Paris. Bruno Schulz moves into a room booked a few days before at the American Hôtel, where he will probably stay in until the end of his stay. He is already aware that he will not be able to implement “the local programme” and writes about it in a lost letter to Maria Chasin.
The fact that Schulz checked in at the American Hôtel before August 12 is known from Siegfried Kracauer’s postcard* to him dated that day with the address of the hotel. The card is a response to the meeting proposal sent to him by Schulz. There is also a hotel card with two addresses written in pencil by Schulz and with an annotation by a different hand: “chambre no.15 /3e-étage”, possibly meaning that the writer lived in room 15 on the third floor.
The hotel was located at Bréa 15 and was Schulz’s last known Parisian residence. Hotel d’Orient, where he stayed in Paris, is no more than one kilometre away and Café du Dôme on Montparnasse 109 (corner of rue Delambre) is just two hundred meters away. It is not known, however, whether Schulz followed the advice* of Kazimiera Rychterówna* and approached the “table of the Polish society” and made contact with Moïse Kisling (who came there every day at 2 pm) or with other Polish artists. He probably had many opportunities to do so, so it can be concluded that the Café du Dôme was one of the places where Schulz made some Parisian contacts.
At this stage of his stay in Paris, Schulz already assessed his situation. In a letter to Romana Halpern*, sent after his return to Drohobych, he wrote: “after one week I realised that I would not implement my program here”. In a lost letter to Chasin* he reported the course of the first Paris days. He had already met André J. Rotgé* and knew the conditions for organising an exhibition in his gallery (although he had not yet made a final decision on this matter). He had also met Ludwik Lille and possibly Rachela Szalit. He had failed to contact Aleksandra Pregel* (who left Paris) and the addressee’s brother, Georges Rosenberg*. Searching for his contact, Schulz found “Mrs. Rosenberg”, who introduced herself as Chasin’s friend (which she denied: “You write to me about Mrs. Rosenberg, as if she were my friend, but… I don’t know such a person at all. Besides, I have no girlfriends”).
The quoted sentence is from Chasin’s reply on August 18 to his missing letter, in which he reported his first days in Paris. This helps us to recreate some events. One of them is a visit at the Louvre – perhaps in the company of Szalit, about whom Chasin had written to Schulz in July: “please write to Mrs. Rachela Szalit, 6 bis, rue Lecuirot, Paris 14th on my behalf and make an appointment with her. She is a painter and graphic artist (formerly living in Berlin), genre-bohémien. Tell her that you are my friend and that I am asking her to help you and take care of you. Make an appointment with her to visit the exhibitions, she does it happily. Of course you can also write to her in German”. (sr) (transl. mw)
