Manekýni, Demiurg a Bruno Schulz. Kontexty schulzovskej štúdie Ireny Kossowskej
Mannequins, Demiurge and Bruno Schulz. Notes on Irena Kossowska’s Reading of Bruno Schulz

Summary/Abstract: Irena Kossowska’s “A Quest for a ‘New Man’: Bruno Schulz and Giorgio de Chirico” published in Realisms of the Avant-Garde (2020) analyses the work of the Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz (1892 – 1942) from the perspective of the category of the “new man”. In his writing, Schulz employed cultural syncretism and eclecticism that aimed at innovation. He paraphrased and intertwined chosen models and formed new semantic entities and the previously non-existent innovative combinations. Trying to trace the original myth diluted in various layers of culture, he combined heterogeneous elements derived from mutually antagonistic sources into a homogenous vision. In the construction of his own private mythology from fragments and “shreds of sculptures and statues of gods”, Schulz used various elements of the cultural heritage. This contribution situates Kossowska’s chapter into the context of Schulz’s understanding of his own work as mythologizing the reality and creating private mythology from developing key images of the unconscious originating in childhood. Metamorphoses of entities in Schulz’s literary universe spring from the fermentation of the matter. With regards to the motif of mannequins and the Demiurge, the contribution provides a supplementary context that is relevant for the matter under discussion – Judaism and the creation of golems (R. Lachmann, V. Nelson, M. Benešová) and parodies of Gnosticism.

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