Anthologist-Preface: Aljaž Koprivnikar
Translation: Stergia Kavvalou
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Emma Kausc, Zuzana Lazarová, Ondřej Macl, Bernardeta Babáková, Natálie Paterová, Martin Poch, Jan Škrob, Tomáš Čada, Marie Feryna, Ondřej Hanus
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Czech literature is on the rise today, as can be seen already from the scope of its creative base – a great number of literary festivals (Tabook, Microfestival, Prague Writers’ Festival, Orten’s Kutná Hora, Days of Poetry…), magazines (Tvar, Host, Souvislosti, Psí víno, A2, H_aluze, Pandora, Revue Protimluv, Revolver Revue, Plav…), publishing houses (Fra, Perplex, Dauphin, Dybbuk, Host, Akropolis, Torst, Wales…), literary awards for poetry (State Prize for Literature, the Jiří Orten Award and the Magnesia Litera for Poetry…) and a well organized library system, which contributes significantly to the sales of published books as well as a constant promotion of reading culture. If we account also for the branched network of literary cafes (Fra, Literární kavárna Řetězová, Božská Lahvice, Tynska Literarni Kavarna in Prague, Skleněná louka in Brno, the Les absinth club in Ostrava…), poetry competitions (Orten’s Kutná Hora, Václav Hrabět’s Hořovice, the Vladimír Vokolek Literary Award, the František Halas Literary Award in Kunštát…), innovative poetry projects (The Poetry Jukebox, Project Prague…) taking place all over the country, as well as the growing presence of poetry online (to only mention the three best known web pages – www.pismak.cz, www.totem.cz and www.poetizer.com) and in the public life, there seems to be a constant interest in poetry, with the audience having access to extremely lively and diverse writings.
Even though the Czech Republic counts as one of the smaller European literatures and is a small book market by the number of its readers, it has historically been supplying world literature with great names in poetry, and the same holds true today. Contemporary Czech literature has mostly started to shift away from the more traditional poetry of the past. In general one would be hard pressed to find typically lyrical elements, and if one does they are often redefined in accordance with their time – i.e. by alluding or echoing the traditions of Czech literature, be it through the writings of individual authors (Holan, Skácel, Zábrana, Reynek, Seifert, Nezval…), or broader literary periods (neodecadence, romanticism, expressionism, Czech underground), especially surrealistic and experimental poetry, as well as the movement of civilism from the beginnings of the 20th century. Some poetics also show certain parallels with other literary movements from throughout the world, most prominently French, German, English and American poetry – the latter overwhelmingly features influences from the beatnik movement, overworked in a contemporary manner. Together with influences from past poetic movements, similarities can also be found in the motifs and structure – use of urban imagery, form and content experimentation, as well as searching for new ways of expression, by combining literature with theater, music, performance, depicting arts and others. In that way, Czech literature is similar to other European literatures, which also show a tendency to lean towards intermedial art-forms and poetry in free verse.
While the younger generation of contemporary Czech poets is mostly focusing on everyday life, a rise can also be seen regarding texts also incorporating social activism, either dealing with current global events or contrasting the mundane with self-reflection and the position of an individual, intimate life in society. Unlike with past literary creation, the authors aren’t bound together in generational groups, neither movements or manifestos (apart from the still active surrealist group meeting around the Analagon magazine, and even there individual authors still diverge from their set program). It is much more common for the authors to be linked together on the basis of magazines (i.e. the experimental circle of Psi vino), publishing houses or personal contacts. In general it could be said that the young generation of poets, presented in this selection, move away from traditional lyrical poetry and towards more experimental and conceptual principles. Nevertheless, some poetics remain, which show a more classical and formal structure, yet still modernize them and present them in a new way, often parodied. Similar can be said of a more meditative poetry, popular in the past, and nowadays incorporated in the descriptions of everyday life, where it is also accompanied by persistent questions of human existence and metaphysics on one side, and a thorough examination of the and global contemporary problems.
Mostly the selection of poets before you is made up of authors, born after 1980. The authors show promise and potential in their work and are for the most part already well established in Czech literature, as well as represented outside its borders through multiple translations. Even though the poetics seem to be highly individual at first glance, some show parallels – for example the writings of Zuzana Lazarová and Ondřej Hanus, which both show influences of Czech surrealism, catholic tradition, as well as certain poetry forms, used by past movements. Zuzana Lazarová in her poetry collection The Iron Shirt, nominated for the Jiří Orten prize, continues on her previous surrealistic poetic, in the selected poems building on the myth of Lilith, through which she attempts a well thought-out critique on the patriarchate and the hypocrisy of the Church. In a grotesque exchange between the subject, who seems to be at times Lilith, at times someone entirely external, and “the absent one”, the former depicted as a mutilated, submissive figure and the latter as an immoral creator the roles from the original myth are reversed – God is shown as the corrupter, while Lilith as the prototype of the woman becomes absolved through her stoic suffering. The intertwining of mythical and contemporary references can also be seen with Ondřej Hanus, who has already published three poetry collections (Shadowfort, A Book of Figures – for which he also received the Jiří Orten prize –, and Open Form – nominated for the Magnezia Litera prize). Hanus probably most explicitly draws on the surrealist tradition. His verse in Holešovice Train Station seems to loosely lean on the titular train station, but the word associations and the chain of meaning it builds quickly wonders to typical surrealist topics – the sexual, subconscious, death… “syntax was definitively declared as an offense to the tongue / and a dream is the only thing impossible to mock” Hanus writes, seemingly in a process of automatic writing, again confirming his connectedness with surrealism, which values precisely destruction of conventional meaning and the subconscious. Hanus manages to achieve this masterfully through intertextuallity and other references, which he upgrades with his authentic language, updating the surrealist vocabulary with 21st century imagery. A strong bond between modernism, the avant-garde and a contemporary expression is also prominent in the poetry of Marie Feryna and Tomáš Čada, where the latter’s reminds in part of avant-garde manifestos, in part of beatnik poetry. Having already published poetry collections titled Under floor and Everything about love, he has also been nominated for the Dresden Prize for lyric in the past year. In this selection we can see how he combines emotion with experimental forms. In one poem he is able to use clearly declarative voice to instruct, call out to the reader, in another he uses a starkly surgical approach, showing loss and other intimate moments through rationality and sterile language, in part broken up by experimentation. Through the contrast between subject matter and language Čada allows the emotions in his poems to affect uninhibitedly. On the other hand Marie Feryna, a poet who also published two poetry collections, is leaning in the presented texts on one of the members of the poet group Fantasia, Kamil Bouška, and talks among other things about personal variations on the myth of creation, resulting in many intertextual procedures. Her subject is put in a chaotic world and overflowing with existential crisis. It seems Feryna continues with the rich Czech tradition of surrealism, blurring boundaries between words and finding meaning in dreams and the subconscious. Even though she goes as far as saying that “everything is screwed / we are not here / to exist” there still seems to be a way out from the vicious cycle drawn in the texts – not by death or escapism, but by active participation, by killing the death. Perhaps with help of dreaming, but most certainly by writing, which when done well, seems to be unaffected by time. Myth influences can also be seen with poet Jan Škrob, who was nominated for the DILIA Litera award for his debut Under the tiles, and won the Dresden Prize for lyric last year. His poetry is one which seems old and fresh at the same time. Using repetitions with minute changes invokes a feeling of ritual or something mythical. The changes thus are put forth as symbols, in the form of a color or an action, and act as keys to the understanding of the meaning of the whole. This is in Škrob’s poetry joined by modern imagery and absence of punctuation, updates the ancient formula to fit our time and presents it in a fresh way.
Less influence from past formation are seen i.e. with the Jiří Orten prize nominee Martin Poch, who has already published several poetry collections and is known for a very specific and individual metaphorical language, often using personification and synesthesia. The selected poems are written in a similar vain and feature a unique mix of war motifs and intense togetherness – be it father and son or a man and a woman. While in part the subject is getting goosebumps in war zones, where airbags are perfused with blood, in part he is also capable of such intimacy that “they’ll need a crane to disengage us”. The harsh military life is thus juxtaposed with an orgiastic celebration of life, bringing an interesting spin on the play of Eros and Thanatos. This is a stance which, according to several Czech literary critics, puts him in one of the most recognizable names of contemporary poetry. War motifs can also be found in the poetry of Emma Kausc, who was nominated for the Jiří Orten prize for her debut collection Cycles, and is currently studying in Great Britain. The dialogical structure of her poems, switching between the inner world of a person and external engagement, features a subject that speaks as if though through sediments of thought washed ashore. Intimate moments are put side by side with current social disturbances in one breath and there is a sense of urgency to the poems. Even though the contrast between the one and the other seems to make them incompatible they float together naturally and manage to show how connected the private is with the public.
Intimism and subjective position is also prominent in the poetry of Bernadeta Babáková, Natálie Paterová and Ondřej Macl, who each use it to form their own poetic language, central themes and motifs. Babáková for example seems to draw on the tradition of intimate, confessional poetry. In her poetry she depicts everyday life, often in relation of the subject to the Other. The presented connections and reality are, however, of a frail, or maybe rather unsure nature. Through the uncertainty and relativity of the world around the subject Babáková perhaps manages to paint a picture of her generation even more acutely than through the subject matter. Natálie Paterová in contrast focuses more on intertextual elements »Creating a word, you’ll create a world says Roland Barthes, pronounced Bart, like Bart Simpson.« as can be seen in her poem God does not limp. The poet recieved several international awards home and abroad, and is just about to publish her second poetry collection. In the featured selection, she mixes intellectualism and pop-culture. The world she depicts seems like one where the low and the high are intermingled. The banal everyday flows seamlessly together with situations of world crisis – discrimination, terrorism, eco-criticism, etc. and the modern man is exposed as one who goes about their business unaffected by the horrors of the world. The only thing which seems to shine a light of hope – the creative power of poetry. Even more expressive intertextuality can be found, together with traces of postmodernism, in the writing of Ondřej Macl. As explained by his translator to English, David Vichnar, Macl in his poem cycle What Were You Born For parodies established roles and labels of today’s society, as a reaction to the support received by a sexist poem, included in a primary-school textbook. For his poetry collection I love my Granny more then Young Women (2018) he received the Jiří Orten prize. The featured selections shows well how popular figures and certain labels have often very banal origins – the little mermaid is shown as a pedophilic interest, the damsel-in-distress story exposed of its hypocrisy, trans-women put as a source of transcendence, etc. Though at first glance constructed like poems for children with the subject matter and metered verse, Macl’s satirical poems also hit deep with the social injustice, hidden in them, a quality that puts him among the few satirists, who build their texts on a very conceptual basis.
It should be said that even though the current selection of the ten young authors strives to be as representative as possible, in order to enable the Greek reader to acquaint themselves with contemporary poetic life in the Czech Republic, more names could easily be included. However, because selections are always limited – which is why we’ve chosen to only feature authors younger than 35, already nominated for a literary prize (or well recognised by Czech literary critic’s) and are at the same time already known at home and abroad, as we feel that they also show potential and promise to reshape Czech literature in the years to come. To overcome the frequent problem of Czech as a smaller European language and lack of translations connected with that, the current selection aims to introduce the selected authors to the Greek public, as well as putting Czech poetry on the map, within a broader project of anthologies of younger European poets, as one of the most interesting national literatures, as well as try and promote intercultural points of contact between the Czech and European literary spaces.
Aljaž Koprivnikar