Schulz’s most famous book, The Street of Crocodiles (originally: Sklepy Cynamonowe) from 1933, is a collection of short stories about a school boy and his relationship with Father Jacob, a declining shop owner, who eventually becomes a heretic prophet, magician and trickster. The Father keeps a flock of fantastic birds and eventually becomes one; he also creates his own living clothes dummies.
The narrator is Joseph, a dreamy boy in his early teens. The book combines innocence, imagination and a strongly sensual vibe. According to an expert on Schulz, poet Jerzy Ficowski, Schulz aimed at creating his own mythology, recovering the lost ‘pith of childhood’. In that sense, he was a very local writer, he could dream and work only in one place on earth that he knew and loved: the small town Drohobycz, now in Ukraine. The places and characters from The Street of Crocodiles are largely autobiographical, but they also transcend and expands in Schulz’s story.
His father, who was 46 years old when Bruno was born, was often ill and his condition was worsening. His death in 1915 was a tragic and life-changing event for Bruno, who loved his father dearly. Eventually, according to Ficowski, he tried to resurrect him by writing. The artistic means that he uses to achieve such a result remind me of alchemy and magic. For example, the father character in the novel turns into various creatures and objects, becomes part of the building itself. Such imagination is similar to magic, it’s an act of turning the time and disappearing of things. His family’s old house and shop was destroyed then, because of the First World War, so he ‘rebuilt’ it in his book, too. Jacob’s old shop becomes a realm of innocence, possibility and magic, a paradise before the great catastrophe. As Bruno Schulz had said, he was looking for the first, original Book, a matrix of all the later sensations, delights and illuminations in life. In other words, just like in Marcel Proust’s famous cycle, The Street of Crocodiles is about sweet madeleines, lost perceptions and tastes of childhood.