Gdańsk. Józefina Szelińska, Bruno Schulz’s former fiancée, commits suicide aged eighty-six.
For a long time in a state of dejection and sadness, ailing, because of an injured hip, and dependent on others she takes a handful of sleeping pills. In the apartment at 107 Kościuszki St, flat 9 she is found by a friend. Despite immediate medical intervention Szelińska* dies in a hospital at 15:30.
She is buried in Srebrzysko Cemetery in Gdańsk.
Since the 1970s, Szelińska begins to write about “a depression impossible to harness”. Until her final letter to Jerzy Ficowski* mentions of “tiredness”, “futility”, “miserable gloom”, “void”, “emptiness”, “lack of motivation and energy”, “a sense of departure”, “pointless existence”, will appear more and more frequently (here is one of the most emphatic passages: “[...] and uninteresting people, human life grey, horrible, stupidly provincial, v. lonely, without external radiance”).
After her death Ficowski – until then bound by a promise – reveals the identity of Schulz’s fiancée whom he hid under the initial “J.”. (rb) (transl. ms)
See also: end of 1932*, spring 1933*, summer 1933*, end of summer 1933*, December 1933*, end of 1935 / beginning of 1936*, 8 February 1936*, mid-January 1937*, 22 January 1937*, February/March 1937*, first quarter of 1937*, 1940*.
