Światło-czułość. Czy Xięga bałwochwalcza Brunona Schulza mogłaby powstać bez cliché verre?
Light-Sensitivity. Could Xięga bałwochwalcza by Bruno Schulz Have Been Written Without cliché verre?

Summary/Abstract: In about 1920 Bruno Schulz executed a series of etchings, which he entitled: Xięga bałwochwalcza. Today, it produces increasing interest among researchers mainly due to the “book” structure of the predominantly erotic motifs, and its place within the oeuvre of this artist. It still remains a puzzle when and how did Schulz become acquainted with the rarely applied cliché verre technique. The article pertains both to the Schulzian series and the nature and history of the titular technique. One of its descriptions says: “Take a glass plate or a pane and execute a drawing not in a darkroom but by hand, making use of all the possibilities created by the properties of glass – its transparency and non-transparency, analogously to the photographic negative; then the picture is copied on light sensitive paper in the same way as an ordinary plate”. Schulz used cliché verre, i.a. to achieve a conceptual effect of stimmung, resulting from the need to depict closed spaces, which constitute sui generis locations for the intimate scenes involving men and women. He was probably less interested in the status of the technique; much more important was the fact that it assisted the language of vision and was highly effective – it made it possible to produce images.

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