Względność śmierci. Kilka myśli o tanatologii Brunona Schulza
The Relativity of Death. Several Reflections on the Bruno Schulz Thanatology

Summary/Abstract: The thanatological imagination of Bruno Schulz is both complicated and precise and cannot be rephrased in simple categories. In his case death and dying possess a dual nature: on the one hand, they are frequently presented by concrete tangible images (a rubber intestine, cockroaches, etc.) and, on the other hand, they are uncertain, not conclusive, and located in the hazy boundary between existence and nonexistence, organic and nonorganic matter. By obtaining from Schulz his original forms, such a manner of thinking about death was, nonetheless, characteristic for numerous twentieth century authors: by way of example, one may seek affiliation in the works of Franz Kafka or Bolesław Leśmian. The most philosophical frame in which we may grasp this disturbing type of thanatological imagination seems to be Ernst Jentch’s “das Unheimliche”, developed by Sigmund Freud. This particular conception assuming the existence of an entire number of empirically experienced phenomena on the borderline between life and death, which are an unceasing source of unrest, arises both from archaic mythological structures and the experience of the twentieth-century man, such as the First World War. It is mass-scale deaths and disabilities which during this particular war could intensify the feeling of the depersonalisation and reification of the human body, which, in turn, affected the change of the imagology of death. Bruno Schulz’s stories – predominantly Nawiedzenie, Noc wielkiego sezonu, Wichura, Traktat o manekinach… and Traktat o manekinach. Dokończenie – are outstanding testimony of this process.

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