Czy należy spalić Schulza? Likwidatorzy: Wyka i Napierski

The author considers the circumstances in which Kazimierz Wyka and Stefan Napierski, two respected literary critics, published texts which criticized Bruno Schulz in the monthly magazine Ateneum (1939, no. 1). Schulz’s prose works were already widely known to be difficult, but there was no doubt as to their merit. The writer’s high position seemed indisputable, and yet Wyka and Napierski still consciously tried to destroy Schulz’s legacy. Their critical attack on Schulz is interpreted in the essay not as an isolated exploit, but as a model case of interpretational misunderstanding, which is not so much the effect of a lack of understanding, but of planned action and ill will of the critics. Wyka and Napierski did not want to understand, and with their dislike of the type of prose that Schulz wrote they programmed a certain type of reading and critical approach, which had many followers and determined reception. At the same time, however, their dismissal of Schulz turned out to have a positive value ‒ not for the history of criticism, but for Schulz studies as such.