Artistic Reflexivity and Interartistic Contamination in Polish Modernism: The Graphic and Literary Works of Bruno Schulz

Abstract

The article explores two examples of reflexive interartistic contamination in the works of the Polish Modernist artist Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). First, it argues that Schulz's early cycle of engravings, The Idolatrous Booke (Xięga bałwochwalcza 1920), draws on the notion of "visual narrative," or the idea of presenting images within the narrative structure of a book. Second, both of Schulz's story collections, Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy cynamonowe 1934) and Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą 1937) are interpreted within the framework of the reverse technique of interartistic contamination (the penetration of the visual into the realm of the word). Our analysis demonstrates that, for Schulz, all existing boundaries between different forms of art are in fact fluid, and thus artificially set up, as all individual artifacts (whether visual or verbal) turn out to be nothing more than similarly defective references to the same reality of "interlacing codes."