“the age of genius was, for bruno schulz, an age that was driven by the faith that life could be created over and over again through the power of imagination and passion and love, the faith that despair had not yet overruled any of these forces, that we had not yet been eaten away by our own cynicism and nihilism. the age of genius was for schulz a period of perfect childhood, feral and filled with light, which even if it lasted for only a brief moment in a person’s life would be missed for the rest of his years.

“‘did the age of genius ever occur?’ schulz asks, and we, his readers, ask along with him. was there ever really an age of sublime inspiration, when man could return to his childhood? when mankind could return to its childhood? an age when a primeval river of life, of vitality, of creativity, gloriously raged? an age when essences had not frozen into forms, when everything was still possible and plentiful and nascent?

“did the age of genius ever occur? schulz wonders. and if it did, would we recognize it? answer its secret call? would we dare to relinquish the elaborate defense mechanisms that we have constructed against the antediluvian wildness and volcanic abundance of such an age, defenses that have, bit by bit, become our prison?”