Bruno Schulz: Between Avant-Garde and Hasidic Redemption
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Bruno Schulz’s stories have been repeatedly interpreted in the context of Judaism. Instead of tracing further parallels pointing to the Old Testament, kabbalah, or other written sources, this article investigates less dignified, even partly ostracized, popular strands of East European Jewish culture. The new focus is on a set of customs and rites that are strikingly consonant with Schulz’s euphoric tales and their narrative enactment. In fact, the central source (Sitz im Leben) of the narrative “gestures” by which the author tries, as it were, to “charm” his imagined audience is “Hasidic celebration” – forms of semi-religious, semi-mundane festivity specific to Galician Jewish communities.