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finnegans_woke's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
cherylsarnoski's review against another edition
3.0
I found this book unwieldy. The metaphors, the visions were beautiful, but so big, so superfluous. Giant words that just dropped in there, kerplunk, kerplunk that just choked the flow. I had an impossible time finding the story, impossible time sinking into it. Every page I read begrudgingly, wondering where was the meat. I wanted to love this. I kept coming to every story hopeful just to feel let down. Maybe it was me, maybe it was this translation.
strangebookssecretary's review against another edition
5.0
Many years ago, late at night, in a room above a bookshop, I switched on a barely tuned television and watched a beautiful dream unfold before me. My friend fell asleep. I stayed awake, mesmerised. It was a movie called ‘Institute Benjamenta’ by the Quay Brothers. I hadn’t heard of the Quay Brothers. I was delighted to discover that they were identical twins. The next film of theirs I watched was ‘Street of Crocodiles’. It was liminal, magical; a film of things almost but not quite happening, things almost but not quite seen… I read that it was based on a story by someone called Bruno Schulz. I bought the book. Bruno Schulz wrote two short story collections, or you could even call them novels, or one novel in two parts: ‘Street of Crocodiles’ and ‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’. In fact, he wrote more books (including an unfinished novel) but we were robbed of them by the Holocaust. The two books that exist are, however, like a microcosm that could be extended by inference indefinitely; it’s as if there are a thousand Bruno Schulz books, all contained between the words of the two we know. Shot dead by a Nazi officer at the age of fifty, his writing displays a sensitivity that is the antithesis of something so stupid, brutal and gross as firing a bullet into a human being. His stories are amorphous tales. There is a delight in the absurd, the surreal, no more so than in the author/protagonist’s love of his fathers’ bizarre, irrational, impolite behaviour caused by his mental ill health, not because of his father’s suffering but because his father’s strange actions and ideas break through the usual, mundane and acceptable. There are complex emotions. There is another movie based on his work by Wojciech Has (‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’), colourful and lively, which concentrates more on the absurd imagery of the stories, rather than the atmosphere and poetry focused on by the Quay Brothers. But as with many books, there is so much that is un-filmable. I love Bruno Schulz most when his stories cannot contain his passion and his writing bursts out into reverie. He creates a mood; a mood of receptivity. You may find the world more wonderful and deep after reading Bruno Schulz.
copusb's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
corvuscorax's review against another edition
3.75
Schulz reușește să construiască lumi ale neliniștitorului familiar, ale îngrijorării călduțe și infantile pe care nu simți nevoia să o explici și pe care nu ai ști, oricum, cum să o pui în cuvinte. Multe dintre capitole se simt ca niște povești de sine stătătoare, care reușesc aproape ca într-un colaj să creeze o lume mereu prinsă pe piciorul greșit.
Tema paternității/a rolului patern în viața copilului este executată strălucit, punând în balanță o absență dureroasă cu o prezență întreruptă și mistifiantă. Simți că ajungi să cunoști atât de bine un personaj absento-prezent, încât ai putea să îi justifici acțiunile incomprehensibile.
Sunt multe fragmente care mi-au plăcut, în ciuda traducerii pe care aș caracteriza-o, la modul generos, drept "cleioasă". Descrierile mi s-au părut excesiv de ornamentate pe alocuri, însă am scuzat unele defecte estetice ca aparținând unui "esprit de temps" care permează operele perioadei. Cred că voi vrea cândva să recitesc cartea, poate când mă simt mai așezată.
Tema paternității/a rolului patern în viața copilului este executată strălucit, punând în balanță o absență dureroasă cu o prezență întreruptă și mistifiantă. Simți că ajungi să cunoști atât de bine un personaj absento-prezent, încât ai putea să îi justifici acțiunile incomprehensibile.
Sunt multe fragmente care mi-au plăcut, în ciuda traducerii pe care aș caracteriza-o, la modul generos, drept "cleioasă". Descrierile mi s-au părut excesiv de ornamentate pe alocuri, însă am scuzat unele defecte estetice ca aparținând unui "esprit de temps" care permează operele perioadei. Cred că voi vrea cândva să recitesc cartea, poate când mă simt mai așezată.
danielad's review against another edition
3.0
This is one of the most odd, most curious books I've recently read. The two collections feature an unstable father, a maid Adela, and a few others. Schulz's metaphors are almost sickeningly ubiquitous, so much so, that is, that I too often found myself daydreaming - not, of course, that I don't usually drift off while reading, dreaming without intending, imagining alternative stories when the ones I'm reading become dull - and forgetting the plot. Not that there is much of a plot, just descriptions, metaphorical descriptions, with characters turning in and out of animals, insects, sanity, the stamp album, Schulz's sacred book featuring Franz Josef I: "I had reason to believe that the album was predestined for me. Many signs seemed to point to its holding a message and a personal commission for me. There was, for instance, the fact that no one felt himself to be the owner of the album, not even Rudolph, who acted more like its servant . . ." (153). So I would need to read the collection again in order to provide a more authoritative analysis. I don't know that I will, maybe a few stories again, here and there, perhaps. But like Jonathan Foer, I felt that "[t]he language was too heightened, the images too magical and precarious, the yearnings too dire, the sense of loss too palpable - everything was comedy or tragedy. The experience was too intense to be pleasant . . ." (ix). But this is, perhaps and as Schulz's admits, because "[there are things] that cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to lose their integrity in the frailty of realization" (ix).
With that said, I will now quote my two favourite passages:
(1) "Mother had no influence over him, but he gave a lot of respectful attention to Adela. The cleaning of his room was to him a great and important ceremony, of which he always arranged to be a witness, watching all Adela's movements with a mixture of apprehension and pleasurable excitement. He ascribed to all her functions of deeper, symbolic meaning. When, with young firm gestures, the girl pushed a long-handled broom along the floor, Father could hardly bear it. Tears would stream from his eyes, silent laughter transformed his face, and his body was shaken by spasms of delight. He was ticklish to the point of madness. It was enough for Adela to waggle her finders at him to imitate tickling, for him to rush through all the rooms in a wild panic, banging the doors after him, to fall at last on the bed in the farthest room and wriggle in convulsions of laughter, imagining the tickling which he found irresistible. Because this, Adela's power over Father was almost limitless." (20)
(2) "One day, during spring cleaning, Adela suddenly appeared in Father's bird kingdom. Stopping in the doorway, she wrung her hands at the fetid smell that filled the room, the heaps of droppings covering the floor, the tables, and the chairs. Without hesitation, she flung open the window and, with the help of a long broom, she prodded the whole mass of birds into life. A fiendish cloud of feathers and wings arose screaming, and Adela, like a furious maenad protected by the whirlwind of her thyrsus, danced the dance of destruction. My father, waving his arms in panic, tried to lift himself into the air with his feathered flock. Slowly the winged cloud thinned until at last Adela remained on the battlefield, exhausted and out of breath, along with my father, who now, adopting a worried hangdog expression, was ready to accept complete defeat." (23)
With that said, I will now quote my two favourite passages:
(1) "Mother had no influence over him, but he gave a lot of respectful attention to Adela. The cleaning of his room was to him a great and important ceremony, of which he always arranged to be a witness, watching all Adela's movements with a mixture of apprehension and pleasurable excitement. He ascribed to all her functions of deeper, symbolic meaning. When, with young firm gestures, the girl pushed a long-handled broom along the floor, Father could hardly bear it. Tears would stream from his eyes, silent laughter transformed his face, and his body was shaken by spasms of delight. He was ticklish to the point of madness. It was enough for Adela to waggle her finders at him to imitate tickling, for him to rush through all the rooms in a wild panic, banging the doors after him, to fall at last on the bed in the farthest room and wriggle in convulsions of laughter, imagining the tickling which he found irresistible. Because this, Adela's power over Father was almost limitless." (20)
(2) "One day, during spring cleaning, Adela suddenly appeared in Father's bird kingdom. Stopping in the doorway, she wrung her hands at the fetid smell that filled the room, the heaps of droppings covering the floor, the tables, and the chairs. Without hesitation, she flung open the window and, with the help of a long broom, she prodded the whole mass of birds into life. A fiendish cloud of feathers and wings arose screaming, and Adela, like a furious maenad protected by the whirlwind of her thyrsus, danced the dance of destruction. My father, waving his arms in panic, tried to lift himself into the air with his feathered flock. Slowly the winged cloud thinned until at last Adela remained on the battlefield, exhausted and out of breath, along with my father, who now, adopting a worried hangdog expression, was ready to accept complete defeat." (23)
humdrum_ts's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
ellephuonglinhnguyen's review against another edition
3.0
And then there is the matter of the highly improper manipulation of time. The shameful tricks, the penetration of time's mechanism from behind, the hazardous fingering of its wicked secrets! Sometimes one feels like banging the table and exclaiming, "Enough of this! Keep off time, time is untouchable, one must not provoke it! Isn't it enough for you to have space? Space is for human beings, you can swing about in space, turn somersaults, fall down, jump from star to star. But for goodness' sake, don't tamper with time!"
jochno's review against another edition
4.0
The most dizzyingly impressive prose I have ever read. Almost impossible to follow at times, excruciatingly beautiful!