Bruno Schulz (1892-1942)
Posted: September 8th, 2004, 10:12 am
The Polish writer and pictorial artist Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) is not well known in the US, but is a marvelously inventive novelist, draftsman and muralist with quirky but sharply disciplined moral and satirical resources at his command.
Schulz wrote novels, translated the work of other writers ( his translation of Kafka's "The Castle" won him the gold medal of the Polish Academy) and made many drawings, etchings and paintings in his short life.
A Polish citizen of Jewish faith, he was murdered by the Nazi SS in 1942.
John Updike, among others, has written an introduction to Schulz's ( also sometimes spelled "Schultz") work. Schulz's drawings have been published in two deluxe editions in the US, both long out of print.
The subject of Schulz's work is sometimes identified as "sexual idolatry", "the dark side of human sexuality" or even, more simply and puritanically, "sex perversion."
Reading Schulz carefully and examining his drawings, however, reveals a deeper meaning. Like Gunter Grass, another writer and accomplished draftsman/printmaker, and like Franz Kafka, Schulz used apparently "prurient" subjects to cast moral dilemmas into complex and intricate metaphors.
Here is an Internet link to some of Schulz's drawings and writings. Note that he is placed right under Kafka on the page:
(link)
http://www.creative.net/~alang/lit/absurd/fiction.sht
--Zlatko
Schulz wrote novels, translated the work of other writers ( his translation of Kafka's "The Castle" won him the gold medal of the Polish Academy) and made many drawings, etchings and paintings in his short life.
A Polish citizen of Jewish faith, he was murdered by the Nazi SS in 1942.
John Updike, among others, has written an introduction to Schulz's ( also sometimes spelled "Schultz") work. Schulz's drawings have been published in two deluxe editions in the US, both long out of print.
The subject of Schulz's work is sometimes identified as "sexual idolatry", "the dark side of human sexuality" or even, more simply and puritanically, "sex perversion."
Reading Schulz carefully and examining his drawings, however, reveals a deeper meaning. Like Gunter Grass, another writer and accomplished draftsman/printmaker, and like Franz Kafka, Schulz used apparently "prurient" subjects to cast moral dilemmas into complex and intricate metaphors.
Here is an Internet link to some of Schulz's drawings and writings. Note that he is placed right under Kafka on the page:
(link)
http://www.creative.net/~alang/lit/absurd/fiction.sht
--Zlatko