Cinnamon shops bruno schulz pdf

Labyrinth Project

Associated Course Learning Outcomes:

Students will write and communicate at a college level in various modes, media, and/or rhetorical contexts.

Students will demonstrate an ability to comprehend, analyze, & interpret texts in various modes, genres, media, and/or contexts.

Students will evaluate and synthesize information to support ideas and perspectives.

Students will analyze creative works from multiple international cultures in relation to the historical, sociocultural, aesthetic, or personal contexts in which those works emerge.

Assignment Overview:

You will demonstrate your ability to come up with an idea related to our subject (labyrinths and labyrinth narratives) and then support that idea by either writing a paper or creating an artefact that involves demonstrating your “ability to comprehend, analyze, and interpret texts in various modes, genres, media, and/or contexts.”

Your writting can be creative or more traditional (such as a paper), but in either case you will need to demonstrate your knowledge and your ability to apply that knowledge. For instance:

If you are a musician, you could compose or record a piece of music related to our readings/subject. The relationship could be tied to one or more of the narratives and/or sub themes, but it could also be structural. There are examples out there if you do a little research.

If you like to write creatively, you could retell a story, create a new story with various themes. You could write a poem. Again, your connection could be narrative and can play with symbols and themes, but you could also play with structure and algorithms in the manner of the OULIPO (workshop for potential literature).

If you are artistic you could create visual/sculptural artwork.

If you are a game developer or CS major, you can create a level in a game or something similar.

Engineering students can build or design something, keeping in mind what you’ve learned from our readings: think about paths, dead ends, entrances, exits, challenges, puzzles, etc. Make sure you connect your choices with our readings.

I won’t be grading you on artistic talent (although it will be appreciated). You will be evaluated on knowledge, ideas, application. If you are asking yourself: Is my writing/idea “rigorous” enough, ask yourself how it fits with the course objectives. And, of course, please feel free to run it by me and get my input.

J N THE PERIOD of the shortest, sleepy winter days, I- caught on both sides, from morning and from evening, in

furred, crepuscular edgings, as the town branched its way

deeper and deeper into the labyrinths of the winter nights, to

be called back and shaken to its senses by only a fleeting dawn - my father was already lost, sold, pledged to the other

sphere.

His face and head had become luxuriantly and wildly

overgrown in those days with a covering of grey hair, sprouting

irregularly in bunches, bristles and long brushes, which

protruded from his warts, his eyebrows and his nostrils and

lent to his physiognomy the appearance of a pugnacious old fox.

His senses of smell and hearing were inordinately sharp-

86 Bruno Schulz The Cinnamon Shops 87

ened, and it showed in the agitations of his tense, silent

features that he remained, through the mediation of those

senses, in continual contact with an invisible world of dark

nooks, mouse holes, musty empty spaces beneath the floor,

and chimney ducts.

All the scratching and noisy nocturnal knocking, all the

secret, creaking life of the floor, found in him an unfailing and

vigilant observer, a spy and a co-conspirator. Beyond the point

of no return, he was absorbed by that sphere, inaccessible to

us, which he made no attempt to explain to us. Often, when

the antics of the invisible sphere grew too absurd, he could

only flick his fingers and laugh quietly to himself. At such

times, by a glance, he would confer with our cat, also initiated

into that world, which raised its cold, cynical face etched with

stripes and narrowed in boredom and indifference its slanting

chinks of eyes.

During dinner, he might put aside his knife and fork in the

middle of the meal and rise with a feline motion, his napkin

tied under his chin. He crept on toe-pads to an adjacent door,

an empty room, and peeked with the greatest circumspection

through the keyhole. Then he returned to the table as if

ashamed, a sheepish smile emerging through purrs and

indistinct mutters, which pertained only to the inner

monologue in which he was engrossed.

In order to provide him with some distraction, and to tear

him away from his morbid investigations, Mother took him for

evening walks, to which he acceded silently and without

resistance, albeit half-heartedly, absent minded, distracted and

miles away. Once, we even went to the theatre.

We found ourselves again at last in that great, dimly lit and

dirty hall, all sleepy human hubbub and chaotic commotion.

But once we had pushed through the human throng, the

gigantic, pale sky-blue curtain loomed before us like the sky of

another firmament. Great, pink-painted masks with puffed

out cheeks undulated on its enormous canvas expanse. That

artificial sky spread wide, flowed down and athwart, swelling

with an enormous gulp of pathos and broad gestures, the

atmosphere of that world, artificial and full of radiance, which

had been erected there, on the clattering scaffolding of the

stage. A shudder flowing through the great countenance of

that sky, a breath of the enormous canvas which made the

masks bulge and come to life, betrayed the illusoriness of that

firmament, gave rise to that tremor of reality which we, in our

metaphysical moments, sense as a glimmer of the mysterious.

The masks fluttered their red eyelids; their coloured lips

voicelessly whispered something; and I knew that the moment

was at hand when the secret tensions would reach their

zenith, when the brimming sky of the curtain would really

part and float away to reveal stupendous and enchanting things.

But it was a moment I was not destined to savour; for

Father, meanwhile, had begun to display certain signs of

anxiety. He grasped at his pockets and finally announced that

he had forgotten his wallet, together with his money and

important documents. After a brief consultation with Mother,

during which Adela's honesty was subjected to hasty,

comprehensive appraisal, it was proposed to me that I return

home in search of the wallet. Mother judged that there still

88 Bruno Schulz The Cinnamon Shops 89

remained plenty of time until the commencement of the

performance, and that, given my nimbleness, I could easily be

back in time. I went out into a winter's night coloured by the illumination

of the sky. It was one of those bright nights in which the astral

firmament is so immense and branched, almost fallen apart,

broken into pieces and divided into a labyrinth of separate

heavens, abundant enough to be shared among whole months

of winter nights, to overlay with its silvered and painted globes

all of their nocturnal phenomena, adventures, scandals and

carnivals. It is unpardonable recklessness to send a young boy out on

such a night on an important and urgent mission; for in its

half-light the streets will grow tangled and multifarious, each

exchanged for another. Deep inside the town there open up,

so to speak, double streets, doppelganger streets, mendacious

and delusive streets. One's imagination, enchanted and

misled, produces false maps of the ostensibly long-known and

familiar town where those streets have their places and their

names, whilst the night, in its inexhaustible fecundity, can

find nothing better to do than to produce continually new and

fictitious configurations. Such temptations of winter nights

usually begin innocently, with the intention of taking a

shortcut, of chancing some unaccustomed or swifter alley.

The enticing arrangements of an intersection arise, of

convoluted progress along some untried cross street. But this

time it began differently.

Having gone a few steps, I realised I had left my overcoat

behind. I was on the point of turning back, but on reflection

this seemed a needless waste of time; for the night was not

cold at all. Quite the reverse, it was veined with streams of a

strange warmth, the wafts of some false spring. The snow

dwindled into white strands, an innocent, sweet fleece

scented with violets, and into those very strands the sky began

to thaw, where the moon showed itself twice, three times over,

demonstrating by this multiplicity all of its phases and

positions. The sky had lain bare that day the interior of its

construction, as if in numerous anatomical preparations,

displaying spirals and veins of light, sections of the night's

turquoise solids, the plasma of its expanses and the tissue of its

nocturnal reveries. On such a night, one was unlikely to walk along Podwale, or

any of the other dark streets which form the reverse side, the

lining, as it were, of the four sides of the market square,

without recalling that, occasionally in that late season, one or

two of those curious and so alluring shops would still be open,

which slipped one's mind on ordinary days. I called them the

cinnamon shops, in honour of that dark hue of the wainscoting

with which they were panelled.

Those truly noble businesses, open late into the night, had

always been the object of my most fervid dreams. Their dimly

lit, dark and solemn interiors exuded a rich, deep aroma of

paints, lacquer and incense, a fragrance of remote countries

and rare materials. There, one might find Bengal lights, magic

caskets, the stamps of long vanished countries, Chinese decals,

indigo, colophony from Malabar, the eggs of exotic insects,

parrots, toucans, live salamanders and basilisks, mandrake

90 Bruno Schulz

roots, mechanical toys from Nuremberg, homunculi in tiny

pots, microscopes and telescopes, and above all, rare and

peculiar books, old volumes full of astonishing illustrations

and intoxicating stories.

I remember those merchants, old and dignified, who served

their clients in discreet silence and were full of wisdom and

understanding of their most secret wishes. But most of all,

there was a certain bookshop there, where once I saw a

number of rare and forbidden editions, the publications of secret lodges, lifting the veil from tormenting and intoxicating mysteries.

So seldom did an opportunity arise to visit those shops - and with, moreover, some small but adequate amount of money in one's pocket - that I could not forgo this opportunity now, pressing as may be the mission entrusted to

our zeal. By my reckoning, I would have to proceed along a

certain side street, passing two or three corners, in order to

reach the street of the nocturnal shops. This would lead me

away from my objective, but I could make good the delay if I returned by way of Zupy Solne.

Lent wings by my desire to visit the cinnamon shops, I turned into a street that I knew - flying more than walking, anxious not to go astray. Thus I passed by three or four cross

streets, but the street I sought was not along any of those.

What is more, the configuration of the streets no longer

corresponded to the image of them in my mind's eye. No trace

of the shops. I walked along a street whose houses had no

entrances; only windows shut tight and blinded by a gleam of

the moon. The correct street must lead along the other side of

The Cinnamon Shops 91

those houses, I thought to myself, where their entrances are. I

anxiously quickened my step, beginning deep down to

relinquish any hope of visiting the shops; merely with the

intention of emerging swiftly from there into a region of town

that I knew. I approached an exit, uneasy about where it might

bring me out this time, and entered a broad, sparsely built-up

highway, very long and straight, and at once a blast from its

expanse swept over me. Here, alongside the street or deep

within gardens, stood picturesque villas, the decorative

buildings of the wealthy; parks and the walls of orchards were

visible in the gaps between them. At a distance the vista was

reminiscent of ulica Leszniañska in its lower and seldom

visited regions. The moonlight was pale and bright as day,

unravelling into a thousand strands, silver flakes in the sky,

and only the parks and gardens loomed black in that silver

landscape. Scrutinising one of the buildings more closely, I concluded

that before me stood the rear and hitherto unseen side of the

gymnasium school. I went directly up to the entrance, which

to my surprise was unlocked, the hallway lighted, and entered

to find myself on the red carpet of a corridor. I was hoping to

steal unnoticed through the building and leave by the front

gate, thus taking a magnificent shortcut.

Then it dawned on me that, at that late hour, one of

Professor Arendt's elective lessons must still be taking place,

which he conducted late into the night in his classroom, and to

which we flocked in wintertime, burning with the noble

enthusiasm for drawing exercises that our outstanding teacher

inspired in us.

92 Bruno Schulz

Our little group of students would be all but lost in that

great, dark room, the shadows of our heads growing enormous

and fragmented on the walls, cast by two small candles

burning in the necks of bottles. In truth, not many of us used

those hours for drawing, and the professor did not stipulate

too exacting demands. One or two of us had brought pillows

from home and now settled down on the benches for a light

nap. Only the most studious sat under a solitary candle,

drawing something or other in the golden circle of its radiance.

Growing bored, holding sleepy conversations, we usually

had to wait a long time for the professor to arrive. At last his

study door opened and he entered, a small man with a

beautiful beard, all esoteric smiles, discreet concealments and an air of mystery. He quickly closed the study door behind

him, through which, for the brief instant it had stood open, a

throng of plaster shades had huddled together beyond his

head, classical fragments, mournful Niobids, DanaIds and

Tantalids, a whole sad and barren Olympus withering

throughout the years in that museum of plaster figures. That

room was filled even in the daytime with a cloudy haze,

overflowing sleepily with plaster dreams, empty looks, fading

profiles and musings receding into nothingness. We often

liked to eavesdrop at that door, on the sighing, whispering

silence of that rubble, crumbling amid cobwebs, that twilight

of the gods, decomposing in boredom and monotony.

The professor strolled, solemn and dignified, along the bare

benches where we made our drawings, dispersed in small

groups in the grey gleams of the winter night. It grew hushed

and sleepy. Here and there, my colleagues were settling down

The Cinnamon Shops 93

to sleep. The candles slowly burned out in their bottles. The

professor was engrossed in a deep glass case full of old

volumes, antiquated illustrations, etchings and prints. Making

esoteric gestures, he showed us old lithographs of evening

landscapes, dense nocturnal forests and the avenues of winter

parks, looming black on white, moonlit roads. Time passed unnoticed amid our sleepy conversations,

running unevenly, seeming to tie knots in the flowing of the

hours, swallowing away to who knows where whole stretches

of their duration. Imperceptibly, without transference, we

rediscovered our group already making its way home along a

lane white with snow and edged with a dry, black thicket of

bushes. We walked along that shaggy edge of the darkness,

brushing against the bearskin of the bushes, which cracked

under our feet in the bright, moonless night, the false, milky

daylight long after midnight. The diffuse whiteness of that

light, drizzling with snow, the pallid air and milky space, was

like the grey paper of an etching, where strokes and hatching of compact brushwood were tangled in deep black. The night,

deep into the early hours, now replicated that series of

nocturnes, Professor Arendt's nocturnal etchings, and carried

further his imaginings. In that park's black forestation, its shaggy fleece of

brushwood, its mass of brittle twigs, were found niches and

nests, places of the deepest, downiest darkness, full of

embroilment, secret gestures and incoherent conversations in

finger language. It was hushed and warm in those nests, where

we sat in our shaggy coats on the soft, summery snow, gorging

ourselves on the nuts with which the hazel bushes were

94 Bruno Schulz

replete in that springtime winter. Martens, weasels and

ichneumons silently wound their way through the brushwood,

furry, sniffing little animals stinking of sheepskin, elongated,

on short little paws. We suspected that among them were

specimens from the school cabinet, which albeit disem-

bowelled and moulting, had heard in their empty innards on

that white night the voice of an old instinct, a mating call, and had returned to their lair for a brief, illusory lifespan.

But the phosphorescence of the spring snow slowly grew

cloudy and died away, and the thick, black murk before

daybreak set in. Some of us fell asleep in the warm snow,

whilst others scrabbled in the dense thicket for the entrances to their houses. They groped their way into those dark

interiors, into the dreams of their parents and siblings, falling

into a continuance of the deep snoring they had tracked down on their dawdling ways.

Those nocturnal assemblies were full of mysterious charm for me, and I could not forgo the opportunity now to peek into

the art room for a moment, resolving to spare only a few

minutes for the visit. But as I ascended a flight of cedar

backstairs, filled with ringing echoes, I realised I was now in

some hitherto unseen, unknown part of the building.

Not the slightest sound disturbed the solemn silence here.

The corridors were more spacious on this wing, lined with

plush carpet and abounding in finery. Small, dimly glowing

lamps shone at the corners. Turning one such corner, I found

myself in an even wider corridor, bedecked in palatial

sumptuousness, where one of the walls was open through

wide, glazed arches onto the interior of an apartment. Before

'The Cinnamon Shops 95

my eyes a long enfilade of rooms began, receding into the

depths and furnished with dazzling magnificence. My eye was

drawn along its lane of tussore-silk hangings and gilded

mirrors, expensive furniture and crystal chandeliers, far into

the downy pulp of those extravagant interiors, full of coloured

whirling, shimmering arabesques, winding garlands and

budding flowers. The profound silence of those empty

parlours was inhabited only in the secret looks that the mirrors

exchanged, and a panic of arabesques which ran aloft in

friezes along the walls and were lost in the stucco-work of the

white ceilings.

I stood in admiration and awe before that sumptuousness. I

suspected that my nocturnal escapade had led me

unexpectedly to the headmaster's wing and before his private

apartment. I stood transfixed with curiosity, my heart

pounding, ready to take flight at the slightest noise; for how, if

discovered, could I justify this, my nocturnal espionage, my

audacious snooping? The headmaster's little daughter might

be sitting, unobserved and silent, in one of the deep, plush

armchairs and suddenly raise her eyes to me from behind her

book - her black, sibylline and calm eyes whose look none of

us could hold. But it would be cowardice, I decided, to

withdraw in mid-course, without having fulfilled my

objective. Besides, absolute silence reigned everywhere in

those interiors, filled with sumptuousness and illumined by

the dimmed light of the indeterminate hour. Through the

arches of the corridor, at the far end of a great parlour, I could

see a large glazed door which led onto a terrace. It was so quiet

all around that I mustered my courage. There did not seem to

96 Bruno Schulz The Cinnamon Shops 97

be too great a risk involved in descending the few stairs to

floor level and, in a few bounds, crossing the vast, expensive

carpet to the terrace, from where I could easily reach a street I

knew.

I did so, and as soon as I had stepped down onto the parquet

floor of that parlour, beneath the huge palms that stood in

vases there, shooting up as high as the arabesques of the

ceiling, I noticed that I had, in fact, reached neutral ground;

for the parlour had no front wall whatsoever. It was a kind of

loggia, connecting by two or three steps to the town square, an

offshoot, as it were, of that square, where a few items of

furniture were arranged on the pavement. I ran down the few

stone steps and was once more in the street.

The constellations were standing precipitously on their

heads. The stars had all turned over onto their other sides in

their sleep, while the moon, buried in an eiderdown of little

clouds, which it illumined with its invisible presence,

appeared to have an endless road still before it. Absorbed by

its convoluted celestial procedures, it spared not a thought for

daybreak.

A few worn out and rickety droshkies loomed black in the

street like crippled, dozing crabs or cockroaches. A coachman

leaned out from his high seat. He had a small, red and good

natured face. "Shall we go, young sir?" he asked. The coach

shook in all the joints and ligatures of its many-limbed body

and moved off on its light wheels.

But who on such a night will entrust himself to the whims

of an irresponsible droshky driver? Amid the clattering of the

spokes and the rumbling of the box and roof, I tried to make

my destination known to him. Heedless and indulgent, he

shook his head at everything I said. Humming a tune to

himself, he drove by a circuitous route through the town.

A group of droshky drivers stood before a taproom; they

waved to him amiably. He cheerfully made some reply and

threw the reins onto my knees, not even drawing the carriage

to a halt. He got down from his seat and went to join the group

of his colleagues. The horse, a wise old droshky horse, looked

around nonchalantly and continued on his way at a steady,

droshky trot. This horse, as a matter of fact, filled me with

confidence; he seemed to be smarter than the coachman. But I

didn't know how to steer him; I had to submit to his will. We

set off along a suburban street enclosed on both sides by

gardens. Those gardens, the further they extended, slowly

98 Bruno Schulz The Cinnamon Shops 99

gave way to parks of many trees, and they to forests.

I shall never forget that luminous drive on the brightest of

winter nights. The coloured map of the heavens had

expanded into a vast cupola, where fantastic lands, oceans and

seas towered, etched in lines of starry whirlpools and currents,

luminous lines of celestial geography. The air became easy to

breathe and was lit up like a silver gas. It held a scent of

violets. From under the snow, woolly like white karakul furs,

tremulous anemones began to appear, a spark of moonlight in

each delicate chalice. The entire forest was illumined as if by

a thousand lights, stars that the Decçmber firmament was

plentifully shedding. The air breathed with some secret

spring, the inexpressible purity of snow and violets. We

entered hilly terrain and the lines of the hills, shagged with

the bare twigs of trees, rose like blissful sighs into the sky. I

caught a glimpse on those exultant hillsides of whole groups of

wanderers, gathering up amid moss and bushes the fallen and

snow-dampened stars. The road grew steeper. The horse

skidded and struggled to pull the carriage, all of its ligatures

screeching. I was elated. My breast imbibed that delightful

spring air, the freshness of the stars and the snow. A bank of

snowy white foam built up higher and higher before the

horse's breast, and the horse arduously dug a passage through

its pure, fresh mass. At last we came to a standstill and I

stepped down from the droshky. He was breathing heavily, his

head bowed. I held his head to my breast. Tears glistened in

his great, black eyes. Then I noticed a round, black wound on

his belly. "Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered in tears. "My

dear, it is for you," he said, suddenly becoming very small, like

a little horse made of wood. I left him. I felt strangely light and

happy. I pondered whether I ought to wait for the local train,

the little, narrow-gauge train that stopped there, or return to

town on foot. I set off walking along a steep serpentine in the

depths of the forest, going at first with light, flexible steps, and

then, gathering momentum, at an ambling, euphoric run

which soon became a ride, like skiing. I found I could adjust

my speed at will and steer the ride with nimble turns of my

body. I curbed my triumphal run on reaching the edge of town,

modifying it to a sensible, leisurely pace. The moon was still

high; the sky's transformations were unending, the metamor-

phoses of its multitudinous vaults in ever more masterfully

described configurations. The sky had opened up that night,

like a silver astrolabe, its bewitching internal mechanism,

exhibiting in endless cycles the gilded mathematics of its cogs

and wheels. In the market square, I came across people out taking

strolls. Enchanted by the spectacle of that night, their faces

were all turned heavenward and silvered by the magic of the

sky. All concern over the wallet had left me; caught up in his

eccentricities, Father had surely forgotten by now that he had

ever lost it. I didn't care about Mother.

On such a night, unique in a year, propitious thoughts

come, inspirations, prophetic touches of the divine finger. I

was about to head for home, filled with ideas and inspiration,

when my school friends sidetracked me, carrying books under

their arms. They had set off for school too early, awoken by

the brightness of that night that did not want to end.

100 Bruno Schulz

We set off walking in a group, along a steeply descending

street where a breeze of violets blew, uncertain whether it was

still the night's magic that silvered the snow, or whether, at

last, the dawn was rising...

LII kw. £i si :ox4li 11

J N THE BOTTOM DRAWER of his fathomless desk, my .1 father kept an old and beautiful map of our town.

It was a whole in-folio volume of parchment sheets, bound

at one time with linen strips, which formed an enormous wall

map in the style of a panorama in bird's-eye perspective.

Hung on the wall, it unfolded almost to the full length of

the room, and opened a wide vista onto the whole valley of the

Tymienica - a ribbon of pale gold wending its tortuous way

- onto a whole lakeland of widely scattered marshes and

ponds, folding forelands that drew away to the south,

sporadically at first and then in ever more gathering layers, a

chessboard of curved hills, smaller and paler the further they

sank into the golden and smoky mist of the horizon. Out of

that sagging distance of the periphery, our town came into