Bad Kudowa. Schulz spends a month in the health resort, where he meets Arnold Spaet, Cecylia Kejlin and her daughter Irena.
Schulz mentions his stay in the German Bad Kudowa* (now Kudowa-Zdrój in Poland) rather cursorily in a letter of 13 March 1934 to the translator of German poetry and a scholar of German, Arnold Spaet*: “How could I not remember you, Sir, and our pleasant Kudowa talks!”.
You can read about this episode in Irena Kejlin-Mitelman’s memoir* published by Jerzy Ficowski in 1984 (in Bruno Schulz. Listy, fragmenty. Wspomnienia o pisarzu). The author – a 12-year-old girl at the time – remembered, among other things, the first encounter with Schulz in Park Zdrojowy and the great impression that Schulz’s appearance made on her: “There is a strange figure sitting on the bench opposite. The sun is scorching hot, greenery and flowers around us, and he is all dark –his clothing, his face and hair. Dark, huddled, and sort of in-drawn. Legs and feet together, palms laid flat, closed with his knees; his dark head nestled between his shoulders. Sitting still, he is staring at Mom”. During the next three weeks of August, Schulz often met them. He paid a lot of attention to the girl, whom he gave outdoor drawing lessons (“The best teacher I ever had”). With Cecylia Kejlin,* Irena’s mother, he had long conversations in the evenings (“probably confessions”), of which only single words were preserved in the memoir of Irena Kejlin-Mitelman, “pronounced in capital letters: ‘New Life’, ‘The World is Open and Beautiful’, ‘Your Talent, Sir’”.
It is unclear what the cause of Schulz’s stay in the sanatorium was. Perhaps some kind of heart disease. The health resort in Kudowa was famous primarily for its cardiological treatments (one of the German guides referred to the resort as the “best heart treatment in the East”); however, neural diseases (neurosis, encephalitis, hysteria, hypochondria)were also treated there: and diseases of the digestive tract, rheumatism or lung diseases. In 1922, after the devaluation of the German mark, the offer of the sanatorium must have seemed also financially encouraging to Schulz. Still, it could hardly have been a holiday or a tourist trip – the resort could not provide as much entertainment as fashionable European resorts or even the town of Zakopane (located much closer to Drogobych).
Irena Kejlin-Mitelman recalls that Schulz avoided social gatherings and did not use the attractions available at the sanatorium. He went on a sightseeing tour only once, to Schädelkapelle* (Skull Chapel). Later, supposedly, “for a few days he sketched phantasmagorias of skulls and tibiae”.
Schulz’s friendship with Cecylia Kejlin lasted a few more years, and it produced abundant correspondence, lost during the war. (jo) (transl. mw)
See also: spring 1924, 1980*, 1984.
