Ciała Schulza

Abstract

Bruno Schulz’s first body was flesh and blood. Like any body, it was a place of existence. The events of which it became part can be written out in a calendar. We see them in motion – in birth, in dying, in fatigue, in sex and laughter. The other body of the writer is present in his work. It is the body created by Schulz, reproduced and represented – dispersed in words and images. It is largely published. It becomes an object of aesthetic reflection. It seeks form for itself in the concrete corporealities of the represented world, but also in the unveiling of the style itself – in the heterogeneous, delicate expressions of sexuality and gender. The writer’s first and second bodies do not exist separately. They are not opposites, nor are they fully identical. One does not attempt to cannibalistically devour the other. Rather, they must be seen as two bodies always facing each other, touching, rubbing against each other, differentiating. The essay is taken from a Ph.D. dissertation on Schulz, Differentiating. The First and Second Body of the Writer, defended at the University of Gdansk on October 26, 2022, whose theme was the erotic and mournful bodies of the author of Cinnamon Shops.