Writing in the Dark Essays on Literature and Politics
Literature was a means of escape for him and later a means of earning a living. In some of these essays his early love of literature is portrayed. This is exemplified in the story of Bruno Schulz. This early 20th century writer produced works of huge originality. He argued that daily life was but a series of legendary episodes, fragments of a mythology. Human language was a primeval snake cut into a thousand pieces which subsequently seek each other out as a means to unify meaning and being.
Grossman echoes Schulz’s writing in this yearning for wholeness. He argues, too, that Israel yearns for it, being a state of bits and pieces. Schulz’s end was horrific, casually shot in the head by a Gestapo officer in the Ukraine town of Drohobcyz.
