The Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz [0]
THE STREET OF CROCODILES
Bruno Schulz was one of the most remarkably gifted writers to have been produced in Eastern Europe in this century. Little known outside his native Poland, his work nevertheless—and despite official disapproval—continues to exercise a profound influence over young Polish writers. His life and work are discussed in the Translator's Preface and in Jerzy Ficowski's Introduction, written especially for this Penguin edition. Penguin Books also publishes Bruno Schulz's Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass.
Jerzy Ficowski is a poet, translator, and essayist. Born in 1924, he studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw. An early admirer of Bruno Schulz's prose, Ficowski was dedicated to finding Schulz's letters, which was a difficult task, since the majority of the addressees did not survive the war. In 1956 Ficowski published a book about Schulz, The Regions of Great Heresy, and in 1975 he edited the collection of Schulz's letters. Jerzy Ficowski lives in Warsaw.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Originally published in Poland with the title
Cinnamon Shops 1934
English translation first published in the
United States of America by Walker and Company 1963
Published in Penguin Books 1977
10 9 8 7 6
Copyright © C. J. Schulz, 1963
Introduction copyright © Viking Penguin Inc., 1977
All rights reserved
Originally published in Penguin Books as part of the
"Writers from the Other Europe" series (general editor: Philip Roth)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Schulz, Bruno, 1892-1942.
The street of crocodiles.
Translation of Sklepy cynamonowe.
I. Title. II. Series
[PZ3.S39St7] [PG7158.s294l] 891.8'5'37 76-48335
ISBN 014 01.8625 5
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Videocomp Garamond
The characters in these stories are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION by Jerzy Ficowski
AUGUST
VISITATION
BIRDS
TAILORS' DUMMIES
Treatise on Tailors' Dummies or the Second Book of Genesis
Treatise on Tailors' Dummies: Continuation
Treatise on Tailors' Dummies: Conclusion
NIMROD
PAN
MR. CHARLES
CINNAMON SHOPS
THE STREET OF CROCODILES
COCKROACHES
THE GALE
THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT SEASON
THE COMET
Translator's Preface
He was small, unattractive and sickly, with a thin angular body and brown, deep-set eyes in a pale triangular face. He taught art at a secondary school for boys at Drogobych in southeastern Poland, where he spent most of his life. He had few friends outside his native city. In his leisure hours—of which there were probably many— he made drawings and wrote endlessly, nobody quite knew what. At the age of forty, having received an introduction through friends to Zona Nalkowska, a distinguished novelist in Warsaw, he sent her some of his stories. They were published in 1934 under the title of Cinnamon Shops—and the name of Bruno Schulz was made. Three years later, a further collection of stories, with drawings by the author, Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, was published; then The Comet, a novella, appeared in a