Schulz w Paryżu

The text includes a possibly complete reconstruction of 27 days spent by Schulz in Paris in 1938. The reconstruction provides the basis of a theoretical commentary which compares the advantages and traps of narrativized biographical discourses on Schulz with the order of the calendar. All that is known about Schulz in Paris has been found in about a dozen documents and several dozens of references in his correspondence, which is not too bad for a biography of a “writer without archive.” The documentation of other episodes of his life is much scarcer. We know when and where he stayed in Paris, sometimes even his hotel room number. However, of the 27 days spent by Schulz in Paris only about one third can be reconstructed in fragments. All the rest remains nebulous and impenetrable. Schulz often disappears into thin air and in fact we do not know what he was doing all days long. He neither talked nor wrote about it much. The opinions and remarks which he formulated, e.g., that Paris is a „riotous Babylon,” were quickly picked up by his exegetes and reconstructors of his biography. The surviving documents set boundaries which – while the reconstruction of episodes is still at stake – can be crossed only by conjectures and speculation. There is nothing wrong in these risky procedures. They are not bad as such, but those who move too far from the documents letter can be easily led astray. Not that everything is legitimate – in the world without the god of biography some rules are still valid. Conjectures and speculation must not reach beyond the „material truth.”