Śmierć (3). Antyhasło do Słownika schulzowskiego

There is a strong tradition of reading Schulz as an author who constantly (and intentionally) expels death from his work. The author of this article, however, argues against such an opinion. On the contrary, his argument reveals those themes and figures, both in Schulz’s stories and drawings, that refer to the thanatic imagination, not literally though, but rather in a way described by the French philosopher and critic Michel Guiomar as an “obscure vicinity of death” evoked by the work of art. These are, for example, theelegiac-ironic convention of “Autumn” and “The Homecoming”, as well as the funeral mood and death symbols in “The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” or in highly transgressive parts of “Spring”. The author also addresses questions concerning Schulz’s personal outlook on death and afterlife, which seems to link together the need for consolation and fascination with death. Although the paper was originally intended to be an entry for the future Schulz Dictionary, the official style of the opening section soon gives way to more general considerations on the thanatological discourse itself and Schulz’s idiosyncratic literary idiom.