In Search of ‘The Messiah’: Bruno Schulz & His Detective |Polska 1939: Przerwane historie

In Search of ‘The Messiah’: Bruno Schulz & His Detective

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In Search of ‘The Messiah’:
Bruno Schulz & His Detective

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‘Meeting: A Young Jewish Man and Two Women in an Urban Alley’ by Bruno Schulz, 1920, oil on cardboard, 53 x 70 cm, from the collection of Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw, photo: Zofia i Marek Bazak / East News

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A letter that never arrived

It all started with a letter. It was sent in 1942 by a young man to the address of Bruno Schulz, a famous writer. In it, the 18-year old wrote about the great impression that his recent reading of Schulz’s book Street of Crocodiles (originally: Sklepy Cynamonowe) had left on him.

He apologised for his audacity in addressing the writer directly and thanked him for a sensation that – as he later recounted – he would never experience again. He also shared that he was ashamed that he had not learned earlier about this ‘greatest writer of our times’ and expressed ‘gratitude for [Schulz’s] existence itself’. He later said: ‘I kept on asking [him] about something, thanking [him] for everything and expressing a faint hope that I would receive an answer’.

Throughout that time, Jerzy Ficowski – for that was the name of the young man – would take on the role of archaeologist and chronicler of the life of Bruno Schulz, becoming in the process something resembling a one-person detective agency. He would try to piece together the collected splinters and scraps of the writer’s life into a biography and to reconstruct Schulz’s world.

What Ficowski was able to achieve delineated the horizon of our knowledge about the writer. And what he was unable to find conquered the imaginations of multiple generations of scholars and readers.

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Bruno Schulz was born in 1892 in Drohobych. This Galician town, located near Lviv, was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following World War I, the town, inhabited by Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, found itself within the borders of the Second Republic of Poland.

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Galicja with the Grand Duchy, before 1885, photo by Eduard Hölzel, source: Polona.pl

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Most of Schulz’s short stories are based in Drohobych. Although the writer never decided to move – he considered Drohobych to be fundamental for his work – the town was controlled during his lifetime by a few different countries, belonging subsequently to Austro-Hungary, the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Second Republic of Poland, the USSR and the Third Reich.

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General view of Drohobycz, 1932, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)

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The first house at the market square (pictured at the right of the church) is the house of Jakub Schulz, Bruno’s father. This is where Bruno Schulz was born and where he lived until 1910.

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Drohobych market square around 1915, before the fire at Bruno Schulz's house, photo: National Library / Polona

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The ‘Crocodile Street’ from Schulz’s short story – a kitsch small-town financial district with grotesque, big-city aspirations – is actually a mythological transposition of Stryjska Street, which is located near Drohobych’s market square.

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Drohobycz, Stryjska Street, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa / Polona

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The authentic

Years later, Ficowski returned to that moment of his life, invariably calling it a revelation.

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Cover of ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ (originally: ‘Sklepy Cynamonowe’ with an illustration by Bruno Schulz, Warsaw, 1934. Photo: Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw / East News

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Bruno Schulz with his family in the garden of the house in Drohobych.

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Photo: Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw

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State Junior High School in Drohobych. The writer Bruno Schulz teaching handiwork classes, 19th May 1934.

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Photo: Laski Diffusion / Shalom / East News

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Doctor Jan Kochanowski, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), Roman Jasiński and Bruno Schulz in Jan Kochanowski's apartment on Wiejska Street in Warsaw, around 1934.

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Photo: Jan Kochanowski / archive of Elżbieta Jasińska / Fotonova / East News

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Years of searching

Ficowski spent the years immediately following the war travelling with a Romani group.

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Jerzy Ficowski in uniform, photo: NAC / archive of Jerzy Ficowski

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‘You won’t find anything…’

Ficowski tried to fight against the destructive passage of time, but he often had the feeling that he had arrived too late. He reached Drohobych, which became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the war, only in 1959. Embittered, he admitted that he found almost nothing there. He considered the next trip, made in 1965, a failure as well, even though his spoils turned to be quite substantial – five drawings, a few letters and a photocopy of Schulz’s grades from the school years 1902 to 1910.

Ficowski visited the Lviv apartment of Debora Vogel, a poet and a friend of Schulz and an addressee of his letters. He learned from the housekeeper, who remembered the Vogels from before the war, that there was ‘an entire basement full of papers’ – but they had ‘organised a cleaning last year and […] burned scribblings and trash’. The trash must have included Schulz’s letters, and these contained the first version of The Street of Crocodiles (Schulz wrote it in the post-scripts to letters sent to Vogel).

In the former apartment of the writer’s niece, Ella Schulz-Podstolska, Ficowski asked the new tenant whether she had found any drawings when she moved in. It turned out that there was one: ‘a likeness […] of some weird girl’. She added:

But the drawing was cut with a knife and stained with blood. I thought it could have been human blood! I couldn’t have kept it under my roof. One Sunday, while visiting my family’s grave at the cemetery, I took the bloodied drawing and tossed it to some grave through a crack.
Trans. MW

It was not only time that was working against Ficowski’s efforts, but also the political system, which after the war established strict rules of what was allowed and what was not. Schulz’s old colleague Krawczyszyn, a teacher in Drohobych’s middle school who was found 20 years after the war, put it bluntly:

Don’t look for it; you won’t find anything. If anybody had some relic remember that for an innocent piece of paper, you could have been deported far away from here, forever.
Trans. MW

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Destruction was the rule…

Ficowski looked for Schulz’s letters, which, due to the lack of manuscripts, stood as the most important testimony about his life and the most important of his written works.

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Jerzy Ficowski. Photo: archive of Jerzy Ficowski, in the collection of NAC

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Errors in fate

At the same time, ‘every preserved letter has its own peculiar – often improbable – story’.

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Manuscript of the story ‘Second Autumn’ – the only surviving literary manuscript of Bruno Schulz, found by Jerzy Ficowski. Photo: Biblioteka Narodowa

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‘“The Messiah” is growing slowly…’

In a letter written in 1934, shortly after the publication of his debut work, Schulz wrote the following:

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Bruno Schulz, in the years of writing ‘The Messiah’, 1935, Drohobycz, photo: reproduction from the Fotonova / East News archive

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The war

In September 1939, after the Soviet aggression of Poland, Drohobych became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

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Self-portrait by Bruno Schulz, photo: FoKa / Forum

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What is ‘The Messiah’?

Schulz never wrote about the contents of his work.

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Letter to Andrzej Pleśniewicz from 4th March 1936. Ficowski came into possession of three Schulz's letters to Pleśniewicz during the war. Borrowed by a mutual friend from their addressee (who died at the end of the war), these letters became some of the most important in Schulzology and also launched the collection of the ‘Schulzians’, developed over the years. Photo: archive of Jerzy Ficowski, in the collection of Biblioteka Narodowa

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‘Ojcowie Miasta na Tle Jerozolimy’ (The Fathers of the City against the Backdrop of Jerusalem) by Bruno Schulz; ink, paper; an illustration to the short story ‘The Night of the Great Season’; before 1934.

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Photo: Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw

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Among Bruno Schulz’s preserved artworks is a group of drawings on Jewish themes that, despite their illustrative character, cannot be related to any existing literary work. As Ficowski described them, ‘they all share the air of ritual and the scenery where a small Galician town and its citizens, the believers of the Old Testament, unite and identify themselves with their Biblical ancestors, with the patriarchs of the Torah and with their Jerusalem origins from before the destruction of the Temple’. Ficowski suspected that these drawings might have been designed as an illustration to the novel ‘The Messiah’.

‘Przy Świątecznym Stole’ (At the Ceremonial Table) by Bruno Schulz; pencil, paper

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Photo: Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw, X.12449

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Table scenes are part of Schulz’s most common art themes, including their Jewish variety. As Ficowski put it, ‘the table is something like a sanctuary, a link between individual beings and a centre point of the community. Schulz wrote in the Book: “Don’t we all secretly hold hands under the table that separates us?”’

Ficowski continues: ‘These are not convivial tables, they are not there for serving meals, but to facilitate being together. Sometimes, a book lies on the tablecloth, but there is usually nothing there: no silverware, no plates, no meals. Sitting at the table is ceremonial, it is a state of particular insight into oneself – like saying prayers. Some sacred intermission in the ceremony of life is taking place’. – From ‘Księga Obrazów’ [A Book of Pictures] by Jerzy Ficowski

‘Trzech Mędrców przy Stole’ (Three Wise Men at the Table) by Bruno Schulz; 1938; pencil, paper

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Photo: Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw

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‘We are unable to point to other Schulz’s drawings that could have served as illustrations for ‘The Messiah’ in its extra-ceremonial, ‘private’ sphere – other than the organ-grinders, whose likenesses where preserved thanks to their being placed in the first edition of ‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’. Without knowing the plot of ‘The Messiah’ and stories related to its characters, it is impossible to guess which of the drawings – other than those bearing clear ethnic-believer marks – could have been part of the work’s illustrations. – From ‘Księga Obrazów’ [A Book of Pictures] by Jerzy Ficowski

‘Dwie Nagie Kobiety i Dwóch Starców nad Księgą’ (Two Naked Women and Two Old Men with a Book) by Bruno Schulz; ca. 1935; pencil, paper

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Photo: Muzeum Literatury in Warsaw

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Other, later scholars also contributed their interpretations.

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‘Ex Libris with the Messiah’ for Stanisław Weingarten by Bruno Schulz, around 1920, photo: Schulz/Forum

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‘The coming of “The Messiah”’

In 1987, The Messiah appeared on the horizon for the first time. Alex Schulz – an American citizen, a former inhabitant of Drohobycz and, as he claimed, Bruno Schulz’s cousin – addressed himself to Ficowski.

A bit earlier, Alex, staying in his home in California, was supposed to receive a phone call from someone who came to the US from Lviv (Ficowski wondered: ‘A diplomat? An officer of Soviet security organs – the KGB?’). The caller offered to sell Alex a parcel of Bruno Schulz’s manuscripts, although he was unable to clearly describe its contents. He only said that everything was written in Polish, that the bundle also contained eight drawings and that it weighed around two kilograms. He was ready to sell it for 10,000 dollars.

Alex Schulz announced his willingness to purchase the parcel and asked Ficowski to witness the transaction, serving as an expert to judge the bundle’s authenticity.

Ficowski spent the summer of that year waiting near the phone, aware that what was going to happen ‘will be the fulfilment of my wildest dreams, a revelation on a worldwide scale’. But the phone never rang. It soon turned out that Alex Schulz had experienced a sudden brain stroke and was left paralysed and unable to speak. Ficowski wrote: ‘And so, the coming of The Messiah was delayed until an unforeseeable future, perhaps forever.’

The Messiah affair came back to life three years later. In May 1990, the 66-year old Ficowski was visited by the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden, Jean Christophe Öberg – an admirer of Schulz’s work – along with his secretary. Öberg claimed that he had credible information that ‘among the millions of documents in one of the Soviet KGB archives, there is a stuffed parcel containing Schulz’s literary manuscripts, including, most importantly, the novel The Messiah’. In addition to the novel, the bundle was said to contain various other pieces, including some that were never published, as well as letters and various personal documents of the writer.

This revelatory news came from some formal meeting of the diplomats in Stockholm that was attended by Öberg. It took place in the city’s Soviet Embassy or the Swedish MFA (I do not remember this detail). One of the attendees of the gathering, a Russian, said on the side that he saw this bundle-bag with his own eyes and approximately described not only its contents, but also its story.
Trans. MW

Öberg claimed that he stumbled onto these materials in a Soviet archive, where it was kept not under Schulz’s name, but of some Pole, whose personal details did not ring any bells. That person was said to have been arrested by the Gestapo; their documents, taken from them, were supposedly found after the war in a post-Gestapo archive somewhere within the Soviet zone (later, the GDR). In 1947, the archives were moved to Moscow and made part of the KGB’s documents.

Ficowski was once again asked to serve as an expert by accompanying Ambassador Öberg to Ukraine, where the planned meeting was to take place. This time, everything was delayed due to visa procedures: the Ambassador was refused entry twice. The third time, after the fall of USSR, Öberg was already applying for visa in Kiev, but the entire plan ended with his early death. He died in May 1992, two weeks after meeting Ficowski, ‘after a short, difficult illness – a rapidly progressing cancer’.

‘As it is customary in diplomatic circles, he gave me no information that would allow me to continue his efforts’, Ficowski wrote.

For now, this would be the last time that The Messiah sent any sign.

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False hopes & new discoveries

Ficowski, as it appears, believed in the possibility of finding The Messiah until the very end.

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Stairs at the Schulz house in the 1960s, which no longer exist today. Photo: Jerzy Ficowski / archive of Jerzy Ficowski / NAC

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Thanks to Ficowski, Schulzology knew of similarly unexpected and sometimes almost miraculous discoveries. A good example is the sudden unearthing in 1973 of Schulz’s Exposé on ‘Cinnamon Shops’.

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Illustration by Bruno Schulz for the ‘Bilszowicka Prawda’ newspaper, 16th April 1941. Photo: courtesy of Lesia Chomycz

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Frescos of Bruno Schulz discovered by Benjamin Geissler on 9th February 2001 in Drohobych. The frescoes were under a layer of plaster in the former apartment of SS Felix Landau. They were painted in the spring or summer of 1942 for the policeman's children and depicted scenes from fairy tales. Picturedin the former Landau Villa in Drohobych. Photo: Tomasz Tomaszewski / Forum

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Fot. Tomasz Tomaszewski/Forum

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In May 2001, the frescoes were forged and secretly taken to Israel. The photo shows frescoes presented at the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem during the exhibition ‘Wall Painting under Coercion’, February 2009. Photo: Jim Hollander / EPA / PAP

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Fot. Jim Hollander/EPA/PAP

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Shulzology after Ficowski

Ficowski’s death in 2006 marked, to a large extent, an end to this heroic period of searching. Although it may appear that the time of wonderful findings has come to an end, Schulzology, which was built on the foundations laid by Ficowski, is in fact alive and well. A new generation of scholars is working hard on shedding some light on every fragment of Schulz’s life.

Since 2016, researchers at the University of Gdańsk have been trying to determine a detailed, daily calendar of the writer’s life. Each bit of progress and all Schulz-centred events are documented by the website www.brunoschulz.org.

Additionally, the latest academic work by Schulzologists from all over the world is published in the Stanisław Rosiek-founded journal Schulz/Forum (also available online). The amount and the quality of publications seem to confirm these words spoken almost 30 years ago by Katarina Šalamun-Biedrzycka: ‘I am convinced that in around a dozen years, there will be just as many “Schulzologists” as “Joyceologists”’.

Almost 80 years after Schulz’s death, minor discoveries continue to be made, which serve researchers as important documents helping to establish a narrative of the writer’s life. At the beginning of the 21st century, the discovery of Schulz’s lost letter made it possible to find an aphorism of his about reading and books. In 2012, a previously unknown photo of Schulz surfaced.

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During this decade alone, two unknown written works by Schulz were discovered. One of them, a comprehensive essay on the artistic work of Ephraim Moses Lilien, sheds new light on the genesis of Schulz’s earliest attempts at visual art. (It may even provoke questions as to whether Lilien’s work was The Book which served as an origin of Schulz’s creations.) In turn, a well-known ex libris of Jakub and Ella Schulz turned out to contain, on its back, an unknown portrait of the mother and the scene of the worshipping of the idols.

It is likely that, as Ficowski predicted, further, unexpected discoveries are indeed still in store. Moreover, we do not know what could happen with those Ficowski himself awaited and dreamed of. Perhaps there are still wonderful oil paintings waiting to be discovered. As Ficowski wrote, all but one of these were lost in the writer’s family region, in today’s Ukraine.

Maybe there will come a time when we will see Zabicie Smoka (The Slaying of the Dragon) – a painting we are certain was kept in the writer’s home in Drohobych – or the almost unspecified landscape a portrait we only know were both displayed in Lviv’s city gallery. There’s also the interesting Bal Wariatów (The Lunatics’ Ball) and, particularly relevant for us here, Nadejście Mesjasza (The Coming of the Messiah). We know that these belonged to the writer’s brother and were located next to many of the drawings in his apartment in Lviv until 1939.

Perhaps these will be found together with a drawing made by a few-year old Bruno, depicting ‘a hunched old man with a very long beard sitting under a wide-trunked tree, most likely a willow’. The drawing bore the title given by the young author: Pan Bóg (God).

Who knows? One day, we may read the letters Schulz sent to Thomas Mann (which should be somewhere in the writer’s archive in Zurich) and, together with them, find the novella Heimkehr (Homecoming). The latter is the only known literary work of Schulz written in German; a copy was also sent by the writer to a magazine in Moscow.

Perhaps we will find other works from the lost parcel, such as the manuscript of a collection consisting of four longer stories, which Schulz created before the war. Or his short story about a cobbler’s misshapen son, rejected in 1940 by the editors of Lviv’s Nowe Widnokręgi (New Horizons) magazine.

What about the other assorted stories, unfinished works, fragments of prose and half-written letters? The journals kept over the years in thick, hard-bound notebooks? And the letters from numerous friends, writers and painters? Ficowski’s wish could even finally come true, and The Messiah we are all waiting for could be uncovered in some post-Soviet archive.

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A video walk thru Drohobych from Bruno Schulz animated drawings.

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Animation by Ivan Nyshpor, created on the basis of illustrations by Bruno Schulz, in cooperation with the Museum of Literature in Warsaw and the Drohobycz Museum.

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But the story of The Messiah, as it was described by Ficowski – along with his relentless sense of hope –continues to inspire more and more interest in this Book of Books. After novels by Philip Roth (The Prague Orgy, 1985), David Grossman (See Under: Love, 1986) and Cynthia Ozick (The Messiah of Stockholm, 1987), the subject matter was picked up by the theatre.

In 2010, Michał Zadara took Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk’s screenplay about the lost novel to the stage of Vienna’s Schauspielhaus. Since 2013, Schulz’s The Messiah even has a version in music (composed by Jakub Kisieliński). But coming back to literature, in 2018, Adam Wiedemann wrote a short story under the same title. It was commissioned by Olga Tokarczuk as part of the biennial Bruno Schulz Festival in Drohobych.

Perhaps, in the end, we will enjoy not just one coming of the Messiah, but many.

Post-scriptum

Several months after the publication of this article, a previously unknown piece of writing by Bruno Schulz was published by the “Schulz/Forum” magazine (No 14). The short story called “Undula” was written under a pen-name and goes back to 1922, which means that it predates other known Schulz’s pieces by over a decade. The short story was uncovered by the Ukrainian scholar Lesia Khomych in the archival issues of the “Świt” magazine, a periodical run by the clerks of the oil industry from Borysław. Find out more about "Undula"...

Originally written in Polish by Mikołaj Gliński, translated by MW, Aug 2019

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