Welcome to The Republic of Dreams,
an online portal devoted to adapting the works of Bruno Schulz.

The use of headphones is encouraged.
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Tour / 6 minute sonic experience

Tour / 6 minute sonic experience

Welcome to The Republic of Dreams guided sonic experiences.

Repeated listening to these experiences is encouraged, as it will ensure easier access to the Republic.

Begin by making yourself comfortable, in a space where you will not be disturbed.

We recommend you wear an eye mask or turn off any lights.

If you haven’t already, close your eyes and let my voice be your guide.

Lying down, imagine a bed of thick, warm moss beneath you.

The roots and fungal networks whisper, below you.

Behind your eyelids a vast web of stars appears, etched into the cool blackness of space.

Millions upon millions of stars.

Breathe in and when you exhale, begin to slowly drift toward these stars...

Gravity has no hold on you.

As you focus on my voice, drift deeper and deeper into space.

With each exhale, relax the muscles in your face.

Relax your neck and shoulders

Relax your arms and legs

Relax your hands and feet

Back in the forest, lying in the moss, your body becomes hundreds of tiny purple butterflies.

Watch them fly away into space.

You are now entering The Republic of Dreams.

Short stay / 16 minute sonic experience

Short stay / 16 minute sonic experience

Welcome to The Republic of Dreams guided sonic experiences.

Repeated listening to these experiences is encouraged, as it will ensure easier access to the Republic.

Begin by making yourself comfortable, in a space where you will not be disturbed.

We recommend you wear an eye mask or turn off any lights.

If you haven’t already, close your eyes and let my voice be your guide.

Lying down, imagine a bed of thick, warm moss beneath you.

The roots and fungal networks whisper, below you.

Behind your eyelids a vast web of stars appears, etched into the cool blackness of space.

Millions upon millions of stars.

Breathe in and when you exhale, begin to slowly drift toward these stars...

Gravity has no hold on you.

As you focus on my voice, drift deeper and deeper into space.

With each exhale, relax the muscles in your face.

Relax your neck and shoulders

Relax your arms and legs

Relax your hands and feet

Back in the forest, lying in the moss, your body becomes hundreds of tiny purple butterflies.

Watch them fly away into space.

You are now entering The Republic of Dreams.

 “I shall never forget that luminous journey on that brightest of winter nights. The coloured map of the heavens expanded into an immense dome, on which there loomed fantastic lands, oceans and seas, marked with the lines of stellar currents and eddies, with the brilliant streaks of heavenly geography. The air became light to breathe and shimmered like silver gauze. One could smell violets. From under the white woolly lambskin of snow, trembling anemones appeared with a speck of moonlight in each delicate cup. The whole forest seemed to be illuminated by thousands of lights and by the stars falling in profusion from the December sky. The air pulsated with a secret spring, with the matchless purity of snow and violets. We entered a hilly landscape. The lines of hills, bristling with the bare spikes of trees, rose like sighs of bliss. I saw on these happy slopes groups of wanderers, gathering among the moss and the bushes the fallen stars which now were damp from snow. The road became steep, the horse began to slip on it and pulled the creaking cab only with an effort. I was happy. My lungs soaked up the blissful spring in the air, the freshness of snow and stars. Before the horse's breast the rampart of white snowy foam grew higher and higher, and it could hardly wade through that pure fresh mass. At last we stopped. I got out of the cab. The horse was panting, hanging its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in its large eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. 'Why did not you tell me?' I whispered, crying. 'My dearest, I did it for you,' the horse said and became very small, like a wooden toy. ” “Adela is completely limp, completely surrendered to the deep rhythm of sleep. She has no strength even to pull up the blanket over her bare thighs and cannot prevent the columns of bedbugs from wandering over her body. These light and thin, leaflike insects run over her so delicately that she does not feel their touch. They are flat receptacles for blood, reddish blood bags without eyes or faces, now on the march in whole clans on a migration of the species subdivided into generations and tribes. They run up from her feet in scores, a never-ending procession, they are larger now, as large as moths, flat red vampires without heads, lightweight as if cut out of paper, on legs more delicate than the web of spiders. And when the last laggard bedbugs have come and gone, with an enormous one bringing up the rear, complete silence comes at last. Deep sleep fills the empty passages and apartments, while the rooms slowly begin to absorb the greyness of the hours before dawn.”

Photograph of Bruno Schulz sitting on steps in Drohobycz, 1933-1934 from Czeskie Centrum / České centrum Praha, author unknown

Declaration of Ideas

by Mika Johnson

At present we consider the word to be merely a shadow of reality, its reflection. But the reverse would be more accurate: reality is but a shadow of the word. - Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz was a Polish writer and visual artist of Jewish descent. His work is regarded as the most dream-like literature of the 20th century.

Schulz would shed his physical body around noon, on November 19th, 1942, the same day he had planned to escape his hometown, Drohobycz, from the Nazi terror. Murdered in the streets just blocks away from where he grew up, Schulz was buried that night in a local Jewish cemetery that itself would disappear, lost under the bricks and beams of a post-war housing district. In another dimension, Bruno Schulz never died. He lives on, since by coding his memories, dreams, and identity into his work with language, Schulz transcended death. Like a Jewish Mashiach (the title of Schulz’s lost work), he now returns to us in the 21st century, intent on leading us out of the labyrinth of materialism and into the collective dream. This is possible thanks to a virtual space, manifested by Schulz in his lifetime, which now expands with each new mind that makes contact with his work. It is that space, which we call The Republic of Dreams, which this project is devoted to sharing with a wider audience.

While Bruno Schulz is the founder of The Republic, the space itself is composed of the debris of long-dead stars. It dates back to the last expansion of the Universe, the transformation of gases to matter, the emergence of stars into planets, and the manifestation of life on Earth 3.7 billion years ago. We then fast forward to symbol-using apes who evolve reflective consciousness and, later, dreams. The ancestors of this species, known as homo sapiens, form one collective, unified dream, over hundreds of thousands of years. Access to that collective dream, however, is difficult. This is why we celebrate July 12, 1892, the auspicious date of Schulz’s birth, as the opening of a portal to the collective dream, which Schulz would mold and engineer in his lifetime. Like St. Peter, who holds the keys to a Christian heaven, Schulz becomes a cosmic gatekeeper, or anointed architect as it were, to an entire Republic that remains a bridge to the world-dream.

Since entry into The Republic of Dreams can only be achieved through poetry, trance, or other dream-like states, we are launching an online Map, User Instructions, and Sonic Experiences that function as creative keys, making entry to The Republic more accessible. Nevertheless, intention is everything. The linear, day-to-day mind cannot enter, nor can the fully awake rational mind. Reason must be abandoned. Sense must become nonsense. Because of this requirement, entry is not risk-free. Our operating systems, which we call culture, provide us with answers, be they scientific, religious, or ideological. To abandon this operating system is to invite anxiety, even terror. This is why all the works on this site are intended to gently open the access points to Schulz’s Republic, and along with it the collective, unified dream.

The reward of entering Schulz’s Republic of Dreams is pure wonder. Like cartographers lost inside an exotic landscape, bodily transformations, cosmic travel, alien communication, even telepathy becomes possible, if not probable. The illusions of time and space, beginnings and endings, self and other, even the categories of life and death dissolve and are replaced by new questions. But in all cases, what we learn from our visit to Shulz’s Republic is one truth: that the world isn’t made out of atoms, quarks, or electrons. Nor is it composed of spirit. The world is made out of language, and beyond language, dreams.

Declaration of Ideas

by Mika Johnson

At present we consider the word to be merely a shadow of reality, its reflection. But the reverse would be more accurate: reality is but a shadow of the word.

- Bruno Schulz

Scan of birth registry for including Bruno Schulz on 12 July 1892

Click the links below to hear excerpts from the following short stories by Bruno Schulz.

The use of headphones is encouraged.
Headphones icon

Visitation

Visitation

“Already for some time our town had been sinking into the perpetual greyness of dusk, had become affected at the edges by a rash of shadows, by fluffy mildew, and by moss the dull colour of iron. Hardly was it freed from the brown smoke and the mists of the morning, than the day turned into a lowering amber afternoon, became for a brief moment transparent, taking the golden colour of ale, only to ascend under the multiple fantastic domes of vast, colour-filled nights. We lived on Market Square, in one of those dark houses with empty blind nooks, so difficult to distinguish one from the other. This gave endless possibilities for mistakes. For, once you had entered the wrong doorway and set foot on the wrong staircase, you were liable to find yourself in a real labyrinth of unfamiliar apartments and balconies, and unexpected doors opening on to strange empty courtyards, and you forgot the initial object of the expedition, only to recall it days later after numerous strange and complicated adventures, on regaining the family home in the grey light of dawn.”

Cinnamon Shops

Cinnamon Shops

“I shall never forget that luminous journey on that brightest of winter nights. The coloured map of the heavens expanded into an immense dome, on which there loomed fantastic lands, oceans and seas, marked with the lines of stellar currents and eddies, with the brilliant streaks of heavenly geography. The air became light to breathe and shimmered like silver gauze. One could smell violets. From under the white woolly lambskin of snow, trembling anemones appeared with a speck of moonlight in each delicate cup. The whole forest seemed to be illuminated by thousands of lights and by the stars falling in profusion from the December sky. The air pulsated with a secret spring, with the matchless purity of snow and violets. We entered a hilly landscape. The lines of hills, bristling with the bare spikes of trees, rose like sighs of bliss. I saw on these happy slopes groups of wanderers, gathering among the moss and the bushes the fallen stars which now were damp from snow. The road became steep, the horse began to slip on it and pulled the creaking cab only with an effort. I was happy. My lungs soaked up the blissful spring in the air, the freshness of snow and stars. Before the horse's breast the rampart of white snowy foam grew higher and higher, and it could hardly wade through that pure fresh mass. At last we stopped. I got out of the cab. The horse was panting, hanging its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in its large eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. 'Why did not you tell me?' I whispered, crying. 'My dearest, I did it for you,' the horse said and became very small, like a wooden toy.”

August

August

“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 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... On Saturday afternoons I used to go for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passers-by, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half closed against the glare, as if they were drenched with honey. Upper lips were drawn back, exposing the teeth. Everyone in this golden day wore that grimace of heat – as if the sun had forced his worshippers to wear identical masks of gold. The old and the young, women and children, greeted each other with these masks, painted on their faces with thick gold paint; they smiled at each other's pagan faces – the barbaric smiles of Bacchus.”

The Old Age Pensioner

The Old Age Pensioner

“On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after another, under the saws and axes of the workmen. Ah, timber, trustworthy, honest, true matter of reality, bright and completely decent, the embodiment of the decency and prose of life! However deep you look into its core, you cannot find anything that is not apparent on its evenly smiling surface, shining with that warm, assured glow of its fibrous pulp woven in a likeness of the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face appears, always smiling and golden. Oh, the strange complexion of timber, warm without exaltation, completely sound, fragrant, and pleasant!”

Eddie

Eddie

“Adela is completely limp, completely surrendered to the deep rhythm of sleep. She has no strength even to pull up the blanket over her bare thighs and cannot prevent the columns of bedbugs from wandering over her body. These light and thin, leaflike insects run over her so delicately that she does not feel their touch. They are flat receptacles for blood, reddish blood bags without eyes or faces, now on the march in whole clans on a migration of the species subdivided into generations and tribes. They run up from her feet in scores, a never-ending procession, they are larger now, as large as large as moths, flat red vampires without heads, lightweight as if cut out of paper, on legs more delicate than the web of spiders. And when the last laggard bedbugs have come and gone, with an enormous one bringing up the rear, complete silence comes at last. Deep sleep fills the empty passages and apartments, while the rooms slowly begin to absorb the greyness of the hours before dawn.”

The Street of Crocodiles

The Street of Crocodiles

“There are trams here. In them the ambition of the city councilors has achieved its greatest triumph. The appearance of these trams, though, is pitiful, for they are made of papier-mache with warped sides dented from the misuse of many years. They often have no fronts, so that in passing one can see the passengers, sitting stiffly and behaving with great decorum. These trams are pushed by the town porters. The strangest thing of all is, however, the railway system in the Street of Crocodiles. Occasionally, at different times of day toward the end of the week, one can see groups of people waiting at a crossroads for a train. One is never sure whether the train will come at all or where it will stop if it does. It often happens, therefore, that people wait in two different places, unable to agree where the stop is. They wait for a long time standing in a black, silent bunch alongside the barely visible lines of the track, their faces in profile: a row of pale cutout paper figures, fixed in an expression of anxious peering. At last the train suddenly appears: one can see it coming from the expected side street, low like a snake, a miniature train with a squat puffing locomotive. It enters the black corridor, and the street darkens from the coal dust scattered by the line of carriages. The heavy breathing of the engine and the wave of a strange sad seriousness, the suppressed hurry and excitement transform the street for a moment into the hall of a railway station in the quickly falling winter dusk. A black market in railway tickets and bribery in general are the special plagues of our city. At the last moment, when the train is already in the station, negotiations are conducted in nervous haste with corrupt railway officials. Before these are completed, the train starts, followed slowly by a crowd of disappointed passengers who accompany it a long way down the line before finally dispersing.”

All texts translated by Celina Wieniewska 
Permission granted by Bloomsbury Publishing

Photograph of market halls on Styrska Street in Drohobycz seen from Market Square. On the building there is a sign of the Merchant Credit Cooperative. The camera is positioned in the street. A few people are looking at the camera from the sidewalk. 1918-1939, author unknown

Explore the map of the Republic

Photograph of fireman descending from a building on a zipline for the fire defense propaganda week, organized by the district branch of the Lviv Association of Fire Brigades of the Republic of Poland, there is a full crowd of onlookers behind him, 1935 by Adam Jankowski