Bruno Schulz czyta Conrada v. 2

The paper refers to a problematic relationship of Bruno Schulz with Joseph Conrad, analyzed for the first time by Bogusław Gryszkiewicz. Gryszkiewicz’s text has become for the author a pretext to ask questions concerning the limits of Schulz studies and the originality of Schulz himself. Passionately trying to find literary parallels, should we be indifferent to what is original, unique, and incomparable? If we take such an attitude to Schulz, he turns out a writer with the imagination of a plagiarist, who only translates texts by other writers into his idiom. This kind of a comparatist interpretation, lost in the maze of literary references and intertextual echoes, is a trap. In such a maze one is unable to recognize Schulz’s depth and his fabulist machinery that made absolutely original events and characters.