Literate Lifetime
"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader." -- W. Fusselman
Schulz, Bruno, 1892-1942We have 1 book for this author.
Bruno Schulz (July 12, 1892 – November 19, 1942) was a Polish writer, literary critic and graphic artist, widely considered to be one of the greatest Polish prose stylists of the 20th century. Schulz was born in Drohobycz, at the time when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the province of Galicia (now Drohobych is in Ukraine) to assimiliated Jewish parents. BiographyAt a very early age, he developed an interest in arts, and eventually studied architecture at Lwów University, and fine arts in Vienna. After World War I the part of Galicia, which included Drohobycz was awarded to Poland. He taught drawing in a Polish gymnasium from 1924 to 1941 in his home town, where his father, Jakub Schulz, used to be a cloth merchant (he died in 1915). The author nurtured his extraordinary imagination in a swarm of identities and nationalities: a Jew who thought and wrote in Polish. He also spoke German, but not Yiddish, even though he was immersed in the Jewish culture. [1] Yet there was nothing cosmopolitan about him; his genius fed in solitude on specific local and ethnic sources. He preferred not to leave his provincial home town, which in the course of his life belonged to four countries. His adult life was often seen by outsiders as that of a hermit, uneventful and enclosed. One might say that Schulz became a writer by chance, since he was discouraged by some influential colleagues to publish his first short stories. Then, several letters that he wrote to a friend, in which he gave highly original accounts of his solitary life and the details of the lives of his fellow-citizens, were brought to the attention of the novelist Zofia Nałkowska. She encouraged Schulz to have them published as short fiction, and The Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy Cynamonowe) was published in 1934; in English-speaking countries, it is most often referred to by its English title, The Street of Crocodiles, which comes from the title of one of the chapters (short stories). This novel-memoir was followed three years later by Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą). The original publications were fully illustrated by Schulz himself; however, in later editions of his works these illustrations are often left out or are poorly reproduced. He also helped his fiancée translating Franz Kafka's The Trial into Polish, in 1936. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 caught Schulz living in Drohobycz, which was occupied by the Soviet Union. There are reports that he worked on a novel called The Messiah, but no trace of this manuscript survived his death. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, as a Jew he was forced to live in the ghetto of Drohobycz, but he was temporarily protected by Felix Landau, a Gestapo officer who admired his drawings. During the last weeks of his life, Schulz painted a mural in Landau's home in Drohobycz, in the style with which he is identified. Shortly after completing the work, he was shot dead by a German officer, a rival of his protector. Over the years his mural was covered with paint and forgotten. In February 2001, after a long search, Benjamin Geissler, a German documentary filmmaker, has found the hidden mural. The meticulous task of restoration began by Polish conservation workers, who informed Yad Vashem about the findings. In May of that year representatives of Yad Vashem in Israel were allowed to come to Drohobycz to examine the mural. They removed five fragments of the mural, which had already been restored, smuggled them out of the country and transported to Jerusalem. Geissler has documented the search, the finding and restoration, as well as the destruction of the mural in the film entitled “Finding Pictures”. [2] International controversy ensued. [1] [3] [4] While Yad Vashem claims that parts of the mural were legally purchased, Ukraine has officially stated that they were removed without authority or export licenses. As of 2007, parts of the mural are in storage in Yad Vashem, and their status is being negotiated [1]. The fragments left by Yad Vashem in place have since been restored and, after a tour in Polish museums, are now part of the collection at the Bruno Schulz's Museum in Drohobycz. [1] In the 1980s, the original Austro-Hungarian advertisement [2] that Schulz must have seen and subsequently incorporated into Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą was discovered in a library. The advertisement is a page from "The Book" of Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą. Schulz actually quotes a few lines from "The Book" in his novel and one generally assumed it was something Schulz had just made up. However, the quote: I, Anna Csillag, born in Karłowice, Moravia, had weak hair growth... (Ja, Anna Csillag, urodzona w Karłowicach na Morawach, miałam słaby porost włosów...) is similar to the beginning of the advertisement for hair growth I, Anna Csillag with my hair that's 185 centimetres long which grew during the 14 months of using a cream of my own invention — (see link above). WritingsSchulz's body of written work is rather 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. It is also worth mentioning a collection of Schulz's letters which were published in Polish in 1975, entitled The Book of Letters, as well as a number of critical essays Schulz wrote for various newspapers. Several of Schulz's works have been lost, including some short stories from the early 1940s that the author had sent to be published in magazines and work for a novel entitled The Messiah. A new edition of Schulz's stories was published in 1957, leading to French, German, and later English translations. Of interest is The Messiah of Stockholm (1987), a novel by the noted Jewish-American author Cynthia Ozick. It concerns Lars Andeming, a Swiss man who is convinced that he is the son of Schulz. Andeming comes into possession of what purports to be a manuscript of The Messiah. The question, of course, is how he can determine one way or another if the work is authentic.
Film AdaptationsSchulz's work has provided the basis for two films: Wojciech Has's The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973), drawing from a dozen of his stories and emphasizing the unforgettably dreamlike quality of his writings; and a short stop-motion animated film called Street of Crocodiles (1986) by Stephen and Timothy Quay. References
External links
This biographical information was gathered from the Bruno_Schulz page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksSklepy cynamonowe |
Pick of the DayLists of Interest
Other ways of browsing |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Polish
![[2]](http://www.phys.ucalgary.ca/~trondsen/mastersofcinema.org/csillag.jpg){kind=link}