June 1982

Warsaw. PIW Press presents a collection of essays by Włodzimierz Paźniewski Życie i inne zajęcia, one chapter of which is devoted to Schulz’s death.

The book by Włodzimierz Paźniewski1 is a collection of sketches about twentieth-century literature, art and culture. The author particularly eagerly revolves around Viennese modernism and the legendary twilight of Austria-Hungary, although he also often refers to American artists and the traditions of the East. These independent texts are connected by the metaphor of the world as palimpsest, an infinite book in which literary, mythical and historical figures meet, and biographies take the form of apocrypha overwritten on the eternal myths2.

The chapter entitled “Mesjasz na wakacjach w Truskawcu” (“Messiah on holiday in Truskawiec”) contains a two-page, fictionalized account of Bruno Schulz’s death. Paźniewski presents the last days of the writer in the style of Christian Passion: Schulz has the face of Christ, Felix Landau* is Pilate, Karl Günther* plays the role of Judas. In the background, he refers to the legend of Schulz’s lost novel Messiah*; this unfinished work is compared to the brutally terminated life of the author. Further fragments of the sketch concern, among others, the deaths of Witold Gombrowicz* and of Edward Csató.

The book received mostly good reviews3. Critics pointed out the erudite character of the collection and its originality against the background of Polish essay writing. Wit Jaworski enthusiastically describes Życie i inne zajęcia (Life and other activities) as “one of the most interesting achievements of generation’68”4, while Feliks Netz calls it “the book of the year”5. On the other hand, Anna Sobolewska claims that sometimes “the author closes the most difficult issues into overly impressive formulas”6, and Robert Stiller considers the Paźniewski method to be an imitation of Borges7.

None of the reviewers discussed the fragment about Schulz.

See also: 19 November 1942. (jo)

  • 1
    Włodzimierz Paźniewski (b. 1942) was a poet, prose writer and essayist, initially associated with the New Wave. In the 1970s, a member of the poet group “Kontekst” from Katowice. Together with Andrzej Szuba, Tadeusz Sławek and Stanisław Piskor, he published a collection of critical and literary sketches and polemics, Spór o poezję (Argument over poetry) in 1977. He is the author of several books, recently mainly essay collections: Europa po deszczu (Europe after rain, 2001), Karawele na wietrze (Caravels in the wind, 2005), Księga przemijania (Book of Passing, 2007), Biuro podróży metafizycznych (Metaphysical travel agency, 2013), Neurosa teutonica (2015).
  • 2
    The protagonist of the first sketch, the monk Domenico, whose life goal was to write all the stories of the world in one book, turns to the reader: “Even what you think and write at this moment is only a repetition of a thread familiar to me” –Włodzimierz Paźniewski, Życie i inne zajęcia (Life and other occupations), Warszawa 1982, p. 6. In further texts of the book, other personas appear – and sometimes even talk to oneanother. There are, among others, Luis de León, John Cleland, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Arnold Schönberg, Franz Joseph, William Blake, Plato, Ettore Majorana, Saint Augustine, Henry Miller, Alexander Pushkin, Kazimierz Wierzyński, Leopold Buczkowski, Edward Csató, Juliusz Słowacki, but also Icarus, Daedalus, Venus, God, and Hamlet. In the last chapter of the book, there is a phrase that could be considered the punchline of the collection: “The thing you wrote – an old professor of philosophy told me in the corridor – resembles an assortment of nouns. I suppose you formulate the definition of the world by enumerating things [...]” – ibidem, s. 153.
  • 3
    In addition to the works quoted below, see also: Włodzimierz Pawłowski, “Appendix,” Literatura 1983, no. 2, pp. 57–58.
  • 4
    Wit Jaworski, „Włodzimierz Paźniewski Życie i inne zajęcia” [review], Życie Literackie 1983, no. 1, p. 10.
  • 5
    Feliks Netz, „Ucieczka w labirynt”, Tygodnik Kulturalny 1983, no. 28, pp. 2 and 15.
  • 6
    Anna Sobolewska, „Podróż do Kakanii,” Twórczość 1983, no. 5, p. 124.
  • 7
    Robert Stiller, „Poezja erudycji”, Nowe Książki 1983, no. 1, pp. 68–71.