PL
In his stories, Bruno Schulz told the history of animals or, rather, animalized humans or humanized animals. He multiplied similarities and differences, inquiring about the nature of their origin. His artistic imagination was replete with flies, cockroaches, horses, dogs, birds, etc. The accumulation of animal and animal-like characters is one of Schulz’s characteristic methods of creation. It is a method common for writers who appreciate independence and carefully reflect on detail in their writing. In such a context, the author finds similarities between Schulz’s and Rainer Maria Rilke’s work. In “Dodo,” she identifies rhetorical devices that are typical for Schulz’s fiction, e.g., repetitions and animal similes. Those devices make the truth about relations between the characters quite complex – the “particularly privileged” Dodo of an extinct flightless species and the “heavy madman” Hieronim, a tawny owl.