The Street Of Crocodiles

3 Pages 719 Words

In The Street of Crocodiles, Bruno Schulz uses the literary technique of Expressionism to produce in his readers a variety of images and emotions which would not be generated through realistic descriptions alone. Using definitions of Expressionism obtained from Web Museum (www.ibiblio.org) and from encyclopedia.com, it is easy to see the use of this technique in Schulz’s writing. The two paragraphs best illustrating the meaning of Expressionism in The Street of Crocodiles are Schulz’s description of a vase of peacock’s feathers in the story “Cockroaches” (112) and his description of dusk from “The Night of the Great Season” (129). In these paragraphs, Schulz uses expressionistic words, ideas, and images to impart to the reader the subjective aspects present in his own personal reality.
In “Cockroaches”, Schulz’s description of a sheaf of peacock’s feathers as a “dangerous, frivolous element” (112) sets the paragraph up for its expressionist theme. Schulz is creating his own image of the feathers rather than attempting to describe them realistically. Schulz personifies the feathers in order to “achieve the highest expression intensity, both from the aesthetic point of view and according to idea and human critics” (Web Museum): “The eyes of those feathers never stopped staring; they made holes in the walls, winking, fluttering their eyelashes, smiling to one another, giggling and full of mirth” (112). This depiction exemplifies Schulz’s intention to “depict not objective reality but the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist” (Web Museum). Schulz’s feathers, which “peeped through the keyholes” and spoke “to each other in a deaf-and-dumb language full of secret meaning” (113) illustrate his expressionist goal of substituting for the real object “his own image of this object, which he feels is an accurate representation of its real meanin...