Was Bruno Schulz a Writer?

Abstract

The essay is an analysis of the most important, yet actually quite sporadic artistic adventure of Schulz, which was fiction writing. The question discussed is apparently paradoxical: was Bruno Schulz a writer? The author argues that there is a difference between a writer and a man of letters, i.e. someone who is a professional in the literary field. Schulz never became the latter and this is what makes his biography significantly different from those of the typical literati among whom he had many friends. In comparison to them, Schulz wrote very little, started writing quite late, and the period when he really was a writer lasted only several years. One might say that writing fiction indeed rather happened to him – it was not a permanent disposition of his artistic existence. That had crucial consequences for the form of his writing.