Cracow. Wydawnictwo Literackie publishes a book Bruno Schulz. Listy, fragmenty, wspomnienia o pisarzu edited by Jerzy Ficowski.
A small, 80-page-long booklet contains a selection of materials collected by Jerzy Ficowski* throughout the many years he spent reconstructing Bruno Schulz’s biography and creative achievements. As Ficowski writes with hope: “This is – I believe – only an addition, not a completion, because despite the ravages that have been made by war, destruction and the devastating passage of time, we still have to discover the lost manuscripts, which may be resting somewhere – anonymous, unspotted or inaccessible until revealed by the most fortunate seeker and finder”.
In his introduction, Ficowski refers to the 90th anniversary of Schulz’s birth* and 40th anniversary of his death* to take place in 1982: “Let this anniversary, one of the many forgotten and memorable, become an opportunity to remember the biography of the great artist – if only as a modest trigger”. The book failed to be published in the anniversary year, but it was finally released two years later.
The volume consists of four parts: letters, fragments, memories and illustrations; the first part includes Schulz’s unpublished letters to Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz*, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Wacław Czarski*, Ludwik Lille* and Tadeusz Wojciechowski* along with comments from Ficowski. In the second part there are fragments of two of Schulz’s unreprinted essays: “How Legends Come into Being” and “Tragic Freedom”, thematically referring to Józef Piłsudski’s character*. The third part of the book is filled with “excerpts from several letter accounts and memories of Bruno Schulz”. These come from the memoirs of Maria Budracka-Tempele*, Irena Kejlin-Mitelman*, Chaim Winter*, Zbigniew Berwiński, Edmund Löwenthal*, Ella Schulz-Podstolska*, Aleksy Kuszczak, Paweł Zieliński* and Emil Górski. In the last part of the book there are previously unpublished illustrations: photographs by Schulz from around 1920 and around 1938, as well as a photograph of Schulz with students of the last grade of the Władysław Jagiełło Gymnasium* in Drogobych* from 1926, a pencil portrait of Maria Budracka-Tempele Niedosiężna glorietta*, an ink drawing Bachanalia* from 1920, a drawing on the cover of the folder called The Book of Idolatry*, an ink drawing Kataryniarz, being an illustration to Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, a pencil drawing depicting three figures at the table: Schulz’s parents* and his friend Edmund Pilpel*, as well as the solution of the mathematical task found by the teacher of mathematics from the Drogobych gymnasium Mirosław Krawczyszyn*. (mr) (transl. mw)
