March 24, 1934, Saturday

Drohobych. Bruno Schulz, replying to a letter full of “gifts and souvenirs” from Zenon Waśniewski, makes a kind of archeology of memory and sets the directions of their future contacts.

The handwritten original of Zenon Waśniewski’s letter has not survived. From Schulz’s answer, however, it can be concluded that the sender had sent him family photos, sketches, and also the book of poetry by Aleksander Błok, Nightingale Garden, published in the Kamena Library*, with his own linocuts1.

The photos stimulate Schulz’s memory. Now he is able to connect the name with the face of the person whom, as he claims, he remembered and recalled many times over the years. “Now I remember perfectly well that you assisted me more than once”, he writes. “I remember some walks and conversations. You were of a gloomy disposition, rather reticent and private. Have you stayed like that? Or maybe it was only the structure of your eyebrows and eyes that produced this kind of Slavic, gentle gloom”2.

He thanks Waśniewski for the sketches showing caricatural images of Schulz and other characters from the Lviv era3. “I recognised my portrait right away; the friend depicted from the side with an aquiline nose and a trace of shaved stubble is Cygie4 from Łódź. I also recalled assistant Sadłowski”5-6. Schulz would enter the offered sketches into his archives at Floriańska* and they would share the fate of other archives7.

When planning joint ventures, Schulz, interested in Waśniewski’s artworks, expresses a desire to learn the woodcut technique under his guidance (he probably means linocut). The implementation of this project requires personal contact. Schulz, although he is going to Warsaw* soon, cannot respond to Waśniewski’s invitation and visit him in Chełm. “It would be good to meet somewhere in the summer”8, he writes. This subject would re-emerge in Schulz’s letters. The only meeting with Waśniewski would happen in the summer of 1936 in Zakopane*. It would be their first and last meeting after twenty years.

Schulz cannot repay Waśniewski for the gifts received with a copy of The Cinnamon Shops* (because Rój* does not send the ordered copies) or with artworks from The Booke of Idolatry*, which he calls etchings for unclear reasons (because “there is no time to make copies”9). However, he promises to do what is most important to Waśniewski: to give him something out of his literary work. To this end, he asks: “Could it be a passage of prose that I would send to Kamena, or does it have to be a whole? I suppose it may as well be a passage. I’ll send it soon”10. (sr) (transl. mw)

See also: March 15, 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*], June 24, 1935*, July 13, 1935*, August 3, 1935*, [August 7, 1935*], June 2, 1937*, August 4, 1937*, [January 5, 1938*], April 24, 1938*. (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Aleksander Błok, Nightingale Garden, translated by Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski, 4 linocuts by Zenon Waśniewski, Kamena Library no. 2, Chełm 1934.
  • 2
    Letter from Bruno Schulz to Zenon Waśniewski dated March 24,1934, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Dzieła zebrane, volume 5: Księga listów, zebrał i przygotował do druku Jerzy Ficowski, uzupełnił Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 65.
  • 3
    Waśniewski then revealed himself as a skilful portraitist (and caricaturist). A page with pencil portraits of people associated with Lviv Polytechnic has survived in the family collection. Schulz must have received a similar sheet of portrait sketches. For a reproduction see: Krystyna Mart, Zenon Michał Jan Waśniewski. Malarz, poeta, pedagog, żołnierz. Katalog, Chełm 2016, p. 24. The catalogue also includes dozens of caricatures made by the editor of Kamena in various eras.
  • 4
    Stanisław Cygie (1890–?), architect, graduate of Vienna University of Technology; until 1939 worked in the Construction Department of the Faculty of Technology of the City Council in Łódź.
  • 5
    Władysław Aleksander Sadłowski (1869–1940), architect, professor at Lviv Polytechnic; designed Lviv Main Railway Station, as well as many Lviv public buildings, incl. buildings of the Philharmonic and the Industrial School.
  • 6
    Bruno Schulz, op. cit., p. 65.
  • 7
    For the history of the Schulz archive, see: Jerzy Ficowski, Strych na Floriańskiej czyli ostatnia wizyta Feiwela Schreiera, [in:] idem, Okolice sklepów cynamonowych. Szkice, przyczynki, impresje, Kraków 1986, pp. 76–80, as well as Zguby i znaleziska, [in:], idem, Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Bruno Schulz i jego mitologia, Sejny 2002, pp. 194–203. Cf. also: Stanisław Rosiek, Archiwum „pisarza bez archiwum”. Rękopisy Brunona Schulza, [in:] Archiwa i bruliony pisarzy. Odkrywanie, edited by Maria Prussak, Paweł Bem, Łukasz Cybulski, Warszawa 2017, pp. 299–320.
  • 8
    Bruno Schulz, op. cit., p. 66.
  • 9
    Ibid, p. 65.
  • 10
    Ibid., p. 66.