spring 1924

Perhaps Schulz was going to move to Warsaw* for a longer period, as could be suggested by his frequent visits to Cecylia Kejlin*, whom he met two years earlier in the sanatorium in Bad Kudowa*. Irena Kejlin-Mitelman*, her daughter (fourteen years old at the time), remembered a fragment of the conversation where Schulz asked Cecylia for advice or favor: “Bruno, these etchings are not for sale and some are not even for display. They have no idea, they will not understand. And if they do understand, it’s even worse [...] so if you really want to stay in Warsaw, sir – go to school”¹. The drawings in question probably come from the series Xięga bałwochwalcza* (which uses the cliché-verre technique). Instead of a purchase offer for them, Schulz received an order for eleven oil portraits, eight of which he would later complete: three portraits of Cecylia Kejlin, her daughter and husband Aleksander, as well as five portraits of the Kejlins’ friends. All the paintings were lost. The only description of them comes from the memoir of Irena Kejlin-Mitelman. In her opinion, the aesthetics of the portraits resembled the painting technique of the French colorist Pierre Bonnard – completely unlike the “tortured”² drawings by Schulz.

When it comes to her portrait, she says that, with a branch of lilac in her hand, she looks at least a few years older than she really was. In addition, there is a peculiar incident associated with this piece of work: during the painting session Schulz is said to have fallen on his knees in front of the girl in an idolatry act. Irena Kejlin-Mitelman recalls that this was an accurate enactment of the recurring scene from Schulz’s masochistic sketches, including drawings 6 and 7, which were attached by Jerzy Ficowski* to the 1973 edition of “Druga jesień”*.

Schulz was disappointed when he was leaving Warsaw; he had the feeling that “the Warsaw vibe was worse than the one in Drogobych, it made him suffocate and that it was not a city for him”³. (jo)  (transl. mw)

See also: August 1922.