Catastrophic Motives in the Bruno Schulz’s Works

Abstract

The work of the talented writer and artist, literary critic, philosopher, and epistolographer of the first half of the 20th century, Bruno Schulz, is consonant with today’s challenges. The article analyses the prose works of the artist from the perspective of catastrophic motives because until now scholars of Schulz have analysed the outlined problems either cursorily or in a comparative aspect — based on a comparison of the artistic works of different writers, so the relevance of the study is primarily connected with the expansion of Schulzological problems within the literary discourse. The content and development of the term “catastrophism” are analysed; the individual facts of the social life of the era to which Bruno Schulz belonged are characterized; the moments of the artist’s biography are outlined, which influenced the formation of his worldview, in particular, the elements of a catastrophic vision of the world; the peculiarities of Schulz’s catastrophism are clarified. To achieve the goal of the research, the following methods of literary analysis have been applied, such as biographical, sociological, as well as the elements of psychological and receptive analysis. The studies of Shultz’s prose show that the presence of catastrophic motives in Bruno Schulz’s creative work is completely natural and justified. The catastrophic tendencies of his works of fiction are revealed primarily through binary contrasting oppositions, through the prism of the “decency” of the old and the “spirit of modernity” of the new (industrial) city at different levels, such as periphery — center, man — mannequin, life — death, good — evil, beauty — mutilation, hope — despair, etc. It is emphasized: Schulz’s catastrophism is a special kind of catastrophism; an important feature of Bruno Schulz’s artistic catastrophic vision of the world is his optimism, at least Schulz’s tragedy has bright, joyful shades and hopes. The author concludes that the study of specific material, in particular Schulz’s catastrophism, will contribute to a thorough theoretical generalization of literary studies of the outlined issues. In the future, the literary and critical works and epistolaries of Bruno Schulz as interesting material for catastrophic, eschatological, apocalyptic, and even masochistic studies are seen.