BRUNO SCHULZ

A well-informed consideration of the life and legacy of the Polish Jewish writer and artist who died during World War II.

Often compared to Kafka in background, “father fixations,” and “self-sacrificial devotion to literature,” Bruno Schulz (1892-1942) toiled mostly in obscurity as an art teacher in Drohobych, Poland (now Ukraine)—except among those intellectuals who had read his two volumes of stories published in the mid-1930s, Cinnamon Shops and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. The books were highly praised for their flights of meteoric prose as well as morbid sensuality and undercurrents of masochism. Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial, awarded the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, describes Schulz’s work in his own words and those of critics. The author’s prose is sensuous and often lavish: “Schulz sought in his art a confirmation of his existence; art for him was something sacerdotal….In time he became inextricably bound up with his art and its disinhibiting effect.” Largely confined to his hometown, which featured a diverse mix of Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian ethnicities in a region of shifting nationalities, Schulz and his fellow Jews were caught in the vise grip between the invading Soviets and the Nazis in 1939. During his last tortuous months, he was employed by Felix Landau, a sadistic SS officer, to paint portraits for fellow Gestapo officers as well as a series of fairy-tale murals. On Nov. 19, 1942, Schulz was shot in the streets, and different accounts of the murder have been subject to “the polyphony of memory.” Balint’s narration of Schulz’s life is brief compared to his fascinating discussion of the controversy surrounding the discovery of his murals in 2001 and their spiriting away to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial by Israeli agents. In this incisive portrait, Balint also delves into the enormous influence of Schulz on Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Jonathan Safran Foer, among many others writers.

A poignant, passionate revisiting of an important literary and artistic voice.