24 June 1935, Monday

Drohobych. Bruno Schulz is planning a trip to Zakopane. He corresponds with Zenon Waśniewski.

Schulz plans to go to Zakopane in early July, where he is going to meet his friends, including Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Józefina Szelińska is to accompany him on the journey, although Schulz himself communicates to Waśniewski his doubts about the joint trip and the engagement itself1: “In Zakopane I will be with my fiancée (so it is – so late) – crazy risk this whole party”2. Schulz would like to live outside the city centre, “maybe in a highlander’s cottage”3, in order to be able to work in peace. He also invites Waśniewski to come. The co-founder of “Kamena” probably mentioned visiting Drohobych*, but Schulz writes that he would prefer to host him in Zakopane: “You would meet a lot of people right away, my friends, especially Witkacy, with whom I made friends and it would be very interesting”4. (ts)(transl. mw)

See also: March 15, 1934, March 24, 1934, April 2, 193[4], April 24, 1934, June 5, 1934, June 23, 1934, August 28, 1934, September 14, 1934, September 30, 1934, October 6, 1934, October 15, 1934, November 7, 1934, November 15, 1934, December 19, 1934, January 28, 1935, March 16, 1935, [March 25, 1935], July 13, 1935, August 3, 1935, [August 7, 1935], June 2, 1937, August 4, 1937, [5 January 1938], April 24, 1938. (bt) 

  • 1
    The 43-year-old Schulz seems to be questioning the rationality of his engagement, which happened “so late”. Interestingly, more than thirty years later, Józefina Szelińska will express her surprise that Schulz called her his fiancée: “Since I never liked the term ‘fiancée’, we never used it among ourselves. That is why he surprised me greatly when, after so many years, because of the published letters to Waśniewski, he came to me as accepted by Bruno” (letter from Józefina Szelińska to Jerzy Ficowski of September 5, 1967).
  • 2
    Bruno Schulz, Księga listów, collected and prepared for printing by Jerzy Ficowski, supplemented by Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, letter to Zenon Waśniewski, No. I 42, p. 86.
  • 3
    Ibid.
  • 4
    Ibid.