Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

Michał Paweł Markowski, Powszechna rozwiązłość. Schulz, egzystencja, literatura. ("Universal Dissolution: Schulz, Existence, Literature"). WUJ, Krakow, 2012.

Universal Dissolution is the first entirely philosophical interpretation of the works of Bruno Schulz. At the same time, it is the first discourse placing Schulz's output in an existential perspective from which the author of The Cinnamon Shops uncovers a hitherto unknown countenance. Michał Paweł Markowski utilises many critical languages hitherto not evoked in this context: the philosophies of Hegel and Nietzsche, Heidegger and Cioran. He presents a new explanation of Schulz's understanding of matter and myth, parody and irony, masochism and humanism. The titular "universal dissolution" (Schulz's own term) refers back to the volatile nature of reality, which perpetually changes its forms to protect itself against consolidation in just one shape. The literary and philosophical existentialism of Bruno Schulz is a disagreement with a world where all possibilities have been exhausted and where the last word has already been said. Universal dissolution is the most original book about Schulz that has thus far been written.