1943

In the spring of 1943* Jerzy Ficowski* receives information from a friend Adam Pawlikowski about the death of Bruno Schulz, to whom Ficowski – delighted after reading The Cinnamon Shops – had written a letter of gratitude and admiration. Having received the tragic message, he decides to write an essay collecting impressions from his reading. “So in 1943, I wrote a small and chaotic composition; adoration of Schulz was accompanied by the naivety of my formulations. I bound the whole – some thirty few half-pages of the manuscript – in canvas and titled it Regiony wielkiej herezji [Regions of Great Heresy]. I still keep this volume as a souvenir. In fact, what has survived is my delight for Schulz and the title taken from the ‘Mannequins’”¹. The volume in its original form has not been preserved to date – Ficowski has unfortunately lost it². In the archive of Jerzy Ficowski there is a recreated version of the book, dated 1944, with a note on the title page: ‘ed. II recreated after the disappearance of ed. I – 1943’”. Considering it too naive and exalted, the author never decided to publish the essay. (mr) (transl. mw)

See also: 1943*, 1967*, 1993*.