American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Of Sublimity, Shrinkage, and Selfhood in the Works of Bruno Schulz

Author(s): Andreas Schonle and Bruno Schulz
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 467-482
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/309683
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OF SUBLIMITY,SHRINKAGE,AND SELFHOOD
IN THE WORKSOF BRUNO SCHULZ1
Andreas Schonle, Universityof Michigan

The artistic world of Bruno Schulz displays an uncommon fluidity and

mutabilityof forms, whichleaves young Joseph, the centralnarratorof the
stories published in The Streets of Crocodile and Sanatorium under the Sign
of the Hourglass, at pains to constructa stable world view and define the
boundariesof his self. Indeed, confrontedwith a world that likes to trav-
esty itself, Josephcannot rely on his perceptualfaculties to convey endur-
ing knowledge. Unable to objectify external reality, Joseph has no other
recourse but to wonder and tremble at the ever-new concoctions of the
real, which tend to overwhelmhis frail sense of selfhood- of identitywith
himselfand differencefrom the rest of the world. Of course, Bruno Schulz
is not the first to addressthe relationshipbetween the self, its perceptual
faculties, and the world. Since the eighteenth-century- and especially
since Kant--continental philosophy has treated this problem under the
categoryof the sublime.I will attempthere to set Schulzwithinthis intellec-
tual tradition,showing how an awarenessof this philosophicalmasterplot
illuminateshis writingsand how he contributedhis own, original,Modern-
ist narrativeto this intellectualparadigm.

L The Story of the Sublime

Eighteenth-centurytheories of the sublime have played an important
role in the emergenceof the modernself, a self endowedwith unity,inward-
ness, and autonomy.At stake we have a problemof definition,closure, and
self-determination.For the worldis big, and the self is comparativelysmall,
even though it is equipped with formidablemeans. As long as conscious-
ness was warrantedby God, there was no need to explore its capacity,
versatility,and boundaries.When it became autonomous,and when on top
of that the world turned out to be much larger than had been previously
envisioned,the self was all of a suddenexposed to the potentiallythreaten-
ing world of nature. The question whetherthe self was resilient enough to
contain the immensityof the universe without losing its unity, even when
SEEJ,Vol.42, No. 3 (1998):p. 467-p. 482 467
468 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

stretchedto the utmost, became pressing. Short of fulfillingthis paradoxi-

cal condition, the self would have run the permanentrisk of being annihi-
lated or disintegratedby an overwhelminglysublimespectacle. Knowledge
of the self was no longer to be attainedby means of a philosophicaldeduc-
tion, nor by way of a religious experience, but only through aesthetic
perception.Aesthetic subjectivitycame forwardas the sole humanfaculty
still capable of assemblingthe bits and pieces of the world into a vision of
totality (Ritter 153). A nearly Copernicanrevolutiontook place, by which
aestheticsusurpedthe traditionalfunctionof speculativephilosophy(Jauss
121-23). Nature became a kind of objective analogyfor the self, a figura-
tive representationof the totality of the soul, and it was thus unified
throughthe prismof aestheticconsciousness.
The developmentof ideas about the sublimerunsthroughthe eighteenth
centuryin both literatureand philosophyand reachesa philosophicalpeak
with Kant's Critique of Judgment.2 This is not the place to attempt a thor-
ough expositionof Kant'saesthetics,but in anticipationof the discussionof
Schulz'sworks a few points should be emphasized.Kant defines the sub-
lime as an event by which the subject experiences the inadequacyof the
senses to graspa formlessand unlimitedobject. In order to overcome this
distressingfailureof the imagination,the self falls back upon reason, pro-
ducing a transcendentalidea about the object, say totality, infinity, or
unity.The object, then, becomes an indirectrepresentationof this idea. In
so doing, the self managesto assimilatethe object in spite of its threatening
dimensions.Moreover, the self comes out of this experiencestrengthened
by an enhancedawarenessof the power of an extrasensible,i.e. intelligible
facultyit has, namelyreason. In other words, the experienceof the sublime
brings about a unique reflexive movement whereby reason rejoins itself
and discoversits own existence. This process unfolds in two stages: first,
the self's perceptualfaculties are challenged by an overpoweringobject.
But instead of disintegrating,the self is then led to affirmforcefully its
unity and totality and to generate an idea that is commensuratewith the
object. Implied here is the consciousnessof the absolute independenceof
the subject from the world, that is, of its essential freedom. Thus, the
sublime fosters the self's disengagementfrom concrete involvementwith
realityand enables its autonomy.
Romanticpoets countered the Kantiansublime with an exalted faith in
the powersof the.imagination"By sensibleimpressionsnot enthralled, . ..
"Tohold fit converse with the spiritualworld"(Wordsworth,The Prelude
14: 106-108). This visionary sublime, the prerogativeof poets, signals a
turn away from aesthetic perception:the self is no longer beholden to the
sensible qualitiesof objects. Instead, it subsumesthe world into totalizing
consciousness,denying the difference between spirit and matter. In addi-
tion, it eludes the dialecticbetween competinghumanfaculties,reason and
 Of Sublimity,Shrinkage,and Selfhoodin the Worksof Bruno Schulz 469

imagination,that Kanthad attemptedto chart.This "egotistical"versionof

the sublimeis profoundlyunstable,because its underlyingsolipsismdooms
it to endless self-repetition:differencescollapse along with the dismissalof
the world.3
In the twentiethcentury,Kant'sanalysisof the sublimehas been claimed
from variousstandpointsand has been translatedinto variousintellectual
paradigms.In a study of the Romanticsublime, ThomasWeiskelattempts,
among other things, to transpose Kant's concept of the sublime into
Saussuriansemiotics, thus strippingit of its idealisticpresuppositionsand
makingit availableto an argumentcompatiblewith Deconstruction.Kant's
mathematicalsublime(the kind of sublimethat deals with the magnitudeof
things), then, is redefinedas the result of an accumulationof signifiersthat
defeats all attempts to infer meaning. The signifiersare so aggressive in
their formal features, and so underdeterminedwith regardto their signi-
fied, that they tend to lose their distinctivenessentirely, producing an
impressionthat Weiskel pictures as "a featureless (meaningless)horizon-
tality or extension: the wasteland"(26). The sublime is generated by a
syntagmaticflow of signifiers that supplement each other without ever
yielding to a signified. They can become meaningfulonly if they are arbi-
trarilystopped by the insertionof a metaphorthat replaces them all. The
syntagmaticflow in its totality serves as the figure (Kant's "indirectrepre-
sentation")of somethingthat must be inferredby similarity.The absence
of the signifiedbecomes a signifyingevent, the sign of a "newlydiscovered
presence" (28). Instead of Kant's reason discovering itself, we reach a
meaningfulpresence, which Weiskel deliberatelyrefrainsfrom specifying.
This constructionof the sublime betrays concernsthat are substantially
differentfrom those that had animatedKant. Kant sought to preservethe
unity of the world by endowing aesthetic perception with the ability to
mediate between the real and the self. His philosophyreflectsthe spiritual
conditionof humanbeingswho havejust emancipatedthemselvesfromGod
and confrontthe worldwith insatiableintellectualcuriosity,yet remainshy
abouttheirnewlyacquiredautonomyandloathto severtheirbondswiththe
realcompletely.Weiskelwritesabouta self in the age of communication,one
that has long ago lost the sense that the real is a physicalpresence. Instead,
this self faces a proliferationof signs whose meaningsare unstablebecause
they are uprootedfrom reference to physicalrealities. For him, therefore,
the sublime is not about a conflictbetween facultiesof the self, but about
varioussuppletivechains of signifiers:it involves either potentiallyendless
series constructedon the basis of contiguityor more finite ones invoking
similarity.In response to a sublimeoccurrence,the subject arreststhe flow
of signifiersby injecting a metaphor,thus unifying (and containing)what
seemed to be unfinalizablediscursiveself-generation.
But Weiskelalso analyzesthe psychologicalmechanismtriggeredby the
470 Slavic and East European Journal

sublime. He suggeststhat the cause of the sublimeis not an efficient, but a

teleologicalone. That is, the self is not propelledinto a sublimereactionby
an accumulationof overwhelming external phenomena, but because it
strivesfor the outcome of the sublimescenario.4The underlyingmotive of
the sublimeis the "aggrandizementof reason at the expense of reality and
the imaginativeapprehensionof reality"(41). A peculiar circularityis at
work in the sublime:reason, in fact, magnifiesthe world, makingit more
threateningthan it really is, in order to overrulethe imagination,which is
deemed unable to come to terms with the immensityof the universe. This
complex procedureresults in the comfortingreassuranceof reason's mas-
tery of the world and its supremacyover imagination.Accordingly,the
worldis not overwhelmingin itself, much as the syntagmaticflow of signifi-
ers is not in itself meaningless. They are rendered thus because reason
requiresit. As Weiskelputs it, "sublimationmelts the formalothernessof
thingsand reducesthem to materialor to substance.The formalproperties
of the perceivedparticularare canceledand replacedby their 'significance,'
values assessed and assigned by the mind" (59). One detects here an im-
plied critiqueof the mechanismof the sublime,whichunnecessarilydrama-
tizes the real into a terrifyingabstraction,only to enhance reason's grasp
over the self and to strengthen its disciplinarypowers. According to
Weiskel, the sublime de-realizesthe world in order to install reason more
firmly.
Predictably,this becomes the insertion point of a new translation,this
time into the phraseologyof Freudianpsychoanalysis.To put it simply,the
sublimescenariobecomes a processwherebythe ego performsan identifica-
tion with authorityor powerin orderto converta situationof potentialself-
loss into a position of dominationand control. Although Weiskelrefers to
the Oedipalcomplexrepeatedly,he hesitatesto give specificsto the psycho-
analyticalscriptinvolved, and so do the scholarswho follow his lead (Hertz
40-60 and Bloom 1-9). For our purposeit is sufficientto retain the notion
that the sublimeis the locus of a power strugglein the self, one that results
in the domestication,if not repression,of desire, allegedlyin the interestof
the self's integrity.
In 1982 Jean-Fran9oisLyotard proposed a reconceptualizationof the
sublime that proved to be very influentialin Europe. In this eulogy to the
sublime, Lyotardaddressesthe spiritualconditionof a self thoroughlyde-
realized by technology-basedmass media. Because of its alienation from
immediatereality,this self longs for somethingthat has a clear ontological
footing. Takingadvantageof this situation, technocraticsociety floods this
self with pseudo-artisticobjects that alleviateits realitydeficitby supplying
a heartydose of realism,i.e. easily decipherableimagesof the worldneatly
orderedinto an intelligiblewhole. The pre-packagingundertakenby mass
media replaces the synthesizing work of the imagination. This mass-
 Of Sublimity,Shrinkage,and Selfhoodin the Worksof Bruno Schulz 471

produced realism helps stabilize the identity of media consumers, even

thoughit only vicariouslyfulfillstheir hankeringafter the real.
In this context, genuine art faces the responsibilityof resistingthe slack-
ening that results from this uncriticaldesire for the real, to prevent the
indulgenceof what Lyotardcalls "pornography,"the substitutionof mass-
producedrealismfor the real ("Answeringthe Question"41). Art does this
by invoking the sublime. However, this new translationof Kant presents
the sublime not as a response to an overwhelmingoutside phenomenon,
whether it be nature, the proliferationof signifiers,or the sway of a sexu-
ally attractiveobject. Instead, the sublimeoccurswhen reasonconceivesof
an idea that the imaginationis incapableof makingvisible. Thus Lyotard
turns the Kantian scenario of the sublime around and alters its purpose.
For Kant, reason intervenesafter the failureof imaginationand in orderto
preservethe integrityof the self. For Lyotard,reason acts before imagina-
tion is aroused and in order, as it were, to outstripit, thus engineeringa
disintegrationof the self and, more importantly,a severingof its ties with
the real. For when imaginationfails to match the powers of reason, the
result is a gap between the self's ability to conceive of something and its
ability to make it visible.5This exhilaratingexperience, which celebrates
the conceptualpowers of the self at the expense of its sensibility,manifests
the self's disengagementfrom (visible) realityand its commitmentto allud-
ing indirectlyto the unpresentable("Answeringthe Question"45). It as-
sumes, that is, a "presence,"somethingbeyond the graspof the senses that
can be evoked only through allusions. It also implies the renunciationof
the value of unity and totality, fostering instead a proliferationof differ-
ences. And it signals a wideninggap between the artist and the public: if
the Kantiansublimewas an experiencepertainingto aesthesis- the capac-
ity for sensation- and hence availableto anyone, at least in principle,the
sublimeaccordingto Lyotardinvolvespoesis - the capacityto make art-
whichis, well, reservedto artists.
Lyotard'sconceptualizationof the sublimeexpressesfaith in the powers
of humankindto develop ideas, even when they outstripthe abilityto make
them presentable, i.e. visible. It does so, as it were, in order to stem the
influenceof the faint eclecticismthat often sails under the colors of Post-
modernism,instillingsome vigor, morality,and purposein the Postmodern
project. In so doing, it embraces the de-realizationof the modern self
technologyinduced, dismissingthe nostalgiafor the real, the unified, and
the whole as the capitalistaestheticsof the maximizationof profit. Weiskel
had taken issue with the aggrandizementof reason engineeredby the sub-
lime because it stifled the self and unnecessarilysemiotizedreality.Traces
of a dreamabout immediacybetween self and worldstill affectedhis think-
ing. Lyotardtakes resolutelythe side of reason, at the expense of all other
aspirationsof the self. If he seems to succeed in instillingthereby some
472 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

grandeur to the Postmodern project, he also fails to emancipate the self

from technological innovations, which require it to exercise ever greater
self-discipline in order to evade the leveling effects of mass production.6
Oddly enough, neither he nor any other theorist of the sublime from
Kant onwards contemplated other possible outcomes in the contest be-
tween reason and imagination, such as the possible failure of reason to
match a formidable external occurrence and preserve the integrity of the
self, either because this occurrence is naturally overwhelming or that the
imagination exacerbates its impact. This is where Bruno Schulz comes in.
For unlike certain Romantics, who could not be less preoccupied with the
identity and integrity of the self, keen as they were on celebrating the
imagination's exalted embrace of the universe, Schulz is both fascinated
and tortured by the imagination's protean propensity to rob the world of its
objectness and thus to threaten the boundaries of the self.7

II. Threats to the Self

Bruno Schulz's first collection of short stories opens with a brief tale in
many ways emblematic of the Modernist sublime. It is concerned with the
depersonalization of the subject. "August" describes nothing more than a
simple walk undertaken by Joseph, the first-person narrator, and his mother
on a hot August day to visit distant family members. At the very outset the
narrator mentions the absence of his father, blaming him implicitly for leav-
ing them "prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days" (3).8 Hence
we recognize a situation in which the identification with authority and power
is rendered impossible by default. To fight against the oppressive summer
heat, the protagonists and other townspeople resort to a series of self-
protecting devices - from pulling down blinds to isolate the living rooms, to
closing one's eyes while walking, to wearing "a grimace of heat," "identical
masks of gold" (4) that render faces interchangeable. An instinct of closure
and isolation is at work in these attempts by "the old and the young, women
and children" to accommodate themselves to the heat, the price of which is a
loss of individuality. On this Sabbath day, they take on pagan faces, and their
"barbaric smiles of Bacchus" (4) render them indistinguishable from one
another. Forgetting the Jewish God and returning to paganism parallels the
absence of the blood father. The Market Square of the small provincial town
is promptly transformed into a "biblical desert" (4), a metaphor that ampli-
fies the harrying ineluctability of the sultry day, lending it cosmic dimen-
sions. As Joseph and his mother walk along toward the periphery, the town
itself loses its distinctive features: the houses "drown, windows and all, into
the exuberant tangle of blossom" (5). The luxuriant vegetation and deafen-
ing sounds of nature cover up the remnants of civilization. The theme of
dehumanization reaches its apex in the encounter with a "half-animal, half-
divine" (7) idiot girl masturbating on a heap of rubbish against the trunk of
 Of Sublimity,Shrinkage,and Selfhood in the Worksof Bruno Schulz 473

an elder in an act of "degeneratedpagan fertility"(7). When they finally

reach their relatives, it is only to discoverthat the unhamperedlushnessof
naturehas carriedover into theirprivatelives: Aunt Agatha, whose "white
and fertile flesh . .. held only loosely in the fetters of individualform"(8-
9), demonstrates"an almost self-propagatingfertility,a femininitywithout
rein, morbidlyexpansive"(9). She complainsall the time about her hus-
band, who is "smalland hunched,with a race fallow of sex" and appearsto
be resignedto his "graybankruptcy"(9).
The initial oppressiveheat has undergone a numberof substitutionsas
the story unfolds:from an image of existentialand metaphysicalloneliness
(the desert), to the depiction of the aggressive and dehumanizingabun-
dance of nature and its threatsto humanendeavors,to the final disclosure
of the victimizationof males by the uncheckedfertilityof females. All these
occurrenceshave in commonthat they endangerthe integrityand vitalityof
Josephand of the culturalheritagehe represents.The theme of the threat
to the self by external naturalphenomena links this story to the Kantian
sublime, or at least to its initial phase.9 But if for Kant the sublime is
precipitatedby a discrete naturalobject or site, it is remarkablehere that
Joseph seems to suffer more from a diffuse and pervasivesense of threat
embodied by a variety of encounters:the summerheat, luxuriantvegeta-
tion, and the wanton fertility of an aunt. These functionallyequivalent
phenomenamerge almostseamlesslyinto one another,losing their individ-
ual distinctivenessand recallingthe metonymicchainsof signifiersWeiskel
had describedas the preconditionof the sublime.I will call this the serializa-
tion of the sublimeprologue:the prologueis a series, ratherthan a specific
and unique phenomenon, and it is serialized in that far from reaching a
finalclosure, it can prolongitself in variousguises.
Now, in order for the sublime scenario to be full-fledged,this phase of
victimizationshould be followed by a reversalthat empowersthe self. It is
characteristicof Schulz'ssublimethat our story ends here with an epiphany
that is short-livedand ultimatelyaborted. Josef meets his cousin Emil and
is fascinatedby the aura of exoticism that emanatesfrom this traveler.As
the story "CinnamonShops"suggests, exoticismin Schulz'sworksis often-
times connectedwith eroticismand is endowedwith a crucialrole as a kind
of vista enablingan escape from a stiflingworldinto an enchantedrealmof
freedom.10Emil seems to entice Josefwith a wink to come into an adjacent
room, and as he shows him pornographicpicturesof "nakedwomen and
boys in strangepositions"(10), his face is brieflybroughttogetherby a sort
of "tenseness."Yet just as a wave of desire begins to overwhelmJoseph,
Emil's face promptly "receded into indifference and became absent and
finallyfaded awayaltogether"(11). In other words, the sublimeappropria-
tion of power is here deflated into a patheticallyshort-livedexpressionof
virilitydirected at pornographicreproductions.The self retreatsinto non-
474 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

existence as soon as desire threatens to lead to human communication.

Power manifests itself only vicariously, in the securing circularity of a
closed semiotic system. Where the self was supposed to maintain nature at
a distance by generating a transcendental idea, it interpolates a signifier-
pornographic images-that helps it find some fleeting composure before
dissolving again. This vacuous sublime is aborted not because of a prolifera-
tion of signifiers, nor because the self experiences a reality deficit. Suitably
arrested in time and space, the signifier here actually offers some relief
against the amorphous expansion of reality. Rather, the sublime is aborted
because the self is too frail to do anything but shield itself from reality by
hiding behind an image. Sexual desire, whether homo- or hetero-, can exist
only provided it is insulated from human communication.
"August" affords a number of conclusions. Kant is often credited with
subjectivizing the sublime in insisting that it resides not in a quality of the
object itself, but only in a disposition of reason coming to itself (Monk 8).
However problematic the concept of subjectivism with regard to Kant,
Schulz clearly does carry this tendency to its extreme. Indeed, in compari-
son with Kant's absolute greatness ("We call sublime what is absolutely
[schlechthin] large"; Kant 103), the sublime in Schulz is expanded almost
beyond recognition. The interpenetration of the self and the world reaches
so far that just about anything the self finds intrusive, threatening or bother-
some can be magnified into an encounter with the sublime. At times, plain
boredom, the "fathomless elemental boredom" (24) against which Joseph's
father fights in numerous stories, is enough to set off the sublime scenario.
Or else, it is the winter (78) or dusk (87) that conflates the external world
into an indistinct magma endangering the identity, i.e. the very separate-
ness of the self. This all-pervasiveness of the sublime amounts to an ac-
knowledgment and artistic realization of its circularity: the sublime resides
first and foremost in a complex process within the self rather than in
external reality, and so it can easily become recurrent.
Kant bases his opposition between the beautiful and the sublime on
differences of shape among external things. A beautiful object affords
pleasure from its form. A sublime object, on the contrary, precludes any
such pleasure of the imagination, for it is boundless, and as a result its
totality cannot be apprehended as a well-defined form (Kant 134). For
Kant, the sublime object is without form because it lacks limits. In Schulz's
work, a singular reversal of this syllogism takes place: it is because an
object has no form that it is deemed unlimited, rather than the contrary.
Thus, in many stories, the initial situation that sets off the sublime scenario
is one of utter uniformity. In the absence of distinguishing features, the
attempt to break down, sort out, and categorize the world fails. Repeated
images of dusk, grayness, shadows, and winter, as in the beginning of
"Visitation," evoke this dissolution of reality: "Already for some time our
 Of Sublimity,Shrinkage,and Selfhood in the Worksof BrunoSchulz 475

town had been sinking into the perpetual graynessof dusk, had become
affected at the edges by a rash of shadows, by fluffy mildew and by moss
the dull color of iron" (12).
This state of realitycarriesarchetypalsignificancein Schulz'sworks. The
blurringof edges due to a propagationof parasitictissuesand the disappear-
ance of color contrastsresult in a near-to-totalleveling of differencesand,
ultimately,of meaning.Objectscease to be objects andfuse withthe aggres-
sive uniformityof the externalworld. In his "Essayfor S. I. Witkiewicz,"
Schulz maintainedthat "the substance of that reality exists in a state of
constantfermentation,germination,hiddenlife. It containsno dead, hard,
limited objects. Everythingdiffusesbeyond its borders,remainsin a given
shape only momentarily,leaving this shape behind at the first opportu-
nity ... This migrationof formsis the essence of life ... There is an ever-
present atmosphere of the stage . .." (Letters 113).11Father's heretical criti-
cism of God's creation, "Lessmatter,more form"(29), is derivedfrom the
realization- a truly Kantianone - that the pleasure affordedby the free,
calmandslightlydistancedcontemplationof a beautifulandlimitedobject is
indispensablein order to secure a balanced relationshipwith the world.
The trivialityof the externalpretextsettingoff the sublimemay of course
affectits scenario.An ubiquitoussublimityis doomed to degradationat the
very time of its unfolding.In the "Visitation",for instance, Father spends
days and nightsworkingon the ledgers of his shop, attemptingdesperately
to straighten out the accounting of his small business. This apparently
innocuous activity grows out of proportionsand reaches dimensionsthat
invite an analogywith Kant'smathematicalsublime. Father'sundertaking
can be seen as a last-ditch effort to bring under control the unchecked
progressionand proliferationof numbersand calculationsconnected with
his trade. The issue is, indeed, one of power and authority.At the very
time that this struggletakes place, however,anotherdramaunfolds. It thus
happens that while Father "seemed to be engrossed in the complicated
currentaccounts-his thoughtshad been secretlyplumbingthe labyrinths
of his own entrails"(15), by whichhe is made awareof "claimsand sugges-
tions." As these inner impulsesbecome increasinglypressing, the ensuing
conflict develops along two tracks. On one level it turns into a highly
dramaticdisputeof mythicmagnitudebetween the old man, who is likened
to the prophetsof the Old Testament(15), and Jehovahappearingthrough
the upper window. Simultaneously,however, a contrapuntalline develops
in whichFatheris sittingon a chamberpot, desperatelytryingto stimulate
bowel movements, an enterpriseultimatelycrownedwith success, so that
the scene ends with Father emptyingwith "a terriblecurse"the content of
the pot through the window (16). Here the sublime is counteractedand
undercutby a suggestionof the grotesquethatcallsinto questionits serious-
ness. One comes to wonderwhetherthe sublimeattemptto bringnumbers
476 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

under control is not simply an alibi for a more prosaic and physiological
battle. The claims of the body seem to supersede those of the self.12
The fact that just about anything is susceptible to being magnified into an
occurrence of sublimity is bound to raise suspicions about genuineness.
Indeed, in the works of Bruno Schulz the sublime, even in its truncated
form, takes on a tinge of theatricality. In "August," the comparison of the
Market Square with a biblical desert swept by hot winds is promptly quali-
fied by the acknowledgment that the trees "affect a storm, rustling theatri-
cally their crowns" (4). Similarly, in "The Gale," the darkness that had
fermented and evolved into a storm has surrounded the house "with a
backstage area full of howling, whistling and groaning" (82), so that in the
end the gale is exposed as "a donquixotesque invention of the night, imitat-
ing in the confined backstage area the tragic immensity, the cosmic home-
lessness and loneliness of the wind" (82). The theatrical metaphor runs
throughout Schulz's oeuvre, suggesting that the sublime requires a willing
suspension of disbelief, a deliberate ignoring of the ways aesthetic impres-
sions are fabricated behind the scenes. A dramatization of the scenery on
the private stage of consciousness, the sublime loses its firm ontological
grounding. In "Cinnamon Shops", for example, a stage curtain represent-
ing a starry sky is said to tremble and to create a "vibration of reality which,
in metaphysical moments, we experience as the glimmer of revelation"
(53). This "vibration" of reality alerts us to its instability. Rents in the fabric
of reality are such that one never knows whether what assails the senses is
an external phenomenon or a creation of the imagination. As a result,
sublimity and theatricality reinforce each other.
Ultimately, the difference between the Kantian and the Schulzian sub-
lime is one of function. For Kant, the sublime contributes to the self-
consciousness and freedom of human beings by rendering them mindful of
the existence of reason and its faculty to produce the ideas of unity and
totality; and since this principle of unity is the cornerstone of the formal
architecture of our understanding, the sublime fulfills a role very crucial
indeed. No such centrality can be claimed by Schulz's truncated sublime,
which, on the contrary, is emblematic of the bankruptcy of reason. As a
result, the Kantian multi-layered structure of consciousness collapses. The
legitimacy of categories like space, time, and causality, through which we
experience the world, is called into question. In Schulz's world a starry
firmament can be so "wide and ramified that it seems to have disintegrated,
to be divided and broken up into a labyrinth of separate skies, sufficient to
endow a whole month with winter nights" (54).13 Similarly, time may multi-
ply and branch out into different directions, unfolding along "illegal and
suspect" "parallel streams" (131), much as some events may occur that do
not fit in any time sequence at all,14 thus frustrating our ability to account
for their causes and consequences. In short, the three Kantian categories of
 Of Sublimity,Shrinkage,and Selfhoodin the Worksof Bruno Schulz 477

our apprehensionof the world--space, time, and causality--lose their

specificity and relevance as a result of this unheard-of inbreeding. The
appearanceof this world contradictsthe form of human experience, as
logicallyimpossibleas this may seem.
The bankruptcyof reasonhas, of course, a tremendouseffect on the self.
Indeed, withoutsteadfastreason, the self lacks the abilityto distanceitself
from reality.As its autonomyvanishes, the self abuts againsta realitythat
seems to know no limits and to reside in a constantstate of overflow.And
since this reality seems to be in the habit of theatricalizingitself and is
therefore characterizedby a highly uncertainontological footing, the self
incurs a tremendous risk of dissolution. Its endeavor to define itself as
distinct from the world is doomed by the uncommonfluidityof the real.
Thus Schulz's sublime reflects the end of a philosophicaltradition that
constructedthe self as a free, distinct, and autonomousentity, a tradition
that peaked in Kant'sanalysisof the sublime. The collapse of a positivistic
model of the real-of the sense that the real is an immutableand objective
given- along with the discoveryof the frailtyof humanfaculties,made this
outcome inevitable.
While the contrapositionwith Kantis instructive,Schulzcan also be use-
fully comparedwith subsequentapproachesto the sublime.His intuitionof
the sublimeprecedes the semiotizationof realityreflectedin Weiskel'sand
Lyotard'sreconceptualizations.In a Deconstructiveframework,the unityof
the self is compromisedby unfinalizablechainsof signifiersthat traverseit.
In Lyotard'sPostmodernism,the self is endangeredby the technological
mass-productionthatconfersimmensepowersto informationandcommuni-
cationmedia. Lyotardis essentiallysurrenderingthe notion of the self when
he discardsunityas an attributeof the subject.Lyotard'ssubjectis so dispos-
sessedof itself thatit maynot feel it whenit is visitedby the sublime(Lyotard
and Pries 341-42). In contrast, Schulz'sself remainsunified as a subject.
Even as he undergoes transformationsand disintegrates,Father remains
awareof himself as "I." While the self disintegratesas a predicate- it be-
comes variousthings as it is swept by transformations-it retainsits gram-
maticalidentitywithitself, continuingto identifywiththe first-personstance
expressedby the pronounI.
III. Closure and Creativity
AlthoughSchulzsets forth a truncatedsublimethat heraldsthe failureof
reason, his protagonists remain sufficiently self-conscious to undertake
last-ditchattemptsto preservethe integrityof their selves. Schulzexplores
two possibilitiesin this regard.In discussing"August,"I brieflymentioned
some strategiesof closure and isolation that some charactersespouse for
the sake of survival.Adela is the primaryproponentof this attitude, pro-
tecting herself from intrusionsof the sublime by sealing herself off. She
478 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

spends most of her time sweeping things away, shutting rooms or windows,
covering up furniture with protective bags, keeping people separate, mini-
mizing thereby any emergence of freedom and irrationality. All of this is
emblematic of a principled withdrawal from the external world, of an
endeavor to arrest the free circulation of signifiers so as to preserve the
integrity and autonomy of the self. Numerous metaphors of closure, con-
striction, and confinement run through the stories of Bruno Schulz, suggest-
ing that self-preservation may require severance from the world.
However, as a result of the circular nature of the sublime, the attempt to
bar the outer world or to tame its manifestations is nothing but a symptom
of the inner weakness of the self. This strategy of closure leads to the total
impoverishment of the self, to an unheard-of shrinkage and internal drain-
ing. The inner exhaustion ranges from the metaphysical to the sexual. In
his "Letter to Stefan Szuman, July 24, 1932," Schulz writes about a "state
of spellbound suspension within a person solitude," a "cutting oneself off
from life and action" that is linked to a dream in which as a young man he
performs his own castration in a dark forest at night, realizing afterwards
that as a punishment for his terrible sin he is condemned to "public confine-
ment in a glass retort, from which [he will] never escape" (Schulz, Letters
37). Schulz ascribes to this dream a "symbolic charge," a "semantic poten-
tial," that, in his own account, he has never been able to exhaust in his
works. This is one of Schulz's "master images," fundamental iconic situa-
tions that inform his consciousness (Kuprel 103-104). The dark forest is a
key to the dream. It stands for the threat that the world exerts upon the
individual, leading him to cripple himself. This nightmare sums up the
chain of reactions, by which sublimity prompts the self to withdraw from
the world, which in turn results in self-emasculation and self-seclusion.
The second possible response to sublimity is the reversal of the first one.
It consists of a readiness to give in to the immensity of the world and let the
self be swept away by it. Schulz supplies a paradigm for this attitude in his
"Letter to Romana Halpern, August 20-26, 1937," where he depicts his
current mental condition as a moment of awakening, a sudden eagerness to
be drawn into the "affairs and processes" of the world:
Thus inside me my specific being, my exceptionality,immersesitself into oblivion, so to
speak, withoutdissolving.What shut me off from the world'sonslaughtsrecedes gently into
the background,and I, like an insect releasedfrom its cocoon, exposed to the tempestof an
alien light and the winds of heaven, commit myself to the elements, in a way for the first
time. ... Now I am openingmyself to the world ... and all would be well if it weren'tfor
that terrorand innershrinking,as if before a perilousventure.. ." (Letters149)
This excerpt describes a point-by-point reversal of the attitude evoked in
the previous letter. Openness to the world implies a certain forgetfulness of
one's own self, but at the same time and in spite of the anxiety created by
this exposure, it is conceived as a new birth, or more precisely as a coming
 Of Sublimity,Shrinkage,and Selfhoodin the Worksof Bruno Schulz 479

to maturity (leaving the cocoon) that turns the theme of emasculation

around.
In several instances Schulz writes in his correspondence and essays about
the need to "surrender" to the world, sometimes with explicit reference to
the sublime: "one must surrender one's heart to such greatness if one is to
bear it. But who can make up his mind to espouse this sacrificial, unre-
quited, burning, sublime love?" ("The Formation of Legends: Commemo-
rating the death of J6zef Pitsudski," Letters 60). Yet in a world defined as
"universal masquerade," that is, as a meaningless concatenation of signifi-
ers, the surrender Schulz has in mind can be no backdoor vindication of the
perceptual faculties that the sublime had called into question from the
outset ("An Essay for S. I. Witkiewicz," Letters 113). What is called for is
rather a kind of activity. Instead of opposing the fluidity of the world, the
self should facilitate and even intensify this mutation of forms.
No one performs this better than Joseph's father, this "metaphysical
conjurer" described in "Tailors' Dummies" as a "magic mill, into the hop-
pers of which the bran of empty hours was poured, to reemerge flowering
in all the colors and scents of Oriental spices" (24). In one of the rare
occasions when the sublime is experienced in an unambiguously positive
way, the surrender translates into a peculiar kind of creative production. In
the story "The Age of Genius" Joseph recalls a moment of his childhood as
he happened to be lifted into ecstasy by a sudden burst of light which he
perceived as a "flood," "flowering," or "bliss" following a period during
which boredom had been constricting everything (133). As if possessed, he
starts to produce frenetically one drawing after the other, "luminous draw-
ings, made as if by a foreign hand" (133). As he contemplates these arti-
facts, Shloma, a friend of Joseph and a former convict, begins to under-
stand that artistic activity is the only alternative to his life of turpitude:

One mightsay, that the worldhas passedthroughyourhandsin orderto renewitself, in order

to molt in them and shed its scales like a wonderfullizard. Ah, do you think I would be
stealingand committinga thousandfollies if the worldweren'tso outwornand decayed ... ?
Whatcan one do in such a world?How can one not succumband allow one's courageto fail
when everythingis shut tightly, when all meaningfulthings are walled up, and when you
constantlyknockagainstbricks,as againstthe wallsof prison?(140).

Characteristically, this surge of creativity does not realize itself in the

slow and painstaking process associated, for instance, with classical paint-
ing, but rather in a frantic drawing on numerous random pieces of newspa-
per. At stake is not the production of a perfect artistic object, of the
ultimate signifier that would reunite form and meaning, but the frenzied
multiplication of signifiers that replace and at the same time supplement
each other. Not for nothing does the narrator bemoan the loss of some of
these drawings. Indeed, they derive their significance only from their being
480 Slavicand East EuropeanJournal

parts of a totality and cannot possibly exist as isolated artistic objects. The
disappearance of individual drawings compromises the value of them all.
There is a thin line, however, between the creative activity induced by
this surrender and another much more sinister possible outcome. For sur-
rendering entails the risk of becoming an object rather than an instrument
of transformation. After all, a human being whose reason is invalidated
loses nearly all claims to an autonomous essence distinct from the rest of
the world. Here the consistency of Schulz's poetic world is truly remark-
able. The sublime is as likely to trigger an outpouring of creative energy as
it is to expose the subject to misuse and appropriation as an element in a
transformational series. Nothing can ward off a confusion between agent
and material in the creative process, as if the metonymic relationship be-
tween the two would somehow invite their substitution. The many meta-
morphoses that Father undergoes tend to be intimately connected with his
creative activity. In "Cockroaches," for example, his intense loathing for
the repulsive insects and the all-out war he wages against them result only
in his eventual metamorphosis into a cockroach. The reversal normally
brought about by the sublime, the conversion of threat into creation, is
perverted here. What is turned around is the feeling of repulsion: for the
father it becomes straightforward fascination, paving the way to his own
transformation.
When it comes down to it, there is a long way from Kant's elevation of
the sublime to a self-consolidating discovery of reason to Schulz's exposure
of reason's potential irrelevance in a world devoid of stability and unity.
For Schulz the sublime has lost its cognitive dimension. Knowledge is of
little avail in a world whose forms are so fluid and vulnerable. One notices
not a reality deficit, as Lyotard had it, but a reality surplus: the real is so
productive that it loses all stability and keeps inundating the self. The only
attitude that can be envisioned in order to stem the fluidity of the real is
that of creating on our own, attempting to gain some leverage over the
world by rearranging our environment and thus staying a step ahead of the
principle of transformation at work in the universe. Thus, if in the age of
Kant aesthetics takes over the functions of speculative philosophy in an
attempt to salvage the unity of the world and the self, in late Modernism it
is poetics (in the etymological sense of poein, Greek for "to make," "to
produce") that comes to the fore, in a move that answers the same need but
betrays the increasing fragility and depersonalization of the self.

NOTES
1 I would like to thank one of my anonymousreferees, who proposed several helpful
revisionsto the translationfromwhichI was quotingas well as pointedout the reference
to Dorota Glowacka'sarticlecited below.
 Of Sublimity, Shrinkage, and Selfhood in the Works of Bruno Schulz 481

2 For an old-fashionedbut solid survey of eighteenth-centurynotions of the sublime,

including Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the
Sublimeand Beautiful,as well as of its precursors(Pseudo-Longinusand Boileau), see
Monk. Jean-FrangoisLyotardprovidesa sophisticated,if slanteddiscussionof this tradi-
tion in "The Sublime and the Avant-Garde."FrancesFergusondefends the Kantian
sublime against Deconstruction in Solitude and the Sublime.
3 On the "egotisticalsublime"see Weiskel,48-62.
4 AlreadyKantprovidessome groundsfor thiscontention:"Thusthe vastoceanheavedup
by stormscannotbe calledsublime.The sightof it is horrible;and one mustalreadyhave
filledone's mindwith all sortsof ideas if suchan intuitionis to attuneit to a feelingthatis
itself sublime,inasmuchas the mind is inducedto abandonsensibilityand occupyitself
with ideas containinga higherpurposiveness"(Kant99).
5 See Lyotard'sattemptto describethe sublimeas an affect thatis not felt by a subject,i.e.
as a strangerin the house of subjectivity(Lyotardand Pries342).
6 LyotarddefinesPostmodernismas the collapseof the emancipatoryprojectof Modern-
ism (Lyotardand Pries326).
7 Dorota Glowackadiscussed the sublime in the works of Schulz in the context of an
analogybetweenSchulz'sartisticuniverseandthe Postmodernnotionof simulacrum(72-
91). Underthe influenceof Lyotard'screativeinterpretationof Kantas a precursorof the
Avant-Garde(in "The sublimeand the Avant-Garde"),she assertsthat Schulz'streat-
ment of the Sublimeis Kantianand Postmodernat once (90-1). Her formerthesis rests
on a loose reading of Kant. Her latter assimilates the sublime to the concept of
simulacrum,a move abettedby the fact that she discussesthe sublimewithoutreference
to the subjectof aestheticperceptionor production,thus overlysimplifyingits plot. My
readingsubmitsthat Schulz occupies a unique position somewherebetween Kant and
Postmodernismand thatan awarenessof these by now classicaltreatmentsof the sublime
helps highlighthis distinctiveness.
8 I quote from the standard translation, The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz, which I
have modifiedwheneverit was not sufficientlyliteralfor my purpose.Referencesto this
edition are given directlyin parentheses.
9 David Goldfarbconnects Schulz'svision of childhoodwith the sublime in a brief but
tantalizingcomment(28).
10 Among the many variegatedobjects on displayin the cinnamonshops, in the midst of
thingsas unusualas roots of mandrakeand eggs of exotic insects, one findsa libraryof
"rareand forbiddenprints,of publicationsof secret clubs that unveiledtormentingand
ravishingmysteries"(55). On sexuality and eroticism in Schulz's works, see Russell
Brown's"BrunoSchulzand FranzKafka:ServantGirlsand OtherTemptations."
11 Any furtherqualificationof this "principleof metamorphosis"would requirea careful
examinationof the philosophicalunderpinningsof the Schulzianuniverse.JerzyJarzebski
offers a helpful startingpoint by quotingan excerpt from Schopenhauer,in which the
rhetoricis strangelysimilarto Schulz's(LXI-LXII).
12 In his influentialessay "TheDegradedReality,"ArturSandauerdescribedthis dualityas
an oscillationbetweena degradedrealityand a sublimemyth(25-26). The only problem
here lies with his phrasing.The very notion of degradedreality is a bit artificialand
misleading.Whatis crucialis thatit is the samepsychologicalagent, here the Father,who
blowsevents up into sublimitywhileat the same time deflatingtheminto triviality.There
is no middle ground in Schulz'swork, no "reality"or objective "normality,"nothing
given that could possiblybe degraded.Trivializationand sublimationare two concomi-
tant processesof the constructionof reality.
13 The labyrinthis a motif of Schulz's work that has been extensively discussed, most
recentlyand interestinglyby David Goldfarb(32-3). See also (JarzebskiLIII-LVII).
482 Slavic and East European Journal

14 For example: "events that have occurredtoo late, after the whole of time has been
distributed,dividedand allotted"(131).

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