[December 15] 1938, [Thursday]

Lviv. In the 59th issue of Sygnały, a short story by Bruno Schulz entitled Fatherland is published with the annotation “A piece of a larger whole”. 

The publication is a result of the editors’ invitation for Schulz in September to prepare something for the December issue of Sygnały*. The writer replied to them in a letter dated September 24, 1938: “I am very eager to participate in the December issue. I don’t know what I’m going to prepare yet, but some fiction for sure. I will send it within the agreed time period”1. After over a month, this “fiction” is sent to the editorial office. It is, according to Schulz’s words from the enclosed letter, “a part of a story”2. Under the text printed in Sygnały there was the following information, in turn: “A piece of a larger whole”. But nothing is known about the “whole”. It was rather not The Messiah*, whose parts Schulz had allegedly previously printed in magazines. The story was first published in book form only in 1964 in the volume Proza, which was intended by the publisher to “show the fullest possible literary output”3 of Schulz. (sr) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Letter from Bruno Schulz to the editorial office of Sygnały dated September 24, 1938, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Dzieła zebrane, volume 5: Księga listów, zebrał i przygotował do druku Jerzy Ficowski, uzupełnił Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 96.
  • 2
    Letter from Bruno Schulz to the editorial office of Sygnały, November 4, 1938, [in:] ibid., p. 96.
  • 3
    Publisher’s note, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Proza, przedmowa Artur Sandauer, oprac. listów Jerzy Ficowski, Kraków 1964, p. 694. Homeland is published on pages 431–439.