Drogobych. Schulz writes a letter to Tadeusz Breza.
At the beginning of the letter, Schulz warmly thanks Breza for the article in one of the November issues of Kurier Poranny –unknown to him before – in which Breza picks The Cinnamon Shops as the leading achievement of Polish literature in 1934: “I am touched and grateful. This solidarity of my dear people consoles me in my depression”. The depression Schulz mentions results from the Ministry’s rejection of his request for a creative leave: “I am staying in Drogobych, in a school where this gang will continue to get on my nerves”.
Schulz then recalls anannoying sense of a shortage of time, a motifthat reappears in several of his letters to Breza (of 21 June and 13 November 1934). Once again, he builds a humorous, quasi-medical comparison: “Your gastrointestinal tract passes time too easily; it is unable to keep it inside; mine is characterized by a paradoxical pickiness, controlled by the idée fixe of the virginity of time”. And he comments, “I can’t share time, I can’t feed on someone’s leftovers. (...) When I have to prepare a lesson for the next day or buy materials in the woodyard, an entire afternoon and evening are lost for me (...). ‘‘All or nothing’ is my motto. And because every school day is so desecrated, I live in proud abstinence and, thus, I fail to write”.
At the end, Schulz announces that he intends to spend the Christmas period in Warsaw and asks Breza to recommend a cheap apartment. (jo)
See also: 21 June 1934, 13 November 1934, late December 1934–19 January 1935.
