Maria Delaperriere

Schulz: A desire for self-creation

The article refers to Jerzy Jarzębski’s Powieść jako autokreacja [The novel as self- creation]. In this collection of essays Bruno Schulz’s prose is both discussed together with other examples from Polish literature and presented as unique in terms of self-cre- ation. This inconsistency is justified by Schulz’s worldview: he preferred ‘mythologi- cal delusion’ to purely verbal self-creation (ex nihilo). Following this lead, the author of the article adds to Jarzębski’s intuitions a few remarks on the complicated relation- ship between mythologisation and Schulz’s more or less hidden quest for self-creation. Schulz’s approach to the biblical myth of Joseph is juxtaposed with Die Geschichten Jaakobs by Thomas Mann, who kept on creating new variants of the original myth. Through contrast, Mann’s method reveals the self-creational tendencies of Schulz, who, reaching into the depths of his own prehistory, repudiates the biblical myth. At the same time, Schulz mythologises the reality, deliberately obliterating boundaries between poiesis and mythos and thus demonstrating demiurgic aspirations, which can be considered the final attempt to reconcile not only two poetics, but also two opposing visions of the world.
 

INNER EXILE AND CODES OF CONTESTATION IN POLISH LITERATURE IN THE YEARS 1945–1980
The resistance of Polish writers against the postwar communist regime is presented in this article mainly as a way of collective manifestation of the attitude often called ‘inner emigration’. The article focuses on the ambiguous stratagems of some ardent adepts of the communist ideology, who fi nally became political dissidents, but before that had chosen the sort of ‘inner exile’ or ‘inner emigration’, having created their own literary codes based on camouflage, allegory, and mystification