Bruno Schulz | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1892-07-12)12 July 1892 Drohobych,Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria |
| Died | 19 November 1942(1942-11-19) (aged 50) Drohobycz,German-occupied Poland |
| Occupation | Writer, fine artist, literary critic, art teacher |
| Genre | Novel, short story |
| Literary movement | Modernism,surrealism,magic realism |
| Notable works | Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass The Street of Crocodiles (a.k.a.Cinnamon Shops) |
Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was aPolish Jewish writer,fine artist,literary critic andart teacher.[1] He is regarded as one of the greatPolish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded thePolish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. Several of Schulz's works were lost inthe Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novelThe Messiah. Schulz was shot and killed by aGestapo officer in 1942 while walking back home towardDrohobycz Ghetto with a loaf of bread.
Schulz was born inDrohobych,Austrian Galicia, historically part of theKingdom of Poland before thethree partitions, and today part ofUkraine. After World War One, Drohobycz became part of theLwów Voivodeship. Bruno Schulz was the son of cloth merchant Jakub Schulz and Henrietta née Kuhmerker.[2] At a very early age, he developed an interest in the arts. He attended Władysław Jagiełło Middle School in Drohobych from 1902 to 1910, graduating with honours.[3] Then he studied architecture atLviv Polytechnic. His studies were interrupted by illness in 1911 but he resumed them in 1913 after two years of convalescence. In 1917 he briefly studied architecture inVienna. At the end of World War I, when Schulz was 26, Drohobycz became part of the newly rebornPolish Second Republic. Schulz returned to Władysław Jagiełło Middle School, teaching crafts and drawing from 1924 to 1941. His employment kept him in his hometown, although he disliked the teaching, apparently maintaining his job only because it was his sole source of income.[4] He also amused himself by telling his students stories during classes.[5]
Schulz developed his extraordinary imagination in a swarm of identities and nationalities: he was aJew who thought and wrote inPolish, was fluent in German, immersed inJewish culture, yet unfamiliar with theYiddish language.[6] He drew inspiration from specific local and ethnic sources, looking inward and close to home rather than to the world at large. Avoiding travel, he preferred to remain in his provincial hometown, which over the course of his life belonged to or was fought over by successive states: theAustro-Hungarian Empire (1792–1919); the short-livedWest Ukrainian People's Republic (1919); theSecond Polish Republic (1919–1939); theSoviet Ukraine from theinvasion of Poland in 1939; and, duringOperation Barbarossa,Nazi Germany after theGerman attack on theSoviet Union in 1941. His writings avoided explicit mention of world events of the time period.
Schulz was discouraged by influential colleagues from publishing his first short stories. However, his aspirations were refreshed when several letters that he wrote to a friend,Debora Vogel, in which he gave highly original accounts of his solitary life and the details of the lives of his family and fellow citizens, were brought to the attention of the novelistZofia Nałkowska. She encouraged Schulz to have them published as short fiction. They were published asThe Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy Cynamonowe) in 1934. In English-speaking countries, it is most often referred to asThe Street of Crocodiles, a title derived from one of its chapters.The Cinnamon Shops was followed three years later bySanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą). The original publications were illustrated by Schulz; in later editions of his works, however, these illustrations were often left out or poorly reproduced. In 1936 he helped his fiancée, Józefina Szelińska, translateFranz Kafka'sThe Trial into Polish. In 1938, he was awarded thePolish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award.
In 1939, after theNazi and Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II, Drohobych was occupied by theSoviet Union. At the time, Schulz was known to have been working on a novel calledThe Messiah, but no trace of the manuscript survived his death. When the Germans launched theirOperation Barbarossa against the Soviets in 1941, they forced Schulz into the newly formedDrohobycz Ghetto along with thousands of other dispossessed Jews, most of whom perished at theBelzec extermination camp before the end of 1942.[7][8] ANaziGestapo officer,Felix Landau, however, admired Schulz's artwork and extended him protection in exchange for painting a mural in his Drohobych residence. Shortly after completing the work in 1942, Schulz was walking home through the "Aryan quarter" with a loaf of bread, when another Gestapo officer, Karl Günther,[9][10] shot him with a small pistol, killing him.[5] This murder was in revenge for Landau's having murdered Günther's own "personal Jew," a dentist named Löw. Subsequently, Schulz's mural was painted over and forgotten – only to be rediscovered in 2001.
Schulz's body of written work is small:The Street of Crocodiles,Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass and a few other compositions that the author did not add to the first edition of his short story collection. A collection of Schulz's letters was published in Polish in 1975, entitledThe Book of Letters, as well as a number of critical essays that Schulz wrote for various newspapers. Several of Schulz's works have been lost, including short stories from the early 1940s that the author had sent to be published in magazines, and his final, unfinished novel,The Messiah.
From May 2024, the only surviving literary manuscript by Bruno Schulz (short storySecond Autumn (Polish:Druga jesień) is presented at apermanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.[11][12]
The Street of Crocodiles andSanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass were featured inPenguin's series "Writers from the Other Europe" from the 1970s.Philip Roth was the general editor, and the series included authors such asDanilo Kiš,Tadeusz Borowski,Jiří Weil, andMilan Kundera.[13]
An edition of Schulz's stories was published in 1957, leading to French, German, and later English translations. The first English translations wereThe Street of Crocodiles, New York: Walker and Company, 1963 (translation by Celina Wieniewska ofSklepy Cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops)) andSanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass New York: Penguin, 1979, (translation by Celina Wieniewska ofSanatorium Pod Klepsydrą, with an introduction byJohn Updike)ISBN 0-14-005272-0. The two were later combined into one collection, published asThe Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz. New York: Walker and Company, 1989ISBN 0-8027-1091-3
Madeline G. Levine translated Schulz's fiction asCollected Stories for Northwestern University Press (2018), which won theFound in Translation Award in 2019.[14]
In 2020, Sublunary Editions published Frank Garrett's translation ofUndula, an early story by Schulz which appeared inDawn: The Journal of Petroleum Officials in Boryslav under the pseudonym Marceli Weron.[15][16]
Stanley Bill's translation of 13 of Schulz's stories (includingUndula) was published under the titleNocturnal Apparitions: Essential Stories in 2022.[17]
Schulz's work has provided the basis for three films.Wojciech Has'The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973) draws from a dozen of his stories and recreates the dreamlike quality of his writings. A 21-minutestop-motion animated 1986 film,Street of Crocodiles, by theQuay Brothers, was inspired by Schulz's writing, as was their 2024 featureSanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass which combines stop-motion animation and live action.[18][19][20]
In 1992, an experimental theatre piece based onThe Street of Crocodiles was conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and produced byTheatre de Complicite in collaboration with theNational Theatre in London. A highly complex interweaving of image, movement, text, puppetry, object manipulation, naturalistic and stylised performance underscored by music from Alfred Schnittke, Vladimir Martynov drew on Schulz's stories, his letters and biography. It received six Olivier Award nominations (1992) after its initial run and was revived four times in London in the years that followed influencing a whole generation of British theatre makers. It subsequently played to audiences and festivals all over the world such as Quebec (Prix du Festival 1994), Moscow, Munich (teatre der Welt 1994), Vilnius and many other countries. It was last revived in 1998 when it played in New York (Lincoln Center Festival) and other cities in the United States, Tokyo and Australia before returning the London to play an 8-week sell out season at the Queens Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. It has been published by Methuen, a UK publishing house, in a collection of plays by Complicite.[21]
In 2006, as part of a site-specific series in a historicMinneapolis office building,Skewed Visions created the multimedia performance/installationThe Hidden Room. Combining aspects of Schulz's life with his writings and drawings, the piece depicted the complex stories of his life through movement, imagery and highly stylized manipulation of objects and puppets.
In 2007,physical theatre companyDouble Edge Theatre premiered a piece calledRepublic of Dreams, based on the life and works of Bruno Schulz. In 2008, a play based onCinnamon Shops, directed by Frank Soehnle and performed by the Puppet Theater fromBiałystok, was performed at theJewish Culture Festival in Kraków. A performance based on the writings and art of Bruno Schulz, called "From A Dream to A Dream", was created collaboratively byHand2Mouth Theatre (Portland, Oregon) and Teatr Stacja Szamocin (Szamocin, Poland) under the direction of Luba Zarembinska between 2006–2008. The production premiered in Portland in 2008.
Cynthia Ozick's 1987 novel,The Messiah of Stockholm, makes reference to Schulz's work. The story is of a Swedish man who's convinced that he is the son of Schulz, and comes into possession of what he believes to be a manuscript of Schulz's final project,The Messiah. Schulz's character appears again in Israeli novelistDavid Grossman's 1989 novelSee Under: Love. In a chapter entitled "Bruno," the narrator imagines Schulz embarking on a phantasmagoric sea voyage rather than remaining in Drohobych to be killed.[22] That entire novel has been described by Grossman as a tribute to Schulz.[23]
In the last chapter ofRoberto Bolaño's 1996 novelDistant Star, the narrator, Arturo B, reads from a book titledThe Complete Works of Bruno Schulz in a bar while waiting to confirm the identity of a Nazi-like character, Carlos Wieder, for a detective. When Wieder appears in the bar, the words of Schulz's stories '...had taken on a monstrous character that was almost intolerable' for Arturo B.
Polish writer and criticJerzy Ficowski spent sixty years researching and uncovering the writings and drawings of Schulz. His study,Regions of the Great Heresy, was published in an English translation in 2003, containing two additional chapters to the Polish edition; one on Schulz's lost work,Messiah, the other on the rediscovery of Schulz's murals.[24]
China Miéville's 2009 novelThe City & the City begins with an epigraph from John Curran Davis's translation of Schulz'sThe Cinnamon Shops: "Deep inside the town there open up, so to speak, double streets, doppelgänger streets, mendacious and delusive streets". In addition to directly alluding to the dual nature of the cities in Miéville's novel, the epigraph also hints at the political implications of the book, since Schulz himself was murdered for appearing in the "wrong" quarter of the city.
In 2010Jonathan Safran Foer "wrote" hisTree of Codes by cutting into the pages of an English language edition of Schulz'The Street of Crocodiles thus creating a new text. In 2011, the Austrian Rock and Roll Band "Nebenjob"[25] published the song "Wer erschoss Bruno Schulz?" ("who shot Bruno Schulz?"),[26] a homage on the poet and accusation of the murderer, written by T.G. Huemer (see 'references' below). Schulz andThe Street of Crocodiles are mentioned several times in 2005 novelThe History of Love byNicole Krauss, with a version of Schulz (having survived the Holocaust) playing a supporting role.
In February 2001, Benjamin Geissler, a German documentary filmmaker, discovered the mural that Schulz had created for Landau. Polish conservation workers, who had begun the meticulous task of restoration, informedYad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust remembrance authority, of the findings. In May of that year representatives of Yad Vashem went to Drohobych to examine the mural. They removed five fragments of it and transported them toJerusalem.[27]
International controversy ensued.[6][28][29] Yad Vashem said that parts of the mural were legally purchased, but the owner of the property said that no such agreement was made, and Yad Vashem did not obtain permission from the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture despite legal requirements.[30] The fragments left in place by Yad Vashem have since been restored and, after touring Polish museums, are now part of the collection at the Bruno Schulz Museum in Drohobych.[6]
This gesture by Yad Vashem instigated public outrage in Poland and Ukraine, where Schulz is a beloved figure.[6]
The issue reached a settlement in 2008 when Israel recognized the works as "the property and cultural wealth" of Ukraine, and Ukraine's Drohobychyna Museum agreed to let Yad Vashem keep them as a long-term loan.[31] In February 2009, Yad Vashem opened its display of the murals to the public.[32]
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