July 31, 1935, Wednesday

Zakopane. Bruno Schulz meets with Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.

Witkacy spends the next day meeting people of culture and science who are staying in Zakopane. In a letter, he informs Jadwiga Witkiewicz: “I have no time today, because of Schulz, Czachowski, Ingarden, Płomieński”1. Schulz knows all of them and probably meets them at Witkacy’s house. Kazimierz Czachowski, literary critic, literary historian and translator, is a friend of Stefan Szuman* who asked him for help in publishing The Street of Crocodiles2. A week ago, Schulz met Roman Ingarden, also at Witkiewicz’s. Schulz mentions conversations with Witkacy’s friend Jerzy Płomieński (whom he calls “Płomieńsio”)3, a literary critic, essayist, and literary historian, in a letter to Zenon Waśniewski*4. Probably the meeting is also attended by Józefina Szelińska* and Maria Ingardenowa5.

On the basis of conversations with Szelińska, Jerzy Ficowski* states that “in these discussions and exchanges of thoughts, Schulz was a listener and participant, and the views he expressed were in a sphere close to the interlocutors, precisely formulated, drawing attention to the metaphysical aspects of reality”6.

See also: July 19–20, 1929*, June 24, 1935, July 13, 1935, July 24, 1935, July 25, 1935, August 3, 1935, August 7, 1935, August 14, 1935, August 24, 1935, late 1935 / early 1936. (ts) (transl. mw)

  • 1
    Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Listy do żony (1932–1935), prepared for printing by Anna Micińska, edited and annotated by Janusz Degler, Warszawa 2010, p. 310–311.
  • 2
    More about this matter is written by Jerzy Ficowski – Regiony wielkiej herezji i okolice. Bruno Schulz i jego mitologia, Sejny 2002, pp. 204.
  • 3
    Płomieński described his acquaintance with Witkacy and the vicissitudes of Schulz in an article by Polish “pontifex maximus” of catastrophism (see Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Człowiek i twórca. Commemorative book, edited by Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Jerzy Eugeniusz Płomieński, Warszawa 1957).
  • 4
    Bruno Schulz, Księga listów, collected and prepared for printing by Jerzy Ficowski, supplemented by Stanisław Danecki, Gdańsk 2016, p. 89.
  • 5
    On this day, Witkiewicz paints a portrait of Maria Ingarden, see Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Listy II (vol. 2, cz. 1), edited and annotated by Janusz Degler, Stefan Okołowicz, Tomasz Pawlak, Warszawa 2017, footnote 2 to a letter to Roman Ingarden no. 21, p. 97.
  • 6
    Jerzy Ficowski, Regiony wielkiej herezji…, p. 158.