June 1967

This is the first book publication devoted to Schulz. Ficowski’s work is the result of a project conducted since 1948* aimed at finding, reconstructing and reading the remnants of Bruno Schulz’s life and work. The main source of information about the writer were conversations and correspondence with people who knew Schulz and who decided to respond to Ficowski’s press appeals for information about Schulz’s life and works¹. These testimonies become unmarked, anonymous in the author’s narrative². There are no footnotes in Ficowski’s book. The only mention of the sources is a list of names placed at the end of the introductory chapter “I’ve Found an Authentic (Instead of the Introduction)”. The list was modified in subsequent editions and deleted in the most recent one (from 2002). 

In the chapter, Ficowski describes the sources of his interest in Schulz and the history of his research. He also strongly emphasises the personal character of the presented work. Subsequent chapters presenting an attempt to reconstruct Schulz’s biography (“Bruno, Son of Jacob”, “Back to School”, “Prehistory and the Creation of The Cinnamon Shops”, “Expeditions into the World”, “The Epilogue of the Biography”) are intertwined with interpretative essays, in which Ficowski analyses selected aspects of Schulz’s fiction: the myth of return to childhood (“Book, or Repeated Childhood”), the concept of time (“Schulz Time or, the Mythical Path Towards Freedom”), the rooting of Schulz’s visions in empirical reality (“Phantoms and Reality”) and the interweaving of “the element of emotionalism and the strict precision of the expression that prompts it”³ (“Magic and Definition”). In the last chapter entitled “The Surviving and Lost Works” Ficowski describes his search for and the discovery of Schulz’s works and other materials remaining.

Tadeusz Drewnowski, reviewing Regiony wielkiej herezji, writes: “Ficowski’s biographical essay, despite its modest assumptions, provides many important observations and often direct statements for the analysis of this original phenomenon. All of them complement and in many ways correct the critical and literary study of Artur Sandauer”⁴. He also notices the list of lost works prepared by Ficowski, expressing hope that it will help make more discoveries. Drewnowski also appreciates the editorial aspect of the work, praises Wydawnictwo Literackie for its ability to give the book individual qualities.

Arnold Słucki sees in Regiony wielkiej herezji an intention to confront the most important schulzological authority of the time – Artur Sandauer* – in the scope of philosophical foundations of Schulz’s fiction⁵. 

In his discussion of Regiony wielkiej herezji, Wojciech Żukrowski reflects on his own experience of reading Schulz. He claims not to value his fiction that much himself today; he considers it mannered. He writes that “it has aged unexpectedly quickly”⁶, though it can still fascinate young readers: “In Schulz’s work, an alley has been penetrated; surely this alley does not lead far, but it is worth traveling – perhaps a young writer will be dazzled with it or it will foster someone’s choice of forms, it will be useful, as it was once to Ficowski and to me too”⁷.

Julian Przyboś draws the reader’s attention to the rather emotional nature of Ficowski’s work and the accuracy of his observations: “It was formulated by a pen of a poet who said important things about the work of his beloved master”⁸. Although he also notes some misguided interpretative formulations, such as the reference to the principle of uncertainty of Werner Heisenberg.

Waldemar Chołodowski claims Ficowski’s book is valuable in the way it presents to the reader some previously unknown parts of Schulz’s biography. Emphasising the popular character of Regiony wielkiej herezji, Chołodowski also states that “this book, printed [...], is a call for more decent scientific work about the oeuvre of Bruno Schulz. It is also a solid starting material for such work”⁹. The critic also draws attention to the materiality of the book, emphasizing that it was “printed on excellent paper”¹⁰. 

Wiesław Paweł Szymański* calls Regiony wielkiej herezji a brave book because of Ficowski’s declared personal attitude towards the subject, and because of the fulfilled intention of reading Schulz’s fiction through the prism of his biography. According to Szymański, Ficowski devotes too much space to showing the rooting of Schulz’s work in his life, and not enough – to analysing the work itself. The critic also negatively evaluates the hagiographical tone of the chapter “Bruno, Son of Jacob”. However, these defects, treated as consequences of Ficowski’s courage, do not prevent Szymański from claiming Regiony wielkiej herezji to be a “very valuable, transparent, comprehensible written”¹¹ book, to which, in his opinion, all writers about Schulz will later refer.

In a review for the Paris émigré journal Kultura, Andrzej Chciuk* criticized Regiony wielkiej herezji from the perspective of a Drogobych resident and a person currently working on Schulz’s monograph. Appreciating the presentation of Schulz to the reader, Chciuk notes that Ficowski offers his own vision of Schulz which is radically different from the image preserved in the memory of Drogobych residents who knew him personally: “This is Ficowski’s Schulz, this is the perception of Schulz’s work by an intelligent writer, Ficowski himself; this is Schulz with gaps in his biography, patched with the best intentions and inventions of the author – but it is still not the Schulz as I and others knew him”¹². According to Chciuk, the disadvantage of the book is the biased approach of Ficowski: “Ficowski is not a critic, but a hagiographer full of reverence, which is quite bad. For only when you see all the shortcomings, ridicule, fancies and deviations of Schulz, and only when all of this is understood together, in a simple way – one can judge his work and life”¹³.

Tadeusz J. Żółciński emphasizes the tragedy of Schulz’s lonely life: “Ficowski’s biography is a tragic, fatalistic biography. Schulz’s obsessive loneliness, not only as a writer, but also as a man, did not leave him until the last day of his life, until he fell pierced with a German bullet in one of the streets of Drogobych during the cleansing of the town”¹⁴. Żółciński emphasizes the complementarity of the findings of Ficowski and Artur Sandauer, claiming that in order to understand Schulz, it is necessary to read both Regiony wielkiej herezji and “Rzeczywistość zdegradowana”¹⁵. 

Krzysztof Miklaszewski emphasizes the documentary value of Regiony: “Apart from the descriptions that Ficowski’s book has already earned, one more must be placed: priceless. It is the only, properly documented ‘canonical’ source, unquestionably determining even such basic facts of the biography, such as the date of birth and death, which reveals the probability of chronology the creation and printing of individual works, and correcting all the mistakes and errors in research to date”¹⁶. Miklaszewski also points out that Ficowski often draws conclusions about Schulz’s work too easily from his biographical data. 

In the following decades, three more editions of Regiony wielkiej herezji were published (1975*, 1992* and 2002*). Each of them was corrected and supplemented by the author using all newly acquired information. (mr) (transl. mw)

See also: 1943*, 30 May 1948*, 27 June 1948*, 1956*, 10 November 1957*, January 1975*, 1992*.