Klisze fantazmatów. Wstęp do czytania „Xięgi Bałwochwalczej”
Clichés of Phantasms. Introduction to Reading “Xięga Bałwochwalcza”

Summary/Abstract: Was Xięga bałwochwalcza (Idolatry Book) at the onset of the artistic path pursued by Bruno Schulz? The small number of the artist’s preserved works from the first stage of his œuvre makes it impossible to solve this question. Even if Xięga bałwochwalcza does not include everything it certainly contains much of that, which we come across (or not) later in a developed or transformed form, albeit at times also deeply concealed and disguised in his entire œuvre, including literary works. It is thus necessary to start with Xięga bałwochwalcza. There is no better road leading to Schulz’s literary world.The problem lies in the fact that Xięga bałwochwalcza is not an orderly work. Nor is it completely present in the domain of culture. A copy encompassing all works does not exist (never existed?). Schulz treated on-the-spot configurations totalling more or less twenty graphic works selected from amongst 29, which upon each occasion he placed in a portfolio specially prepared for this purpose. Xięga bałwochwalcza is a work in motion – scintillating, with an ultimately undetermined configuration and unknown composition.While working on Xięga Schulz – no one knows why and in what way – resorted to the cliché-verre graphic technique that does not involve paint and a printing press but light, which by penetrating a negative manually prepared on a glass pane, draws on positive paper traces initially invisible and then chemically developed. With metaphorical exaggeration one might say that this is the black light of the phantasm. Xięga bałwochwalcza is a collection of curious photographs of the artist’s gloomy interior and his concealed desires – private phantasms. His work, however, does not end at that exact moment. Sometimes the artist retouched the copies. Such secondary operations correct the visual presentation of the phantasm in time, when it suspends (or ultimately loses) its power. Holding the retouching instruments Schultz often entered the sphere of presented appearances. Now, creative activities, whose object was the negative, recommence on the positive print. The extent to which the changes performed at this stage could take place is demonstrated by a Cracow copy of a graphic work: Procession, in which the central figure of the adored female changes her appearance.

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