Dzieło, którego nie ma? Praktyczne (i ontologiczne) powody niedostępności Xięgi Bałwochwalczej
Journal Title: Schulz/Forum - Year 2015, Vol 5, Issue 5
Abstract
In the age of technological reproductibility the original of The Booke of Idolatry has disappeared under more and more replicas. We have been talking and writing about reproductions which are more and more distant from the original: reflections, reflexes, copies, representations, and effigies. Until today, the whole cycle of Schulz’s cliché-verres has not been published in an adequate form – there are only more successful reproductions of particular graphics. At any rate, the identity of The Booke has always been precarious and ambiguous. It has always been a work in motion – flickering, unstable, composed in various ways since particular graphics have appeared in different authorial configurations (files) each of which lead its own, independent life. Thus The Booke of Idolatry has its multiple history and no “hard” ontology. As a whole, it is not available. Still, the trouble with it begins already at the elementary level of an individual graphic. The differences among available copies have been caused by technological conditions (different chemical processing of the positives), which bring about specific material (different pace of ageing) as well as artistic consequences (replicating his cliché-verres, Schulz would choose either a sepia or a silver-black tone). As a result, different prints of the same graphic look different, which implies contingency of seeing and, what follows, also of understanding and interpretation. We may encounter The Booke of Idolatry only in its specific historical version, by coming across its individual copy. A comparison of a dozen or so preiconographic descriptions (or perhaps testimonies of looking/seeing) of the same copy of Mademoiselle Circe and Her Troupe reveals a fundamental diversity of views. Is it possible to have a debate on meaning without a consensus as regards what we can see? Is a pact concerning a visible object of the debate made (or perhaps not made?) in passing, while we interpret it in a joint effort to find its meaning?
Authors and Affiliations
Stanisław Rosiek
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP169850
- DOI -
- Views 68
- Downloads 0
Demiurg jest dwoistością. Alfred Kubin i Bruno Schulz – próba porównania
Both Bruno Schulz and Aflred Kubin moved freely between image and word. In their artistic quests they first turned toward the iconic and only then chose the verbal art. In Schulz’s work, the relationship between woman an...
À la manière de… Bruno Schulz
A pastiche of Schulz’s work focusing on a vision of the Father’s particularly important mission. The old Jacob, wearing his coat and hat, sits on a chamber pot to defend “with all his waning power and the remains of the...
Schulz czytany przez Henri Lewiego
Henri Lewi’s book, Bruno Schulz or, Messianic Strategies, published in 1989 in Paris, is an attempt to read the fiction and correspondence of Schulz as a record of his individual lot and the collective condition of Jews...
Homunkulusy Brunona Schulza
In Bruno Schulz’s short stories, full of motifs taken from alchemy and the Book of Genesis, one can find many homunculi – artificial human beings that were one of the goals of alchemists’ experiments. In Schulz’s fiction...
Antyportret w wersji literackiej
In The Cinnamon Shops reader can find both echoes of the classic images of faces, referring to the tradition of physiognomy and tradition of portrait painting, as well as images of faces belonging to the species of antip...