Bruno Schulz was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. He was born in Drohobych, a town located in western Ukraine, not far from the city of Lvov. He spent nearly his entire life there and was generally unwilling to travel. His voyages outside of his native city were sporadic and brief. He viewed Drohobych to be the center of the world and was an acute observer of life there. His writings and his art are saturated with the realities of Drohobych and his stories are full of descriptions of the town's main streets and landmarks, as well as with portraits of its inhabitants.
The Street of Crocodiles, which inspired the much-applauded 1986 puppet animation short by the Quay Brothers, tells of various episodes in the life of a merchant family in a small Galician town. The stories are said to be inspired by Schulz's own childhood and upbringing, however Schulz uses metaphor and colourful language to blur the line between life and death, the real and the imaginary. The book follows a main character, Jacob, as he descends into madness throughout the story. Schulz uses extremely detailed imagery to disorient and confuse readers in a way that keeps them stuck to every page.
Jacob becomes completely isolated from reality and the world. In “Visitation,” the narrator recalls that “we did not count him as one of us anymore, so very remote had he become from everything that was human and real” (p. 17). In “Cinnamon Shops,” the narrator says his father “was already lost, sold and surrendered to the other sphere” (p. 53). The narrator tells us that he now understands his father as a “lonely hero who alone had waged war against the fathomless, elemental boredom that strangled the city” (p. 25). Jacob isolates himself from his family in order to save them, or so he believes anyway.
The Street of Crocodiles is a dark, whimsical yet somewhat autobiographical collection of stories sure to keep readers engaged in each twisting, confusing story. Schulz’s ability to so seamlessly blur the line between reality and fantasy is still revered today and is not often able to be replicated with any vague resemblance.
For my Street of Crocodiles Site, I knew I wanted dark colours to fit the eerie tone of the stories told by Schulz. I also wanted to include some shades of green, despite the theme of crocodiles not being a literal one. I had a look on Coolors.co and found this palette:
I originally intended the background of the site to be the darkest green shade in the palette, but instead went for more of a subtly-green-toned black with brighter green accents to really lean into the eeriness of the stories.