4 April 1935, Sunday

Witkiewicz* finishes writing his first text about Bruno Schulz. It is the introduction to his and Schulz’s publication, anticipated by Tygodnik Ilustrowany*”¹, as well as to Schulz himself, which assumed the form of an interview carried on through correspondence. At the end of February and  the beginning of March Schulz complained to the Editor-in-Chief of Tygodnik Ilustrowany Wacław Czarski* that his article (“in the form of an interview with Witkacy”) had been at Witkiewicz’s for a week and he feared that it would stay there forever². In response to this letter, Czarski turns to Witkiewicz with a request to send the interview as soon as he can, together with a written introduction so that this publication could prove to Schulz that “no dark forces lay in wait for him”³.

In an informative introduction titled “Interview with Bruno Schulz” (Wywiad z Brunonem Schulzem), Witkiewicz includes Schulz in a line of the so-called demonologists⁴. He describes Schulz’s artwork as scratchographies⁵, which are, according to him, “poems of the cruelty of legs”, in which immanent human evil expresses itself, dressed in masochistic and sadistic forms: “Schulz gave expression to both these psychic manifestations to the absolute limits of intensity, and with an almost monstrous pathos,” writes Witkiewicz⁶. In terms of composition, the author of the introduction admits that some of Schulz’s graphic illustrations are close to the ideal of Pure Form, which, he states, indicates the undoubted genius of the author⁷. He also praises The Cinnamon Shops* and other short stories published in literary journals, calling them “a first-rate phenomenon”, and Schulz himself, a “new star of true greatness”⁸.

Witkiewicz’s text is one of the first enthusiastic interpretations of Schulz’s literary and graphic output⁹. (ts) (transl. ms)

See also: 1 January 1935*, 4 March 1935*, 11 April 1935*, 28 April 1935*.