Schulz and Economy. On the Experience of Modernity in „The Street of Crocodiles”

Abstract

The paper focuses on the motifs characteristic of the experience of modernity, which appear in Bruno Schulz’s fiction – specifically, on those derived from modern economy and its influence on the individual’s reception of reality, such as metropolis, crowd, loneliness, commercial street, and commodity fetishism. The context includes the accounts of modernity proposed by Marx, Benjamin, Simmel, and Marshall Berman. In his description of the commercial street in “The Street of Crocodiles,” Schulz draws on the tradition of modernist literature, developing the traditional modes of description in terms of his own imagination and literary mythology. He approaches the economic modernity from a peripheral point of view, which allows his to perceive its aspects that are invisible in the center.