To Be a Jew in Independent Poland

Abstract

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 in the pre-Second World War Poland. The author interprets Schulz’s writings, in which the writer resorted to myths and metaphors and avoided direct autobiographical confessions, as a disguised presentation of his personal experience. Lewi tries to prove that even though Schulz did not openly refer to his Jewishness, he drew from the Judaic tradition and his most important myths are deeply rooted in the Old Testament.