[between August 8 and 9, 1938]

Paris. Bruno Schulz writes a letter to Wacław Czarski, where he shares his first impressions of his stay and recommends Ludwik Lille to him as a collaborator for Tygodnik Ilustrowany.

“Scary city and such women! I am devastated. A real debauched Babylon!”1 – Schulz sums up in a letter to Czarski* the first week of his stay in Paris. At that time, he was living with Lille*, about whom he would write to a friend of the editor of Tygodnik Ilustrowany* that he was “a painter, a great essayist and an art expert”2. He could, according to Schulz, “constantly or periodically send correspondence from Paris on all areas of life”3. This letter is probably Schulz’s way of repaying for Lille’s help4.

Based on the first sentence which reads: “I have been in Paris for a week”, Jerzy Ficowski set the date of the letter for 10 August5. However, since Schulz checked in at the Hotel Orient on the evening of July 31, it should be assumed that the letter was written two days earlier, on August 7 or 8, after moving to Lille’s.

See also: 1935, [winter 1934/1935*]. (sr) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Letter from Bruno Schulz to Wacław Czarski dated August 10 [?], 1938, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Dzieła zebrane, volume 5: Księga listów, zebrał i przygotował do druku Jerzy Ficowski, uzupełnił Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 100.
  • 2
    Ibid.
  • 3
    Ibid.
  • 4
    Thanks to the recommendation of Schulz, Czarski starts cooperation with Lille, who will publish several articles in Tygodnik Ilustrowany in the coming months. In his later letters to Lille, Schulz would bring up the issue of delayed remuneration for publications from Czarski.
  • 5
    Jerzy Ficowski assumed that Schulz “began his journey on August 2 and ended it on August 26, 1938” (Bruno Schulz, op. cit., p. 425, fn .2), similarly in subsequent versions of the writer’s calendar, cf. Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Bruno Schulz i jego mitologia, Sejny 2002, p. 501.