Bruno, syn Franciszka
Bruno, Son of Franz

Summary/Abstract: Already the first reviewers of Bruno Schulz’s exhibitions and stories compared him toFranz Kafka, pointing at clear resemblances of imagination and motifs. Those analogieswere later noticed also by literary scholars who either tried to prove that Schulz wasinspired by the work of the Prague writer, or – on the contrary – demonstrated that allthe correspondences between their literary worlds were accidental or determined by thetimes. Analyzing the reception of Kafka and Schulz in Poland before World War II, andthe arguments used by both parties, the author makes an attempt to establish whetherSchulz was indeed Kafka’s follower. It transpires that even though Schulz most likely knewKafka’s novels and stories already before 1926, and one may find a number of links connecting not only their works, but also biographies, in terms of their idiom and worldviewsthe two writers were dramatically different. This, however, does not mean thatthere is no connection between them. On the contrary, the author realizes that it wasactually Kafka who encouraged Schulz to write and ultimately made him an artist, sothat Schulz’s writing may be considered a kind of response addressed to his literaryprogenitor. The picture of Schulz as an imitator of Kafka was largely influenced by the first postwar critics of his work, who promoted it abroad and looked for analogies withthat of another Jewish writer active at approximately the same time and in the samegeographical area. The ultimate step toward a firm belief in the literary affinity of Schulzand Kafka was made by Jerzy Ficowski who, even though he rejected analogies, created Schulz’s legend using the same methods as Max Brod – with similar merits as well as errors.

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