May 9–11, 1910, Monday–Wednesday

Drohobych. Bruno Schulz passes the written Matura exam.

Together with fifty-three other students, Schulz takes the first part of the final exams. It is covered by new regulations established by the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education in 1908, simplifying the Matura exam, removing the written part of the Mathematics exam, but preventing the partial exemption that very good students could use. 

Schulz is to translate into Polish a piece of Virgil’s Aeneid (Book VIII, verses 306–341). Three hours are allocated to this task and it is allowed to use a dictionary. 

In a similar exam in Greek, Schulz translates into Polish chapters 96–100 of the speech about Demosthenes’s wreath1. 

From the main language of instruction, that is Polish, he chooses one of the three themes: “Napoleon I in our history and literature”; “The life of Adam Mickiewicz is also a beautiful and sublime poem” or “The power of work”2.

See also: June 1–8, 1910, June 9, 1910. (kw) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Statement of the board of the Franciszek Józef Imperial-Royal Middle School in Drohobych for the 1910 school year, Drohobych 1910, pp. 63, 90. Imperial-Royal Official Journal The national school council in Galicia, R. XII, no. 12, pp. 173–177. Reforma matury, “Gazeta Szkolna”, R. VII, no. 3, p. 20.
  • 2
    Statement of the school board of the Imperial-Royal Higher Middle School in Drohobych for the 1910 school year, Drohobych 1910, p. 54.