“Reality is as thin as paper, and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character. A hundred times I had to try and test its taut skin with my hands, and had found it hopelessly botched.”
These are the words of Jewish Galician writer Bruno Schulz, a globally relevant artist and painter, particularly recognised among three countries – Ukraine, Poland and Israel – for his contribution to their cultural heritage. His life story unfortunately intersects with the Nazi persecution of Jews during the Second World War, and he was shot in 1942.
Although his fame was later to blossom internationally, he was already viewed across Eastern Europe as a significant literary figure. In 1938, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature, however, he remained relatively unknown outside of Eastern Europe until the 1970s. His emergence as a truly global figure is credited to American novelist and Kafka admirer Philip Roth who, initially intrigued by the works of writers in Prague, began a project that was extended to the rest of Eastern Europe, called the ‘Writers from the other Europe’.
Roth’s project published the famous collection of Schulz’ letters to Polish-Jewish poet Debora Vogel, which became his best-known work, ‘Street of Crocodiles’. The work features many instances of his characteristic inventive prose, such as:
“There are things which only the sudden onset of night can reveal to us, dreams which, like the characters in stories, must take refuge in the deep basements of our souls, away from the light.”
A feature of Schulz’s work has been described as ‘reflexive interartistic contamination’. Not only did he mix image and text in a highly individual fashion, but the dreamlike, self-questioning construction of his prose provides a uniquely Polish contribution to the current of literary Modernism. This was carried forward by writers like Kafka, Joyce, Woolf, Bulgakov, Borges, Calvino, and Roth himself. His works blend reality with fantasy, bordering on the surreal at times, as his obsessive focus with an inner world matches the tendency in global Modernism to focus on the subjective dimensions of experience.
Interestingly as an individual who would reach a global readership, Schulz never moved from the small town of Drohobycz which, during his lifetime, found itself situated within the borders of five different regimes: the Habsburgs, the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union and that of the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa. Schulz lived through the period of Nazi occupation and obtained a merciful, protected position thanks to a Gestapo officer who took a liking to his art. This soldier was Felix Landau, a member of the Einsatzkommando, the notorious ‘mobile units’ tasked with the mass shootings of Jews across the region – details of which can be drawn from his diary. Landau commissioned a number of works, including a mural for his children’s bedroom, in exchange for immunity from the harsh treatment and executions. This temporary leniency permitted Schulz to describe in a series of letters the increasing difficulties for Jews under Nazi occupation. This precious testimony of the treatment of Eastern-European Jews during the Holocaust was published in an English edition ‘Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz’ in 1987. However, due to the precarity of the times, Schulz’s security was short-lived, and he was shot during a killing spree by a Nazi officer in 1942. It may seem curious that Schulz’s brand of artistic expression should inspire Landau’s artistic sensibilities, but it is clear that his visual art features somewhat dark topics, grotesque figures twisted into strange forms, and his writings often foreground sadistic elements like that of his paintings.
In 2001, a mural was uncovered in the Landau villa, by coincidence the very same that he had commissioned for his children from Schulz. Global media attention was drawn to the story when the Israeli World Holocaust Remembrance Centre Yad Vashem came to Drohobycz and secretly removed parts of the mural for ‘repatriation’ to Israel, on the grounds that the artist, by now a global name, had been a representative of Jewish (hence, Israeli) culture. This action created controversy between the Israeli and Ukrainian and Polish governments, and as a result, the works were returned to the author’s hometown. The nature of Schulz’s legacy thus intersects many dimensions of historical realities that continue to this day – for example, the role of Ukrainian locals of his time and the extent of their involvement in the Holocaust by bullets, and how far questions of belonging, heritage and identity are determined by geographical borders.
When discussing the global significance of a local figure – Schulz’s short life and his literary output are particularly relevant. They epitomise how the works of an individual have made a profound contribution to the global conversation surrounding national collectivised history and identity.
Schulz’s commentary in the debate on collective identity can be effectively summarised by the quote:
“We are all products of the stories we inherit; the narratives of our lives intertwine with those of our ancestors, shaping who we are.”