Bruno Schulz – mistrz, inspirator czy literacki ojciec Jerzego Ficowskiego

Abstract

This article explores the artistic relationship between Jerzy Ficowski and Bruno Schulz. For the first time Ficowski came across Schulz’s The Cinnamon Shops in 1942, as a 17 year old adolescent. He remembered that first reading as a moment of epiphany which occurred to be crucial to the whole further Ficowski’s literary biography. The young poet hailed the author of The Cinnamon Shops as his great master, the only one who dared to express the true importance of myth to the artistic imagination in such an unique way. The influence of Schulz’s prose on Ficowski’s poetry was unquestionable. However, this does not mean that Ficowski’s work was secondary to Schulz’s or less original. Jerzy Ficowski, like Schulz, emphasized the importance of childhood and myth in a poet’s imagination. On the other hand, both writers found themselves different ways to express those ideas in artistic way. To analyze the unique nature of artistic relationship between Bruno Schulz and Jerzy Ficowski, I refer to the famous Harold Bloom’s work The Anxiety of Influence. A theory of Poetry.