Staging Jewishness in Decline. Irène Nemirovsky's David Golder

vis-a-vis the Works of Bruno Schulz

Kris Van HeuckelomKU Leuven - kris@vanheuckelom.be

David Golder in David Golder Jacob in Sanatorium under the(France, 1931, dir. Julien Duvivier) Sign of the Hourglass (Poland,

1973, dir. Wojciech Jerzy Has)

"The Eternal Fairy-Tale"

Xięga Bałwochwalcza (1920-22)The Idolatrous Book

Female domination (sadism) Male submissiveness (masochism)

„Undula The Eternal Ideal”

Gender relations in The Idolatrous Book (1)

● Psychobiograpical approach: Schulz as a masochist

● Artistic context: mythological, iconic,

literary intertextuality

Gender relations in The Idolatrous Book (2)

Undula ~ a contemporary Venus

“On Cythera”

Classical mythology

D. Velazquez, Venus At Her Mirror Cover of The Idolatrous Book

Iconographic tradition

● Fin-de-siècle decadentism

● the grotesque

F. Rops, Pornocrates

Demonic femme fatale

Undula ~ pictorial version of L. von Sacher-Masoch’s Wanda

Literary sources

Cover of The Idolatrous Book (1920-1922)

Book within a book ~

Painting within a painting

Cover of The Idolatrous Book

The Idolatrous Book as autoreferential artefact (1)

1. the material product created by the artist (a portfolio of graphics entitled The Idolatrous Book)

Frontispiece of The Idolatrous Book

The Idolatrous Book as autoreferential artefact (2)

2. a similar object (a book) being depicted on the graphics themselves (some of which are entitled „The Idolatrous Book”)

„Undula With The Artists”

1. The book as a work-in-progress

Undula u artystów

„The Idolatrous Book”

2. Finished book presented to the idol

Undula u artystów

The book as a medium of verbal expression

is represented throughout Schulz’s portfolio

as a typical male attribute, whereas the idol

is given an obvious female shape.

Gender & word-image relations

Book covers and frontispieces of The Idolatrous Book (1)

Book covers and frontispieces of The Idolatrous Book (2)

seductive attractiveness of paintings ~

seductive beauty of the female sex

(Freedberg 1989)

Iconoclasm & gender

Double dimension of idolatrous behaviour in The Idolatrous Book (1)

Act of veneration (“Thou shalt not bow down thyself”)

“Undula The Eternal Ideal” “The Enchanted City”

Double dimension of idolatrous behaviour

in The Idolatrous Book (2)

Act of image creation (“Thou shalt not make any graven image”)

„Undula With The Artists”

The creative forces of masculinity are redirected from the domain of the sacred text to the female sphere of images and image production.

The Book itself is idolatrous!

“Pictorial turn” (cf. Mitchell 1994)

= A book of graphics containing

a series of subsequent scenes

The Idolatrous Book as a visual narrative

The “Idolatrous Book” as an artistic concept

Through the mise-en-abime effect,Schulz’s The Idolatrous Book at

the same time formulates and

implementsthe idea of interartistic

contamination.

Schulz’s transgression of boundaries

1. Religious Law: The Second Commandment

2. Artistic Law: G. E. Lessing’s secular discourse of iconoclasm

cf. Clement Greenberg

The Idolatrous Book or

The Adulterous Book

Cover of The Idolatrous Book “The Idolatrous Book”

The book offered to the idol is “a harbinger of Schulz’s Word, a proclamation of his work as a

writer.”

“The Idolatrous Book”

Ficowski (1988: 58)

All existing boundaries between different forms of art are in fact fluid, and thus artificially set up, as all individual artefacts (whether visual or verbal) turn out to be nothing more than similarly defective references to the same reality

of interlacing codes..”

Schulz’s artwork & fiction

“The Schulzean narrator unveils his techniques, displays his method, consciously reveals the iconic character of the image. He records reality as if it was a picture; while the realistic narrator depicts the picture as if it was reality.”

Stala (1993: 104)

KONIEC

THE END

Staging Jewishness in Decline. Irène Nemirovsky's David Golder vis-a-vis

the Works of Bruno Schulz

”Dedication” (from The Idolatrous Book, 1920-

22)

Kris Van HeuckelomK.U.Leuven - kris@vanheuckelom.be

The Pictorial Turn of Bruno Schulz

”Dedication” (from The Idolatrous Book, 1920-22)

Kris Van HeuckelomK.U.Leuven - kris@vanheuckelom.be