This essay is based on discoveries during the writing of the first international comparative study of Bruno Schulz, a writer-artist who cannot be selectively isolated from his primary artistic world and the period's cultural history which impacted on his life-choices. His hope was to be known in Warsaw and then beyond national borders, reflected in his self-confessed favourite authors (R.M.Rilke, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka) and short travels. It is therefore relevant in this new century to compare his established national position with its development worldwide since the English debut in 1958. Both perspectives are based on his first biographer Jerzy Ficowski's important work, a situation that now needs to be also debated openly if readers are to obtain as full a portrait as possible. Unfortunately, the debate abroad is further complicated by the poor original translation combined with a lack of wider translation of more recent Polish scholarship.
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