August 3, 1938, Wednesday, 2:10 pm

Paris. Bruno Schulz goes to the pneumatic mail station on Dupin Street to send the parcel to Elio Ganzerlo, which returns to the sender after a few hours due to the addressee’s absence.

In a letter written in French, Schulz offers Ganzerlo greetings from Dr. Srul Schmer (internist) and his wife Dziunia, who was Schulz’s student at Blatt Middle School*. He invites Ganzerlo to the Orient hotel, where he lives, for the next day (“between 8 and 9”), because, as he writes, he wants to give him “a small gift from [...] their mutual friends”1. The meeting does not take place. When sending the invitation, Schulz uses pneumatic post services2. The parcel is delivered at 2:10 pm from the station no. 80 at Dupin Street 3,300 meters from the Orient Hotel. When rewriting Ganzerlo’s address from his notebook into a standard pneumatic-mail form, Schulz was unsure of the spelling and provided two versions: “7, rue Danou” and “7, rue d’Aunon / Paris V”, one above the other. Neither of them turned out to be real. There are no such streets in Paris. The parcel first went to station 29 in the fifth district, from where it was delivered to the number 7 of Lhomond and Damals streets and then it returned with the information that Ganzerlo was unknown at these addresses. In the end, the street name was read by postal officials as “7 rue Daunou” and there were two attempts to deliver the parcel. Without success. After a few hours, it returned with the note: “2nd delivery attempt, person absent, not found, unknown in Daunou Street”3. Perhaps because building number 7 housed the Daunou Theatre4.

Did Ganzerlo work in it? Who was he? An actor? A man of the theatre? Why did he give the theatre address as his own? We know as much about him today as can be deduced from a short letter. He is a friend of Schulz’s friends from Drohobych. But how did he meet the Schmers? How did the paths of Drohobych residents cross with the mysterious man with an Italian-sounding name? Was Schulz, wanting to meet Ganzerlo, only doing a friendly favour, or maybe he wanted to ask him for help in establishing contacts with the artistic milieu of Paris? If so, this intention failed. (sr) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Cable from Bruno Schulz to Elio Ganzerlo dated August 3, 1938, [in:] Bruno Schulz, Dzieła zebrane, volume 5: Księga listów, zebrał i przygotował do druku Jerzy Ficowski, uzupełnił Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 189.
  • 2
    Elisa Le Briand, Anne-Laure Cermak, Le réseau avant l’heure. La Poste pneumatique à Paris (1866–1984), Paris 2006.
  • 3
    The cable from the collection of the Museum of Literature in Warsaw (a gift from Adam Sandauer) was reproduced as Letter from Bruno Schulz to Elio Ganzerlo and commented on by Wojciech Chmurzyński in: Bruno Schulz 1892–1942. Katalog-pamiętnik wystawy „Bruno Schulz. Ad Memoriam” w Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza, pod redakcją Wojciecha Chmurzyńskiego, Warszawa 1995, pp. 152–153.
  • 4
    Designed in Art Deco style by architect August Bluysen, it operated since 1921. It was a medium-sized theatre. It could accommodate almost half a thousand viewers. The Daunou Theatre has specialised in light repertoire since its beginnings. In 1938, two comedies by André Birabeau were staged: Dame Nature and Le Nid.