„Niepokój, groza wieczności”
“The Fear of Eternity"

Taine Read by Schulz (An Attempt at Simultaneous Reading)

Summary/Abstract: There is only one published piece of evidence that Bruno Schulz read Taine: a note thathe made in reference to Taine’s Philosophy of Art (pages 51-71 of volume II of the Polish1911 Lviv edition). The note has been discovered almost miraculously and briefly commentedon by Jerzy Jarzębski in 1995. In the present essay, the author approaches thenote once more, reading it together with Taine’s book and treating Schulz’s text as anintellectual map to reconstruct the actual moment of the writer’s reading. It seems thatthere is some mental kinship between the French philosopher and the Polish writer: common fascination with ancient Greece and skepticism about the prospects of modern European civilization. Both compared the ancient and modern ideas of art and ways ofeveryday life, as well as pagan and post-Christian beliefs about death and afterlife.

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