Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz _ with Selected Prose

Hardcover: 256 pages ISBN-10: 0060158964 ISBN-13: 978-0060158965

Schulz's hopeless dream of a renewal of society through inspiration and myth pervades these letters and fragments, mostly written in his native Polish village between 1933 and 1942 as the Nazi threat loomed ever larger. The same tortured spirit permeates his justly famous prose collections, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. This morbidly shy crafts teacher, who was shot by an SS brute, wrote spiritually questing letters, some of which bear comparison with those of his idol, Rilke. But the most impressive selections are his essay on Kafka, whom Schulz considered deeply religious; his richly beautiful "The Republic of Dreams"; and his rhapsodic meditation, "Fatherland." The 70-odd pencil or ink drawings reproduced here reflect Schulz's neurotic preoccupation with dwarfish male freaks cowed by coy or powerful females.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Many contemporary readers met the Polish writer Bruno Schulz for the first time as a ghost-character in Cynthia Ozick's Messiah of Stockholm ( LJ 3/1/87). Who was this man whom Isaac Singer called "one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived"? There are few tangible facts, so these letters provide an invaluable and telling portrait. They cover the period from 1938 to 1942 (when, as a Jew, he was shot in the street by an SS agent) and are arranged by correspondent rather than chronologically, thus helping to show the development of his personal and intellectual relationships. His drawings, reminiscent of George Grosz's, are also powerful images of a tormented genius. For all literary collections. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.