essays on Bruno Schulz, 1991, all by Russell E. Brown; ”Galicia in the Work of Bruno Schulz” by Bohdan Budurowycz, in Canadian Slavonic Papers, 28, 1986; ”Bruno Schulz and the Myth of the Book” by Piotr J. Drozdowski, in Indiana Slavic Studies, 5, 1990; ”Time in Bruno Schulz” by Theodosia S. Robertson, in Indiana Slavic Studies, 5, 1990; On the Margins of Reality: The Paradoxes of Representation in Bruno Schulz’s Fiction by Krysztof Stala, 1993; The Divine Duty of Servants: A Book of Worship Based on the Artwork of Bruno Schulz by Rolando Perez, 1999; Bruno Schulz: New Documents and Interpretations, edited by Czeslaw Z. Prokopczyk, 1999; Holocaust Literature: Schulz, Levi, Spiegelman and the Memory of the Offence by Gillian Banner, 2000.
Bruno Schulz was a shy teacher, whose life in an obscure corner of Europe camouflaged an extraordinary imagination. His stories magnify the provincial characters of the predominantly Jewish town of Drohobycz to the status of epic heroes involved in magical and surreal events.
Two separate collections of stories were published in his lifetime, Sklepy cynamonowe (The Street of Crocodiles) and Sanatorium pod klepsydr (Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass). On first reading, they seem to tell of a young man’s path to maturity, but experiences that should lead the author’s alter ego, Joseph N., to greater understanding instead confirm his naivety and remoteness from truth. The universe first revealed to him by his wily Magus-like father Jacob, the ”incorrigible improvisor,” is one that has forms but no Form (Creation after the Fall?). Like his biblical forebear, Joseph remains trusting, innocent, and blessed by Providence.
Decomposition and decay are the main elements of a Schulz story, as the mannequin-like characters, the village, the plot, and the time materialize, merge, and melt away again. Though sequential in written form, the stories occur in parallel as alternative readings of the same elements in the same space. In the anti-world of the sanatorium run by Dr. Gothard, the clock is put back to postpone the father’s imminent death so he can set up business one last time in that dimension. In another dimension the father’s metamorphosis into a crab surprises no one in the family; indeed he is even served up for supper. Joseph’s uncanny influence over reality is shown particularly in the story ”Wiosna” [Spring], when he is shown a stamp album by his cousin Rudolf. The stamps’ portraits and countries suggest to him a perilous adventure set in the romantic Mexico of the Emperor Maximilian, though its events seem to take place on the very edge of the town where Joseph lives. His passion for a Bianca, imprisoned by a wicked uncle, disintegrates into faithful duty as Joseph becomes a minister when a coup d’etat is staged in her name.
The schizophrenic character of Joseph’s many manifestations and experiences and the unstable nature of everything around him are balanced by Creation itself: it assures that each dimension is self-contained, and as declared by Joseph in ”Wiosna,” ”it was a spring that took its text seriously.” Here is the sense of Schulz’s writing: not self-discovery, but discovery itself is the objective, the quest for the ”Authentic,” for the ”Book,” and thus God Himself. The multiple dimensions of Schulz’s stories are the environments lent to facilitate or hinder that search. Thus Schulz gives no conclusive definitions, but a finite number of readings of Creation, expressed as highly metaphorically charged writing. Just as Jehovah’s written Word is an approximation of Him, so too the stories are permutations of God’s creativity. The final effect is magical, timeless, and intensely claustrophobic.
In effect, Schulz’s worlds are a constantly shifting set of conversions of his adolescent memory. Runaway similes and metaphors create infinite numbers of unpredictable texts. Joseph’s mission to isolate the ”Authentic,” much like his father’s definitive ”Grammar of Autumn,” is closely linked to the Cabbalistic transliteration of the correspondences between physical objects, mental states, and Divine inspiration, but could equally be seen as a case history of sublimated hysteria. Yet his multi-dimensional world is not one of the struggle between Good and Evil—Jewish moralism plays no part at all—it is rather a complex metaphor for his own creativeness, and a repudiation of the bleak reality around him, the one in which he was shot by an SS-officer in 1942.
