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PARTISAN REVIEW
Poland, earlier part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of the
Soviet Union) . In
See Under: Love,
Grossman imagines the Schulz of
The
Street oj Crocodiles
eluding his killers by jumping into the sea at Danzig
and turning into a salmon. In reality, both his grave and the graveyard,
like the manuscript of his lost novel,
The Messiah,
have disappeared, per–
haps fittingly for an artist whose life, death, drawings, and stories have
themselves become the mythical threads out of which other writers' sto–
ries have since been woven. How ironic that the writer who lived all his
life in a small provincial town, who kept at a distance even those he
loved, allowing them access only through the gateway of letter-writing,
has so touched his readers that many cannot bear the thought of his
death and, in protest, have rewritten and reimagined his fate, launching
what he would have called "a counter-offensive of fantasy" against reality
itself
Schulz owes his posthumous reputation not only to the tireless Jerzy
Ficowski, who for forty years has conducted a treasure hunt for Schulz's
lost writings and drawings, but also to Philip Roth, who, as general ed–
itor of Penguin's
Writers oj the Other Europe Series,
introduced Schulz to
American readers (In dedicating
The Messiah oj Stockholm
to Roth,
Cynthia Ozick thanked him for introducing her to Schulz.) Ficowski has
claimed that Schulz's work "was so distinctive that it had no precedents
in Polish and European literature nor any worthy followers or suc–
cessors." Yet Schulz certainly knew German literature: he loved Thomas
Mann (his letters to Mann are lost), wrote a brilliant afterword to
The
Trial,
and adored Rilke. He certainly knew and reviewed with great in–
sight modern Polish literature. Danilo Kis, the recipient just before his
death of the Bruno Schulz Prize , given to a writer underrecognized in
the United States, does seem a successor of sorts. Kis, whose fiction is as
father-fixated as Schulz's, once quipped to John Updike, "Schulz is my
god." Even Kis's choice of title for his novel
Hourglass
is reminiscent of
Schulz's second novel,
Sanatorium at the Sign oj the Hourglass .
Yet if there are no "worthy successors" to Schulz, there are at least a
flock of literary love-children. Cynthia Ozick's Lars Andemening, the
Swedish book-reviewer in
The Messiah oj Stockholm
is convinced that he
is Schulz's son. He speaks adamantly of his peculiar lineage:
"I've got every detail of his face, I know it by heart. I know almost
every word he wrote. Father and son ... When I wake up , I can see
my father's eye.
It
seems to be my eye, but it's his. And he lets me have
his own eye to look through."
