Admired by writers of world renown, compared to Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) is one of few Polish writers to achieve international status. His reputation rests upon a relatively small output: two collections of short stories: Sklepy cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops, 1934) and Sanatorium pod klepsydrą (The Sanatorium under the Hourglass, 1937), originally translated into English by Celina Wieniewska, (1909–1985). The first collection appeared in 1963 as The Street of Crocodiles (the new translation restores the original title: Cinnamon Shops), and the second in 1977 as Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass. These have seen several reprints, some with notable introductions, including by David Goldfarb, while translations into other languages have been done from them. The new collection contains four additional stories: “Autumn,” “The Republic of Dreams,” “The Comet” and “Fatherland.” “The Comet,” appeared in Wieniewska's 1963 collection, although it did not originally form part of Cinnamon Shops. The remaining three appeared in Walter Arndt's translations in Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz with Selected Prose, edited by Jerzy Ficowski (1990).

One reason for Schulz's appeal to non-Polish readers must surely be that his work does not confront the national concerns with which much nineteenth- and twentieth-century Polish literature is concerned. Instead, Schulz recreates the private world of childhood, experienced in a provincial Jewish town on the threshold of modernity, somewhere at the eastern extremities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century; a mythologized yet universalized world, where “illegal” time and space expand, but which is simultaneously rooted in mundane material reality with all its sensuous richness. The other reason for Schulz's success can only be the recreation of this world in English by his first translator. In her Translator's Note to the new version, Madeline Levine herself acknowledges the “undeniable magic” of Wieniewska's version (2018, xiii). Many agree that Wieniewska's prose was written in an attractive English style that made Schulz's linguistic idiosyncrasies more manageable, as research on this topic by Zofia Ziemann has shown.

Given this success, the question arises: why retranslate? Retranslations, especially of a complex text like this, will necessarily be different; sensitivities and interpretations vary, so the existence of prior translations is not a reason not to retranslate. The second question: are the existing translations in some way inadequate, and can they be improved upon?

Unlike many English-speaking researchers of Polish literature, I did not come to Schulz via Wieniewska. His Polish is not an easy read: the intricacy of his sentences, abundance of subclauses, as well as numerous extended metaphors, obscure cultural references, and exotic vocabulary, are challenging; yet despite these initial barriers to understanding, a subsequent re-reading reveals the inherent rhythms of this prose, and also its quirks and humor, not always comfortable (what Levine calls his “linguistic tics and mannerisms,” xiv). Knowing the Polish text, it is difficult to detach oneself from it and imagine the impact of the new version on the uninitiated English-speaking reader. I attempt however to appreciate it from the combined perspectives of 1) a scholar, familiar with the originals, who seeks to use it either as a tool for discussing Schulz in comparative contexts or as an aid for students wrestling with his language—in both cases, “accuracy” would be the main concern; and 2) an English speaker encountering Schulz for the first time, where readability might be the priority. I have the impression, given the accessible style of the Foreword by Rivka Galchen, that this publication aims to reach a broad audience (Galchen mentions none of the substantial English-language academic research on Schulz).

A comparison between Levine's version and the originals (the edition used was the 1989 collection Opowiadania, wybór esejów i listów, edited by Jerzy Jarzębski) reveals it to be very close—both in terms of semantic meaning and of reflecting the undulations and rhythms of the style, keywords falling wherever English grammar allows on the words also emphasized in the Polish. Levine acknowledges one of her inspirations to be Robert Wechsler's claim that translation is “both a scholarly art and a form of performance.” Performance, including musical performance, is highly relevant to the current task, since Schulz often alludes to music, to distant barrel organs or tinkling pianos, and employs musical metaphors: “the raised white road meandered like a melody along a crest of broad chords” (186). Another aspect of “performance” is recitation, and the test of a good translation is to read it out loud. Again, this is relevant in Schulz's case, as he was a renowned oral storyteller and the art of storytelling is part and parcel of the structure of his written stories. The beauty of Levine's sentences becomes especially apparent on hearing them aloud, if only in the head.

Levine more closely conveys the complexities of the real Schulz. The new translations were commissioned by the Polish Book Institute precisely to address the problem that Wieniewska made significant omissions, as Michał Paweł Markowski, a Schulz scholar and advisor to Levine, has argued. The existence of different versions nevertheless foregrounds the perennial tension between readability and “faithfulness” to a writer's style. Levine's much closer version may not be so direct and slick, but it is certainly no less readable. The following passage from “Spring” highlights the typical differences:

I am disappointed by one thing. The current edition does not include Schulz's thirty original illustrations to Sanatorium under the Hourglass, which appeared in Wieniewska's 1977 edition and in subsequent reprints. But maybe there is a good explanation for this.