Reading Selection - July 2004

The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz

BRUNO SCHULZ 1892-1942, Polish short-story writer and artist. Unrecognized until after World War II, Schulz is now considered the finest modern Polish-language prose stylist and a significant visual artist. His stories are dreamlike reflections on life in the modest Jewish quarter of Drohobycz (now Drohobych, Ukraine), where he was born and lived. Both his fiction and drawings are notable for their erotic charge and their acute anticipation of the Holocaust. His style, which has been compared both to Kafka and Proust, is elaborately figured, poetic, and tinged with surrealism. Schulz published his first story collection, The Street of Crocodiles, in 1933 (tr. 1963); the second, The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, appeared in 1937 (tr. 1979). Germans occupied his hometown in 1939 and three years later Schulz was murdered on the street by a Gestapo officer. His reputed masterpiece, an unfinished novel entitled Messiah, has never been found. Although most of his works of art have disappeared, in 2001 fragments of a Schulz mural were discovered in a Drohobych building, parts of which were removed by Israeli agents to the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.

THE STREET OF CROCODILES in the Polish city of Drogobych is a street of memories and dreams where recollections of Bruno Schulz's uncommon boyhood and of the eerie side of his merchant family's life are evoked in a startling blend of the real and the fantastic. Most memorable - and most chilling - is the portrait of the author's father, a maddened shopkeeper who imports rare birds' eggs to hatch in his attic, who believes tailors' dummies should be treated like people, and whose obsessive fear of cockroaches causes him to resemble one. Bruno Schulz, a Polish Jew killed by the Nazis in 1942, is considered by many to have been the leading Polish writer between the two world wars.

Reviews of The Street of Crocodiles Include:

In this diminutive collection of stories, Schulz paints a complex portrait of the landscape in his childhood in Poland. The stories evolve more from the physical landscape than that of the characters, giving an intense life to inanimate objects. A sense of hidden madness, and threads of unspoken desires and fears permeate the book. Schulz writes of his father's creeping insanity, the strange landscape of his small shop, and the forboding accompanying the end of the world with the approach of a comet. While Schulz's imagery and simile get a little repetitive, the atmosphere of living objects and mysterious confluence of life is compelling and hypnotic. John Q McDonald, The Thumbnail Book Reviews

"Schulz cannot be easily classified. He can be called a surrealist. a symbolist, an expressionist. a modernist...He wrote sometimes like Kafka, sometimes like Proust, and at times he succeeded in reaching depths that neither of them reached....He remains a highly artistic paradox, a literary riddle who, like Kafka, deserves the attention of lovers and critics of literature." --Isaac Bashevis Singer

Movie Adaptation:

The animated puppet drama Street of Crocodiles is based on stories written by Bruno Schultz during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The film takes a surreal journey through miniature cityscapes populated by porcelain faced dolls, into the darker reaches of out collective psyche. Directed by Timothy and Stephen Quay, Street of Crocodiles was their first 35mm film, made through the bfi Production Board and is now preserved by the NFTVA.

Review:

The Brothers Quay have created visually stunning animation through their passion for detail, command of color and texture and use of focus and camera movement. Using stop-animation, they turn miniature sets into unforgettable worlds; Street of Crocodiles is a nightmarish netherworld that comes alive inside a deserted museum. The Detroit Institute of Arts

The Play:

Adapted by Simon McBurney and Mark Wheatley, directed by Simon McBurney,The Street of Crocodiles is inspired by the life and stories of Polish writer Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). Originally co-produced by Théâtre de Complicité and the Royal National Theatre it opened at the Cottesloe in 1992 and toured all over the world until 1994. The original production was remounted in 1998 and played in New York, Toronto, Minneapolis and Tokyo before opening at the Queen's Theatre London in January 1999. The Street of Crocodiles previous incarnation, performed at the Cottesloe in 1992, was nominated for four Olivier Awards.

Review:

"Complicite not only open our eyes to Bruno Schulz but turn his densely impressionistic stories into a piece of vividly imaginative theatre" (Michael Billington, Guardian) "This astounding production creates a vision of provincial Poland in the early part of the century as a restless ocean of unending flux...the miracle of Complicite's interpretation of Schulz's stories...is its ability to give specific theatrical life to this perceptual anarchy...when you leave the theatre you expect the ground beneath your feet to give way." New York Times

"Simon McBurney's production elides human and animal identities with consummate ease, proving the reiterated theory that all matter is in a constant state of fermentation. The show defines a particular world of Eastern European anxiety, supported by fantastic lighting, non-stop physical invention, and a heart-stopping soundtrack of music by the likes of Shostakovich, Janacek and Alfred Schnittke. You will not see a more formidably cohesive ensemble on the London stage." Michael Coveney, The Daily Mail

Links:

Fiction of the Absurd: Bruno Schulz