Jan Gondowicz’s Heresies

Abstract

The essay is a review of Jan Gondowicz’s most recent book, Trans-Autentyk. Nie-czyste formy Brunona Schulza [Trans-Authentic. Bruno Schulz’s Im-pure Forms]. Most of the texts included in the volume focus on Schulz’s graphics and drawings. Gondowicz, a highly unconventional Schulz scholar, believes that they convey the cipher of the writer’s mythology by referring to a secret society from Drogobych, called “Kalleia,” which aimed to revive an ancient cult based on the sacred value of eroticism. This is the central hypothesis to be found in Gondowicz’s masterful essays, informing also his interpretations of some of Schulz’s short stories. Analyzing Schulz’s drawings, Gondowicz discovers in them traces of a crisis of the ineffable and their epiphanic potential, later articulated in fiction.