Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Sklepy cynamonowe
    Sklepy cynamonowe
    Sklepy cynamonowe
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Sklepy cynamonowe

    By Bruno Schulz

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageJęzyk polski
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1977
    Author

    Bruno Schulz

    Bruno Schulz was a Polish Jewish writer and artist who has influenced writers including Salman Rushdie, Roberto Bolaño, David Grossman and Cynthia Ozick. He was born and lived most of his life in the town of Drohobych, once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then Poland, and now part of Ukraine. He published two collections of short stories - Cinnamon Shops and The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass - during his lifetime. Schulz was shot and killed by a German SS officer in Drohobych in 1942. His unfinished novel, The Messiah, was lost in the Holocaust.

    Read more from Bruno Schulz

    Related to Sklepy cynamonowe

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Reviews for Sklepy cynamonowe

    4/5

    270 ratings23 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Zawsze był dla mnie ucieczką od nudy, szarości.
    • 5/5
      This book was first published, in Polish, in 1934. It began as a series of letters from the reclusive Schulz to a friend, Deborah Vogel. Only two books by Schultz were published before he was murdered by the Gestapo in 1942. His novel, The Messiah, and his unpublished writings were lost.Schulz's descriptions are like paintings, but more, because the objects are active and sounds, movement and colours all play a part."The dark second-floor apartment of the house in Market Square was shot through each day by the naked heat of summer: the silence of the shimmering streaks of air, the squares of brightness dreaming their intense dreams on the floor; the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of a day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon."It's impossible to classify this book. It is a comic memoir with Schulz as the young narrator and his eccentric father as the main character. It is a fantasy of the end of the world, an elegy to the death of a Galician town and its way of life. In parts it makes no sense, but if you let the words wash over you, there is meaning all the same.I really enjoyed this book, though it is not at all the sort of thing I usually read. I got lost, and had to re-read many paragraphs and pages, but because the book is so short there is no rush to reach the end.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.

      This was like looking at one long autumn oil painting in minute detail, inch by inch, as it passes very slowly before your eyes at the same time the sounds and smells of autumn drift in through an open window.

      Reading this book clearly brought to mind the many other books that I have read that have tried to do this but failed disappointingly without me ever realising or knowing that there was one book that had managed to pull off this seemingly impossible feat of a physical sense of beauty being manifested by words.
    • 3/5
      Weird and probably wonderful. The translation was so overstuffed with adjectives that it felt overwritten although the original intention may well have been a heightened and overwrought reality. Denser and harder to read than I had anticipated, this was unsettling but not in a creepy way.
    • 3/5
      This less anovel than a collection of oddities, a freakish notebook of squirming detail. There was an association to be made between Schulz's "father" in the novel and the Father in Kafka's The Judgement.
    • 4/5
      Unhappy Philosopher: "The Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schulz(Original Review, 1981-05-30)Why do I read? To learn, to experience worlds, emotions, interactions that I don't experience in my reality, to think, to be, to become.If not for Huxley - recommended by an English teacher at school - I'd have remained a working class racist, sexist homophobe, would never have smoked haxixe, gone on to study philosophy, met my children's mother, have had wonderful kids or stepped out of a culture of impoverished imagination.I might have been 'a happy pig' rather than an "unhappy philosopher," (to paraphrase Plato) it's true, but it's been a richer life for it. Reading still throws utterly unexpected poetry and beauty at me, as with some of the lines from 'Street of Crocodiles' by Bruno Schulz, which is a wonderful if not easy read. It really is risible to see a bunch of non-Polish speakers bemoaning a translation because, well, it makes for difficult English! Well, trying reading Schulz in Polish as that’s same friend who speaks Polish told me - it ain't easy, either, for a Polish speaker! His prose is frequently florid, too much, heavy, creaking but then bursts into levity and flight, that is the joy and surprise of his work - transformation, not only within the scenes, but within the writing itself (the same can be applied to Saramago…). And I also despair of critics and readers (and this happens in book reviews every week) who comment on the quality of a translation without having a working knowledge of both languages. The problem is that when reviewing work in translation it's considered polite to comment on the translator, and if you've enjoyed the book it naturally follows that you'll want to compliment the translator on the job they've done. It's a bit of a nonsense, but it's usually born of good intentions as opposed to wanting to make people believe you spend your spare time reading Chekhov and Proust in the original. [2018 EDIT: That's why I only do it when I've read the original which invariably only happens when the language to and from involves Portuguese, English, Spanish or German.]I read because it's in the blood. There is no greater love (or as a friend of mine usually says: "To avoid eye contact with that creepy guy on the subway.").
    • 4/5
      This one started off very well with spectactularly rich prose full of well chosen baroque metaphores. About halfway it tended to become repetitious and the stories were without plot, becoming a type of style excercises and giving the impression of paintings in words (the author is a famous painter). In all a discovery, to be read with pauses in between.
    • 3/5
      This is a collection of stories about the narrator's childhood. The stories revolve primarily around his father, mother and housekeeper. The thing that struck me immediately while reading these was how exquisite the author's prose was, but like a really rich desert it became, for me too much without enough substance. The stories get quite fantastical and I often found myself rereading for clarity. I tend not to be a fan of short stories because I don't get enough character development in them. I am always left with a feeling of needing more information and these stories were no exception.
    • 4/5
      Polen, en lille by, 1900 og nogle år fremIndeholder "August", "Hjemsøgelse", "Fuglene", "Mannequinerne", "Fortsættelse", "Afslutning", "Nemrod", "Pan", "Herr Karol", "Kanelbutikkerne", "Krokodillegaden", "Kakerlakkerne", "Stormen", "En nat i højsæsonen"."August" handler om ???"Hjemsøgelse" handler om ???"Fuglene" handler om ???"Mannequinerne" handler om ???"Fortsættelse" handler om ???"Afslutning" handler om ???"Nemrod" handler om ???"Pan" handler om ???"Herr Karol" handler om ???"Kanelbutikkerne" handler om ???"Krokodillegaden" handler om ???"Kakerlakkerne" handler om ???"Stormen" handler om ???"En nat i højsæsonen" handler om ???Jeg er ikke helt sikker på at indholdsfortegnelsen er rigtig, for der er flere udgaver
    • 3/5
      Novels where authors put their childhood on paper usually have no plot nor resolution, and the characters are oftentimes just the archetypes of family members, as shown through the interpretive lenses of those authors. As such I usually judge such stories based on two criteria- the quality of the prose and the degree to which it evokes real childhood.

      As to the prose, the language used to describe Schulz's childhood life is beautiful at times, but often crosses the line into prolixity. I don't plan on trying Schulz's other surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, because getting through a work twice as long as this one with this amount of verbiage sounds like it would be a chore and not a pleasure. That being said, I can see why someone would love this writing. "Dreamlike" can be used to describe something as formless and indistinct, a world of fuzzy edges and uncertain features, or it can be used to describe a world of heightened characteristics, where the colors are brighter and the shadows are darker, where everything is exaggerated. The Street of Crocodiles is the latter kind of dreamlike. As the book itself states, "our language has no definitions which would weigh, so to speak, the grade of reality, or define its suppleness." If you're interested in writing and setting that reflects a more supple degree of reality then I bet you'd enjoy this book. For my part, I found the writing to lack the substance other writers have imparted on narratives of this sort. Reading Proust I had to pause periodically because the writing there was so rich, I had to mull over the images he painted. Here I had to pause periodically because the writing was tiring. Despite the beauty it sometimes achieves the writing here was just not my cup of tea.

      This leaves the second prong of my analysis, how much the book evoked childhood. I tend to think of childhood as typified by naïveté (not innocence), which is almost diametrically opposed to how Schulz saw his childhood, which is rife with paranoia and insight into the nature of things usually not obtained until older. Perhaps this accurately evoked Schulz's childhood, but it didn't evoke mine.

      I have seen many people describe this book as one of their favorites, and that doesn't surprise me, but it isn't a position I share. I suspect its most lasting effect on me will be encouraging me to dive back into In Search of Lost Time.
    • 1/5
      I hate to abandon this with so many good reviews, but the writing was overly ornate to the point of distraction.
    • 2/5
      I really, really wanted to like this book. Schulz's use of language is amazing, especially in the first section. Ultimately, however, it just felt too surreal to me. It's entirely possible that the fact it's taken me almost a year to finish the (very slim) book is responsible for this, at least in part. I kind of want to re-read it, but also I kind of don't.
    • 5/5
      This is possibly the strangest novel I have ever completed. I could no more summarize the plot than I could fly to the moon (as my mother used to say). At times it verges on word salad but once I got comfortable with Schulz' cadence and style, I got swept up in this exuberant, wild celebration of metaphor, anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, personification, paralipsis, allegory, allusion, and the magic of language. For example, I adore this description of the emergence of the bicycle: "It was not long before the city filled with velocipedes of various sizes and shapes. An outlook based on philosophy became obligatory. Whoever admitted to a belief in progress had to draw the logical conclusion and ride a velocipede. The first to do so were of course the lawyers' apprentices, that vanguard of new ideas, with their waxed mustaches and their bowler hats, the hope and flower of youth. Pushing through the noisy mob, they rode through the traffic on enormous bicycles and tricycles which displayed their wire spokes. Placing their hands on wide handlebars, they maneuvered from the high saddle the enormous hoop of the wheel and cut into the amused mob in a wavy line. Some of them succumbed to apostolic zeal. Lifting themselves on their moving pedals, as if on stirrups, they addressed the crowd from on high, forecasting a new happy era for mankind -- salvation through the bicycle ... And they rode on amid the applause of the public, bowing in all directions."Trust me, this is not a novel about bicycles, nor is it a novel about lawyers' apprentices, nor is it about mobs. It's about culture and the passage of time. Or something like that. But Schulz' brief tangent made me laugh out loud and fold down the corner of the page for safekeeping. The novel is, at its most basic level, about the narrator's manic-depressive father and his wild, delusional schemes. The impact on the narrator is clearly disorienting, and to say that in this novel the line between madness and reality is blurred would be a vast understatement.Schulz uses metaphor with remarkable inventiveness. Describing Mr. Charles' nightly descent into bed after "...the pressure of the hot empty days": "Groping blindly in the darkness, he sank between the white mounds of cool feathers and slept as he fell, across the bed or with his head downward, pushing deep into the softness of the pillows, as if in sleep he wanted to drill through, to explore completely, that powerful massif of feather bedding rising out of the night. He fought in his sleep against the bed like a bather swimming against the current, he kneaded it and molded it with his body like an enormous bowl of dough, and woke up at dawn panting, covered with sweat, thrown up on the shores of that pile of bedding which he could not master in the nightly struggle. Half-landed from the depths of unconsciousness, he still hung on to the verge of night, gasping for breath, while the bedding grew around him, swelled and fermented -- and again engulfed him in a mountain of heavy, whitish dough."Now *that* is some restless sleep! This is a work to be savored, perhaps to be read aloud. At the risk of unparalleled gaucheness, as Nick so eloquently stated in the 1983 Hollywood film, "The Big Chill," don't be too analytical. "Sometimes you just have to let art ... flow ... over you." Or, probably more appropriately, I'll quote Schulz, himself:"...truth is not a decisive factor for the success of an idea. Our metaphysical hunger is limited and can be satisfied quickly."Indeed.
    • 3/5
      Zeer vreemde leeservaring... Proust schoot door mijn hoofd, neen Kafka, of neen, zelfs eerder Maurice Gilliams, en zelfs een beetje Joseph Roth (Job). En toch heeft deze Poolse jood (door een SS-er in 1942 door het hoofd geschoten) een heel eigen stem. De aanbeveling van Kamiel Vanhole (in De Spoorzoeker) was een gouden tip. Deze Kaneelwinkels bevatten een vijftiental korte impressies, pareltjes van het leven in een onbestemde stad, met een vaderfiguur die verschillende gedaanten aanneemt, een bijwijlen zeer concrete dan weer echt fantaisistische wereld. Nog het meest doet Schulz me aan de 19de eeuwse symbolisten denken, en in het essay "la mythification de la réalité" bevestigt hij dat: "De realiteit is de schaduw van het woord, niet andersom"
    • 3/5
      So maybe my expectations were too high, because I read Schulz's name often in the same sentence as Robert Walser's.So I was disappointed, even though this book isn't bad by any means.But I felt like it just never quite measured up.All the reviews keep saying how the language is rich and full. I agree that there is a LOT of language going on here, but I feel like there is a little too much, and that the language hasn't been properly honed or paid full attention to. Almost like eating 10 desserts in one meal, this writing seems bloated and unfocused. A writer like Proust may jam a lot of words into his sentences, but you felt like every word mattered. Here, I just don't get that feeling. The words often seem to say the same thing over and over again. I do realize that this could be a problem with the translation, but since I don't read Polish, I can't really say for sure.And while some of these episodes were pleasantly creative, overall this book just didn't blow me away. It certainly never reaches Walserian heights, at least for me. Speaking of which, Walser uses really simple language. Maybe the comparison with Walser has more to do with a child-like quality of both writers. But there is something charming and wonderful in Walser that I don't detect here. I think Bruno Schulz may write ABOUT childhood, but he doesn't infuse his writing WITH it, with that quality of pure delight; instead his reminiscences often feel melancholic and from a place of much reflection. Nothing wrong with that, except I wish people wouldn't put these two names together in sentences, since they feel completely different to me!
    • 5/5
      Exquisite stories of events in the petit bourgoise household of a manic scientist in a prosaic world with magical possibilities. It is hauntingly witty; each time I read it I find a small sad smile on my lips.
    • 5/5
      Some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever experienced is in the short little fiction of Bruno Schulz. Every time I read this book I get a feeling of sadness, I’m not sure if it’s because of the power of his writing or if it’s the thought of him lying dead in the Ghetto after being shot by a vengeful Nazi officer. He left us to soon, if only we had his lost work.
    • 4/5
      The narrator's dad is pretty much crazy. He conducts strange science experiments, collects and hatches a lot of birds, climbs into strange spots around the house, and has a "Metamorphosis" moment of turning into a cockroach. Schulz is a very youthful-feeling and imaginative storyteller. I happened to really like one section that dealt with extra half-formed months, as if time could grow small appendages. An odd little book...but one that you can't help smile at..
    • 3/5
      This book is extremely well written; particularly striking are the author's use of color and sound, as well as the chapters dealing with the father's many manias. With that said, I often got bogged down by so many consecutive paragraphs of description, however beautiful they were--I could see things wonderfully in the world Schulz has created, but I didn't understand much of anything that was going on in terms of plot.
    • 4/5
      Strange, episodic story cycle of life in a gloomy Eastern European city (Drogobych), which is overstuffed with decaying marvels, cryptic artifacts, and just plain trash. (Same goes for the protagonist's home, which seems both cramped and weirdly infinite.) The book is populated by colorful / quirky / mad characters, most centrally the protagonist's father, who obsesses first over raising exotic birds and then later, over developing a quasi-Gnostic theory about tailor's dummies as a form of imprisoned matter. Uniquely European high weirdness, likely to be enjoyed by fans of Calvino's "Invisible Cities" or Kafka's parables.
    • 5/5
      Read Bruno Schulz! His entire output is two books in English, padded out with his drawings. He was brilliant and inspiring, a teacher, artist, man of culture and a wastrel. He was murdered by the Gestapo (who had until then been protecting him) in Warsaw, shot dead in the street.
    • 5/5
      A slim volume of short stories by a Jewish Pole, a writer and an artist, who was protected by one Nazi officer and then murdered by a rival Nazi officer, during the German occupation. I last read this book 25 years ago and found it as strange and compelling this time round.The setting is small-town Poland before the second world war. The town is dull and bourgeois, the stories are about a family of shopkeepers who live above the shop in a rambling old building, with lodgers, shop assistants and domestics. The narrator is, we assume, a young man of the family relating stories that are set in the recent past. The Father dies, or is transmuted, in many of the stories. He becomes, variously, a stuffed condor, a live condor, and a cockroach; he disappears in a gale, he gives lectures on form and matter to the staff, and breeds vultures from mail order eggs. The counterweight to the Father is Adele, the young housekeeper, and the only person who can restrain the father's excesses. The town itself is a character, its quarters and buildings have personalities and undergo their own transmutations. Schulz is an extraordinary writer, like a Kafkaesque miniaturist, but almost entirely neglected and mostly out of print. I've managed to get hold of his other volume of stories, on eBay, I've never read it, and I'm looking forward to it greatly.
    • 5/5
      Unmatched prose styling. Exceptionally beautiful writing. Truly marvelous.It's a shame there isn't a plot. Nonetheless this is worth your time.

    Book preview

    Sklepy cynamonowe - Bruno Schulz

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sklepy cynamonowe, by Bruno Schulz

    Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.

    This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission.

    Please read the legal small print, and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.

    **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

    **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

    *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****

    Title: Sklepy cynamonowe

    Author: Bruno Schulz

    Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8119] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 16, 2003]

    Edition: 10

    Language: Polish

    Character set encoding: Codepage 1250

    *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKLEPY CYNAMONOWE ***

    Produced by Pawel Sobkowiak—Scanned and proofread by Polska Biblioteka Internetowa

    BRUNO SCHULZ SKLEPY CYNAMONOWE

    Spis tresci:

    SIERPIEŃ NAWIEDZENIE PTAKI MANEKINY TRAKTAT O MANEKINACH ALBO WTÓRA

    KSIĘGA RODZAJU TRAKTAT O MANEKINACH Ciąg dalszy TRAKTAT O MANEKINACH

    Dokończenie NEMROD PAN PAN KAROL SKLEPY CYNAMONOWE ULICA KROKODYLI

    KARAKONY WICHURA NOC WIELKIEGO SEZONU

    SIERPIEŃ

    1 W lipcu ojciec mój wyjeżdżał do wód i zostawiał mnie z matką i starszym bratem na pastwę białych od żaru i oszołamiających dni letnich. Wertowaliśmy, odurzeni światłem, w tej wielkiej księdze wakacji, której wszystkie karty pałały od blasku i miały na dnie słodki do omdlenia miąższ złotych gruszek. Adela wracała w świetliste poranki, jak Pomona z ognia dnia rozżagwionego, wysypując z koszyka barwną urodę słońca— lśniące, pełne wody pod przejrzystą skórką czereśnie, tajemnicze, czarne wiśnie, których woń przekraczała to, co ziszczało się w smaku; morele, w których miąższu złotym był rdzeń długich popołudni; a obok tej czystej poezji owoców wyładowywała nabrzmiałe siłą i pożywnością płaty mięsa z klawiaturą żeber cielęcych, wodorosty jarzyn, niby zabite głowonogi i meduzy—surowy materiał obiadu o smaku jeszcze nie uformowanym i jałowym, wegetatywne i telluryczne ingrediencje obiadu o zapachu dzikim i polnym. Przez ciemne mieszkanie na pierwszym piętrze kamienicy w rynku przechodziło co dzień na wskroś całe wielkie lato: cisza drgających słojów powietrznych, kwadraty blasku śniące żarliwy swój sen na podłodze; melodia katarynki, dobyta z najgłębszej złotej żyły dnia; dwa, trzy takty refrenu, granego gdzieś na fortepianie, wciąż na nowo, mdlejące w słońcu na białych trotuarach, zagubione w ogniu dnia głębokiego. Po sprzątaniu Adela zapuszczała cień na pokoje, zasuwając płócienne story. Wtedy barwy schodziły o oktawę głębiej, pokój napełniał się cieniem, jakby pogrążony w światło głębi morskiej, jeszcze mętniej odbity w zielonych zwierciadłach, a cały upał dnia oddychał na storach, lekko falujących od marzeń południowej godziny. W sobotnie popołudnia wychodziłem z matką na spacer. Z półmroku sieni wstępowało się od razu w słoneczną kąpiel dnia. Przechodnie, brodząc w złocie, mieli oczy zmrużone od żaru, jakby zalepione miodem, a podciągnięta górna warga odsłaniała im dziąsła i zęby. I wszyscy brodzący w tym dniu złocistym mieli ów grymas skwaru, jak gdyby słońce nałożyło swym wyznawcom jedną i tę samą maskę—złotą maskę bractwa słonecznego; i wszyscy, którzy szli dziś ulicami, spotykali się, mijali, starcy i młodzi, dzieci i kobiety, pozdrawiali się w przejściu tą maską, namalowaną grubą, złotą farbą na twarzy, szczerzyli do siebie ten grymas bakchiczny—barbarzyńską maskę kultu pogańskiego. Rynek był pusty i żółty od żaru, wymieciony z kurzu gorącymi wiatrami, jak biblijna pustynia. Cierniste akacje, wyrosłe z pustki żółtego placu, kipiały nad nim jasnym listowiem, bukietami szlachetnie uczłonkowanych filigranów zielonych, jak drzewa na starych gobelinach. Zdawało się, że te drzewa afektują wicher, wzburzając teatralnie swe korony, ażeby w patetycznych przegięciach ukazać wytwomość wachlarzy listnych o srebrzystym podbrzuszu, jak futra szlachetnych lisic. Stare domy, polerowane wiatrami wielu dni, zabawiały się refleksami wielkiej atmosfery, echami, wspomnieniami barw, rozproszonymi w głębi kolorowej pogody. Zdawało się, że całe generacje dni letnich (jak cierpliwi sztukatorzy, obijający stare fasady z pleśni tynku) obtłukiwały kłamliwą glazurę, wydobywając z dnia na dzień wyraźniej prawdziwe oblicze domów, fizjonomię losu i życia, które formowało je od wewnątrz. Teraz okna, oślepione blaskiem pustego placu, spały; balkony wyznawały niebu swą pustkę; otwarte sienie pachniały chłodem i winem. Kupka obdartusów, ocalała w kącie rynku przed płomienną miotłą upału, oblegała kawałek muru, doświadczając go wciąż na nowo rzutami guzików i monet, jak gdyby z horoskopu tych metalowych krążków odczytać można było prawdziwą tajemnicę muru, porysowanego hieroglifami rys i pęknięć. Zresztą rynek był pusty. Oczekiwało się, że przed tę sień sklepioną z beczkami winiarza podjedzie w cieniu chwiejących się akacyj osiołek Samarytanina, prowadzony za uzdę, a dwóch pachołków zwlecze troskliwie chorego męża z rozpalonego siodła, ażeby go po chłodnych schodach wnieść ostrożnie na pachnące szabasem piętro. Tak wędrowaliśmy z matką przez dwie słoneczne strony rynku, wodząc nasze załamane cienie po wszystkich domach, jak po klawiszach. Kwadraty bruku mijały powoli pod naszymi miękkimi i płaskimi krokami—jedne bladoróżowe jak skóra ludzka, inne złote i sine, wszystkie płaskie, ciepłe, aksamitne na słońcu, jak jakieś twarze słoneczne, zadeptane stopami aż do niepoznaki, do błogiej nicości. Aż wreszcie na rogu ulicy Stryjskiej weszliśmy w cień apteki. Wielka bania z sokiem malinowym w szerokim oknie aptecznym symbolizowała chłód balsamów, którym każde cierpienie mogło się tam ukoić. I po paru jeszcze domach ulica nie mogła już utrzymać nadal decorum miasta, jak chłop, który wracając do wsi rodzimej, rozdziewa się po drodze z miejskiej swej elegancji, zamieniając się powoli, w miarę zbliżania do wsi, w obdartusa wiejskiego. Przedmiejskie domki tonęły wraz z oknami, zapadnięte w bujnym i zagmatwanym kwitnieniu małych ogródków. Zapomniane przez wielki dzień, pleniły się bujnie i cicho wszelkie ziela, kwiaty i chwasty, rade z tej pauzy, którą prześnić mogły za marginesem czasu, na rubieżach nieskończonego dnia. Ogromny słonecznik, wydźwignięty na potężnej łodydze i chory na elephantiasis, czekał w żółtej żałobie ostatnich, smutnych dni żywota, uginając się pod przerostem potwornej korpulencji. Ale naiwne przedmiejskie dzwonki i perkalikowe, niewybredne kwiatuszki stały bezradne w swych nakrochmalonych, różowych i białych koszulkach, bez zrozumienia dla wielkiej tragedii słonecznika.

    2 Splątany gąszcz traw, chwastów, zielska i bodiaków buzuje w ogniu popołudnia. Huczy rojowiskiem much popołudniowa drzemka ogrodu. Złote ściernisko krzyczy w słońcu, jak ruda szarańcza; w rzęsistym deszczu ognia wrzeszczą świerszcze; strąki nasion eksplodują cicho, jak koniki polne. A ku parkanowi kożuch traw podnosi się wypukłym garbem-pagórem, jak gdyby ogród obrócił się we śnie na drugą stronę i grube jego, chłopskie bary oddychają ciszą ziemi. Na tych barach ogrodu niechlujna, babska bujność sierpnia wyolbrzymiała w głuche zapadliska ogromnych łopuchów, rozpanoszyła się płatami włochatych blach listnych, wybujałymi ozorami mięsistej zieleni. Tam te wyłupiaste pałuby łopuchów wybałuszyły się jak babska szeroko rozsiadłe, na wpół pożarte przez własne oszalałe spódnice. Tam sprzedawał ogród za darmo najtańsze krupy dzikiego bzu, śmierdzącą mydłem, grubą kaszę babek, dziką okowitę mięty i wszelką najgorszą tandetę sierpniową. Ale po drugiej stronie parkanu, za tym matecznikiem lata, w którym rozrosła się głupota zidiociałych chwastów, było śmietnisko zarosło dziko bodiakiem. Nikt nie wiedział, że tam właśnie odprawiał sierpień tego lata swoją wielką pogańską orgię. Na tym śmietnisku, oparte o parkan i zarośnięte dzikim bzem, stało łóżko skretyniałej dziewczyny Tłui. Tak nazywaliśmy ją wszyscy. Na kupie śmieci i odpadków, starych garnków, pantofli, rumowiska i gruzu stało zielono pomalowane łóżko, podparte zamiast brakującej nogi dwiema starymi cegłami. Powietrze nad tym rumowiskiem, zdziczałe od żaru, cięte błyskawicami lśniących much końskich, rozwścieczonych słońcem, trzeszczało jak od nie widzianych grzechotek, podniecając do szału. Tłuja siedzi przykucnięta wśród żółtej pościeli i szmat. Wielka jej głowa jeży się wiechciem czarnych włosów. Twarz jej jest kurczliwa jak miech harmonii. Co chwila grymas płaczu składa tę harmonię w tysiąc poprzecznych fałd, a zdziwienie rozciąga ją z powrotem, wygładza fałdy, odsłania szparki drobnych oczu i wilgotne dziąsła z żółtymi zębami pod ryjowatą, mięsistą wargą. Mijają godziny pełne żaru i nudy,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1