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The early poetry of Jaroslav Seifert: Translation theory and practice

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The early poetry of Jaroslav Seifert: Translation theory and practice

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THE EARLY POETRY OF JAROSLAV SEIFERT: TRANSLATION THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume I by Dana Loewy A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) May 1995 Copyright 1995 D ana Loewy R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. UMI Number: 9 6 0 1 0 1 6 C o p y r ig h t 1 9 9 5 by L oew y, Dana All rights reserved. UMI MicroEorm 9601016 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007 This dissertation, written by Dana Loewy under the direction of h&r Dissertation Committee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re quirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY d . „ Dean of Graduate Studies n . April 18, 1995 Chairperson R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. To My Parents M ym rodicum R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Acknowledgments Several individuals directly inspired this project and gave me their unflagging support. Professor Moshe Lazar, a key member of my committee, taught a translation course in the Summer of 1990 that rekindled my interest in translating poetry and fiction. My friends and colleagues Pamela Gilbert and Robert Johnson encouraged me to turn my translations of Jaroslav Seifert into a dissertation project. Josef Raab was both a devoted friend and editor of the first On the Waves ofTSF version. My kind and patient mentor, Professor Jay Martin, chaired this "unorthodox" project and generously gave of his time and vast knowledge. His psychoanalytical training proved especially helpful in times of distress that seem inevitable in projects of this magnitude. I also owe thanks to the members of my guidance and my dissertation committees: Professors Paul Alkon, Michael Heim and David St. John for their enthusiasm and assistance. Dean Richard Ide deserves thanks for co-sponsoring my research trip to Prague in May 1994. There, at the beautiful Klementinum, the Czech National Library, I received competent and tireless help from the staff, mainly Vera Tafatov£ and Ludmila Ulrichova. Jana Kalserovd at the city archives in Pilsen likewise aided my research. I am immensely grateful for the support of Jaroslav Seifert's daughter Jana Seifertova-Plichtova. My parents provided valuable linguistic and research assistance. But most of all, I am indebted to them for always having been readers and for having spoken in strange tongues whenever they did not want their little ones to understand and finally for uprooting me and making me comfortable in more than one country. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. iv Table of Contents Introduction: W ho is Jaroslav Seifert and W hy Translate H im ? ................... 1 C hapter I: The Poet of the Senses--A Biographical Sketch ............................ 10 C hapter II: The W orld of Jaroslav Seifert A. Native Influences................................................................................... 42 B. D e v & sil...................................................................................................... 51 1. Proletarian A r t............................................................................. 51 2. P o e tism ......................................................................................... 72 C. International Influences ...................................................................... 94 C hapter III: Seifert's Early Poetry, Its Context and Reception A. City in Tears and Proletarian P o e tr y .................................................. 109 B. Sheer Love: First Signs of Poetism ....................................................... 128 C. All the Beauties of the W orld at Play: O n the Waves o fT S F 145 D. The Nightingale Sings Poorly: W ord Play M eets M elancholy 168 C hapter IV: Theories of Translation A. Existing Translations of Jaroslav Seifert ..........................................189 1. "Traduttore, traditore"?—The Practice of Paul Jagasich and Tom O 'G ra d y ..................................................................... 190 2. Ewald Osers and O ther Seifert Translators into English 210 3. Germ an Translations of Jaroslav S e ife rt............................... 229 B. The Present Translations and Their T h e o ry ......................................239 C hapter V: The Four Original Translations of Seifert's Early W orks A. City in Tears [Mesto v slz^ ch j...............................................................252 B. Sheer Love [Sam£ l£ska]............................................................................307 C. On the Waves ofTSF [Na vln&ch TSF].................................................. 359 D. The Nightingale Sings Poorly [Slavik zpiva spatne] .........................420 C hapter VI: Explanatory Notes A. City in Tears [Mesto v slz6 ch j...............................................................472 B. Sheer Love [Samd H ska]............................................................................475 C. On the Waves ofTSF [Na vln&ch TSF].................................................. 478 D. The Nightingale Sings Poorly [Slavik zpiva spatne] .........................483 B ib lio g ra p h y ............................................................................................................. 487 A ppendix A: "A Girl"...............................................................................................497 A ppendix B: "The Kitchen C lo ck "........................................................................503 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Abstract The Early Poetry o f Jaroslav Seifert: Translation Theory and Practice The centerpiece of the dissertation is my translation of four collections of poetry by Czech poet and 1984 Nobel Prize winner Jaroslav Seifert: City in Tears (1921), Sheer Love (1923), On the Waves ofTSF (1925), and The Nightingale Sings Poorly (1926). I am the first professional translator of the four volumes, authorized by the estate of Jaroslav Seifert. Chapter I is a biographical overview charting the poet's life and career. It briefly outlines important influences, Seifert's political and aesthetic affiliations and provides a historical context for the translated volumes. Chapter II offers a close look at Seifert's development during the 1920s and explores the poetics as well as the historical events marking the shift of the Czech avant-garde artists union Devgtsil from the doctrine of proletarian art to poetism. I also discuss the major native and international influences that converge in Seifert's early poetry. Chapter III focuses on the individual four collections and traces their respective genesis in the context of DevStsil, their changing aesthetics, and their publication history. Close textual readings of major themes and of important individual poems complete this discussion. The existing English translations of Jaroslav Seifert's works and their theories are the main emphasis of Chapter IV. I show why some of the few translations to-date are unsatisfactory or even erroneous. This section also serves as a rationale for my own translation theory and practice. Next, Chapter V contains my original translations of the poet's first four books that are guided by the idea of congeniality. I also follow the originals, each in its first printing, in typography, layout and pagination. Finally, Chapter VI consists of full annotation for each volume, supplying explanatory notes where appropriate and necessary. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 1 Introduction: Who Is Jaroslav Seifert and Why Translate Him? A book-length biography of Jaroslav Seifert remains yet to be written. Though Seifert's career remains vivid as part of the history of the Czech national consciousness, and the appearance exists that the details of his life must be well-known, even the native reader can turn to only a few brief biographical sketches and Seifert's own charming memoir VSecky krdsy sv&ta [All the Beauties of the World] for biographical information. How is it that this poet, whose prolific output spans more than six peripatetic decades of this century and who remains one of the best-known and best loved writers of his country, is personally still relatively obscure? In fact, only one monograph, Zdenek Pesat's excellent portrait Jaroslav Seijert (1991) is the only work giving more than a perfunctory sketch of his life and writings. The reasons for this relative dearth of published biographical information are political and reflect Czechoslovakia's many painful transformations during Seifert's lifetime (1901-1986). Like many artists and intellectuals actively involved in the reformist Prague Spring, after its subsequent annihilation by the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, Seifert along with his reviewers, critics and philologists was mainly relegated to writing "for the drawer." At best manuscripts were copied and circulated by readers as samizdats, with little chance of official publication in Czechoslovakia. Emigre publishing houses in Canada, Germany, Switzerland and other countries filled an important void, but did not have the financial means and practical access to mass distribution and, naturally, to the Czech readership at home. Czechoslovakia's isolation since the Communist takeover in 1948— changing somewhat with a "thaw" in 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968— worsened again during the time of "normalization," the bleak and politically unchanging 1970s and had clear repercussions on the cultural and literary exchange with the West. During this R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. time little was translated into foreign languages, so that in turn most Czech writers languished in undeserved, government-imposed obscurity. In fact, many of the country's best writers and artists either lived in exile or suffered hardships at home in low-paying, degrading jobs and were barred from publication. At the same time, the 1970s were a time of detente when most Western countries pursued non-confrontational policies and instead chose to advance human rights causes in more remote regions of the world, rather than in their own European "backyard." All too overt support of dissident writers would have nm counter to this goal of not offending neighboring Eastern European communist regimes, among which Czechoslovakia was especially rigid ideologically. Thus, it was difficult to find a "market" in the West for literature produced by dissidents, even when manuscripts were successfully smuggled out of the country. Despite the difficulties, Seifert, along with other Czech artists and intellectuals, signed Charter 77, a document affirming the Human Rights Declaration of Helsinki and saw two of his works translated into English. According to Zdenek Pesat, the Czech government was seeking a modus vivendi with Seifert, whose works published prior to 1968 were put out repeatedly in reeditions while his new manuscripts were ignored. In exchange for his silence on human rights matters, the official authorities promised Seifert publication of his new books, an arrangement which Seifert often broke (Pesat 213-214). The international publicity resulting from the establishment of Charter 77 and Seifert's national acclaim granted him, as it did for Vaclav Havel, certain clout and relative immunity. Seifert continued to intervene on behalf of people persecuted by the hard-line regime and, consequently, even as his new books started appearing with minor censorious deletions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the critics were not allowed to write about them. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 3 The specific political environment in the 1970s in a Europe that pursued detente or Entspannungspolitik explains why the award of the Nobel Prize to Seifert in 1984 was such a surprise in the publishing world of the West. Unprepared, booksellers were not in the slightest able to meet the demand of the reading public for translations of Seifert's poetry or even information about his career. One slim volume, Im Spiegel hat er das Dunkel, put out by a small publishing house in 1982, was all of Seifert's poetry available in German. The anthology consists of selections from Morovy sloup [The Plague Column] and DeStnik z Piccadilly [An Umbrella from Piccadilly].1 Likewise, in the English-speaking world, very few translations existed: Lyn Coffin's translation The Plague Monument (1980), was published in the U. S. by SVU Press, run by the Czechoslovak Society of Art and Sciences. This rendition of Seifert's work strikes the reader as wordy and unpoetic, yet, naturally, it was a step in the right direction. Similarly, Paul Jagasich's and Tom O'Grady's The Casting of Bells (1983),2 while well- intentioned, reveals the translators' grave linguistic deficiencies, resulting in misunderstandings, inaccuracies and downright misrepresentations of Seifert's text. A lack of understanding both of Seifert and his time is obvious in subsequent translations by Paul Jagasich, published in a handful of copies by the author, whose prolific activity can at best be described as amateurish. Finally, translations by Ewald Osers of The Plague Column and of An Umbrella from Piccadilly were published in England in 1979 and in 1983, respectively.^ Osers is precise and his knowledge of Czech profound, but 1 Written in 1968-70, The Plague Column was first published in an exile edition (Koln: Index, 1977) before finally seeing publication in Czechoslovakia in 1981. An Umbrella from Piccadilly was circulated in samizdat copies between 1978 and 1979 in Czechoslovakia and was likewise first published abroad (Mtinchen: Poezie mimo domov, 1979) before appearing in Prague in 1982 with one deletion due to censorship (Mestan 224). 277ie Casting of Bells is a translation of Odlevdnt z v o n u (1967). ^By Terra Nova Editions, London & Boston and by London Magazine Editions, London, respectively. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 4 he is not exactly a poet-translator. For an in-depth look at the just-mentioned translations please see Chapter IV. Obviously, following the Nobel Prize award, more translations appeared, among them most memorable and informative the anthology The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert (1986), assembled by George Gibian and translated by Osers and the nearly impeccable translation and facsimile edition of On the Waves of TSF (Aufden Wellen von TSF) in German by the Austrian publisher Hora Verlag. English-language criticism was likewise difficult to get by. Robert Pynsent's Czech Prose and Verse (1979) is a useful general "survey of Czech literature from 1774 to 1939" and anthology at the same time.4 However, the author resorts to labeling Czech writers as "obnoxious" (Jakub Demi) or calls Helena Malffova, Ivan Olbracht's common-law wife, "an overrated incompetent" (lxiv, lxviii). As opposed to this, Alfred French's 1969 book The Poets of Prague: Czech Poetry Betioeen the Wars is a benevolent and sensitive treatment specifically of the Czech avant-garde of the 1920s.^ The translations of excerpts from Czech poetry, provided by the author and other translators, are fairly useful, printed as they are in both languages. Yet a book of this scope and general accuracy should not contain such obvious untruths as that Jaroslav Seifert celebrated a Paris that he had never seen (46). Seifert visited Italy and France, and Paris, in 1923 and on two subsequent occasions. Yet, paradoxically, Seifert was no literary unknown, even in the West. After all, the Swedish Academy selected him from many names in 1984 (Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges and Claude Simon, among others were discussed that year) for its annual 4Robert Pynsent. Czech Prose and Verse. London: The Athlone Press, University of London, 1979. 5 Alfred French. The Poets o f Prague: Czech Poetry Between theWars. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 5 Nobel Prize for Literature. According to Cestmir Peciva,6 the linguist and slavist Roman Jakobson had long championed Seifert and among the Swedish slavists professor L ’ ubomir Durovic from Lund was a strong advocate of Seifert since 1973. Peciva describes the selection process, during which until February 1 each year the Academy receives about 100 suggestions from 600 academics and former laureates world-wide and whittles this list down to about five candidates by June 1. Then, eighteen Academy members meet every Thursday at a nearby restaurant to debate the roster of remaining candidates. When the Swedish Academy officially announced the award to Seifert on October 11,1984, it stated that he had been one of the candidates for a long time, thus dispelling the impression that his nomination was due to political or "trendy" considerations (Peciva). The Nobel Prize award was of course a political matter in communist Czechoslovakia that was resisting glasnost and perestroika until late in 1989. The Writers Union responded with embarrassed silence viewing the honor bestowed on Czechoslovakia's greatest living poet as political willfulness (Pesat 214), while the authorities attempted to control Seifert's sudden world-wide fame. They hindered access to the ailing poet, who at the time of the award was hospitalized and received the happy news with some delay. In fact, as Seifert's physician and friend, Alois Volkman reports, he was barred from visiting the poet, with whom he had met every Friday for years. Ostensibly to allow the Nobel laureate much-needed rest, the government effectively held him captive in his hospital room, guarded by two officers of the much-feared State Police. 6In an article in the Munich-based Czech emigre newpaper Geske slovo, excerpted on the dust-jacket of Jaroslav Seifert, Knizka polibkti. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 6 Overall, the painter Cenek Prazdk poignantly sums up the problem in the wake of the Nobel award of familiarizing a previously oblivious world with Seifert's body of work and significance as a poet and public figure: "I was deeply ashamed when the literary advisor of the Zurich publishing company Diogenes asked me: 'WHO IS HE? Seifert. Never heard, never read.' It was not his fault that he was not sufficiently informed because there is hardly any information about Jaroslav Seifert" (61-62). Prazdk rightly goes on to blame the communist regime for effectively silencing scores of writers and artists for more than four decades, until the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989, which restored democracy in Czechoslovakia. Of course, Czech readers knew Seifert's works well. To them, he was synonymous with modem poetry and increasingly a household name since the mid- 1930s. People learned his poems by heart; to this day readers rapidly snap up any reprint of his books. Eva H. Plattner notes that during the twelve years preceding the 1984 Nobel Prize 300,000 reprints of Seifert's earlier poetry were published in Czech; these all sold out in Prague bookstores, especially when the award was announced (73). And this front place in a nation of approximately ten million readers of Czech (not counting the five million Slovaks— part of the Czechoslovak federation until 1993 — who likewise understand, and some of whom may read Czech). George Gibian points out that the number of copies published —and sold—of works by Czech poets is frequently several times larger than that of American poets in the United States, which has a population twenty times greater. Or, to put it in another way, perhaps fifty times as many books of poetry are bought by Czechs as by Americans. (1) To comprehend what Seifert and other writers, poets and artists in general, mean to the Czechs, it is important to understand the specific relationship between artists and the public. A small nation that has had occasion to mistrust its political R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 7 leaders tends to pin its hopes on the bearers of its culture and language. This has been the situation since the National Revival started in the late 18th century and continued well into the 19th century, when the Czechs were struggling to maintain their language, culture, and traditions vis-a-vis Habsburg domination. Since then, in times of trouble, the Czech people turn primarily to their artists and intellectuals for solace and for leadership. Jaroslav Seifert himself fully understood, welcomed, and even demanded the responsibility of being the conscience of the nation. He knew that as a poet he was the bearer of historical truth: It is obvious that poets and writers of prose fiction are much more engaged with the truth than painters and musicians because they work with words and speech; obviously, too, we are talking about the truth that lies beneath the surface, that exists solidly behind the appearance of things. Furthermore, the readership encounters die author's words with a great willingness to trust, to believe; the readers are bound to believe that they are going to gain in experience, they seek to identify with the author's words; they want to find expressions of their own experience in literature. But they want to see that experience enriched, structured, expressed by an artist, a poet, so that it will acquire a new value. However, I would like to go further, to generalize this demand on the poet's being the conscience of the nation to include everything that is connected with the truth. Most simply, this means that every person should live and act as a responsible human being in relation to one's self, to one's children and to society as a whole. That everyone should view his or her life in an historical context and live as a human being responsible to history. (Heneka et al. 126)^ Vaclav Havel formulated this postulate of "living in truth" most famously in his essay "The Power of the Powerless." Seifert does not invoke heroism, but a solid, basic human decency, perhaps in the sense of the German term Zivilcourage along the lines of a classical Aristotelian view: "When I write, I try not to lie— that's all. If one cannot tell the truth, at least one must not lie— just keep silent" (Heneka et al. 127). Although this may imply that at times intellectuals may be valued more for their character, courage ^All translations from the Czech are mine unless otherwise noted. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. and uncompromising moral stance than primarily for the artistic or aesthetic qualities that their works evidence, in Seifert's case both life and art measure up to the highest standard. Even to his fellow artists Seifert's actions were a yardstick they applied to their own behavior. Speaking for his generation, Cenek Praz&k calls Seifert "a seismograph of honor" that provided comfort and guidance amidst the ups and downs of Czechoslovakia's changing fortunes and its many national catastrophes during this century (62). Moreover, Seifert's humble origin, unassuming manner, and unaffected simplicity won him the hearts of his many readers. Chapter I of this dissertation is a biographical overview charting the poet's life and career with particular emphasis on the 1920s that saw publication of his early poetry. It briefly outlines important influences, Seifert's political and aesthetic affiliations and provides a historical context for the translated volumes. Chapter II offers a closer look specifically at Seifert's development as an artist during the 1920s and details the poetics as well as the historical events marking the shift of the avant- garde artists union Dev&sil from the doctrine of proletarian art to poetism. It also discusses the major native and international influences that converge in Seifert's early volumes of poetry. Chapter III focuses in turn each of the four collections and traces their respective genesis in the context of DevStsil, the changing aesthetics informing each of them and their publication history in magazines of the time. Close textual readings of major themes and important individual poems complement this discussion. The existing English translations of Jaroslav Seifert's works and the theories behind them are the main emphasis of Chapter IV. I attempt to show why some of the few translations to-date are unsatisfactory or even erroneous. Moreover, this section serves as a rationale for my own translation theory and practice. Next, Chapter V contains my original translations of the poet's first four books that are guided by the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. idea of congeniality and functional equivalence. I follow the originals, each in its first printing, in typography, layout and pagination. Chapter VI, finally, consists of full annotation for each collection of poetry with the American reader in mind, supplying explanatory details where appropriate and necessary. An appendix was added to accommodate the long poem "A Girl," that Seifert included in his second edition of City in Tears (Appendix A) and to make available to the reader an excerpt from the poet's charming memoir All the Beauties of the World (the episode "The Kitchen Clock" in Appendix B). Though I am aware of the limited audience for poetry, much more so for poetry in translation coming from a small nation, I translated the four volumes and wrote about them with full conviction that there is a need for deeper understanding of this artist, his time and place. After all, the Nobel Prize award ten years ago secured Seifert a lasting place in world literature and today's climate of multiculturalism seems to favor marginalized or lesser known literatures and writers. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 10 CHAPTER I: The Poet of the Senses— A Biographical Sketch In absence of a book-length biography of Jaroslav Seifert,1 his loosely- structured, lyrical memoir VSecky krdsy sv&a [All the Beauties of the World] — first published in West Germany in 1981, and with some delay (and several censored deletions) in his homeland in 1982— perhaps offers the most intimate look at Seifert's life and sensibility.^ At the same time, naturally, the reader should expect a certain amount of self-fashioning and fictionalization, particularly when the raconteur himself tongue-in-cheek refers the reader to his "unreliable memory." The poet never kept diaries or saved personal documents, such as the many lectures he gave: "The spoken word escapes fast, but the text remains, so away with it!" (ABW194). Not surprisingly, the book, one of only two long prose pieces Seifert ever wrote, is subtitled Stories and Memories. This also indicates Seifert's explicitly stated intent: to gossip about the dead, but benevolently and with affection, not sparing himself (ABW 10). Vitriolic attacks and vicious settling of accounts, so common in the recent autobiographical genre, are noticeably absent in Seifert. Seifert knew and befriended many important Czech writers, poets, painters and other artists and intellectuals, particularly in the feverish and artistically productive third decade of the 20th century. His memoir can also be seen, then, as a narrative monument to those who otherwise might unjustly be forgotten and whose 1 For biographical data I am most indebted to Zdenek Pesat's 1991 informative monograph Jaroslav Seifert as well as to its critical precursor Dialogy s poezii (1985), and to Antonin Mestan's entry on Seifert in his concise history of Czech literature <jeska literatura 1785- 1985. For social history I consulted Vgra Olivovd, dskoslovenske dSjiny 1914-1939; Ferdinand Peroutka, Budovanistatu-, Podiven, &$i v dSjinach nave doby and Vaclav Cerny, PamSti, vol 1. ^ The book is the product of a collaboration between the two eminent exile publishing houses Index in Koln and Sixty-Eight Publishers in Toronto, Canada on the occasion of the author’s eightieth birthday. All subsequent references will be to this first edition, abbreviated A B W with page numbers in parentheses. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 11 achievements Seifert wants to chronicle, however informally and regardless of his professed ambivalence towards permanence and immutability of textual records. The book is not an autobiography in any strict sense, furnishing dates and abiding by chronology; rather, it is an elliptical, partly repetitive narrative in poetic prose, a tribute in episodes and vignettes to deceased friends and associates, to passing, to long-lost youth and to the sensual "beauties of the world," Seifert's life-long recurring theme, dating back as far as the closing poem of the same name in his second collection Sheer Love (1923). Seifert does not pretend to be an exact historian; instead, his narratives often take the shape of stories he likes to tell his granddaughter about his youth (ABW 394). Seifert, then a septuagenarian, wrote his memoir during the early 1970s when a look into the past perhaps afforded more consolation than the bleak present, which was marked by the recent crushing of the Prague Spring and the reinstatement of a immutably rigid hard-line communist regime when Seifert's new poetry was not publishable in Czechoslovakia. But the work is devoid of bitterness or self-pity. Although the gloomy seasons, fall and winter, resound through the narrative, and symbolically correspond to the eve of the reminiscing aging poet's life, many self-ironic anecdotes and humorous remembrances emanate a lighter air and counterbalance the nostalgia and loneliness of someone who is the sole survivor of a great generation and the last to tell about it.3 Yet Seifert's characteristic affirmation of life is the stronger current in this tension; even in his scarce criticism of others, he is discreet, understanding, mild, and forgiving towards human foibles. His modesty seems unaffected; in fact, he stresses his 3 For a taste, literally, of the flavor evoked by Seifert's narration, please refer to my translation of the vignette "The Kitchen Clock" (section 55 in the original) in Appendix B. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 12 fear of appearing vain (ABW75-76,410). In Knizka polibku [The Book of Kisses]/* he discusses this lifelong uneasiness and self-restraint when his public persona was concerned, and explains that he preferred to speak about himself in verse and used the "I" to invite the reader's identification with him and to express universally felt emotions. Of modesty he assumes that it can function as part of an author's stylization, which may be inescapable: "After all, at the bottom of the most modest human soul there surely slumbers a small flame of vanity" (KniZka 116). Looking back with the indulgence of old age, Seifert good-humoredly chides himself for youthful pride when, at twenty, he saw his first book of verse appear to universal accolades from Czech critics (ABW111). As in his poetry, Seifert primarily lives through the senses. Continually, he vividly evokes simple pleasures and frames his memories by focusing upon the help of smells, perfumes, colors, flowers, music and the taste of wine and food. The olfactory and tactile explorations of a magical-seeming external world are accompanied by his representation of the innocent wonderment of a young, naive m ind— his own. Seifert admits to the healthy appetite of a sybarite (ABW 317ff.), resembling more the inclinations of an unsophisticated gourmand than those of a polished gourmet. For example, it is characteristic that his fond memories of Roman Jakobson are inextricably tied to the latter's incomparable Russian blini, for which Seifert even supplies the recipe. Still, Seifert does not count outright hedonism among his vices (ABW 356) perhaps because his tastes are so earthy and plain, thus absolving him from guilt. Seifert unequivocally denounces the affectations of "the so-called bohemia" and insists 4 This book was published by the Swiss emigre publishing house Konfrontace in 1984 as a tribute to Seifert, who had just received the Nobel Prize for literature. It is an anthology of Seifert's poetry no longer available or suppressed along with reminiscences and congratulatory notes by Czech dissidents and exiles. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 13 that he never attempted to pose in like manner (ABW 42) although his abundant recollections of the 1920s Prague cafe scene, in which he fully participated, may at least superficially bear witness to elements of such a lifestyle. But unlike many of his peers with decidedly middle-class, "bourgeois" roots, Seifert was a genuine proletarian and did not need to fashion himself into one when it was a stylish mannerism among leftist- leaning intellectuals. Jaroslav Seifert was bom on September 23,1901 in Zizkov, a working-class neighborhood of Prague. It is this environment that richly informed not only his early poetry, but to which he kept returning in his mature work— long after moving to the quiet and idyllic suburb of Brevnov in June 1938, where Seifert lived until his death, and which he often jokingly called "wuthering heights" (ABW 462), apparently in playful reference to Emily Bronte's novel, or "windy hill in the Abbacy of Brevnov."5 In his memoir, Seifert likewise frequently harks back to his Zizkov youth in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire before and during World War I. He recalls a life of poverty and want, even as he records the experience, rich in sensual impressions, which fueled his abundant imagination. He attempts to perceive the lyricism of the everyday squalor and feels closely tied to Zizkov because it was a place of initiation, most prominently, into romantic and erotic love, which for Seifert are inseparable. All this gradual discovery is shrouded in mystery in the naive bashful youngster's vision; and one reason for Seifert's lasting charm may be the fact that all his life, in his works, he retained some of the innocent naivefe and sense of awe. Though Seifert's family suffered genuine hardship, his wonder and its lyrically idyllic stylization is even noticeable in accounts of the more difficult moments of Seifert's Zizkov youth, which, along with Seifert's kaleidoscopic narration, exactly 5 In an unpublished letter to the critic and close friend Bohumil Polan dated March 21, 1966. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 14 parallels the poetry he was writing at the time in his final three collections (Pesat, Seifert 224-5). He describes the densely populated squalid tenement blocks from the 19th century, built for commercial profit and speculation and without much consideration for their occupants. In recalling the "mournful melody of decay and the smell of poverty" in which people struggled for their meager happiness, he declares: "I fell in love with even the uninviting dead-end streets, full of dust, soot and lousy grass between cobblestones" (ABW 88). The gray, gloomy and often dank buildings had galleries or walkways on which women washed laundry and loudly sang popular songs. Seifert recalls how in one his childhood homes these walkways sometimes turned into theater boxes, when the tenants gathered there to watch an amateur troupe performing in the enclosed yard below. The living conditions were trying: The only water faucet was located in the open gallery and served seven tenants. There was no laundry room, so the women set up their wash-tubs in the hallways, kitchens or the tiny dark yard, which was replete with large rats. Bathrooms were rare and Seifert delicately avoids detailing the lack of amenities in his early environment (ABW 252). Zizkov was teeming with pubs and wine bars; there was one in every four or five houses. As a boy, Seifert would sit on neighborhood steps with his friends and watch the drunks and listen with keen interest and curiosity to their sentimental love songs and boisterous rowdy tunes. Seifert's mother, a devout Catholic, tried to counter this influence with attendance at evening mass and baroque church hymns. Seifert admits that powerful inspiration for the poetry to come sprang from all these disparate sources (ABW 181). Young Jaroslav also loved cemeteries. He often played on the nearby Olsanske cemeteries, partly out of necessity, because Zizkov boasted very few parks, and partly because one of Seifert's younger sisters, who had died in infancy, was buried there. Moreover, daily funeral processions passed by his house. He R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 15 characteristically denies that his predilection was morbid, claiming that he did not think of death, but that he loved to see the seasons change, to watch the flowers bloom, to plant and water them {ABW242). Ironically, the cemetery twice became the setting for Seifert's first glimpses of human love and sexuality— first, when he chanced upon a couple passionately kissing in the dusk on a spring night, and on a later occasion when a playmate briefly and coyly exposed her genitals. Both encounters, each also linked to fragrances in his memory, impressed him deeply: "To this day I wander with this first revelation of woman" {ABW283). A sense of longing and mystery envelops these first experiences and Seifert confesses to an early attraction to his female classmates' sweetly-smelling hair that he yearned to touch, but, overwhelmed by his shyness, could not dare to do so {ABW89). Seifert's parents apparently successfully and tolerantly reconciled the disparate worlds of the poet's early experience. His mother, "a quiet, lyrical Catholic, heeding God's laws and those of the Church" shook off the grim daily routine by attending mass. Religion, Seifert writes, "was her poetry" {ABW 283). His father was a social democrat and atheist, often taking his son to rallies and party meetings. Zdenek Pesat convincingly argues that the happy coexistence of these two influences profoundly impressed themselves on Seifert and ensured that the poet was never prone to radical excesses, in life or his work, but always strove to reconcile differences and to harmonize extremes {Seifert 10). Certainly, the young boy effortlessly alternated between the two worlds, sometimes on the same evening when intoning socialist songs at political meetings or attending people's rallies after singing long Marian hymns and standing next to his mother in the church pew. The mutual respect Seifert's parents had for one another's convictions was apparent in the modest wedding gifts they exchanged: The bride gave a silver watch- R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. chain with an attached locket containing the likenesses of Karl Marx on the one side and of Friedrich Engels on the other. The groom bought a gold necklace with a cross for his future wife. Particularly during World War I both gifts were often pawned until eventually they were auctioned away and permanently lost due to Seifert's father's unemployment. Seifert remembers long lines in which all family members took turns waiting before closed storefronts for meager food rations during the war. The worsening supply of food and all other essentials in the Austro-Hungarian Empire culminated in March 1918 when entire populations suffered hunger and weakened by insufficient diet, many workers contracted tuberculosis which spread epidemically. Strikes ensued which paralyzed the war industry and further destabilized the moribund system, thus paving the way for the founding of the first Czechoslovak Republic in October 1918. Seifert's father was a trained locksmith, but longed to become an entrepreneur, a vocation for which he evidently lacked talent, as Seifert observes. For a short time he worked as a clerk in a small loan company but after it defaulted, he lost all his savings and incurred crushing debt. He then borrowed still more money and unsuccessfully tried to make a living by selling oil paintings, mostly copies of famous portraits like Murillo's Immaculata, made to order by a poor painter with seven children whom Seifert's father kind-heartedly yet ineffectually more or less subsidized. Even then, it seems, the young Jaroslav saw his father's actions as quixotic. The painter was noi without talent but had to engage in this hack work to survive. Seifert's father in turn never bargained but paid generously and promptly. Soberly the son admired the negotiating skills of the painter, noted their absence in his progenitor and even believed that he discerned pity for the elder Seifert in the painter's demeanor. And so, inevitably, the father never made a living out of this entrepreneurial R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 17 effort. During the worst days of the war, when coal was rare, the Seiferts burned the remaining paintings with their frames for fuel. Afterward, Jaroslav's father briefly held a job in a factory, but the plant soon ceased operation. Later he found employment in an orthopedic shop manufacturing prosthetics for maimed soldiers— a job he kept until his death. The family frequently moved from one Zizkov apartment to the next, partly in response to its changing fortunes and therefore the amount of rent it could spend. Seifert comments with compassion on his father's string of misfortunes: "Another misspent life, full of bitterness and disappointment. And mother softly cried" (ABW 83). Although Seifert on several occasions asserts that he loved both his parents "limitlessly" and equally, there are two interesting, somewhat equivocal passages that shed a more subtle light on his relationship to each parent. The first concerns an incident that occurred when he was fourteen or fifteen years old. As he tells it, a dandyish young Seifert disliked helping his mother push a make-shift ugly cart to bring home whatever coal she could find. One day, feeling ashamed to be with her, he dodged his mother when he saw her in the street burdened with a heavy sack of coal. Looking back on the shallow pride of his youth, the autobiographer reproaches his youthful self for cruelty and cowardice even as he still affectionately empathizes with the folly of adolescence. The other remark is Seifert's confession that he loved the father more and felt closer to him because their characters were more alike while predominantly feeling sorrow and pity toward his mother for the sad lot she endured. This is only superficially surprising from a writer who is best-known for his 1954 collection Maminka [Mother], which most readers without much concern for the creative process and its fictionalization understand too literally as an autobiographical tribute to R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 18 Seifert's own mother (A BW 288). Again, Seifert's narrative is a telling and retelling partly of the same events, yet in subtle variations that sometimes may even appear contradictory; for example, the consistent lyrical idealization of innocence, youth and its freedom from worry are called somewhat into question when Seifert uncharacteristically insists that children are often plagued by anxiety and that his own childhood was anything but happy, primarily overshadowed by his fear for his father who was fifteen years older than his mother (ABW375). But contradiction only reinforces the character of this memoir; this is how memory operates, loosely, associatively, inconsistently. The subtle shades of retelling perhaps create a more adequate approximation of "truth" than a single, presumably straightforward presentation could. In the summers and for the Christmas and Easter holidays Jaroslav often traveled to the nearby town of Kralupy, the birthplace of his mother (it is there that Seifert was buried upon his death on January 10,1986). In one sense it was not a significant change of scene for the boy from Zizkov as Kralupy then was already fairly industrialized and Seifert recalls the town's smelly brook and unsavory air. Due to its refineries, Kralupy in March 1945 became the target of heavy Allied bombing in a rare attack on Czechoslovak soil, then Nazi Germany's "Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia." Seifert fondly remembers his maternal grandfather, who opened the boy's eyes to beauty on long nature walks and when planting trees with a local association devoted to decorative improvement of the town. Moreover, this grandfather shared the young Seifert's love of poetry and acquainted him with the works of 19th century Czech poets. The idyllic depiction of Seifert's childhood is never more pronounced than when he tells stories about his boyhood— for instance, his vicarious enjoyment of a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 19 candy store and a delicatessen store in his Zizkov neighborhood. More often than not, he pressed his face onto the window glass of the delicatessen store and feasted his eyes and nostrils. Being poor, Seifert could only enjoy sweets on rare occasions. As to the deli, his mother shopped more cheaply across the street where the eyes of the sardines in an uncovered barrel strangely moved Jaroslav. To the little boy the exclusive store was an unapproachable place of worship, an exhibition, a piece of art. Without an inkling of bitterness, Seifert employs subtle humor based on hyperbole, highly believable though from the perspective of a deprived, curious youngster. The storekeeper, Mr. Kolman, "recomposed" his rare delicacies in the window daily. The boy traveled the world with the help of the artfully arranged foreign cheeses, fine wines, and delicate meats— very much as he had been enchanted, at a still younger age, by exotic foreign names and images in his small stamp collection. This deprivation and a gratification delayed until long into adulthood perhaps explain Seifert's reliance on the senses (when one perception, say, the visual or the olfactory, by necessity replaces the actual tasting and ingestion) and his later guiltless sybaritic indulgence in food and drink. And even in adulthood, Seifert frequently approached and experienced things second-hand, often only after prodding from his more cosmopolitan and sophisticated friends, who initiated him not only into the appreciation of fine food and wine, but more crucially, of course, into the world of modem art. It perhaps also attests to the simplicity and poverty of Seifert's youth that many seemingly normal adolescent pursuits were inaccessible to him before he reached adulthood, such as bicycling or swimming. Seifert's older friend, the renowned Czech novelist Vladislav Vancura,6 the first president of the leftist avant-garde group DevStsil, 6 It was Vancura, who wrote the brief but lofty foreword to Seifert's first book of verse C ity in Tears. Seifert recalls that he read it so often that he could recite it by heart (A B W 111). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 20 to which Seifert belonged in the 1920s, tried to make up for lost time when on weekends Seifert and his fiancee visited the country at Zbraslav, where Vancura lived and practiced medicine with his wife. Amused, Seifert recounts how the lessons failed, and so did Vancura's attempt to teach Seifert to shoot an airgun. Similarly, the insistence of Seifert's friend, fellow Dev&sil member and avant-garde theoretician Karel Teige, that Seifert learn ballroom dancing, was doomed from the start— not solely because Seifert did not feel a natural inclination to such activities but perhaps because they were not an intrinsic part of his upbringing in contrast to the lives of his more middle-class or even patrician friends. Seifert simply writes that he was shy and could not afford a tuxedo (ABW 391). As far as formal schooling is concerned, Seifert fondly remembers his Zizkov gymnasium. Initially he was a good student, excelling in Latin, which he loved, and in religious education. His religion teacher invited Jaroslav to serve as an altar boy in the obligatory Sunday school services and Seifert ministered to his needs with great enthusiasm. Later, however, the student was disillusioned by the cold, unconvincing professionalism of the priest's daily routine, devoid of mystery and loftiness. His ardor waned in the face of dissimulation. But later Seifert did find the magic he was seeking, in the romantic long poem Maj [May] (1936). This work by Karel Hynek Macha, the foremost Czech romantic poet, was and still is immensely popular. It was reprinted in about 200 editions. In it Macha used to the full the musical potentialities of the Czech language and the work inspired many poets (Mestan 59). It certainly fascinated Seifert. So, it seems, Seifert was early attracted to the magic and truthfulness of words. Seifert never seemed to have had any doubts that poetry was his calling. From the time he entered school, Jaroslav declared he would be a poet, despite the laughter from fellow students (ABW 71). Later, when asked about his life plans, he matter-of- R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 21 factly told his great idol and mentor Stanislav Kostka Neumann that he intended to write verse. While still in school, Seifert befriended two other Zizkov youths, Ivan Suk and Frantisek Nemec, who shared his love of poetry; the three tried to write first verse together; all three published poetry. Indeed, in 1921 Seifert was to be the last of the trio to see his first collection in print. After getting an early start with Neumann's help, the Zizkov three went their separate ways. But even as his apprenticeship in poetry developed, Seifert's success in school declined. WTien Jaroslav's grades began to slip in ninth grade, Suk suggested to him they alter the final grade report. This small deception went undetected and boosted the friendship of the two conspirators. In tenth grade Seifert gave up hope for improvement. His friend Nemec, threatened with failure, concocted a suicide attempt scheme, in which Seifert was implicated. Ultimately the school expelled him. It is evident that the budding poet had tired of his formal education. As their interest in schooling faded, the three began visiting the library of the Worker's Academy in the social democratic Lidovy dum [People's House], where they read "everything we got our hands on," but most of all poetry (A B W 254). There they formed a circle called "Association of 'Non-National' Students," but their ideological orientation was eclectic and vague. Organized in social democracy, then the left-most party, they flirted with anarchism, in 1919 most prominently represented by the poet S. K. Neumann ("our literary and political God," A BW 378), whom they venerated from afar in the hope of making the acquaintance of Neumann. Seifert and his friends spent time at the famous Cafe Union, an anarchist meeting place. However, the youthful group of anarchists quickly dissolved after an unsuccessful assassination attempt against the Czechoslovak Prime Minister Kram&r, a lone act committed by one of its young radical anarchist members. After seeing the arrest of the would-be-assassin, a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 22 fellow group member, and after being interrogated by the police, Seifert was cured from his "romantic political ideas" and relieved to have "fallen from the clouds and not gotten hurt on impact" (A B W 258-9). Seifert came of age in a time of political turmoil and was subject to several diverse influences which eventually shaped his political orientation. The first Czechoslovak republic formed in 1918 and only two years later saw strikes which masked an unsuccessful communist coup attempt. However, the imposing figure of the popular first president, Tom&s Garrigue Masaryk (1918-1935), guaranteed a high degree of continuity and stability, even after the world economic crisis in 1929. The new republic's constitution was centralist like its French model, and France was also its most important political ally. Nevertheless, even this democratic government struggled with labor unrest and social upheaval, partly fueled by communist forces; the government resorted to censorship against the radical press. In 1920 the social democratic party split into a moderate, democratic faction and a radical Bolshevik wing. The latter adhered to the idea of a class struggle modeling itself after the Soviets and in 1921 officially became the Communist Party with its own newspaper, Rude pravo, to which Seifert frequently contributed throughout the 1920s. The 1917 October Revolution and glowing first accounts of the sweeping changes in Russia energized leftist-leaning intellectuals. Revolutionary poetry by Alexander Blok and Vladimir Mayakovsky appeared in print (Seifert himself translated Blok's long poem The Twelve with the help of Roman Jakobson). But there were other, even more important, influences. Around 1920 the Czech avant-garde, led by its chief theoretician Karel Teige, began to discover Guillaume Apollinaire; and in 1920 the playwright, novelist and critic Karel Capek published his brilliantly translated anthology of modem French poets Trancouzskd poezie nove doby. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 23 Both events had a profound effect on the development of the new Czech poetry, so did recent developments in the fine arts: cubism, futurism, dadaism as well as the naive paintings of the Duanier Henri Rousseau. Seifert recalls the important impact upon him of Apollinaire's poetry, how struck he was by Zone and Alcools (A B W 289). The eminent Czech literary critic and writer F. X. Saida encouraged Seifert to explore older French poets, and particularly to try his hand at translating Verlaine, which Seifert did most extensively between 1929 and 1933. This other sphere of influence was important: The native Czech poets of the previous poetic generation of the late 19th century as well as literary peers with whom Seifert was closely associated. At the outset, during the early twenties, he was strongly under the sway of S. K. Neumann and the program of the so-called proletarian poetry but gravitated later more towards Karel Teige and his "poetist" conception of modem art. It is a decade that in Seifert's recollection seems an endless stream of daily meetings and heated debates about art, literature and politics in Prague's many literary cafes and wine bars. Some of his friends wrote, translated, composed at cafes, had "their" tables there and could be found in their favorite establishments day in, day out. S. K. Neumann, who attracted a large following among young writers and artists, always liked Seifert best among them (Pesat, Seifert 21). Seifert reciprocated with almost naive, touching veneration. In his home he kept a framed reproduction of Neumann's photograph, with a picture of the Virgin Mary underneath it {AEW 279). He dedicated his first collection of poetry, City in Tears (1921), to Neumann. The two collaborated on several publications as editors. At the same time, Seifert's creative imagination soon began to chafe under Neumann's categorical insistence that Seifert adhere to the programmatic directives of "proletarian art": advancing social revolution, attacking the injustice of the capitalist system, becoming a voice of the working masses R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 24 and generally "shocking the bourgeois" (who reacted tamely and quite fearlessly, as Seifert remembers). Neumann, although he introduced the two men, disliked Seifert's intensifying friendship with Teige and his attendant drift towards "poetism," the artistic program that Teige conceived after transforming and repudiating the idea of proletarian art. Karel Teige, only a year older than Seifert, was instrumental to the poet's early development and Seifert repeats on several occasions how much he admired his erudition and liked his personality. Seifert credits Teige with domesticating Apollinaire's poetry in Prague, after Capek had "invited" the French poet there by bringing him to Czech readers in his famous translations. Seifert suggests that the immensely rich crop of poets and writers of his time should rightly be called "Teige's generation" to acknowledge the impact of Teige, now largely unjustly forgotten. The two saw each other almost daily, either in Teige's large home library where also the first Dev&tsil meetings were held, or in one of the many cafes they frequented. It was Teige, Seifert says, who opened the world of art for him, particularly in the light of the poet's insufficient proficiency in foreign tongues {ABW 151,446). Teige apparently taught him to love and appreciate poetry as well as the fine arts. Teige was a graphic designer and studied art history. He wrote authoritative essays on art, literature, film, architecture, among other things. His command of French was excellent and he knew a great deal of modem poetry by heart. Seifert reminisces how he first heard Apollinaire's "Sous le pont Mirabeau" and Verlaine's poetry recited by Teige in the original the day they met. It was also Teige who took him on Seifert's first trip to Italy and France in 1923 to familiarize the poet with modem art as he rigorously defined it. At this same period in the early 1920s, Seifert began his long professional journalistic career, although he remained primarily passionate about literature and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. p o etry After joining Rude pravo for a short while in 1921 and following a brief stint in the Moravian town of Brno, where he worked as an editor in the communist paper Rovnost, Seifert returned to Prague only a few months later. From 1922 until 1929 he worked for the Communist bookstore and publishing house and, concurrently, until 1925, was the chief editor of the scathingly satirical weekly SrSatec. Between 1927 and 1929 he took over Neumann's post and ran Reflektor, a communist biweekly magazine. He wrote reviews and reports of plays, books, films, lectures. Generally speaking, Seifert's development in the 1920s ranges from youthful experimentation and the naive absorption of several crucial influences, to his formation, late in the decade, of a style that was entirely an individualistic expression of his own personality. Of course for most of the 1920s he was working for communist party publications. This finding of his own voice, perhaps not surprisingly, coincided with his expulsion from the communist party and his breaking with the avant-garde artistic circle Dev&sil in 1929. The artistic association Devittsil initially arose from Teige's programmatic theses in late 1920 which then were entirely identical with proletarian art but later evolved into a uniquely Czech modernist movement, poetism. DevStsil increasingly began to unite artists on ideological grounds, most prominently communists, and its membership fluctuated strongly (Pesat, Seifert 17). As the decade progressed, the organization turned dogmatic, Stalinist, thus outliving its creative significance for Seifert and the Czech cultural landscape {ABW 445). DevStsil (literally "nine-power") is the Czech name for butterbur, the "mysterious and singular medicinal herb which in its name bears the magical number nine" and thus was chosen by the founding members who happened to be nine, among them two painters and two architects. The herb itself R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 26 the artists had discovered in a recent book by the brothers Josef and Karel Capek (ABW 152)7 Poetism, the denial of established art and celebration of everyday objects or popular entertainment— like the circus, film, and dance halls— was not a traditional artistic program but was meant as a way of perceiving the world that was to become poetry itself. It was to be the art of life, the ability to live and enjoy. Seifert recalls his Paris trip with Teige in 1923, and Teige's unbending orthodoxy, when the poet was forced to sneak into the Louvre secretly because Teige respected nothing but ultra modem art and what he perceived as its immediate precursors. Modem art, to Teige, was conceived in the circus, on the cinema screen or the brightly illuminated boulevards with their neon signs. The Louvre Teige passed with disdain, but waxworks, galleries selling contemporary paintings, the Folies Bergeres, jazz bands, cafes, and music halls were a must. Similarly, Charlie Chaplin became a cult figure. The new modem art ceased to be art— this was the motto, coined by Ilya Ehrenburg, which the poetists adopted. Characteristic for poetism was its playfulness and unfettered creativity, stressing emotion and imagination over logic. This was accompanied by formal looseness, that is, casual, irregular rhyme patterns, slant rhymes, colloquialism, word play. In his second collection of poetry, Sheer Love (1923), Seifert not only reflected elements of this artistic conception, but in turn apparently influenced Teige's poetist theses (Pesat, Seifert 48-49). Poetism, therefore, was essentially congenial to Seifert's ^The accounts of how Dev&tsil got its name vary, so do explanations of the symbolism of this particular wildflower. Drews assumes that it was chosen partly because the butterbur is among the first plants to blossom in the spring (85). Petasites officinalis apparently is a malodorous herbaceous plant, whose blossoms sprout before its leaves do (Brousek 57). The number of Dev&tsil founding members fluctuates between nine and fourteen, depending on source. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 27 nature—perhaps more so than to Teige's. The poet's sympathy for the suffering of the poor never diminished, but his vision was more differentiated than stem propagandists insistence on class struggle in proletarian poetry would allow. His unpretentious proletarianism was innate, not acquired and to an extent shaped his life- vision. Poetism, as Teige conceived it, attracted many new members to Dev&sil and shaped Czech poetry in the mid-twenties. The new program's task was to extol and to encompass "all the beauties of the world," as the final poem in the collection Sheer Love suggests in title and content. It is interesting that Seifert chose this very title for his memoir, thus nostalgically returning to the time of his youthful experimentation. Seifert's third collection, On the Waves ofTSF (1925), is entirely in the poetist vein. It is the quintessential expression of the movement, the most consistent application of "poetry as play" (Pesat, Seifert 61), although this does not mean that it wholly disregards serious themes. The playful element is evident even in the book's flippant dedication to Seifert's poetist friends. More importantly, it is expressed in Teige's original typography. Almost every poem is set in different fonts, in varying sizes. This graphic layout underscores the whimsical nature of many poems; so does the poet's attempt simultaneously to contain the fascinating phenomena of the modem world as he witnessed it on his recent trip to France. It is also a tribute to Apollinaire and to modern poetry. The unconventional graphics are part of a provocative, irreverent gesture that culminates in printing the brand name of condoms "Ollagum" next to the poem "Nightlights." In late 1926, however, Seifert published The Nightingale Sings Poorly, which on the one hand continues and even perfects semantic play, but more strongly than On the Waves ofTSF already rings a different, a more wistful tone. Seifert excels at associative word combinations that, like his previous book, rely heavily on the resources of the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 28 Czech language and present a great challenge to a translator. Several poems at the end of the collection reflect Seifert's recent trip to the Soviet Union (1925), which he undertook as part of an official delegation, with Teige and other writers and intellectuals, for the "Society for economic and cultural friendship with the New Russia." Seifert's response to this journey seems mixed. His verse suggests that he was not oblivious to the turmoil and violence in post-revolutionary Russia— in contrast to his early revolutionary zeal. In his memoirs there is no mention of this visit. In January 1928, after several years of acquaintance and romantic involvement, Seifert married Marie Ulrychova from Jicin, a town which figures so prominently in Sheer Love. A year later a rare prose publication Hvfody nad Rajskou zahradou [The Stars Above Paradise] appeared, consisting of autobiographical pieces that humorously look back at the author's childhood, coming-of-age, and artistic affiliations during the 1920s. Seifert's retrospective orientation signals the beginning of a new phase. The year 1929 marked a turning point for Seifert. Most critics, foremost among them Zdenek Pesat, agree that the collection Carrier Pigeon manifests a transition of poetics that foreshadows Seifert's mature work of the 1930s. The poet still has not become introspective and maintains his preoccupation with external sensory details, but the collection initiates a trend toward internalization and intimacy (Pesat, Seifert 77). His political disillusionment is evident; revolutionary fervor is replaced by skepticism. The same year Seifert, along with six other writers, signed a letter of protest against the policies of the new pro-Stalinist party leadership under Klement Gottwald and was subsequently expelled from the Czechoslovak Communist Party. This also meant that professionally he was barred from its party press. His friends Teige, the great poets Vitezslav Nezval, and Frantisek Halas among others, published a counter declaration, thus taking a radically opposed, confrontational stand to Seifert. It was a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 29 divisive break. Soon thereafter Seifert's fellow Dev$tsil member, the critic and journalist Julius Fucik, successfully voted to have Seifert also removed from this once artistic but now increasingly dogmatic, communist group (cf. A B W 445).® Similarly, Seifert's affiliation since October 1929 with the artistic group Leva fronta [Left Front], that promised loosely to unite leftist intellectuals, was short-lived. As became evident in the 1950s, the communist party would not forgive Seifert's deviations, especially since he always stood by his decision and yet never ceased to adhere to moderately leftist, social democratic ideas. During the thirties he often entered into polemic battles with the radical left, mainly with Julius Fucik. Looking back, Seifert writes that neither the break with communism nor with Dev&sil upset him much, because he felt that the artistic association had outlasted its purpose. But he deeply regretted the estrangement from Teige. They both tried to keep up their friendship, but saw increasingly less of each other. In the thirties Teige and Nezval imported surrealism to Prague, maintaining intense contacts with its French proponents, but Seifert did not participate in this development (A B W 446). Surrealism did not interest him (AWB 415). Until 1949, when he devoted himself exclusively to writing poetry, he continued working as an editor of literary and cultural columns predominantly in the social democratic and labor union press and brought out five ®The accounts vary when it comes to the details surrounding this major shake-up in the ranks of DevStsil. As opposed to the version remembered by Seifert, Vitezslav Nezval recalls that it was in fact Fucik, who took the side of the absent Seifert when the expulsion was discussed. Looking back, Nezval is understanding of the poet's search for individuality and artistic independence: "We lost Seifert. In many respects he liberated himself from what were sectarian rituals after all because the 'terror of avant-gardism' ceased to hold sway over him. His own voice was coming to the fore under different layers and Seifert was seeking to establish his own tradition" (Seifert, JeStgjednoujaro 133). According to Effenberger, Seifert and his fellow writers were not expelled but left on their own after formulating their manifesto directed against the new leadership of the communist party (610). Pesat describes the event as expulsion (Seifert 104). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 30 collections of poetry in the course of the decade that ended with the outbreak of World War II. In the early 1930s Seifert's poetry turned inward and centered on the motifs of death and the passage of time but also incorporated images from the Czech landscape and the beauty of Prague. His poetry became more traditional or perhaps even "neo- classicist" (Mestan 223) in the sense that it exhibits concrete imagery rather than surrealism or ideological abstraction, and thrives on intense sensory experience. All this is conveyed in a form that has grown symmetrical. Rhyme patterns and metric schemes become regular, the metaphors less sweeping, the stanzas parallel and the melody less syncopated but smooth. Pesat points out that this development coincided with Seifert's intense translating of Verlaine's poetry (Seifert 92) ? Another influential element that he sees is Seifert's very own expression of "poesie pure" (93) in contrast to his previous work that embraced social revolution. In the face of deepening economic crisis, along with the rise of nationalism and fascism, the poets in the early 1930s seemed overcome with skepticism and disillusionment when it came to radical societal change. However, Seifert found an outlet not only in his journalism but also in occasional verse that he published regularly in daily newspapers. Occasional verse increasingly became his means of dealing with the dilemma of poetry and action. He wrote a moving and well-received series of poems to commemorate the death of Tomds G. Masaryk, the nation's charismatic first president, who died in 1937. A year earlier he assumed a critical stance in his book of satirical verse Zpivdno do rotadcy [Sung into the Rotary Press] against the overblown official celebrations of the centennial anniversary of Karel Hynek Macha's death. He ^It is not Seifert's first exposure to Verlaine's verse but probably his most intensive as he translated between 20-25 of Verlaine's best-known poems in order to publish a selection of about forty pieces. However, Seifert never completed the project (see A B W 290ff.). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 31 also mockingly targeted the Freudianism of the surrealists, his former artistic associates of DevtHsil, and orthodox Marxism. Concurrently, his book of poetry Ruce VenuSiny [The Hands of Venus], which won Seifert a national prize, was suffused with Macha's spirit, celebrating the quiet heroism of endurance and human striving (Pesat, Seifert 94). His journalistic pieces consistently pinpointed social injustice and the abysmal differences between the haves and the havenots. With the very real threat of fascism and war looming, Seifert looked back upon his earlier poetist and proletarian verse as romantic "boisterous revolutionary talk responding to a reality that in comparison to today resembled a bucolic idyll" (Pesat, Seifert 109-110). The poet not only denounced fascism when the Spanish civil war broke out and co-edited an anthology in support of the Spanish democracy (Pesat, Seifert 118) but used his considerable clout to respond both in journalistic prose and in his verse to the contemporary crisis: the Moscow trials, fascist Italy's war in Abyssinia, the expansionist tendencies of Nazi Germany, among others (Pesat, Seifert 127).10 In 1938 Czechoslovakia fell victim to Hitler's aggression. France, Czechoslovakia's ally, along with Great Britain, succumbed to Germany's pressure and ceded the Sudetenland, mainly inhabited by the German minority, to the Nazis. The infamous Munich Treaty failed to secure peace in Europe and to stop Hitler's expansion. Rather, it paved the way for Germany's incorporation of the remaining Czech lands into the Reich as the so-called "Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia" in March 1939. Slovakia became a puppet state dominated by Germany. Seifert responded to the threat to Czech political and cultural sovereignty in his rousing collection l^The Soviet show trials in 1936-37 divided the European left, but Seifert was unequivocal in his opposition to the Stalinist purges. He wrote three poems that he published in the social-democratic daily Pravo lidu to protest the brutal sentences against Lenin's politburo and the protagonists of the October Revolution ("Jaroslav Seifert v PrAvu lidu o moskevskych procesech 1936-37" 6). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Zhasn&e svStla [Put Out the Lights], published in late 1938, again to considerable acclaim and readership. The poet took up the responsibility to act as a spokesman of his people, particularly in times of imminent danger to nationhood. The collection, much like Seifert's wartime verse, invokes Czech history and cultural icons to remind the readers of past resilience and overcoming of national catastrophes. The native land is eroticized in a deeply-felt lyrical tone. With this sincere, natural and intimate expression of what the Czech people felt and needed Seifert truly assumed the task he had cherished since flirting, in his first collection of poetry, with the role of the revolutionary bard, who would lead the masses on the barricades. The hope for survival and the search for solace motivated Seifert's thematic turn to the nation's past and to "eternal verities" during the war years. He commemorated the immensely popular Czech novelist Bozena Nemcova— whose Babiika [The Grandmother] has become a classic printed in about 350 editions since 1855 (Mestan 78). In a 1940 collection, SvStlem odSnd [Clad in Light], similarly, the central theme is the city of Prague and its glorious past, tied to the poet's autobiographical reminiscences. Seifert clearly identifies himself as the poet of Prague; to the city he clings intimately, for it provides him the consolation he seeks in this time of crisis. In his representation of the city he arrives at a fundamental affirmation of life in all its natural manifestations. Likewise, in Kantenmj most [The Bridge, of Stone] (1944) Prague is the setting for personal reminiscences, simple pleasures like the coming of spring, and feminine beauty. All this is not a sign of escapism, but an attempt at finding, on native grounds, adequate symbols, as the only possible means of reaching an audience, contributing a semblance of resistance despite wartime censorship, and allowing people to read between the lines— a skill the Czechs have repeatedly been forced to learn in the course of their modem history. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Seifert's basic "heliotropic" disposition and tonality parallel Mozart's, as George Gibian rightly points out (11) and as Seifert himself amply attests in his memoir. The gentle criticism raised by his poet friend Frantisek Halas against The Bridge of Stone is telling: Halas liked the collection but did not think poetry should sound "sweet and alluring" in times like World War II: "Nowadays poetry should howl like autumn wind, bark like dogs let loose and shriek like birds of prey." Seifert agrees with Halas but adds that he was unable to do so: "I love Mozart and I wanted to believe that the song of the flute can open the gates to the cathedral of Wisdom" (A B W 72). This is why Seifert did not share Nezval's obsession with the occult. And this also accounts for Seifert's reaction when a fellow poet once gave him an exotic bottle containing curare: Without a moment's hesitation he flushed the poison down the toilet (A B W 51). This sensibility, so atypical in the 20th century, survived despite the several national and personal crises Seifert witnessed in his lifetime and it coexisted with his lifelong commitment to social causes. A crucial moment that sheds light on the poet's attitudes is his brush with death during the final days of World War II when the Czechs, expecting Allied forces to arrive shortly in Prague, rose against their German occupiers on May 5,1945. Unfortunately, it took the Soviet Army five more days to reach Prague, while American forces nearby were ordered not to advance towards the capital; therefore, many ordinary Czech citizens died during the brief uprising. During this time Seifert was once again at Lidovy dum, clandestinely preparing a new post liberation daily newspaper with a few of his editor colleagues. German soldiers pursuing fleeing Czech fighters who hid at Lidovy dum entered the offices, arrested Seifert along with the editorial staff, and marched the men across town to a barracks wall in Karlin, where they were expecting to be shot. For a long anxious moment they were simply left standing at the wall— until at last they were exchanged for German R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. prisoners whom the Czech side had captured. In his memoir Seifert remembers Dostoyevski's masterful, calm narration of his execution that was reversed at the last minute. Seifert's own narration of his excruciating moment is characterized by unheroic simplicity and attention to evocative details. During the march he recalls his childhood, sweet smells and how he used to walk hand in hand with his girlfriends. He shares a last stale piece of bread and cheese with a fellow captive, notices people hiding behind curtains, wonders what they are having for lunch and remembers a drawing of a nude woman on a toilet wall in his youth. That he does not think of death he asks the reader not to consider courage or heroism. He simply did not reckon with death although it was near (ABW 263). The collection Prilba hliny [A Helmetful of Earth] (1945) lyrically celebrates new found freedom and the liberation of Prague by the Soviet Army, which coincided with the arrival of spring, the time of renewal and rebirth. After the war, Seifert again took up journalism. Until 1949 he worked for the labor union daily Prace and edited a series of poetry publications. As before World War II, he wrote commentaries and small feature articles responding to the political and cultural situation, and he published occasional verse commemorating anniversaries, the passing of public figures, or celebrating his literary friends. These poetic memorials were collected in Ruka a plamen [The Hand and the Flame] (1948). Both of the next two collections are collaborations between Seifert and a popular Czech painter, in which the poems were written to accompany the pictures. Humoristic elements as well as folklore, natural beauty, and the changing of the seasons converge in a child-like vision that complements the two well-known illustrators of children's books. Seifert also writes a fairy tale Koulelo se koulelo [It Rolled and Rolled] and returns to the world of the late-romantic and early- R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 35 realist novelist Bozena Nemcov^ with the collection Ptserl o Viktorce [Song About Victoria] on the occasion of the author's 130th birthday in 1950. The reasons both for Seifert's excursion into children's literature and for his return to a theme adapted from Nemcovd's The Grandmother are tied to another momentous political change. This latest work brings into focus the rigid political and artistic norms of "socialist realism" established after the communist coup in 1948 which imposed a brutal Stalinist dictatorship on the country. Paradoxically, the communist critics denounced Song About Victoria on terms that could not, in fact, be more removed from the truth in their assessment of Seifert. One Stalinist era critic blamed the poet for his "estrangement from the people" because he chose a protagonist who pays for her passionate nature with insanity and death (she is struck by lightning). Moreover, the critic detected nihilism and pessimism in Seifert and indicted him for "using poetry against the people, to mock everything that our working people hold dear" (Hejl 101). Communist critics also blamed Seifert for escapism and for "Catholic mysticism"— a development that they presumably already detected long before Seifert broke with the communist party in 1929 (Hejl 100). So, during the communist period, Seifert's earlier break with communism returned to haunt him. It is evident that the criticism had little to do with artistic merit. Pesat points out that Maminka [The Mother], that appeared only a few years later and even received a national prize, was similar in nature and poetics to the earlier work that had drawn such vicious attacks (180). The book is markedly different from the servile poetry of the time. It is an homage not solely to Seifert's own mother but to motherhood as a whole, to positive human values and the home. Unlike his colleague Nezval and other artists after the war, especially following the communist coup in 1948, Seifert chose not to become a propagandistic tool of the Stalinists. In addition, he did not keep his contempt R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 36 for such poetry to himself. In 1948 he and poet Vladimir Holan were heard in a bar comparing contemporary French and Soviet poetry, very much to the detriment of the latter. Only an intervention on his behalf by Frantisek Halas and a forced apology saved Seifert from an internal inquiry by the national writers association and perhaps even from imprisonment. Seifert's private correspondence with critic and friend Bohumil Polan offers a few rare glimpses of the writer's frustrations and tribulations at the time while his memoir mentions this bleak period only sparingly. The letters also show the extent to which the author's health was beginning to fail. Seifert was repeatedly hospitalized during the 1950s and the 1960s with various ailments that impaired his ability to walk. In a letter dated March 30,1950 and written at the spa Jesenik the poet addresses the recent controversy surrounding his book: "Victoria was censored in several places, so that the idea, modest by the way and not directed at anything— is lost. I thought of Victoria's bolt of lightning and of slow time that so quickly killed Nemcov^. Even that is gone." He continues, "I have never been very ambitious, even less so today. After all, an earwig underneath a stone does not have to be a coward." Much later, on March 13,1961, in a letter where he complains about illness and pain, Seifert explains his motivation for writing children's poetry earlier: "I wrote verse for children because I could not write for adults. By the way, if you look closely, it is verse for grown-up readers." He claims that he does not know, understand or appreciate children's literature, or its problems and goes on to say that he likes children, but dislikes teachers and editors of children's magazines and ends on a dark note: "All that this has gotten me, as you know, is only that I am considered 'the poet who wrote Mother.' But this does not upset me anymore because I view many things from the lofty height of utter indifference and quite often I am looking forward to my R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 37 funeral. Which you should not mistake for pessimism. Quite the contrary." A little later that year, on July 15,1961, Seifert with unwonted sharpness condemns It Rolled and Rolled: "Those worthless verses I only wrote because I was forced to do it and I am very sorry for them. [...] But they were published and now they are even preparing a new edition and there I must acknowledge them though I don't want to." Seifert's human decency and courage came to the fore during the period of de- Stalinization in 1956 at the 2nd Writers Congress. He was the only one to come out in support of imprisoned and silenced colleagues and to demand their rehabilitation (Hejl 100). In his speech he stressed honesty thus echoing his early classical idea of the poet as Aristotelian truth-giver and maker: "When anyone else keeps the truth to himself, it can be a tactical maneuver. If the writer keeps the truth to himself, he is lying." He went on to say: "It is wonderful if poets are prodding politicians, but I dare say that it is less wonderful when it is die other way around" (Pesat, Seifert 188). In another letter he thanks Polan for continued friendship and support "in the time in which we are living. In this time of lies, whose atmosphere is sometimes unbearable to breathe" (Letter Nov. 26,1959). The poetry Seifert produced while hampered by illness is marked by contemplation of the ephemeral nature of life, the fleetingness of time and the need for love. Seifert is preoccupied with these themes in his memoir where he says about life: "Sometimes it seems to me that it passed like shivers down my spine" (ABW308). Koncert na ostrovS [Concert on an Island] (1965), like the collection Praha [Prague] (1964), which is thematically tied to the poet's many preceding poems about his native city, marks an important change in form. Seifert abandons the melodic, song-like character of his poetry, dispenses with rhyme, adopts a natural conversational tone and opts for directness of expression rather than imagery. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 38 Due to the continuing political relaxation in the course of the 1960s, it was finally possible to accord Jaroslav Seifert the official recognition that he had earned long ago: He was named "National Artist" in 1966. Before the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21,1968 crushed hopes for reform and a "socialism with a human face," Seifert published two collections of poetry in quick succession: Halleyova kometa [Hailey's Comet] and Odlevdnizvonu [The Casting of Bells] (1967). Both are characterized by diction that is increasingly prose-like; thematically, erotic love and femininity return, so does confessional and contemplative verse as well as reminiscences. The invasion and subsequent military occupation of Czechoslovakia cut short the time Seifert could devote to his next collection Morovy sloup [The Plague Column]. Seifert thought of this book as his last and conceived it to a great extent as a parting gesture. Love, aging and death are central themes, so is poetic stock-taking at the end of a long, rich, difficult life. During this new national crisis Seifert again did not hesitate to take on the responsibility that followed from his standing as "the conscience of the nation." He was elected chairman of the Czech Writers Association at its 1968 congress and led a task force in the national writers association (that included both Czech and Slovak writers), formed to rehabilitate authors persecuted under the previous communist regime. Milan Kundera remembers Seifert's authority and unbending stance: I keep seeing him before me. He walked with difficulty, on crutches. And perhaps due to the illness, when he was sitting, he seemed like a rock: immovable, solid, firm. We felt relief, when he was with us. What justification of existence can a small doomed nation give? The justification was here: the poet, square-shouldered, crutches leaning against the table, the tangible proof of the genius of the nation, the only glory of the powerless. (53) The few letters to Polan during this trying time describe the frenzied pace at which the 67-year-old Seifert exercised his much-needed leadership role: "I am R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 39 staggering through the world— from my bed to the [Writers] Association and back. They burdened me with a lot of things; it would be too much for a healthy man" (Letter Mar. 23,1969). A year later, shortly before a new hard-line association replaced the one Seifert's was chairing: At first it was troublesome for me. I don't know the political game well enough. I also lack political eloquence. But the worst was that I had to hobble to those high places with the utmost exertion and pain. And I had also sharpened my quill for a few last verses, which I can't get to. Not that I don't have the time. But it is weighing me down like a stone. (Letter June 26,1970) Until his death in 1986, Seifert was barred from this organization. His collection The Plague Column, circulated in samizdat typescripts, first appeared in an exile edition in Germany (1977) and was later published in Czechoslovakia (1981). The new hard line regime was often at a loss how to deal with the poet, whose authority in his homeland as well as abroad increased rather than lessened, even through the years that his new works would not be published— except for DeStnik z Piccadilly [An Umbrella from Piccadilly] (1979), which had been copied and circulated since 1978, but about which critics were not allowed to write. In the collection Seifert maintained his inner autonomy and continued in the vein of his contemplative, reminiscing verse acknowledging the inevitable proximity of love and death and anticipating the latter almost longingly. Seifert's popularity, moral authority, and international acclaim among literary insiders granted him a certain immunity to intervene on behalf of human rights causes; most importantly the signing of Charter 77 in 1977. The 1984 Nobel Prize for literature embarrassed a regime that would have preferred to ignore the international attention the award caused. Seifert's last collection Byti bdsnikem [To Be a Poet] (1983) continued the confessional character of the previous book and exuded a calm, resigned attitude toward life and impending death. For a last time the poet again celebrated the city of R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 40 Prague. On January 10,1986 he died and was buried in Kralupy. His funeral drew large crowds of mourners (and consequently the attention of the police). In his congratulatory letter, dated October 11,1984, on the occasion of the Nobel Prize award to Seifert, Vaclav Havel succinctly formulates the reasons why the poet has long deserved this honor: Not only because your poetic work has long... become common property, that is, everyone who is the least bit interested in literature got it under his skin, so to say; not only because you have long been something of a living symbol of the continuity in modern Czech literature; but also because with your moral stance—unpretentious and all the more lasting—you embody the best tradition of a responsible civic stance of a writer in this country. (104) Despite the many turbulences in his life, some aspects of the poet's sensibility and life remained remarkably constant: His deep, natural rootedness in his proletarian origins; his ability to address universally shared human experience, like love and death, in an accessible, yet profoundly relevant manner; his simple appetites and reliance on the senses; and his lifelong ties to the place of his birth, to Prague, to Czechoslovakia— devoid of pathos or fanatical nationalism. Finally, Seifert himself tells us who he was in a poem that ends with a tribute to his wife of many years: AUTOBIOGRAPHY Sometimes when talking about herself, mother would say: My life was sad and hushed, I walked on tiptoe. But when I became mad and stomped a bit, on the shelf mom's cups would lightly ring and I had to smile. I'm told that the moment I was bom, a butterfly flew in through the window and sat on mother's bedstead, but a dog howled in the yard as well. Mother thought this was an ominous sign. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 41 My life has not been peaceful quite like hers. But when into the present days I gaze wistfully as if into empty frames and a dusty wall is all I see, it was marvelously exquisite. I cannot forget many moments, which were like bright blossoms of all possible colors and hues, while evenings filled with perfumes resembled blue grapes concealed in the leaves of darkness. Passionately I read verse and loved music and wandered, ever surprised, from beauty to beauty. Yet when for the first time I beheld a naked woman's image, I began to trust in wonders. My life has passed by swiftly. It was much too short for my long yearnings, which were endless. Before I knew it, life's end had drawn near. Death will soon kick ajar my door and enter. Terrified and shocked then I will hold my breath and to breathe just forget. May it not be denied me still in time to kiss the hands of the one, who patiently with my steps walked and walked on and on and loved most of all. Jaroslav Seifert, An Umbrella From Piccadilly, Miinchen: PmD, 1979. [translation mine] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 42 CHAPTER II: The World of Jaroslav Seifert A. Native Influences It is perhaps fair to say for the sake of simplification that Seifert's sensibility in the 1920s shifts somewhat from predominantly native and (indirectly) revolutionary Russian influences (very pronounced in the first collection City in Tears but less so in Sheer Love), to a more cosmopolitan, exotic, international world view, dominated by French themes, in On the Waves ofTSF. Seifert's fourth collection The Nightingale Sings Poorly is both a culmination of his poetist work of the 1920s and a crossroads to the more intimate, introspective poetry of the 1930s. This change reflects Seifert's orientation away from the dictates of propaganda and engage proletarian art represented by S. K. Neumann and by the artistic association DevStsil until 1922, towards poetism, an aesthetic program of poetic play arising from life in the machine age and its popular culture, as programmatically defined by Karel Teige. This development likewise parallels Seifert's coming of age both as a man and an artist, his evolution towards more independence from his mentors, and, the first-hand insights gathered from his trips to Italy and France (1923) and the Soviet Union (1925). The evolution of Seifert's "proletarian" sensibility would have been impossible without the presence in him of a strong "folk element," the influence of his mother's Catholicism, his strong roots in the working-class milieu of Prague-Zizkov, and the impression upon him of the native Czech literature that he read. It is apparent in his memoir that Seifert truly revered several writers, many of whom he was to know personally. Foremost among them in that first phase of the 1920s was S. K. Neumann, his mentor, critic and fatherly friend, w ho— as Seifert acknowledges— was the first to discover in his own verse the squalid Zizkov as subject matter for modern poetry (ABW 197). To Neumann, who was instrumental in getting Seifert published, the young poet R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 43 dedicated his first collection of poetry. Neumann's poetry and poetics underwent many transformations, most importantly perhaps from Bergsonian vitalism and the pragmatism of the so-called "Generation of 1914," to which he belonged, to proletarian poetry of the early 1920s. This heterogeneous group of authors that published the influential Almanac far the year 1914, was dominated by the brothers Josef and Karel Capek. The "Generation of 1914" is generally seen as the beginning of the Czech avant- garde. It embraced the philosophers William James and John Dewey, whom Karel Capek read in the original. The Capek brothers also lived and studied in Paris (1911), like many Czech artists and intellectuals before World War I, and attended Henri Bergson's lectures. Most importantly, with his splendid, famous translation of modem French poetry Francouzskd poezie nove doby (1920), Karel Capek introduced Guillaume Apollinaire into Czechoslovakia and thus helped initiate a new era in Czech letters. Neumann's poetry in Nove zpSvy [New Chants] (written 1913-1914 but published 1918) along with theoretical articles in A fzije zivot! [Long Live Life] (1920) celebrates the achievements and dynamics of modem civilization. Walt Whitman and Emile Verhaeren, along with the Italian futurists, leave their mark on this phase in Neumann's often modified aesthetics and poetry. Characteristic is his boundless optimism and joy of living. This vitalist exuberance, however, changes with the war experience to a perception of technology as destructive and pernicious to modem man. His ambivalent attitude, particularly toward the modem city, corresponds to Teige's shifting perception of futurism and is echoed in Seifert's overwhelmingly negative conception of the city as an "angular image of suffering" ("Introductory Poem," City in Tears). Poetism later returns to an affirmative, almost worshipping stance toward civilization (evident in Sheer Love and beyond). Perhaps from Neumann too the young R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 44 Seifert adopts the modernist (for instance, Imagist) tendency to focus on everyday objects and to reject rigid poetic form. Aside from Neumann, Josef Hora (1891-1945), whom Seifert calls "magnus parens" of post-war poetry (ABW 44), and Ivan Olbracht (1882-1952) were also mentors for Seifert when he first began writing and publishing poetry with his Zizkov friends Ivan Suk and Frantisek Nemec. Hora edited the literary supplement of the social democratic daily Prdvo lidu, where some of Seifert's first verse appeared. Though older, already established as a poet and later critical of poetism, Hora became an accepted member of Seifert's generation and was one of the most acclaimed proletarian poets in the early 1920s. Seifert seems to appreciate Hora for his purposeful terseness and particularly for his genuine love of farm and country life from which he sprang: "Hora was well-molded from the soil and the atmosphere of his native region" (ABIV 304). Hora also acquainted Seifert with the well-traveled poet Karel Toman (1877-1946), formerly an anarchist (like Neumann), who subsequently turned to native themes, as Hora did. This meeting began a "respectful friendship." The youthful Seifert was enchanted by Toman's personification of artistic freedom that he tried to emulate (ABW 248) while the older Seifert in retrospect cherishes Toman's unaffected simplicity and truthfulness in capturing life and considers his poetry "completely and deeply Czech" (ABW250). Seifert dedicated "Good Tidings" in his first collections to Olbracht, a writer and journalist with leftist-communist leanings and son of writer Antal Stasek. Olbracht briefly took the young Seifert and his two Zizkov peers Suk and Nemec under his wing, acquainting them with other poets and writers over hearty dinners and full glasses. In this first, proletarian phase Seifert also closely associated with Artus Cemik, Dev&sil member and editor of the cultural supplement of the communist newspaper Rovnost in Brno, where Seifert worked for several months in 1921. Cemik knew French R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 45 and German well and corresponded with many modem writers and poets, among them Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Tristan Tzara, Pierre Reverdy and Ivan Goll, whose Paris Burning, deemed by Teige the new Zone,1 Seifert translated for Neumann's magazine Gerven. He also dedicated the poem "Paris" from Sheer Love to Goll. Half forgotten like the great facilitator Teige, Cernik had done a great deal to maintain Czech ties to avant-garde movements all over Europe. In Bmo Seifert also met his peer and lifelong friend, the poet Frantisek Halas (1901-1949), who like Seifert came from a poor family and became a member of the leftist avant-garde of the 1920s. As far as reading is concerned, it is perhaps not surprising for a poet so intimately associated with the city of Prague that the older Seifert relished the historian Antonin Novotna's Prague stories and legends, one of which he relates in his memoir, and feels such a close affinity with the poet, short story writer and journalist Jan Neruda (1834-1901). With Neruda, Seifert shares a rich writing career of reviews, features and commentaries as well as unadorned, journalistic prose. Neruda is famous for his Prague stories; these center on the petit-bourgeois microcosm of Mala strana, the Lesser Quarter on the left bank of the Moldau river. Like Seifert, Neruda started publishing in his early twenties and empathized with the poor; he is also the author of vivid ballad and romances from Czech history and apparently inspired a tradition with his intense, heartfelt collection Matitice [To Mother] which can be traced forward to Seifert's 1954 collection of poetry Maminka [Mother] (Mestan 92). In his memoir Seifert writes that he often thinks that Neruda was capable of charging his verse with "so much love and enthusiasm and so much art" that it is still fresh almost a hundred years later {ABW 391). ^The influential long poem by Guillaume Apollinaire. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 46 As a student Seifert read the back issues of the literary magazine Nova revue (appearing since 1895) which featured the symbolist or so-called decadent authors: Otokar Brezina (1868-1929), an influential precursor for the poetists, admired by Vitezslav Nezval; Antonin Sova (1864-1928), who likewise inspired poets that followed him with his evocative depictions of his native southern Bohemian region; Karel Hlavacek (1874-1897) and Fr&ria Sramek (1877-1952) among others. Seifert seems to have been drawn to sincere and intense poetic treatment of native themes and environments, perhaps because he himself from the very start felt that place was a powerful source of poetic inspiration. In the course of his life he traveled extensively in Bohemia, knew the history of the different regions, and associated many places with poets who have originated from and written about them. This is the case, for instance, with Fraria Sramek, whom Seifert sought out twice but ended up not meeting. Jicin, the birthplace of his future wife, where Seifert frequently visited, is not far from Sobotka and the young poet knew the landscape well, partly because he admired Sr&mek. It is interesting that Seifert resorts to an anthropomorphism when describing Sramek's Sobotka, the "land that the poet embraced, kissed and whose dusty grass he patted" ( .ABW 362); similarly, he often ascribes anthropomorphic (feminine) qualities to "his" Prague, like one winter when he sees the city buried under snow: "With my eyes I wanted to make love to Prague, just like we gaze lovingly at a woman from head to toe" (ABW 46). This vision of an intimate symbiosis between poet and place Seifert formulates even more keenly: "Any landscape is somewhat completed by a poet. The poet precisely guesses at the secrets of its beauty and this beauty he completes singing" [dozpwa] (A B W 362). And although Sr&mek has also written political verse and was a member in Neumann's anarchist circle for some time, Seifert primarily connotes "girls' smiles and kisses" with the older poet (ABW 246). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 47 For similar reasons the young Seifert along with his friends Suk and Nemec admired the poet and bohemian Frantisek Gellner (1881-1914). Seifert recalls that Gellner "showed us the bitter and evil side of love and we liked that back then" {ABW 49). Gellner's poetry was provocative and deliberately scandalous. It also lent itself to be sung in the newly emerging cabarets, for which it was partly written, and Seifert remembers hollering one of Gellner's songs around the pubs which he and his friends frequented {ABW 279). From the same generation as Gellner came the poet and prolific translator of plays and poetry from the French, Jindrich Horejsi (1886-1941), who had lived and studied in Paris. Seifert knew Horejsi, who mostly worked, swilling coffee and chain-smoking, in the din and haze of his favorite Prague cafe. With Horejsi's poetry Seifert's early verse has in common the combination of social struggle and erotic love. With his literary peers of the 1920s Seifert was subjected to considerable cross fertilization and underwent parallel development. Foremost among his DevStsil associates and friends was Vitezslav Nezval (1900-1958), who is still considered by some to be the leading exponent of poetism. Doubtlessly his Pantomima (1924) was the first poetic work written purely in the spirit of poetism (that Nezval had helped chart with Karel Teige) and had a tremendous impact on other writers and their orientation. It is characterized by experimentation and playful representations of joyful life in the modem city. Nezval was endowed with a versatile creative talent and produced not only outstanding poetry but stories, novels, translations, plays, journalistic and theoretical pieces among other things. Seifert recalls fondly the "hours of merry harmony, crazy ideas and unique adventures" he shared with Nezval and the other members of DevStsil in its heady early days: "Nezval's great talent affected all of us. He R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 48 gave something to each of us; he infected everyone with something. Even Teige. Why not admit it" (ABW 414). Other important peers in the avant-garde of the 1920s were the poet, critic and editor Antonin Matej Pisa (1902-1966), and the poets Jin Wolker (1900-1924), Konstantin Biebl (1898-1951), and Vladimir Holan (1905-1980). Something of a cult spun itself around the promising Wolker, who died of tuberculosis at an early age after publishing orJy four collections of poetry; these, nevertheless, secured his lasting reputation in Czech letters. In his proletarian poetry Wolker, like Seifert, juxtaposes religious imagery and revolutionary struggle, so much so that Josef Hora admonished them to abandon the "affected mannerisms with the Lord" as Seifert too was trying to yoke together "workers' fists and Lenin with angels' wings" (ABW 41). Wolker was also profoundly influenced by French poetry and particularly Apollinaire's Zone; his "Svaty kopecek" [Sacred Hillock] (published in Neumann's Gerven on 20 May 1921) attests to this influence. Not long after Wolker's death, the avant-garde issued an anti-Wolker declaration "Dosti Wolkra!" [Enough of Wolker!] in 1925, the title supplied by Seifert, in protest of the establishment's appropriation of the dead poet and with the intent to move away from the narrow and somewhat hazy confinement of revolutionary or proletarian art. Wolker's close friends Pisa and Biebl initially likewise write proletarian poetry but in the second half of the decade Biebl becomes a poetist and Pisa devotes himself to criticism, mainly critical of his poetist friends as he follows along the lines set by Wolker's uncompromisingly "proletarian" demands on art. Biebl's imaginative forays into exotic foreign lands are characteristic of poetism, but, unlike many of his peers, the poet actually traveled to Asia and Africa. Seifert dedicates "Three Bitter Seeds" from The Nightingale Sings Poorly (1926) to his friend Biebl, where he confronts the recurring R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. dichotomy in his work between home and the lure of foreign countries. Vladimir Holan's first volume, Blouznivy vtfir [Delirious Fan] (1926), manifests some poetist influence. Poetism imprinted itself on prose (for instance on Seifert's friend, the novelist Vladislav Vancura), drama as well as fine art. Music is another formative influence for Seifert and may account to a great extent for the lyricism and melodiousness of his verse. Here too Seifert delighted in light-hearted, simple or popular melodies. As was said earlier, he felt a great affection for Mozart. He was moved profoundly by Antonin Dvorak's Stabat Mater and his Slavonic Dances, that incorporate folk elements. During World War II, under Nazi occupation, when the Czechs saw their nationhood and culture threatened with eradication, they clung to Dvorak, whom Seifert perceives as unpretentiously, but deeply, rooted in the Czech lands. Not surprisingly, Seifert felt a kinship with this "plain proletarian man" (ABW 343). Seifert also admits to have attended Viennese light opera twice weekly as a student and later to have seen "opera after opera" at the National Theater, where he took particularly liking to Bedrich Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Again, Seifert responds with natural affinity to folkloristic elements and simple patriotism: "From this opera I learned to love this country, its people and its art." He recalls how he had to sneak visits to this opera in the face of Teige's unrelenting programmatic dictates of poetism, that only accepted modem contemporary composers, such as Stravinski, Milhaud and Satie (ABW 183). As previously discussed (in chapter 1), the working-class neighborhood of Zizkov strongly shaped Seifert's consciousness and poetic vision; in his memoir the poet himself acknowledges this "source of inspiration" that continued to excite him (ABW 196). Although Seifert, like most of his peers in the 1920s, had communist sympathies and his youthful naive piety suffered a few disillusionments, his mother's R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 50 Catholicism exerted its pull, less perhaps as an transcendent belief system, than as an imaginative force in its sensory and material manifestations, for instance, in the way "little people" celebrate religious holidays, sing church hymns and go about everyday worship. Seifert instinctually trusted and never abandoned the world he knew intimately and that perhaps kept him from becoming entangled too deeply in ideology and turning his back on his roots. He remembers respectfully watching an annual pilgrimage or procession of Zizkov women. It was a popular event that drew not only Catholics, but atheists and other non-believers. Seifert is never condescending and cynical toward values or customs that people hold dear or that have been part of a rich folk tradition. Perhaps this respectful attitude explains why Seifert had little trouble reconciling his father's social democratic and atheist leanings with his mother's naturally ingrained belief. Here music too becomes an important element of this bridging of differences. The poet is equally comfortable singing baroque chants and revolutionary songs. But a truly formidable influence in Seifert's early Zizkov days were the bawdy pub tunes and popular street songs. Their influence is felt most strongly in his first two collections of poetry. He uses the plain but poignant language of the street and expresses simple tastes as well as naive revolutionary ardor and all this in a casually rhymed, loose form that recalls the songs and broadside ballads of his youth. In his memoir Seifert describes the country fairs at Kralupy, where he spent a great deal of his summer vacations. At barely ten years, he discovered there the natural coexistence of virtue and vice when color reproductions of saints shared space with gory and gaudy serial images presented and accompanied by singers of broadside ballads. Seifert calls this the "comics" of his time to which he listened with awed horror (ABW354). Hence Seifert's treatment of the lurid ballad about the tailor Trnka from R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 51 Jicin in "Verses About Love, Murder and the Gallows" from Sheer Love. In hindsight the poet insists that his verse was bad and naive while finding the authentic broadside ballads much more beautiful. It can be assumed that, like his peers, Seifert was reasonably well-read in world literature which he knew solely from translations. From the memoir it is apparent that in his reading Seifert had a predilection for great works of love poetry. For example, he mentions Shakespeare's sonnets, Byron, and Dante's Inferno. In On the Waves ofTSF, there are two prominent references to Wilde's Salome and there is no doubt, that Seifert was exposed to translations of French literature in many of the francophile Czech magazines of his time and more directly via Teige's erudite eclecticism. Lastly, a powerful experience informing Seifert's poetic imagination was World War I. Although the young poet never served in the military, he suffered hunger and want during the war years, keenly observed the havoc that war created, and deeply empathized with its victims. Like the young generation in the U. S. or France after World War I, the Czechs exulted in the newly-found peace that arrived along with their national independence, and most were driven by great optimism for the future. The hopes of the intellectual left were kindled by the recent October Revolution in Russia, to which leftists worldwide pinned their vision of a new man2 and a more just social order. B. Devetsil 1. Proletarian Art What distinguished the Um&ecky Svaz Dev&tsil [Artists Union Devetsil], established 5 October 1920, from the beginning was the fact that it operated on 2A frequently used phrase, appearing, for example, in Neumann's article "Devetsil" (551). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. ideological and political rather than purely aesthetic grounds. It was an association of young artists from various disciplines, most of them bom around 1900, assembled under the aegis of leftist politics and bent on creating social— in its early phase called "proletarian" art. By the time of its slow dissolution near the end of the decade, when most members began to pursue their individual creative paths, Dev&sil had inspired some of Czechoslovakia's most innovative art. It was not just a literary society, but one that nurtured several dozens of foremost Czech architects, painters, graphic artists and theater people. In early 1921 Neumann evaluates the group's activities to-date as promising and as "fulfilling a certain program." He also clearly perceives the young artists as a collective body rather than as individuals, in keeping with communist doctrine ("Devetsil" 551). In the early "proletarian" phase the group's members customarily added DevStsil to their names in magazine or newspaper by-lines or published anonymously under the group name; for example, Vladislav Vancura's enthusiastic foreword to Jaroslav Seifert's first collection City in Tears is merely signed "U. S. Devetsil." From the start Dev&sil sought to establish itself in the public life true to the idea of propaganda art. It held readings to familiarize the public with its literary production, presented lectures on issues of aesthetics and politics and organized exhibitions. During this early phase of proletarian art, S. K. Neumann, though never a member, was closely associated with DevStsil. Following the Soviet model (in existence 1917-1922), he was running the short-lived Proletkult, the cultural and propagandists department of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, that issued a weekly by the same title in 1922 and 1923. With Neumann at its helm, Proletkult published the anthology of poetry, Komunisticke ve&ry [Communist Evenings] (1922), which Seifert edited with Neumann (Pesat, Seifert 21). The anthology was not compiled according to literary criteria, its R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 53 anonymous preface says, but was to serve as "a handbook for comrades who organize communist evenings, where poetry is recited" (5). It includes three of Seifert's poems from City in Tears, along with poetry by Neumann, Josef Hora and other Czech poets as well as translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Emile Verhaeren, Heinrich Heine, Walt Whitman and others. The poetry is assembled under headings such as "The Proletariat and Labor," "The City and Other Exclamations," or "Soviet Russia, Revolution, its Heroes and Martyrs" (it is here that Whitman appears). Neumann reviews one such cultural event that took place on February 6,1921 in his article "Devetsil." He remarks that Seifert achieved the greatest success of all his peers. In the days leading up to the reading, Neumann writes, the artistic circle also exhibited at a local bookstore paintings and drawings by such members as Karel Teige, Adolf Hoffmeister and Karel Vanek. Neumann's review exhibits a subtle bias against Teige. His comments tellingly exclude Teige's work; Neumann begins his review by calling Teige's "very aggressive" introductory remarks (his well-known programmatic statement "Obrazy a predobrazy," according to Peter Drews [85]) "somewhat unclear and confused" ("Devetsil" 550). From the start, Teige is the main driving force and theoretician of the artists union. The first of what were to be three large DevStsil exhibitions in the 1920s takes place in May 1922 and is a culmination of the association's first "proletarian" phase (Smejkal). Initially, DevStsil lacked its own publishing outlets, but its young members found acceptance in leftist periodicals and even in the mainstream press. Until the publication of RevoluSnisbomik DevStsil [Revolutionary Anthology Devetsil] in the Fall 1922 their works appeared in such literary magazines as Cesta, Host, Ktnen, Gerven, Orjeus, Var and others. Between June 1921 and May 1922 the periodicals (jerven, Ktnen, Veraikon, and Proletkult each even devoted single issues to DevStsil. Not only poetry and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 54 short fiction but also programmatic articles and manifestos published there ensured that the new catchwords "revolutionary" or "proletarian art" would become the subject of widespread debate on the literary and artistic scene. Much of the discussion revolved around the definition of these terms and the new art they conceptualized. Although Seifert immersed himself in DevStsil activities, he was more of a practitioner of proletarian art than its formulator.3 Unlike many of his peers— such as the much venerated Jih Wolker— who adopted the proletarian sensibility from the outside, given their middle-class or patrician origins, Seifert was a "natural" proletarian, at home in the modem industrial city, intimately familiar with the perspective of the working class in an inherent, organic, not acquired fashion (Hora, "Mezi b&snickymi kruzkami" 165). Neumann characterizes Seifert similarly as "naive proletarian from a working-class or semi working-class environment, little molded by schooling, who expressed in an almost self-made form class sentiments and ideas stemming from his real life"4 (Neumann, "Dopis z Prahy" 90). This definition points to the problematic and somewhat hazy conception of the "proletarian" artist and art that permeates the manifestos of its proponents in the early 1920s. In an opinion piece in the late twenties Seifert calls the concept proletarian poetry, that everyone used differently, "too broad and unclear" ("Kam jde ceskd poesie?" 2). In hindsight he mocks the ideological paradoxes clouding the definition: Mayakovsky's poetry, albeit communist in its tendency, was perceived in Russia as ^The poet and critic A. M. Pisa corroborates this impression in an article addressed to Teige where he remembers the early DevStsil days: "... Seifert already then was not too troubled by theoretical conundrums. . ("Karlu Teigovi" 380). 4 All translations from Czech and German sources are mine if not otherwise noted. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 55 unworthy of the proletariat's attention because a non-proletarian like Mayakovsky could not produce proletarian art. Conversely, Seifert goes on, "comrade XY," a "full- blooded proletarian," despite inability, was writing proletarian poetry. He sums up the problematic by quoting an anonymous German author who wrote: "propaganda art is beautiful if it is beautiful" (2). This of course asserts the primacy of aesthetic criteria applied to art. The Marxist critic Bedrich Vdclavek would resolve the clash between aesthetics and political message to the disadvantage of the former: "We will then rather prefer a work with a good tendency and worse form than a work with an excellent form, yet exhibiting immoral tendencies" (310). Jin Wolker, echoing theses from DevStsil, which he joined in early 1922 with A. M. Pisa, contributed to a definition in the provocative article "Proletdrske umeni" [Proletarian Art], where he describes "the new art" as class, proletarian and communist art.5 His generation— those bom around 1900— felt after World War I the political and social system to be unjust and untenable; similarly, they thought "bourgeois" art was compromised; and so, according to Wolker, the young generation desired to rid itself of the "old" art and strove to establish "a new proletarian art." In their view the artist would shed all vanity and renounce "the cult of the personal." Instead, the artist " ... joins the ranks of those who struggle for the same ideals. He organizes himself in the community of ideas. Here he wants to be heard. His creative attitude is not outside the ranks, but inside, completely" (740). Bourgeois art was characterized by 5 Var 1(9) 1 April 1922. Reprinted in Vlasin, ed. Avantgarda znamd a nezndmd, vol. 1 .1 am quoting from an unsigned serialized article on proletarian art "Umgni mest&cke ci tfidnl, prolet£rske a komunisticke?" Cesta 4(47) 1922:740-44. The manifesto "Proletarske umeni," co authored by Karel Teige, incurred most of the criticism leveled against proletarian art and DevStsil. In 1927 a polemic erupted between Karel Schulz, A. M. Pisa and Karel Teige regarding the extent of the collaboration of Teige and Wolker on this manifesto. Schulz claims Teige's nearly exclusive authorship, Teige himself declares that the article is a collective product in the spirit of early DevStsil, while Pisa insists that Teige was the only co-author with Wolker (see Vlasin, ed. Avantgarda zndmd a nezndmd, vol. 2,362-64; 375-80). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 56 individualism and l'art-pour-l'artism, Wolker says, which now will be replaced by collective orientation and ideology (741). The proletarian artist has a sense of class solidarity and "does not stand above the movement of the masses, but in it; collective thinking is not just intellectual experimentation for him, but living reality" (740). This new art is optimistic, Wolker insists, but not in any vitalist sense relying on and celebrating the existing order: "[To the artist] it is belief in himself, a guarantee of victory and thus a call to arms" (ibid.). This bright-eyed confidence is typical of many proclamations in this early phase of DevStsil. Seifert writes in one of his earliest reviews (of A. M. Pisa's book of poetry Nesrozumitelny svaty [The Incomprehensible Saint]): The word revolution is sacred to all of us. It expresses all our dreams and hopes and incorporates, or at least underlies all that which we believe, as we believe in the stars and the sun. The revolution has become our sun, to which w e steadily turn our faces like a sunflower its blossom (140). This statement and a key passage in Wolker reveal the ironic and paradoxical resemblance between imagery and terminology describing both communist utopia and religious doctrine— interestingly, a phenomenon noticeable not only in proletarian poetry, but in its theory and programs: "The subject of our faith is not God and gods, but man and the world. The Middle Ages believed in the abstract. We fervently believe in the concrete. The new art, therefore, will be realistic" (Wolker quoted in "Umeni" 741; emphasis mine). By "realistic" Wolker means that it will not describe Romantic illusions, but try to present "objective" facts and lived, shared experiences. Similarly, A. M. Pisa is heard: "From the primeval forests of darkness a new man slowly emerges. He comes as a barbarian and an apostle." The role of the artist is to lead: "And the poets of today regain a great primary task, to be John Baptists, messengers of wisdom, givers of order, workers, fighters and prophets" (Pisa, "K orientaci" 322). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 57 Like in other manifestos of the time, here and in Wolker there is a keen sense that the old world order and its art is finished, corrupt and that society stands at a crossroads to a new era.6 The moderate socialist critic Frantisek Gotz addresses this confluence of religious and political belief a few years later in 1926. Drawing on the social philosopher Hendrik de Man, Gotz attributes the phenomenon to "social mysticism" that forms after the horrors of World War I, when "socialism emerges with the same shocking elemental nature like the fervent belief in the coming of Christ once did. It is a movement religious in its very root" (Gotz, Horizont 33). The essence of this mysticism, Gotz says, is "the eschatological sense of the coming of redemption to deliver the entire world from terrible suffering" (34). However, as the decade progressed, many leftists saw such idealistic hopes crushed by the harsh realities in Stalinist Russia, the sectarian infighting in the Czech Communist Party and by growing dogmatism of the radical left. Despite all radicalism, Wolker in the early DevStsil manifesto does not entirely dismiss "old art" but feels that it will be naturally overcome, along with "individualism," by its antithesis, proletarian art. He then uses Marxist teleology to show that proletarian art is only a passing phenomenon that will transform itself with the disappearance of classes following the dictatorship of the proletariat: " [I] t will flow in all directions and will grow into next) cathedrals of socialist culture" [emphasis added] (741). Karel Teige strikes a similar note-in an article that many critics put at the 6 The Marxist critic Bedrich V&clavek, for instance, speaks of "one of the greatest turning points in the history of humanity" (309). Neumann detects ail-pervasive "bourgeois decay" and the bourgeois are doomed as a class much like feudalism was at the end of the 18th century ("K otazce umeni" 138). Teige declares the previous era (and he means impressionism, cubism, futurism as well as expressionism) "the most chaotic period in all of art history" ("Novym smerem" 569). He refers explicitly to Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the W est and diagnoses an end to "Euro-American" civilization while expecting renewal to come from the East, i. e. Russia (570). The anonymous author of the preface to the anthology Communist Evenings (perhaps Neumann or Seifert) speaks of an impending "final battle" to be waged by the communist proletariat (8). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 58 beginning of the creation of a poetics for proletarian art, "Obrazy a predobrazy" [Images and Prefigurations] (Spring 1921): "In predawn darkness we believe in the red dawn, equally beautiful as well as unquestionable— the beginning of an infinitely bright, sweet, brotherly life. Foremost at stake is man and his happiness and a new living environm ent..(5 5 -5 6 ). Art is to be a harbinger of a happier future reality, and it is to create images of a better tomorrow. Some critics (including Neumann) soon reacted with skepticism to what they felt was an objectionable idyllic note. The desire to leave the past behind is evident. Bourgeois art is oppressive, Seifert says in one of his first newspaper commentaries, because it forgot man, "who as a worker was doomed in the labyrinth of awesome mechanics"; and in further rejection of vitalist (and futurist) exaltation he declares: "We socialists today cannot depict the beauty of factories and sing of electrical streets without remembering their relationship to man and his needs" ("Burzoasie a umeni" 2). Still, Seifert, like Wolker, does not dismiss all of "bourgeois art" categorically; he concedes that even the undesirable "individualistic, exclusive and unpopular" bourgeois art has merit as a "value of the human spirit and creative work and as such its value is eternal" (2). Seifert feels the artist must always pay tribute to suffering man and takes up Teige's term of prefigurations or models of a new world and art; to create them is the task of the artist as "humanity is moving ahead on its endless and eternal journey toward happiness." In this time of radical change, a genuine modem artist cannot but be a revolutionary, Seifert says (3). This definition is elusive again. It is clear, however, that the "revolutionary" artist is seen as part of a larger community, the struggling proletariat, and as such should write in a comprehensible and simple fashion and "to think solely about that person to whom as communists we are obliged to speak" (Neumann, "Pro tridniho cloveka" 4). At this early stage R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 59 Neumann again jabs at Teige and his penchant for writing manifestos, but ends on an exuberant, flowery note himself, hazily circumscribing the essence of artistic endeavor: Iron is the logic of communism, iron must be the discipline in today's communist whole and the communists must have nerves of steel; iron is the music of the industrial world which we must conquer and bring to the maximum of concord and productivity; we opened up the realm of art to iron, the machine and industry; we now hear iron in poetry and music; iron will be the rhythms of proletarian poetry — if you w ill—iron art for iron man. ("Pro tridniho cloveka" 4) Elsewhere Neumann is more specific in delineating the nature and the role of the proletarian artist. He admits that it does not mean art created by the working-class, but "for the time being" it is art created for the proletariat ("K otazce umeni tridniho" 168). And in "O proletarske poesii" [On Proletarian Poetry] he says that the new art can at most be "poetry from the 'intelligent' proletariat, 'the workers of the mind,' who more or less belong to the intellectual caste. .. a poetry therefore only proletariat-oriented and written for the proletariat" (86-87). From this he then derives four essential dictates. 1) Poetry is not to serve as an outlet for "passive, weak outpourings of a subjective, individual life" and its moods or feelings that are unrelated to the purpose of serving the proletariat and its revolution (87). 2) A proletarian poet must transcend the "I" and speak for the proletariat, not only for himself. 3) Whenever the poet does speak for himself, "it must be evident that we have to do with a class-conscious citizen with a proletarian and communist orientation" (87). 4) Complete clarity is indispensable. If it is not intelligible to the politically mature proletariat, such poetry ceases to be proletarian (ibid.). Bedrich V&clavek likewise stresses the need for the artist to be based in and among the people who will read what will be "art for the people" and not an "aristocratic privilege of some individuals." The artist is to find a form that is both "truly beautiful and yet comprehensible" ("O nove umeni" 310). Vdclavek then raises a few important questions that, as he feels, await clarification. It is hardly surprising that R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 60 the "bourgeois" critics had a field day plucking apart such vague or provocative pronouncements. A poll among fifty writers initiated by the conservative magazine Most revealed the spectrum of opinions in response to Wolker's manifesto. Communists who responded enthusiastically backed Wolker. For example the writer, poet and co founder of the Czech Communist Party, Antonin Macek, is quoted as concurring that proletarian art "must grow from below, from the classes of the people and not consist of books on beautiful paper for bibliophiles; it must not eschew unpleasant labor, or ogle very cheap paper laurels, but be proletarian, that is, read and loved by proletarians" (see "Umeni" 19). The Catholic author Jan Vrba, a self-professed communist, distances himself from the Russian brand of communism that he sees propagated in the manifesto and denounces violence as a means to achieving "the kingdom of God on earth" to which this "highest dream of the human heart and the greatest work of the human reason" [i. e. communism] will lead ("Umeni" 791). Conservative critics naturally objected to the very idea of mixing politics and art. They dismissed it as fanaticism, subjecting creativity to mere servility and slavery to political dogmatism (Arne Nov&k, see "Umeni" 741). They also criticized factional political thinking in art as opposed to dealing with "universal man" and concerns common to all people. The critic Miroslav Rutte— who with the Capek brothers and others belongs to the so-called "Generation of 1914," named after their important Almanac for that year— likewise dismisses violence as a means to social change because in his view it only replaces one injustice with another. He writes that the main task of all creative minds is to transcend class, so that "art may cease to be class art but become human" ("Umeni" 744). This of course directly clashes with Neumann's demand that art must primarily benefit the proletarian class, not "universal man, but the people of R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 61 our class" ("Pro tridniho cloveka" 4). The translator and poet Otokar Fischer dislikes the emphasis on collective achievement and stresses individual talent. He finds the particularism inherent in such class, communist and proletarian art as equally unacceptable as are calls for "catholic art," "patriot art," or as "art for financiers" would be ("Umeni" 743). The conservative critic Jarmil Krecar denies that the young generation's pronouncements have artistic relevance; to him they are nothing but declarations of faith akin to professions of religious beliefs (ibid.) Given the self-confidence and the youth of the new generation during this controversy, when 20-year-olds take on the establishment, it is not surprising that mainstream critics dismiss some of their ideas as "puerile," "adolescent," or "naive," as Karel Capek does in his response to the Most poll ("Umeni" 742). He finds art and dogma incompatible and dislikes the measuring of artistic merit by the degree to which a work exhibits "class consciousness"; "instead, art should search for truth on its own in the world or within inner experience" ("Umeni" 742). Youth also a plays a role for Miroslav Rutte who argues quite convincingly that this new movement is not truly revolutionary or new, but another personification of youthful discontent and romantic rebellion ("Nove knihy lyriky" 598). He detects a rather superficial infatuation with revolutionary slogans and symbols instead of deep convictions and truly innovative "revolutionary poetic action" and attributes unprecedented achievement in this regard, in "their great and pure love of humanity," to Whitman and Verhaeren (599). One of the most important formulations of proletarian aesthetics came from Karel Teige in a lecture delivered on April 21,1922 (Drews 87) and was subsequently published as the introductory essay "Nov6 umeni prolet&rske" [New Proletarian Art] in the Revolutionary Anthology DevStsil7 While the essay clearly adopts Marxist positions, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 62 it also foreshadows significant deviation from agitprop art. Teige points out the liberating effect of the October Revolution that strove to free the proletariat from the inhumanity of "the old world order" and art from its isolation and estrangement from life ("Neue proletarische Kunst" 7). The Revolution sought to reunite art and life driven by the Marxist idea that art is class art and as such has a social and political function (8). Like other leftist critics, Teige repeatedly shows an anticipation of radical change and a sense of contemporary crisis; he speaks of "mighty upheaval in the present world" (9), "deep crisis of contemporary art" (22), "revolutionary ferment of today" (24), proclaims, "So we are standing on the threshold of the future" (25), and compares his tempestuous time with the era of the French Revolution (33). Teige demands a Marxist art criticism that would "de-psychologize" and demystify aesthetics and declares intuition and inspiration dead; the artist is not a mere visionary or translator of a transcendental world, he says, but the genesis of art is physical and human, so that it resembles the birth of man (12); moreover, an artist's "muses" are in no way superior to the muses of an engineer or even a cabinet-maker (13).8 He calls for a sociology rather than a psychology of art, based on Marxist perception of history. Underlying here are the concepts of collectivism (hence the rejection of individualist psychology) and of popular art. Traditional art is perceived as elitist and exclusive, serving only the bourgeois ruling class. Teige condemns "individualism, that criminal ideological anarchy of life" (20) and blames "bourgeois ^Teige wrote this article concurrently with co-authoring Wolker’s controversial manifesto "Proletarian Art" (Teige, "Manifest Jiriho Wolkera" 377). According to Effenberger, Jaroslav Seifert read this lecture on several occasioiis and was first thought to be its author. The published version was unsigned, intended as a collective statement of D evftsil (514). Due to difficulty in obtaining the Czech original, I quote from a German translation of Teige's manifesto. 8This remarkably but not surprisingly resembles Vladislav Vancura's foreword to Seifert's first collection C ity in Tears: "A poem is not an apparition, but a difficult and inconsiderable achievement like a workman's labor." In his article Teige later refers to art as "one area of human labor" ("Neue proletarische Kunst" 41). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. artists" for being cut off from the majority of the population and writing for imaginary communities (21). Attempts to shock the bourgeoisie resulting from this alienation, do not automatically propel the protesting artists outside the bourgeois class. To achieve a genuine change of style and bring about true social art, a fundamental reorganization of society is indispensable or at least signs of its coming must be present: "The new proletarian art therefore does not so much arise from personal socialist convictions (where it would only remain bourgeois art with a socialist tendency), but from the positive fact of a new society" (22). This corresponds with Wolker's remark that, strictly speaking, proletarian art will come into existence only during the dictatorship of the proletariat in the wake of revolution. Then, according to Marxist teleology, once a classless society is established, proletarian art will be superseded by socialist culture. Teige condemns bourgeois art (including cubism and futurism) — "the hot-house flower"— for its self-centeredness, elitist, and snobbish nature, and for ignoring the audience, the world, and man whom in reality it should serve (23-24). In addition, futurism, he says, is guilty of celebrating technology which was compromised in World War I; the war, in turn was itself the consequence of capitalist expansionism. Contemporary art is confused and lacks direction, Teige writes. As opposed to this lack of orientation and estrangement, art needs to be revived by a focus upon concrete reality, Teige says, since life and art are eternally one. In contrast to "cubofuturist" verse, Teige defines proletarian poetry as programmatic, collective; and its view of civilization as pessimistic (27). Its practitioners have rejected capitalism and "the old bourgeois order" which was discredited by the war. Communism, says Teige in the customary vocabulary of salvation, provided their new orientation: "Today Marxism is the doctrine of the fall and the rebirth of the world" (29). In fact, he unabashedly compares early Christianity's mobilizing effect to contemporary ideology in art (31). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Art becomes a political instrument of change. It is propagandists and engaged: "... an art fertilized by its time, bom of the great collective political cell and living by means of its belief and feeling" (31). The poet's function is thus to be a revolutionary hero and leader: "He does not need to seek words for events, but must influence events with his words; no documentary, but prophesy; [he must] not state but demand!" (ibid.). Yet Teige, like the mainstream critics, also subjects to severe criticism what he views as didacticism and sloganeering in some programmatic art that is primarily motivated by political intent and constitutes poor art: "... bad poetry with the best program will never be programmatic poetry" (33). He later makes the crucial distinction between "the actual revolutionary art, that is strictly military, partisan, characterized by iron discipline" (this undoubtedly characterizes the orientation of Josef Hora, Jin Wolker, A. M. Pisa, S. K. Neumann and others at the time) and "the broader art, which does not arise from struggle, but from the entire life of the proletariat" (41). This latter variety points to the other important feature of proletarian art, collectivism, that ensures that art starts with man, seeks inspiration among the people and addresses the audience with "images from life" (36). Art must answer the needs of the proletariat and should yield products that the people comprehend and find captivating. Thus the emphasis here is less on education and "consciousness raising" than on catering to the audience's taste and simply entertaining the masses. Although most theoreticians of proletarian art would agree that the new art should be comprehensible, they do not draw the far-reaching conclusions that take Teige all the way to (depoliticized) popular culture and ordinary forms of entertainment. Teige wants art to descend from its ivory tower. Art must be comprehensible and riveting. Hence he calls for a new socialist BabiHka [The Grandmother], a 19th R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 65 century Czech realist classic by Bozena Nemcovd, that is widely read to this day. For similar reasons he praises Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and the immensely popular novels of Jules Verne. They, like the cinema, are nearer to the proletarian's sensibility. Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, novels about Buffalo Bill, and fairy tales do not spoil the youth but instead educate it, Teige claims (38). In what must have amounted to blasphemy in the eyes of his orthodox colleagues, Teige plainly declares that workers relish the anonymously-written Buffalo Bill novels more than the poetry of Alexander Blok. The reason is that Blok's poetry "does not sufficiently engage the entire moral and instinctual side of the proletarian's being" (38). In this context it is perhaps not idiosyncratic for Seifert to attempt to write a Native American short novel Na&lnik Pokai-po about the fictional Shoshone Chief Pokai-po, the "prologue" of which, entitled "Neviditelny jezdec" [Invisible Rider], appeared in Neumann's Proletkult in May 1922. Since art is to produce "images from life," it is only logical to accept that the working class exhibits "not only longing for combative fanfares" but also needs sentimental novels or Nick Carter stories, and enjoys variety jugglers, circus dancers, clowns, and soccer on Sundays (37). Teige denounces "aesthetic prejudice" when encountering these "literary varieties," which he perceives as "the only and most authentic popular literature today" (37).9 Though Teige calls such popular pastimes "the dross of bourgeois culture," he does not want to "moralize" because he finds them ^Calling such manifestations of popular culture literary art, is in keeping with Teige's postulate to eliminate the division between art and life and corresponds to his perception of art as a unified force across disciplines, none of which is privileged over the others. In a lecture, Teige later similarly refers to film: "The possibilities of the cinema are unlimited, its resources are rich and endless. Its poetry, 100% modem poetry, is all-inclusive, precise, succinct and synthetic. It is the poetry of a travel diary, Eiffel [Tower], Baedeker, poster, greeting card, map, anecdote, grotesques, poetry of nostalgic memories, for memories of a city are like memories of love; poetry of cafes filled with light and smoke, the song of modern sirens of the Red-Star-Line, tourist poetry of long hotel and ship corridors, with mysterious and numbered doors of rooms and cabins" ("Estetika" 145). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 66 natural and grants "the people and the masses" the prerogative to be right when it comes to their collective taste. Finally, in one respect Teige indeed goes far in anticipating his subsequent poetist positions. He arguably even reverses his demand that art be programmatic, uttered earlier in the very same article, or at least creates a formidable contradiction. He says that many good-willed social novels and narratives leave the workers cold instead of finding a way to their hearts: No stories about life in destitution, no images of mine shafts and workshops, but of tropical, remote landscapes, poems derived from a free and active life, which do not communicate to the worker depressing realities, but realities and visions which excite and strengthen him!... [0]nly the pathetic gesture of the orator, the event on the cinema screen, an occurrence from the unknown splendid world, which one day will be one of our homelands, can conquer the heart of the proletarian. ("Neue proletarische Kunst" 38-39) It is not surprising from their perspective that some communists chided Teige for advocating popular escapism and for neglecting the propaganda purpose of proletarian art. By the same token, mainstream critics reacted to what they perceived as irresolvable contradictions. The rhetoric of revolution and class art wanes in Teige's subsequent manifestos as his orientation toward art as popular entertainment and way of life grew and as his exposure to French culture intensified following an important first visit of Paris in the summer of 1922. Predictably, S. K. Neumann subjects Teige, under whose guidance DevStsil began to drift away from proletarian art, to the most severe criticism, in part motivated by personal dislike stemming from Teige's evident influence over Seifert and his peers. Using the pseudonym Josef Votocek, Neumann calls Teige among other things, a "genuine coffeehouse rebel" ("K otazce umeni" 169) and attacks him for his penchant for writing manifestos and for what he sees as the theoretician's pernicious influence on Seifert's collection Sheer Love. Furthermore, Neumann denounces Teige for bringing "ideological chaos" to DevStsil (168), for being enmeshed in "fashionable bourgeois R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 67 slogans" and lacking "true artistic deeds" as well as "clear thinking" (169). Neumann pointedly responds to Teige's enthusiastic calls for exoticism and popular art: They are hardly objectionable, as long as they tastefully enliven a work of art or primarily serve the purpose to evoke certain ideas of a higher order. But to claim that an exotic story or an adventure novel in the style of [American] Indian narratives or American films leads to proletarian art, is a fabrication all too barbarous. (Neumann, "K otdzce umeni" 170) Concretely, Neumann cites Chaplin's film The Kid to prove Teige wrong; he does not deny the film's artistic merit or Chaplin's greatness (he compares it to Don Quixote), but insists that The Kid is a sentimental tear-jerker, and as such the opposite of proletarian art ("K otazce umeni" 185). It cannot serve as an example of "class-conscious proletarian art" (ibid.). In fact, Neumann makes a similar distinction as Teige between proletarian art and popular (or folk) art but "moralizes" where Teige would not. The term popular art describes "the appetites of today's broad and unsifted strata of the population, disoriented and spoilt by fruitless sensationalism" (186). As opposed to that, his definition of proletarian art is reserved for "the class-conscious and organized proletariat, the vanguard of the working class" (ibid.). In other words, Neumann objects to art as entertainment, devoid of revolutionary ideology. It is here that Teige and communist critics most sharply diverge in their opinions. The ideological differences in 1922 reach a level serious enough for Ivan Olbracht, Seifert's erstwhile mentor, unsuccessfully to pursue Teige's and Seifert's expulsion from the KSC, the Czechoslovak Communist Party (Effenberger 611).1® Later, however, Seifert and Olbracht reconcile their disagreements (Mestan, Letter). Dev&tsil's theoretical shift results in a shake-up in its membership. For example, less than a year after joining in l^The fact that Seifert omitted the dedication of his poem "Good Tidings" to Olbracht in the 1922 anthology Komunisticke ve& ry [Communist Evenings] may possibly reflect their recent discord. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 68 March 1922, both Jiri Wolker and his friend A. M. Pisa, displeased about the abandonment of proletarian art, leave the artistic circle in January 1923. The eminent Czech critic and literary historian F. X. Saida becomes an important early apologist of the boisterous new generation. He seeks to establish a continuity to previous artistic movements; for example, he also points to Walt Whitman as someone who has transcended his individuality by embracing the world and all phenomena of life (see "Umeni" 790) and establishes a link between a loosely-interpreted communism and religion. Communism is "a temporary term for the eternal religious longing of the human soul for all-human and universal brotherhood, for a longing that has always been the ferment of religious creativity" ("Umeni" 791). The perhaps most rigorous critical contemporary discussion of "proletarian poetry" came from Karel Capek at a time (1925) when Teige and most of his adherents had abandoned their "proletarian" tenets and followed the new program of poetism. Capek offers a plain definition, "proletarian art is that which the proletariat consumes because it is its existential need" ("Proletarske umeni" 177) and he mentions such simple popular entertainment as film and folk music (here Capek concurs with Teige). He stresses the aspect of amusement and diversion in art; thus, he can claim uncontested (Capek at least admits freely not to know too much about the proletariat's taste) that an adventure film would win over the collected writings of Marx if the proletariat had to choose. Poetry created by proletarians (and by this Capek means laborers, factory workers by profession) has been rare so far, he says (174). Rather, most of it was written by intellectuals— elitist and removed from the proletariat— who have narrowly mined a limited literary environment and paid lip service to the revolution with tiresome slogans and propaganda, supposedly creating art for the proletariat (176). He adds that writing about the working-class is no new invention, nor is formal R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 69 experimentation with typography or punctuation an indication of a revolutionary stance. In his estimate, working-class taste is far from progressive or radically new (177). Thus, despite a generation gap and political as well as ideological differences, Capek comes remarkably close to some positions held by Teige as early as in his essay "New Proletarian Art," especially when he considers the function of popular art as amusement. An important counterpoint in the discussions around proletarian art is provided by Literami skupina [Literary Association], established in 1921 in Brno, which is characterized by socialist affiliation and in its early years by expressionist aesthetics. In the group's magazine Host, the association's chief theoretician Frantisek Gotz joins the lively debate to define a new position toward revolutionary art. He speaks of the crisis of Marxism, which he calls mechanistic in its conception of human life and unsuitable as a basis for modem art ("K filosofii" 24). The group views revolution as an idealistic striving for betterment both of man and the world, that is, in ethical terms, guided by "a moral idea," and, rather than advocating collectivism, it accepts individualism in the creative process, understood as an organic synthesis of artist and society (26). Gotz rejects Teige's elevation of Wild West and detective stories to the realm of art since they passively cater to the working class's "lowest needs" and constitute "perverted fruit of the bourgeois class" ("K filosofii" 28). Rather, inspired by the idea of education and improvement, "The new social art wants to create a new type of proletarian" (ibid.) and to transform man in general into a "companionable, good and pure being" (25). In a rebuttal of communist attacks against the group's manifesto, the socialists around Gotz emphasize the need both for an economic revolution and a "transformation of human hearts" to eliminate man's selfishness. Yet Gotz pointedly rejects the categorical communist demand for a bloody, sweeping social struggle; R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 70 instead, he advocates a "humane revolution" that respects "the endless value of each human soul" ("O manifestu" 96). In 1926 Frantisek Gotz reflects on the demise of proletarian art and discusses reasons why it was relatively short-lived and produced comparatively few quality works of art. He again begins by criticizing Marxism as a philosophy which ignores the individual and presents life in a simplistic, mechanical fashion. Poetry and Marxism, Gotz says, "are absolutely incompatible" because Marxism reduces poetry purely to a revolutionary instrument (Horizont 37). He criticizes this limitation and holds it responsible for the decline of proletarian poetry and theory: Poetry never has been and never will be a direct instrument of life, a hoe, dynamite, a bayonet. Proletarian theoreticians and poets both overestimated and underestimated poetry, attributing to it a power and capabilities that it does not have and overlooking elements that are within its scope. They attributed to it a huge impact in the world, which it never had. (Gotz, H orizont 38) The statement asserting poetry's relative ineffectiveness and narrow reach echoes Karel Capek, who also felt that proletarian art addressed only a confined circle of people, as compared to traditional art which did not target specific audiences while excluding others ("Prolet&rske umeni" 177-78). Gotz does not deny the social function of poetry; however, in his opinion the concept of the social function of art, narrowly defined as an instrument of revolution, was illusory, and overrated the immediate, direct social function of poetry. The function of art is only to "fictionally satisfy [such] instinctual needs" as heroism or eroticism, not to encompass the whole of human life (Horizont 39). Furthermore, proletarian art was not a direct expression of the working class but was produced for the proletariat (40-41). Gotz reviews the fruits of that creative phase and concludes "that powerful and valuable poems emerged whenever a poet diverged from the program, to be faithful to his poetic heart" (41), but that proletarian poetry did not R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 71 create a new form of its own (43). Finally, Gotz attributes the decline of social poetry to its gloomy nature and single-mindedness that ignored "the pleasure of multiplicity, color, aromas; the joy of unleashed life" (Horizont 42). This formulation itself cannot deny its debt to poetism. Most artists, including Seifert, may have discovered such limitations themselves because they readily adopted the tenets of poetism and by late 1922 DevStsil dropped proletarian poetry from its program. Teige himself recapitulates the turning-points that determined the shift from proletarian art to poetism in his second poetist manifesto, published in June 1928. There his judgment of DevStsil's early phase sounds much harsher: '"Proletarian art/ having had little time to create new forms and its own systems, fossilized in naive partisan rhetoric and neglected itself too much in the whirl of class struggle" ("Manifest poetismu" 324). Proletarian art in its program and artistic expressions proved insufficient to answer the needs of the revolutionary era, Teige says; agitprop is better achieved by newspaper articles, shrill posters and clever propaganda, than by poetry: We learned that proletarian art as Lunacharski had proclaimed it, is a non- Marxist error and aesthetic nonsense. It even became apparent that poems that wanted to be propaganda for the revolutionary movement were not only unsatisfactory poems but also pitiful agitation; neither fish, flesh nor fowl. (Teige, "Manifest poetismu" 325) Teige credits "wondrous magician and acrobat" Vitezslav NezvalU with awakening and reviving poetry from its arrested development and giving his literary peers a new orientation, which in turn was theoretically framed in two important 1922 DevStsil anthologies. HThe epithet puns at titles of Nezval's poetry. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 72 2. Poetism The publication in the Fall 1922 of the Revolutnisbomtk Dev&tsil [Revolutionary Anthology Devetsil] marks an important turning point in the poetics of the group. The introductory essay by Teige on "New Proletarian Art," discussed earlier, is still beholden to proletarian aesthetics although first signs of a new sensibility cannot be overlooked, expressing itself particularly in the demand for popular art and entertainment. However, Teige's closing essay "Umeni dnes a zitra" [Art Today and Tomorrow] along with "Umeni pritomnosti" [Contemporary Art], published in the anthology Zivot, vol. 2, in December 1922, paves the way for Teige's formulation of a new artistic program in his first poetist manifesto, "Poetism" in 1924. The most obvious deviation between the two essays that frame the Revolutionary Anthology is that the final article contains far fewer references to Marxism and social revolution. In a way, the second essay continues or elaborates the latter part of the first. It deals concretely and specifically with modem art and such popular entertainment as film, photography, poster, music and dance. Teige begins to develop in capsule theories which he will later present in greater detail and thus with more clarity and persuasive power. At this point many of his pronouncements have the (acknowledged) character of provocative slogans hurled at the establishment less to convince than to shock and irritate. Yet Teige no longer emphasizes the agitative role of poetry and art in general. Rather, he focuses on the relationship between art and audience. Teige again condemns the polarization of elitist high art and kitsch-laden low art. Traditional artists are cut off from the audience and life in general, producing for a privileged minority of connoisseurs or snobs. Hence Teige's dislike of the Louvre, state- sponsored theaters, libraries and museums. To him they are temples of exclusive taste where art is destined to die in obscurity and oblivion. He also distinguishes the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 73 bourgeois or petit-bourgeois as a caste that is drowning in sentimental kitsch. As opposed to this, Teige is concerned with "the healthy core of the audience and that class of society to whom belongs the world of tomorrow: the proletariat and progressive intelligentsia" ("Umeni dnes" 7). This segment of the population, Teige believes, is unpretentious and takes naturally to its appetites; its mind is open to the "beauty of reality" and finds pleasure in the cinema, circus, variete, folk festival, and the Sunday soccer match. Thus, on the one hand, there is the remote beauty confined to museums that does not serve the public and its needs and, on the other hand, the "new beauty, so modem, that even futurism looks artificial12 and conventional next to it; so supremely perfect that it can be measured by the noblest examples" (8). In this essay Teige begins to develop his theories on constructivism. He claims that the new art no longer is decorative yet it is beautiful because it is highly functional.1^ Thus, modem art can be created by technicians and engineers, Teige says, because they answer the needs of contemporary life without aesthetic underpinnings and prejudice. Beauty now lies in mathematics, in the harmony created by precision. Therefore, machines are beautiful because their creators did not have art in mind as much as utility and functionality: "They have proven a truth inadmissible to aesthetes, namely that beauty is not the exclusive prerogative of so-called art. There are thousands of things in the world, whose midwife has not been art" ("Umeni dnes" 9). It is evident that art is to serve broad interests and comes in many, often "mundane" incarnations. This also explains why Teige praises uniformity and the mass production of copies. Understood in this fashion, art becomes accessible to everyone. In other words, the 12The word is estetsky, meaning "contrived" and elitist, making a cult of art. 1^For example, in his essay "Konstruktivismus a likvidace 'umeni'" [Constructivism and the Liquidation of "Art"] Disk 2 Spring 1925:4-8. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. reproduction is more democratic and can be distributed more easily and widely than the unique original masterpiece. This is why Teige is so enthralled with the cinema, to him a discovery "as important as the invention of typeprint for Renaissance man: here too machine production disseminates art among the audience" ("Umeni dnes" 12). Representatives of modem art will be immortalized, thanks to such technology as film or phonograph records: "Yes, all modem artistic culture is based and must be based on machine production" (ibid.; emphasis Teige's). Here another significant change becomes apparent: the affirmation of modem technology. Proletarian art viewed modem civilization as hostile. Teige begins to reverse his previously-held position. On his trip to Paris in June 1922 Teige met Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, whom he calls "the Columbus of today's architectural landmass" and whose architectural direction of purism he advocates ("Umeni dnes" 9-10). The trip is significant, because Teige's orientation definitely swings westward to Paris. He rediscovers cubism that he formerly rejected, is deeply impressed by African art, and meets many contemporary artists, including Man Ray, Ivan Goll, Foujita, Constantin Brancusi, Jacques Lipchitz, Ferdinand Leger, Pierre Reverdy and other exponents of modem art (Effenberger 588). Smejkal claims that DevStsil's new direction is also caused by a greater exposure to post revolutionary Russian art magazines around 1923; and also to initial personal contacts with Russian artists mediated by Roman Jakobson, then press attache at the Soviet Embassy. Drews, however, denies that there were any "genuinely fruitful" relations between Russian and Czech avant-garde writers and artists before 1925, hampered as they were by language barriers (216-17). Like the futurists before him, Teige pronounces the traditional theater dead and sees renewal in the cinema: "Not the stage pathos, but the images of the cinema screen today speak to the masses; they replace the shabby theater. Instead of senile Ibsenese, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. , bold cowboy visions" (10). Film holds the promise to be the great, universally renewing art of tomorrow, Teige exults: "The cinema is the true encyclopedia of new art, a universal spectacle and universal lesson: let us rejoice and make merry in the movie theater: it is the Bethlehem [sic], from which springs the salvation of modern art" ("Umeni dnes" 10). Naturally, film actors like Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd and Eve Francis are elevated to "heroes of humankind" (11). Teige celebrates Chaplin as "the greatest and most famous spirit of our time," and Fairbanks as "this contemporary Hercules," "healthy sportsman," "jovial and engaging adventurer," and "apostle of modem physical culture" (ibid.). This explains why the anthology Zivot 2 lists among its contributors Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford and why in 1924 the Dev&tsil of Bmo elects Chaplin, Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd among its honorary, that is, active members, "to honor their service to the photogenic a r t . " 14 Teige quotes the film theoretician Louis Delluc that the glory of our century manifests itself most poignantly in film. The cinema, says Teige, transcends the boundaries of traditional art "and is not an art of life and for life, like the ideologues claim, but life itself" (11). Moreover, according to Teige, "film is a poem in the midst of life" and possesses "pure power of modem poetry" ("Umeni dnes" 12). The cinema has the ability to reunite artists with their audience; its sensibility and motifs are widely shared by viewers and so film becomes the model and example of all new art (12). As earlier, Teige champions such popular novelists as Jules Verne, Jack London, Mark u Pdsmo 1(13-14) 1924-25:1. Harold Lloyd's manager replies to thank for the appointment: "My dear Sir: This acknowledges receipt of your very courteous letter of May 18, notifying Mr. Lloyd of the honor of his election to the literary Society described. Please be so good as to transmit Mr. Lloyd's appreciation to the gentlemen of the Committee whose letter you so kindly enclosed. Very sincerely yours, Harold Lloyd Corporation, W. R. Fraser, General Manager." R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 76 Twain and others who provide subject matter for films; and he calls Walt Whitman "a precursor of the poetry of cinema" (13).15 In music Teige discovers a similar development as in the theater: "Concerts and chamber seances are really the rotting water of a carp pond; they are bourgeois social events, nothing more" (13). Music may be dead in concert halls, but it is thriving in the world around us, Teige says: "Jazz! Harmonica! Flexaton! Klaxon! Barbarian barrel- organ! 'Salvation Army' band, songs accompanied by drum, revealing healthy exotic influences! Rag-time!" ("Umeni dnes" 14). The future of music likewise belongs to the machine, Teige predicts. Not surprisingly, Teige rejects the ballet of a Nijinski in favor of cabaret and variete dance of Josephine Baker and exotic native African dances as well as ballroom dancing "which is a popular, democratic pastime, the poetry of Sunday" (14). In a similar vein, Teige dismisses "representing, iconic painting" which he deems entirely obsolete since the advent of photography, to which Teige attributes more intrinsic truthfulness in this realm of naturalistic representation. Not even abstract painting appeals to Teige so much as the mass product poster does: "May painting no longer be a studio plaything or a fancy item for the bourgeois dwelling, or a relic for the picture gallery, albeit a modem one. May it be a poster, the sign of our joy of living" ("Umeni dnes" 15). Teige distinguishes along functional lines and calls photography only beautiful when it is strictly functional; that is, he prefers documentary photography to "bourgeois insignificant and decorative" artistic photography. His ideal representatives of film and photography are D. W. Griffith and Man Ray, both creating "optical and kinetic picture poems" (17). 1-Teige was to develop his theses about modern cinema in greater detail in his essay "Foto Kino Film" (in the anthology tiv o t 2:153-68) and in his book Film (1925). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 77 In the rare instances when Teige does invoke revolutionary rhetoric, his definition of "revolution" is somewhat hazy. On the one hand, he says that in order to achieve a universal style, the new art depends on a forthcoming social revolution. But then he announces, "The new world, however, is constantly bom from multi-faceted work. The revolution does not sleep. It-is here" ("Umeni dnes" 17). Later Teige calls the actual unfolding of this new art a thing of the future, contingent on "a new consolidation of a post-revolutionary society" but points to many promising contemporary experiments (20). Teige reiterates the need to cast away traditional exclusive academic art that is a mere ornament and decoration and emphasizes Ilya Ehrenburg's motto "New art ceases to be art!" in bold print and by framing it by a thick rectangular border in his text (18). Most importantly, as opposed to proletarian art, the new art is characterized by cosmopolitanism and exoticism. It is to be "the complete repertoire of life on this globe" (18) and "spiritual hygiene, just like sports are physical hygiene" ("Umeni dnes" 19). Finally, in telegraphic brevity Teige lists the foremost representatives and precursors of modem art, literature, music and architecture. Among the Czech "authors of the modem spirit" he lists for literature and poetry Nezval, Seifert, Biebl, Vancura, Halas, Cemik, Voskovec, Hoffmeister, Schulz, Zavada and K. Konrdd. That Teige's aesthetics is in transition becomes evident in his definition of the modem artist: "The new artist is but one of many workers of beauty on this globe" (22). This definition of artist as worker harks back to proletarian poetry. But now the artist is a worker of beauty—"[n]ew, vital, functional, and thus omnipresent beauty" (ibid.). Poetism is born although it is barely mentioned and not yet fully developed as an aesthetic term and poetic conception: The sight of nightly illumination and the luminous advertising of a metropolitan boulevard, for example, on Broad-way in New-York [sic], in the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 78 cinema, or in a picture magazine, offers a charm of chiaroscuro far more effective and captivating for the viewer than the charm of Leonardo's or Rembrandt's pictures. A wall papered with posters is often a more refreshing sight in its artistic purity than Louvre halls. The beauty of new art is from this world. The role of art is to create analogous beauties and to sing with head-turning and poetic images ALL THE BEAUTIES OF THE WORLD (Teige, "Um eni dnes" 22-23) The boldly highlighted words recall the title of Seifert's last poem in Sheer Love that practices what Teige demands in theory. It sings the song of modem life, which involves abandoning the perception of civilization and technology as hostile, and instead arriving at the celebration of its beauty. Seifert's 1923 collection reflects precisely this shift from proletarian poetry to poetism. However, as opposed to full- fledged poetism, Teige here still cautions against mere playfulness: "New beauty originates from work and a concrete task, not from idle play, we emphatically repeat" (22). This was to change in Teige's essay "Poetism," which is a summary of the theses that Teige argued in lectures and articles between 1923 and 1924 (Effenberger 534). The first manifesto of what Teige saw as a philosophy and way of life rather than as a new "ism" remains his most significant, famous and controversial programmatic statement in the first half of the 1920s. In May 1924, Teige advocates play as an important component of poetism, which he defines as "the art of life, the art of living and enjoying" that he wants to become as ubiquitous and natural as "sports, love, wine and all delicacies" (198; emphasis Teige's). The work of art is no commercial item for speculation, Teige insists. Neither can it be the subject of "leathern academic discussion." Rather, it is "a gift, or play without obligation and consequences" ("Poetismus" 198; emphasis Teige's). The rhetoric of revolutionary art is definitely gone. Teige refers only once to a "red future" (199) and distinguishes poetism, not a Weltanschauung "but life's atmosphere," from Marxism, that fulfills this function (200). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 79 The new beauty is bom out of purposeful, directed human activity and, again, it is ubiquitous. Rather than originating in galleries or cathedrals, "it is at home in the streets, in the architecture of cities, in the refreshing greenness of parks, in the bustle of harbors and in the furnace of industry, which nourishes our primary needs" (198). The engineer is endowed with poetic vision; he creates a blueprint of life. Teige agrees with Flaubert who predicted that "[t]he art of tomorrow will be impersonal and scientific" (199). Poetist art is "casual, wanton, fanciful, playful, unheroic and amorous. There is not a shred of romanticism in it. It was bom in the atmosphere of merry conviviality in a world that is laughing; who cares if there are tears in its eyes" (199). The gulf between proletarian art and poetism could not be greater when it comes to the relationship between self and the world, ideology and art. The emphasis, Teige says now, is on pleasure and on the beauties of the world. Art now is "[n]othing but the art of wasting time. Nothing but the chant of the heart. The culture of miraculous dazzle" ("Poetismus" 200). Gone is engage art. Poetism is "modernized epicureanism" (201): Poetism wants to turn life into a grand entertainment establishment. An eccentric carnival, a harlequinade of emotions and ideas, a drunken film narrative, a miraculous kaleidoscope. Its muses are kind, gentle and smiling, their gazes as fascinating and incomprehensible as the gazes of girlfriends. (Teige, "Poetismus" 200) Unabashedly Teige now proclaims the primacy of frantic pleasure and optimism over ideological content of art: "Poetism is without philosophical orientation. It would perhaps admit to a dilettantish, practical, tasty, and tasteful eclecticism" (ibid.). In fact, ideology is now entirely dismissed as oppressive and limiting; poetry is emptied of ideology: "The beauty of poetry is devoid of intentions, great slogans, profound intentions, a mandate" ("Poetismus" 200). The "play of beautiful words" is not to be "infected by ideology"; "clowns, danseuses, acrobats, and tourists are modern poets, more than philosophers and pedagogues" (201). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 80 Influenced by constructivism and purism, Teige claims that modem taste is intrigued by geometry and mathematics.1* * Poetism moves away from traditional painting and the rectangular canvas; instead, it welcomes montage and collage. The new poetic language is a heraldic sign language ("Poetism" 201). Most importantly, poetism is not prescriptive, Teige claims (although he himself could be very dogmatic, as Seifert attests in his memoir). Poetism does not even claim to be new art in the traditional sense. It came to eliminate previously known artistic directions in order to "impose the reign of absolute poetry" (202). Clearly, art does not serve education or indoctrination, but happiness, pleasure, and entertainment. "Poetism is primarily a modus vivendi" and a remedy of postwar malady, Teige declares. Where constructivism determines the economic purposeful functioning of the world, poetism reigns in the realm of sensibility, "to save and renew the emotional life, pleasure, and imagination" ("Poetismus" 203). Poetism, Teige says, was conceived in opposition of proletarian poetry, against romantic aestheticism and traditionalism. The satisfaction that artists lacked, they found in the manifestations of modem life and popular entertainment. This created a unique, new kind of art: And so picture poems, lyrical riddles and anecdotes, lyrical films emerged. The authors of these experiments: Nezval, Seifert, Voskovec, and, please forgive, Teige wanted to contain all blossoms of poetry, entirely detached from literature, which we scrap —the poetry of Sunday afternoons, excursions, illuminated cafes, intoxicating alcohols, lively boulevards and spa promenades as well as the poetry of silence, night, calm and peace. (204) Here we find postulates that entered Seifert's On the Waves ofTSF and to some degree his fourth collection The Nightingale Sings Poorly. World play, lyrical anecdotes and the 1**This explains slogans in poetist publications like "Love the beauty of mathematics and machines!" [Pasmo 2(3) 1925-26:38] or articles like "Mathematics-A Component of Modern Beauty," by Vilem Santholzer [Pdsmo 1(3) 1924-25:3]. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 81 sheer pleasure of modem life are characteristic of the poetist phase in Czech avant- garde art. So is "pure poetry," emptied of didactic intent in the service of social revolution. Following the two Devftsil anthologies of 1922 a loosely formed group of young Czech avant-garde writers continued to establish themselves on the literary scene. In 1923 they started the international review Disk. However, financial difficulties prevented regular publication and after its debut Disk appeared only once more, in the spring of 1925, as an anthology. In December 1923 a DevStsil branch was founded in the Moravian city of Bmo, with Artus Cemik and Frantisek Halas among its members, and began publishing its own magazine Pasmo [Zone] (March 1924-August 1926), named after Apollinaire's influential poem. The Prague section of Dev&sil collaborated on Pasmo. Seifert and Teige co-edited both magazines. In late 1924 they also briefly joined the magazine Host, run by the expressionist literary association Literdmi skupina and its leading theoretician Frantisek Gotz. Here Teige's essay "Poetism" was first published along with many other poetist contributions. During his brief stint at Host, Teige clearly imprinted his non-conformist typographical style and unconventional layout practices on the magazine.17 This is a trend begun in December 1922 with Zivot 2, entitled "anthology of new beauty," which already contains many of the markers that were to become so characteristic of poetist art. The typography occasionally resembles Apollinaire's calligrammes and points to so-called "tourist poems," visual poems and collages employing exotic locales, foreign words and iconic signs (Smejkal)— true to the poetist 17In February 1925 Seifert and Teige left Host, which as they had hoped was to be a periodical uniting the entire generation, amidst allegations of too much creative control exercised by Literdm i skapina, while Gotz in turn accused Dev&sil of appropriating the magazine for its purposes and publishing contributions of its own without prior consultation with the other editorial board members. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 82 spirit of internationalism and a cosmopolitan sensibility. Some contributions, particularly in Disk and Pasmo, were published in foreign languages (mostly French, but also German) to facilitate an exchange with other European avant-garde groups and their publications, which they often promoted. Numerous translations served a similar purpose, to reach wider audiences. In keeping with the evolving new modern sensibility, Zivot 2 abounds with photos of biplanes, steam ships, Manhattan, and the modernist icon, the Eiffel Tower. The anthology also contains such poetist pieces as Karel Schulz's "Jazz nad morem" [Jazz over the Ocean] (35), Jin Voskovec's "Mai du Pays" (92-93) and Vitezslav Nezval's DepeSe na koledkach [Dispatch on Wheels] (110-18), all featuring the characteristic syncopated clusters of loosely-connected, surprising images. Nezval subtitles his playful piece "Vaudeville" and addresses it literally to Karel Teige, "Prague II, CemS 12a, Europe." Dispatch on Wheels premiered at the poetist "Liberated Theater," Osvobozene divadlo, in April 1926. In the piece Nezval employs many of the typical poetist protagonists: a clown, a black man, "exotic strangers," a sailor, a radio telegrapher, an animated phonograph and even a megaphone (hldsnd trouba) that Nezval represents pictorially in the shape of the Eiffel Tower (Eijelka), an early radio transmitter: HLASNA TROUBA S. T. F. E I F E L K A R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 83 Both in subject matter and in form, Nezval's piece anticipates Seifert's On the Waves of TSF, that represents a culmination of Teige's typographical experiments which Teige later also subjects to theoretical discussion.18 Disk, similarly, has all the trappings of a modem avant-garde magazine. Both theoretical articles and poetry are often printed in varying typefaces of different sizes and boldness. Illustrations by DevStsil painters and other artists of the international avant-garde are included, along with latest architectural drawings. Teige was to become an important member of the architectural magazine Stavba [Building], which he turned (between 1923 and 1931) into a seminal voice of international constructivism (Smejkal). The last poetist periodical was the literary monthly ReD, short for Revue Svazu modemi kultury Dev&tsil [Review of the Union of Modem Culture Devetsil], which appeared under Teige's editorship between October 1927 and July 1931. The collaboration between Teige and Seifert, as can be expected given the program of poetism, reaches beyond journalism into the formulations of aesthetics and poetry in the traditional sense. Viewing the cinema as a major art form of the future, Teige and Seifert tried their hands at screen-writing, co-authoring "lyrical films" or "filmic poems" that never saw production: "Pan Odysseus a ruzne zprdvy" [Mr. Ulysses and Various News], "Pristav" [Harbor]; Seifert wrote one film script on his own: "Pro ddmy" [For L a d ie s ] .^ Interestingly, all three attempts could be summed up under the heading "poetry of good-bye and departure," according to one of the stage directions in "Mr. Ulysses." They all employ modem means of transportation, the steam ship or the train. The harbor is Marseille. Most importantly, they use a similar 18In the 1927 article "Modern! typo" [Modern Typography], reprinted in Teige Sv8t stavby a bdsne 220-34. 19Pdsmo 1(5-6) 1924-25:7-8; Disk 2 Spring 1925:11-12; Pdsmo 1(5-6) 1924-25:1-2. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 84 collage technique as the tourist poems; with poetist poetry they have in common the stringing together of associations that are often unrelated or marginally so. In total, scenes from these short lyrical films read like the components of Seifert's On flte Waves ofTSF: departure of a ship, harbor, railroad cars, black soldiers, a ship's propeller, a chimpanzee and the like. In late 1923 DevStsil organized what was to be another avant-garde milestone: The exhibition Basar modemtho umSni [Bazaar of Modem Art], in name and conception similar to Dada-Messe in Berlin (Smejkal). It was a show of the current DevStsil production, bringing together advertising posters, photography, architectural drawings and other representations of modem life (Smejkal). At the same time, the exhibition featured montages or visual poems that were to fuse painting and poetry, conceived along the lines of Marinetti's liberated words and Apollinaire's Calligrammes. The bazaar became infamous for its introduction of ordinary objects such as a manikin (entitled "Modem sculpture"), a mirror (inscribed "Your portrait, Sir"), a life belt, and polished steel wheel bearings. Smejkal calls this "the first authentic dadaist gesture" in Czechoslovakia, conceived in the same spirit as Duchamp's ready-mades. However, he points out that the objects were left unchanged and were meant to shock by their (incongruous) presence alone. Smejkal explains the symbolism of the pieces that manifest admiration of technology and cold mathematical beauty and at the same time mock mimetic art like the mirror, "Portrait of an unknown," that Philippe Soupault had exhibited at the gallery Montaigne a year earlier when Teige was in Paris. The intended provocation met with success and most people remembered the exhibition primarily for the wheel bearings and the manikin, an item ubiquitous in any town, that was turned into "new city folklore" and became the "fetish of the Devetsil generation," according to Smejkal. The wheel bearings are fitting objects of modem R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 85 beauty because they are functional, as Teige was to insist at great length in his essay "Constructivism and the Liquidation of 'Art'" and other constructivist studies from the second half of the 1920s. Seifert, who himself hand-carried the manikin to the exhibition hall, good-humoredly remembers this exhibition and makes fun of himself for the "foolish craziness" of his "apprentice years" ("O potrebe poesie" 3).20 Given the hyperbole and cocky exuberance of Teige's manifestos, it is not surprising that poetism was neither received altogether favorably by the literary establishment, nor by orthodox communist critics. The writer and critic Josef Knap maliciously derides a reading on November 22,1925, at which "the holy spirit of poetism, theoretician Teige, diaries Teige, in export poetist fashion" reigned supreme over Nezval on his left and Seifert on his right ("Prosim" 224; emphasis his). In an article entitled "Falesni proroci" [False Prophets], J. O. Novotny questions the sincerity of the young Dev&tsil generation since Teige's categorical pronouncements have changed "a 180°" from revolutionary art to poetism in less than two years (194). Teige's manifesto is seen as "confused" and contradictory, advocating "irresponsible epicurism and downright hedonism" (177). Few mainstream critics, with the exception of F. X. Saida, were willing to see in the antics of the young generation the earnest effort to tap into new productive ideas and to forge fresh forms of expression. Communist critics mostly took poetism to be the latest cultural expression of a moribund bourgeois system. S. K. Neumann speaks of "a new foray of so-called pure lyricism into Czech poetry— the thread on a narrowing screw with which the bourgeois society is burying itself in the grave" ("Dopis" 91). The poetists, according to Neumann, are sell-outs: "The return to pure lyricism in poetry is a victory of opportunism, 20 A year later, in a polemic against the communist party, Seifert again refers to the manikin and the circumstances of the exhibition. See "Voskovd panna." Pravo lidu 41(52) 28 Feb. 1932:9. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 86 surrender of a fight, capitulation to the old world; it is also a return to individualism, a desertion of the masses" (92). The Slovak Marxist group DAV prefaces its polemical article "Poetizm" with the admonition: "Bury the corpses, for they smell!" (6). Poetism, DAV claims, reflects a society in decay and a historical period that is doomed. Similarly, before his (temporary) "conversion" to poetism in 1926, Julius Fucik denounces poetist Dev$tsil as "abounding" with "symptoms of decomposition of the bourgeois class" ("Likvidace" 6)— bourgeois art is synonymous with decay. Similarly, A. M. Pisa in one of his early harsh attacks against poetism condemns it for allowing unbridled imagination to degenerate into "a self-serving, stupid play of images," symptomatic of "decadent romanticism or rococo pseudo-art" ("Krise" 11). Another sign of the movement's resilience and originality is the fact that it was parodied. The frequent recurrence of certain poetist stylizing features allowed easy imitative caricatures. The satirical student magazine Tm [Thom] mocks DevStsil in a poem that incorporates many poetist devices and "icons": deserts, palm trees, Bedouins, sailors, sepias, parrots, bars, black men, tigers and exotic lands.21 Karel Teige is satirized as a "translator" from the French of Louis Aragon's dadaist poem "Suicide," that consists of the alphabet printed in a downward-pointing triangle.22 Aside from quite "seriously" reprinting Seifert's lyrical anecdotes "Circus," "Eyes," and "Abacus" from On the Waves ofTSF, the magazine Tm also runs "portraits" of poetists, Seifert among them, signed by Sonja Spdlovd: SEIFERT Into the city in tears he came on a winged horse, although he was not yet old and gray 21Jiri Dolfler,"Devateron£sobny n&morruk s kytickou v devetsilu." T m 1(1) 1924: 6. 22Tni 1(3) 1924:44. Teige briefly and favorably discusses this poem in his article "O humoru, clownech a dadaistech" [About Humor, Clowns, and Dadaists] where he lists Seifert and himself as "translators" of this poem; Pasmo 2(1) October 1925:8. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 87 burgundy and caviar he desired after pork roast: Sheer love came after him that day.23 And the communist monthly Avantgarda printed a parody by F. C. Weiskopf entitled "100%" that lampoons not only poetist poetry and manifestos but also Teige's typography and layout, the familiar bold titles and other typical features.24 However, even poetism's most ardent detractors grant that it enriched modem poetry and broke ground for new poetic form. The opponents of poetism differ in the degree to which in the second half of the 1920s they interpret the apparent individualization of Devetsil poets and indications of stylistic change benevolently. Despite a rich crop of poetist works that emerged between 1924 and 1927, the turbulences which occurred in Dev&sil in 1926 (when Pasmo folded in August and the Brno branch of Dev&sil ceased to exist) were enough to trigger more or less gloating commentaries announcing poetism's demise. The critic and translator Bohumil Mathesius was to sound the "death knell" of poetism in early 1927 and thus prompted a heated exchange with Teige. Mathesius calls Seifert's The Nightingale Sings Poorly, which indeed is a somber counterpoint to On the Waves ofTSF, "a complete awakening from the intoxication of poetist narcotics" (91). Poetism was a corrective in the development of modem Czech poetry, Mathesius claims, because it strove after formal perfection, new vision and stylistic means. It rid poetry of "too much ideology and individualistic attitudes" (91- 92). However, because poetism, as Mathesius sees it, was a passive response to "postwar hangover" and intellectual disorientation, it could not serve as a lasting source of creative inspiration. Teige responds with the article "Je poetismus mrtev?" [Is Poetism Dead?], that lists most recent poetist prose and poetry (Nezval's Akrobat, 23T m 1(7-8) 1924: 93. Avantgarda 1(4) 1925:8-10. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 88 Seifert's The Nightingale Sings Poorly and Frantisek Halas's debut Sepie among them), to prove the movement's vitality. He then quotes at length from a French magazine that extols die contributions of poetism to Czech letters, and mocks all outspoken critics of poetism, foremost among them Miroslav Rutte and Josef Kodicek, both members of Karel Capek's "Generation of 1914." Devetsil and its artistic program poetism still celebrated triumphs on several fronts. In 1925 Osvobozene divadlo [Liberated Theater] was founded under the directorship of Jindrich Honzl and Jin Frejka. The theater constituted a synthesis of constructivism in the tradition of Meyerhold and Tairov and poetism in the way it employed humor, imagination and lyricism (Smejkal). It was inspired by popular entertainment that the poetists held dear: the circus, music-hall, slapstick movies, and the cabaret. The theater performed mostly adaptations of dada and surrealist works; for instance, Apollinaire's Mamelles de Tiresias, which Seifert translated, Jean Cocteau's Or fee, and Marinetti's futurist pieces (Smejkal). A year later, Frejka was to found divadlo Dada [Theater Dada], which, among other pieces, performed Cocteau's Wedding on the Eiffel Toiver. According to Smejkal, the Liberated Theater belonged among the most progressive European avant-garde scenes of its time. Another success was the winning over of a publishing house receptive to Dev&sil's output and poetics: Between 1925 and 1931 Jan Fromek's Odeon published most of the group's literary and theoretical productions, primarily in Teige's layout and typography, as well as translations of many contemporary French authors and their precursors such as Cocteau, Cendrars, Apollinaire, Rimbaud and Baudelaire (Smejkal). It is here that Teige's ReD appeared. And in 1926 Dev&sil, which in the meantime had renamed itself Svaz modemi kultury [Union of Modem Culture] from Um&ecky svaz [Artists Union], organized its third exhibition which again featured its richly heterogeneous production; this time the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 89 architectural section of Dev&sil predominated, along with visual poems, graphic design and book illustration (Smejkal). It seems that the critics in 1927 were responding to a gradual shift in the contemporary poetic production that had moved from a "harlequinade of emotions" to a more subdued tone and serious themes. The "poetic epoch of spiritual meanings of existence" began with the publication of the poet Josef Hora's collection Struny ve vStru [Strings in the Wind] (Cemy, Pam&ti 159). Depending on their politics, the critics attributed the change to social influences (the Marxists Bedrich Vaclavek and Julius Fucik, for example) or to psychological factors (F. X . Saida, Josef Hora). In his afterword to Seifert's The Nightingale Sings Poorly Fucik blames the "consolidation" of the Czechoslovak democracy for the hopelessness presumably evident in the young literary generation; likewise, Vaclavek bemoans the "[stabilization of the bourgeois regime [that] soon created an oppressive and depressing atmosphere" leading in turn to "profound sadness" in Seifert, Nezval and other poets ("Prvni okruh" 639). Saida diagnoses a sobering up in Seifert and Biebl, but credits poetism with "giving wings to imagery" with its lightness, humor and wit and attests to its perfect inner balance and health (O nejmladSipoesii 79-82). Josef Hora, who apparently made his peace with poetism, judges the movement a "good school of form and the laws of poetic expression" but believes that "a true poet outgrows the school" ("Co s poetismem?" 189). Seifert's "new social motifs" and other signs that he and his peers are beginning to reach beyond poetism are indications to Hora that the young poetic generation has arrived and matured (190). Vaclav Cemy quite rightly attributes the change specifically in Seifert to the poet's finding his true nature, coming to the fore in his melancholy, retrospective attitudes at the end of the 1920s: "Always just half-heartedly a poetist, a concrete, earthly love lyricist, but not obsessed, not feverish, not whirling, in his R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 90 substance a candidate of the idyll, to whom even revolution offered the hope of an idyll, turning sweet on his tongue. . . " (Pam&ti 159). Whether one sees this general shift as signaling a demise of poetism, depends on whether poetism is perceived as a loose theoretical framework for experiment to free the artists' imagination and pave the way for innovation (as it was originally conceived), or whether it is expected that it be strictly adhered to as a rigid program. Blahynka distinguishes between a "poetism of the poets" and a "poetism of the theorists and critics" to make the argument that the movement was pronounced dead by those who reduced it to "avant-garde theoretical orthodoxy," from which the literary production was beginning to diverge. Blahynka argues convincingly that since poetist theory from the start was bom from poetist practice (he cites Nezval's Pantomima, but Seifert's Sheer Love was likewise instrumental), it should not be denied the right to develop, mature and deepen (37). If poetism is defined as "a method of how to perceive the world, so that it becomes a poem," as Nezval had phrased it, it lives on far beyond Nezval's Akrobat, 1927 (the usual demarcation set by critics) and Teige's second poetist manifesto (1928), conventionally seen as an extended "epitaph" of the movement (Blahynka 36). The clashes concerning the viability of poetism clearly prompted Teige's second manifesto in 1928 because he begins by taking stock of poetist accomplishments but also addresses the many attacks the movement has sustained. This does not mean, however, that he conceived it ad hoc for the purpose of refuting the critics. Rather, the declaration is a summary of Devetsil philosophy advanced during the past three or four years. The tone is definitely less boisterous than in the first declaration of poetist aesthetics in 1924. Teige again emphasizes that poetism was not meant to replace or oppose an existing "ism" or become a school, but that it expressed "a new aesthetic and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 91 philosophical opinion" and intended to chart new directions not only in art but in life ("Manifest poetismu" 323,238). He blames critics for all too literally streamlining his bold analogies into narrow definitions and for turning poetism into a code, a formula and a poetics (326). But most importantly, Teige discusses modernist precursors of poetism and acknowledges their influence by analyzing their contributions in detail (see following section). After his excursion into poetist origins, he reiterates that poetry must be kept "pure," free from "any non-aesthetic purposes" and that form is to be conceived so that it appeal via calculated physiological effect to human emotionality, not rationality (338). The task of poetry is to be "poetry for the five senses, poetry for all senses" (339). Evidently Teige became interested in modem psychology and psychoanalysis because he proposes to draw on their recent discoveries. He sees the need that Czech poetic language be revised and its "verbal material" transformed from words serving as mere carriers of meaning to becoming "self-contained realities" and "direct inductors of emotion" ("Manifest poetismu" 338). In other words, poetry is to effect spontaneous, emotional responses by availing itself very consciously of physiological triggers. Thus it is not surprising that Teige and Nezval soon were to become adherents of surrealism which they would import from France in the early 1930s, however much Teige at this point explicitly denies that poetism's aesthetic is indebted to "Bremond's theory of 'poesie pure' and to surrealism, which both bear a newer date than poetism" (354). The perceived difference at this time lies in Teige's insistence on purposeful, functional form (this reflects Teige's constructivist leanings) that is to elicit sensuous responses via its calculated signals. Such endeavor is still far from "automatic writing," but on the other hand it anticipates a turn inward, toward the unconscious and subjectivity. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Teige evidently believed that "our mechanical civilization" necessitated different, new art. Aligning himself with Picasso, Teige sees cubism as a point of no return that ended conventional painting. He credits cubism with exactly the kind of affective power that he demands from poetry: "Those pictures are optical, physical artificial organisms, which evoke certain sensations in the viewer and move his sensibility according to the intentions of the artist by physiological, sensuous and neurological means" (341). Traditional representational painting Teige considers "atavistic" and believes that it will be replaced by film and photography. He also detects a merging of artistic disciplines and poetism to him is an expression of such a fusion: "the daxvn of a new universal poetry as a new complete art of nine Muses, some ars maior" ("Manifest poetismu" 350; emphasis Teige's). Poetism "announces a new synthesis" and postulates "an absolute, universal poetry for all senses," arriving "at a new 'ars una,' unified and polymorphous" (ibid.). Poetry in Teige's view has disengaged itself from literature and in the process it has become more visual until it fused with painting in a visual poem. Film thus is visual poetry in motion, the dynamic poetry of light, evincing responses from all senses (351). In reference to Freud, Teige identifies the urge to create, a "unified human drive," which is rooted in sexuality (358). He anticipates that science, particularly psychology, will yield insights how to tap into the psyche of the viewer in new ways (350). In lieu of traditional artistic categories, poetism proposes an art that addresses the entire human being and Teige lists "poetry for the eye" (e. g., film, fireworks, photo montage), "poetry for the ear" (e. g., "the music of noise," jazz) "poetry for smell" (perfumes, odors), "poetry for taste,"2^ "poetry for touch" (he names Marinetti's 25"The pleasure of a good diner is not less noble and less aesthetic than any other, since pleasure itself is on the highest level of human values, measured by the goal of life: happiness. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 93 tactilism), "poetry of intersensorial equivalencies" (e. g., what he calls "optophonetics," colored lights and musical fountains), "poetry of physical and spatial sense" (e. g. sports, tourism, gymnastics, flying, acrobatics) and finally a "poetry of the sense of comedy"^6 (355-57). How exactly such art is to be achieved, Teige does not always say. Some of it already exists, that is, the poetists discover poetry in a broad sense. It is a lifestyle and atmosphere that manifests itself all around us, primarily in pleasure. After all, poetism aims at achieving a modem epicurism. Poetism's greatest discovery, Teige says, is happiness: "We are working out an order and art of happy life, without disguising reality with illusions" (359). Devdtsil diminished in numbers and activities considerably after a conflict over its future political orientation and ceased to exist in the early 1930s. After a dispute in 1929 Seifert briefly joined the association Levdfronta [Left Front] with several other peers who disliked the increasing Stalinization of the Czech communist party and attendant political orthodoxy of Dev&tsil. The Left Front for a time offered more freedom for left-leaning artists who were not necessarily party members. After years of the homogeneous politics in the avant-garde came signs of individual differentiation. At the same time the socio-economic situation worsened (the world economic crisis that followed the 1929 U. S. stock market crash, the rise of fascism, and ethnic tensions) and accelerated the transformation from naive enchantment and play of poetism to more sober, introspective, "serious" themes. Poetism certainly left its mark on Czech letters for generations to come, while Teige's and Nezval's interest shifted towards surrealism (an aesthetic congenial to late poetist theses)— a move that Seifert did not follow. F. X. We regret that today culinary art does not enjoy the same respect that medieval aesthetics accorded it and that it deserves" ("Manifest poetismu" 355). ^^Teige does not elaborate. He merely lists names of comedians: Grock, the brothers Fratellini (three well-known clowns), Frigo and Chaplin. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 94 Saida was to be right when he predicted the fate of poetism: "the name will be lost, but the impulse and power will continue to function in a different form, and perhaps only then in an appropriately intense fashion" ("O poetismu" 168). C. International Influences Clearly, as the preceding chapter shows, France exerted the strongest influence on the young Czech avant-garde of the 1920s. German, Italian, Anglo-American, and Russian influences were much less significant despite some, partly personal, contacts between individual artists. As a rule, if these national avant-garde "movements" had a certain impact, for example, in the case of dadaism and futurism, they were mostly filtered through the French reception. It is important, however, to understand both the presence and the limited influence of the Russian modernists. Russian futurism and constructivism had a relatively minimal effect on Czech poetic practice although constructivist theses entered Karel Teige's manifestos and held their sway over poetist painters for some time. As can be seen in poetist declarations, the forerunners whom their formulators acknowledge are often incongruous and downright contradictory influences. The eminent critic V&clav Cern^, a contemporary of the boisterous Dev&sil crowd, perhaps not entirely unjustly chides Karel Teige for uncritical admiration of anything French— for eclectically importing whatever was "hot" in Paris at a given moment without subjecting it to much critical sifting-through or rigorous analysis that could have led to a coherent, unified program (Pam&ti 160-61). This limitless attraction to and emulation of France could in part explain the many inconsistencies in Teige's manifestos and his frequent radical reorientations. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. According to Peter Drews, who traced the contacts between the Slavic avant- gardes, the Czech intelligentsia until the mid-1920s was relying mainly on emigres or visiting Soviet authors (Roman Jakobson, Ilya Ehrenburg) for information about new Russian cultural trends. After arriving in Prague in 1920, Jakobson quickly learned Czech and became an important partner of the young Czech writers. In 1924 he even became a member of DevStsil. Still, in a Le Monde interview on December 12,1984 Seifert put Jakobson's influence along with the structuralist theories of the Prague Linguistic Circle into perspective, denying their direct effect on his work: "I have known Roman Jakobson and remember him in friendship. But I have never grappled with literary theories how to approach a poem or how to interpret it. Structuralism is no theory about writing; it does not formulate an aesthetics" (Plattner 92). Apart from contacts between Czech and Russian communists and a first study trip in 1925 undertaken by a delegation to which Seifert belonged, the Russian avant- garde received little attention and press coverage in Czechoslovakia; it was not until 1924 that a first overview of the latest Russian literature appeared (Drews 215). Most importantly, primary sources were scarce since World War I, during which Russian books had become unavailable. In addition to this, most young writers did not know Russian and the available collective translations of Russian avant-garde poetry were notoriously poor (Drews 217). Seifert's translation of Alexander Blok's The Tivelve (1920), suggested and aided by Jakobson, was a rare exception; some translations from Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velemir Khlebnikov were published in 1920 in S. K. Neumann's Kmen and Zdenek Kalista's Den [The Day]. Under the influence of Seifert and Teige, the literary magazine Host began to print Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, Sergei Yesenin, Anna Akhmatova, and others beginning in late 1924, when the two briefly joined the editorial board (Drews 216). Teige showed an early interest in the Russian R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 96 avant-garde, but his essay "Umeiu sovetsk£ho Ruska" [The Art of Soviet Russia], published in Host (1924), almost exclusively focused on the fine arts (ibid.). Vitezslav Nezval, who both as a poet and theoretician significantly shaped poetism and Dev$tsil, situated the movement in the context of the European avant- garde in his 1937 book Modemi bdsnicke sm&ry [Modem Poetic Directions]: Poetism shared with futurism the predilection for urban realities and for velocity, with cubism the demand that poetic means of expression be independent; with surrealism, which was conceived almost simultaneously ..., it had in common the proclivity to spontaneous, preliminary design and to expressions that were not guided by standards of logic and reason; moreover, they each stressed associative thinking and free automatic imagination, (quoted in Smejkal) Karel Teige discusses the genealogy and the forerunners of poetism in his second poetist manifesto while it is evident that he (along with Nezval and many critics) sees poetism as an autonomous Czech contribution to the European avant-garde between the wars. It is also interesting to see how the DevStsil artists' view of influences and precursors they would openly acknowledge changed over time concurrently with ideological shifts and reorientations. Quite self-confidently Teige rejects as inappropriate in the modem context the "historical bequest of native [Czech] values" both for literature and painting and sees modernity in internationalism, in transcending regional and national allegiances. DevStsil joined "the rhythm of collective European creative activity," whose "metronome" was Paris ("Manifest poetismu" 328). French poetry, painting and aesthetics are seen as "the culmination of our civilization's spiritual and cultural life" (329). Teige is part of a tradition of Czech francophiles who already forged close ties with Paris around the turn of the 20th century. In accordance with his cosmopolitan orientation, Teige conceives of poetry broadly as "poetry of our civilization," transcending poetist or narrowly national production. Baudelaire and romanticism R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 97 stand at the beginning of modem poetry, and he names Gerard de Nerval, Aloysius Bertrand, Edgar Allan Poe,27 but not Alfred de Musset, Lord Byron and Victor Hugo (329). This distinction is due to Teige's preference of "poesie pure"28 that he sees as a liberation of poetry from didacticism or ideology that go back to the Middle Ages when poetry was beholden to the church, history and ethics. Romanticism cleared the way, Teige says, to a poetry that is sharply distinct from philosophy, religion, ethics, politics and historiography and that is gradually moving away from literature ("Manifest poetismu" 329). Teige credits specifically Poe and Baudelaire with creating a neiv poetry, commensurate to the existential and psychic conditions of modern man and civilization. He quotes Theophile Gautier's definition of a poem as a flow of metaphors to prove that it anticipates Apollinaire's and he cites Baudelaire, who links "pure poetry with music, painting, culinary and cosmetic art" ("Manifest poetismu" 330). From these examples he arrives at two major streams in the development of modem poetry beginning with Baudelaire. Needless to say, that both figure prominently in poetist theses: 1. An "increasing tendency toward a cleansing of poetry," and "consistent elimination of foreign elements like morality, ideology, history etc." (330). Attendant to this "purification" of poetry is a loosening of form and changes in prosody. Pure reason and the world of ideas cease to provide the primary source of inspiration. Rather, poetry appeals to intuition and "pure imagination" and "kindles the fires of fantasy," receiving "the dark echoes of the subconscious" (330). 2. The idea of correspondence between different sensations and the notion of hidden analogies 27It can be safely assumed that Teige's reception of Poe came second-hand from France via Baudelaire, given Teige's limited proficiency in English. 28Interestingly, only a few years earlier during the reign of proletarian art, Teige was opposed to any modem art that was not socially engaged. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 98 between individual artistic disciplines lead to a poetry that increasingly approaches music and painting: "The poets feel that there is a possibility of a new, higher, absolute poetry, a poetry without literature and beyond literature, a poem of liberated imagination, a poetry of all senses" ("Manifest poetismu" 330-31). Teige individually addresses the contributions of the poetes maudits, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Stephane Mallarm§. He credits Rimbaud with new poetic inventions in Les Illuminations, and admires his wild and mysterious vision, the breaking up of syntax and grammar and his unleashing of gushing metaphors (331). Verlaine's dictum "De la musique avant toute chose" became a new ars poetica, Teige says, that spoke to sensibility, not to the intellect. Mallarme demanded words with new expressive power, high in color and rnnsicaiily, so that poetry became "autonomous and pure material" (331). His experiments with syntax led to "a magic of words," to powerful musicality and rhythm as in Verlaine. The symbolists are forerunners to him in many other respects, especially for initiating typographical innovations which were of particular interest to Teige as graphic designer and artist, but he also commends them for doing away with traditional meter and versification and consequently for guiding their free verse by intuition ("Manifest poetismu" 333). Parenthetically he credits Max Jacob along with the dadaists for ridding poetic language of its customary meaning.29 Not surprisingly for Teige's vision of continuity in modem poetry, he acknowledges Walt Whitman's "[mjighty lyrical Gulf Stream [entering] the harbor of European poetry," disrupting conventional notions of grammar (thirty years before Marinetti and Apollinaire), bringing "poetry which does not require the ivord, music or 29For a further discussion of the dadaists, see for example, in "O humoru, clownech, a dadaistech" [About Humor, Clowns, and Dadaists]; Pasmo 2(1) 1925 and in "Hyperdada" ReD 1927. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 99 rhyme and definitely casting away residues of traditional versification" ("Manifest poetismu" 333; emphasis Teige's).-^ Similarly, E. F. T. Marinetti's contribution was to propose a new poetic form, to disregard punctuation and syntax and to introduce mathematical and musical signs to poetry. It is from these formal futurist innovations, especially the typography, that Teige and the poetists drew most directly. Likewise, Marinetti's demand for poems "of 'wireless imagination' of countless metaphors and analogies, which connect visual values with auditory, olfactory and tactile values" (333), recalls not only concretely the means of expression employed in Seifert's On the Waves ofTSF and during Nezval's poetist phase but is reminiscent of poetist aesthetics in general. Teige puts Guillaume Apollinaire (arguably the greatest immediate influence on the Czech avant-garde) at the beginning of the "cubist revolution" that did away with the "medieval trade of painting" which was dealing in iconic representation and serving ruling institutions ("Manifest poetismu" 334). At the same time, cubism opened new frontiers for poetry, Teige says. He credits Apollinaire more than Marinetti (despite the latter's Parole in liberta) with liberating words from punctuation and syntax, primarily because he feels that "a new star" had to crystallize from the "noisy chaos of Marinetti's poems" (334). It seems that Marinetti's anarchy goes too far for Teige's taste, w ho— as an albeit progressive graphic artist— would no doubt hesitate entirely to repudiate any optical order. Teige enthusiastically praises Apollinaire's Calligrammes as equivalent to "the discovery of America, the uncovering of a new world of poetry as well as Columbus's egg," because his ideograms constitute a move away ^ A s Peter Drews convincingly argues, Teige respected Walt Whitman as "one of the fathers of modem art" but saw his work as a (positive) relic from the past (151). Whitman was more directly influential on the "Generation of 1914," particularly on S. K. Neumann (Drews 149- 50). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 100 from Verlaine's musicality and the reliance on phonetic poetry in general while introducing the primacy of visual poetry (334-35). This clearly shows Teige's own predilection for visual media like film, the poster, modem layout and graphics. At the same time, this is the other reason for Teige's diminishing the futurists' contribution to modem poetry as he sees it: the futurists continue in the tradition of phonetic poems, even if they substitute the Debussy of the symbolists with urban noise (337). In contrast to this, in his manifestos Teige clearly states his belief that the future of art belongs to film, which he sees as an over-arching universal poetic medium. Furthermore, as poetry and painting merge, art becomes increasingly visual. Naturally, Teige quotes Apollinaire's pronouncement Et moi aussije suis peintre (without mentioning Francis Picabia's and Marcel Duchamp's appropriate response Et nous aussi sommes poetes^ which indicates the identification of poetry and painting that Teige applauds). Interestingly, Teige mentions Apollinaire's "Lettre-Ocean" (1914) as a culmination of this fusion, "a poem free from literary decor and content, rapid, with abbreviations, which is read with one steady gaze, taken in simultaneously whole like a poster, instead of being read word for word, verse after verse" ("Manifest poetismu" 335). One prominent abbreviation in Apollinaire's "Lettre- Ocean" is the acronym "TSF" for the telegraph or the early radio, the wireless ("telegraphie sans fil"), set horizontally in large bold type. To Teige this poem prefigures the future layout of verse publications. It also sheds light on his typographical practices in setting up Seifert's On the Waves of TSF. He predicts that the modem visual poster-like typesetting "will require special typographical and photo- 31For a very' useful discussion of Apollinaire's endeavor to merge painting and poetry see Katia Samaltanos's Apollinaire: Catalyst fo r Primitivism, Picabia, and Duchamp. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 101 typographical montages which will organically unify image and text while capacitating it for maximum optical arrangement" (335). When addressing optical simultaneity, Teige arrives at Blaise Cendrars, whose La Prose du Transsiberian he again tellingly appreciates for being "an interesting polymorphous and polychromatic typographic experiment" ("Manifest poetismu" 336). He also attributes this "simultaneity of reading” that, much as film does, directs the viewer's gaze to Cendrars's other poetry (336; emphasis Teige's). In similar fashion Teige notes which of his contemporaries use primarily typographical or visual innovations in their poetry. He mentions Jean Cocteau, who, like Mallarme, employs white spaces between words and lines^2; Nicolas Beauduin's manipulation of the "hypnotism of type" creating "poetry entirely for the eye, not for the ear" that again approaches synchronic filmic technique; and, finally, he champions the little-known artist Pierre Albert Birot for his conception of the "poetic poster," "or open air poster poetry" since the poet enlarged his poems and exhibited them like paintings ("Manifest poetismu" 336). This review of modernist turning-points obviously is selective and anything but exhaustive because Teige focuses only on specific developmental aspects of modem art. Several important influences were presented rather cursorily; after all, the purpose of the second poetist manifesto was not exclusively to trace poetist forerunners. In fact, Teige presents the milestones in the development of modem art and poetry almost as if they more or less directly led to poetism. Far from viewing poetism as a creative eclectic amalgam of European avant-garde aesthetics, the poetists perceive themselves as a self- contained, "original" movement (an opinion supported by a few contemporary and ^ 2H e n c e the many white gaps in the poems from On the Waves of TSF that mark semantic units in the absence of punctuation. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 102 several subsequent critics), its strong roots in an internationalist, cosmopolitan context notwithstanding. Besides receiving numerous impulses that led to formal innovations, the poetists also absorbed a whole new thematic orientation (manifest, for example, in their adoption of exoticism), when Dev£tsil massively began to turn toward Paris in 1922, as the previous generation of artists and intellectuals has done before. There is no doubt that poetist theory and production owe more to futurism, for instance, than Teige admits— partly because futurism later discredited itself by its militarism when Marinetti's fascist sympathies led to his personal disenchantment with avant-garde experiment. Yet the very penchant for writing manifestos points to futurism; so does Teige's typographic experimentation. Teige corresponded and exchanged magazines with Marinetti, who in turn visited him in Prague in November 192f33 on ^ occasion of an exhibition of modem Italian art, and held a lecture, where he proclaimed in French, which— aside from German— was the lingua franca of Czech intellectuals at the time, "Vive le Devetsil" (Smejkal). Drews claims that futurism was of little importance for the Czech avant-garde, which remained "reserved," including Teige, upon Marinetti's visit (186). In his memoir, Seifert recalls how Marinetti read in a very lively fashion from his Parole in liberta in Teige's apartment. He also remembers that the Italian admired the resources of the Czech, a language of highly varied inflections, in which Marinetti had several names.^4 However, after his engagement as a flyer in the Abyssinian war (1935-1936), Seifert says, Marinetti entirely fell out of favor with the Czech avant-garde (ABFV382). ^December 1921, according to Effenberger (539). ^Since in Czech the name Marinetti is declined, the different suffixes indeed yield several different forms. Hence the Italian futurist's pleasure at heaving several names. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 103 Overall, the relationships between Teige and other Czech writers to futurism and dadaism transformed over time in a manner that is indicative of Teige's and Dev&sil's changing politics and changing conception of the international artistic scene. In his 1922 essay "New Proletarian Poetry" Teige essentially dismissed futurism as an antiquated and moribund pre-war movement. To him, Marinetti, author of Monoplan du pape (in part translated by Karel Capek in 1913), was a writer who produced "chronic humbug" and "kitsch" ("Neue proletarische Kunst" 26). And in a still earlier article, "S novou generaci" [With the New Generation] (1919), Teige calls Marinetti a "loudmouth" and condemns dada as the latest symptom of cubism's demise (108). Yet there are similarities between futurism and poetism; for instance, the identification of life and art, the propensity for experiment, the radical breaking with the past and tradition and the subsequent poetist acceptance and aesthetic rehabilitation of the machine all suggest futurist origins, even if they be filtered via France and dadaism, as Drews claims (187). Clearly, under the ideological dictates of proletarian art, the futurist cult of technology and war but also dadaist play and nihilism were not acceptable, but later, after embracing poetism, Teige more readily acknowledged some indebtedness to futurism and again considered it a modem movement (Drews 187). During the second half of the 1920s he wrote several assessments of futurism of increasing scope and precision (Effenberger 539).35 Similarly, during DevStsil's phase of elevating proletarian art to a special central place, a movement as amoral, anti-political and nihilistic as dadaism naturally invited censure from a viewpoint of programmatic art. In early 1921 Seifert echoes the typical theses of Dev&tsil when he calls cubism the last stage of stagnant bourgeois art, 33"Futurismus a italskd moderna." Pasmo 1(10) Mar. 1925:4-6; F. T. M arinetti + italska modema + svStovyfutnrism us. ReD 2(6) Feb. 1929:185-204. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 104 accompanied by dadaism which "has absolutely nothing in common with art any longer" ("Burzoasie a umern" 2). At that stage, DevStsil members were drawn to primitive art and naive painting, particularly to Henri Rousseau.36 Teige repeatedly wrote about dadaism and over time his studies gained depth and insight, so that he increasingly saw the value of dadaism. In his 1926 Host article "Dada" he traces the movement's genealogy and its aesthetics. It is apparent, though, that Teige does not consciously acknowledge any direct influence or shared characteristics between dadaism and poetism because the dada "spirit of negation and destruction" is "foreign to the modem constructive spirit" (39). On the other hand, Teige certainly applauds dadaism's "bold and healthy" anti-traditionalism. Still, he sees this as a trait not exclusively dadaist but common to all truly modem art (40).37 As Smejkal rightly points out, dada brings together disparate fragments to create a chaotic, aggressive effect. The method Czech poetist-constructivist painters share with dada is undoubtedly montage and collage. However, constructivists use geometry and composition for political purposes or for advertising; likewise, Dev&tsil poets employ free association but with a clear purpose and image to be evoked (Smejkal). In a 1931 study, Frantisek Gotz idiosyncratically equates dada with poetism and surrealism, and he also groups Seifert, Nezval, Halas, Biebl and other poets in a chapter entitled "Cesk6 dada" [Czech Dada], This classification is warranted less by art history than by social and intellectual climate 36§alda writes about Seifert at the time of Sheer Love: "Seifert is a primitive and remains a primitive; he is in poetry what the Douanier Rousseau was in painting. He really only writes on Sunday: the poetic act is to him a festive act. It is something like Sunday mass for him -I keep having this impression from [reading] his verse" (O nejmladSi poesii 53). And Pisa detects in City in Tears an "affinity for the imagery and tone of the popular soul," for which Seifert and his peers loved Henri Rousseau's paintings (Stopami poezie 254). 37"rhis is reminiscent of his discussion of poetist precursors in the second manifesto. There, rather than trying to establish a more or less direct lineage, Teige charted what he conceived of as "modem spirit" of which poetism was a full-fledged part. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 105 since Gotz defines dada broadly as a response to existential angst which all these artistic movements attempt to dispel by dismissing aesthetic tradition and by claiming to be modi vivendi, methods of living, modernized epicurisms (Basnicky dneSek 249). Before 1921, Teige aligned himself with "collectivist" perspectives of writers he called "artists of the unity of life": Jules Romains, Georges Duhainel, Charles Louis Philippe, and Charles Vildrac ("S novou generad" 124). He praises Philippe in particular for delivering "images from life" ("Neue proletarische Kunst" 36). For his part, Vitezslav Nezval wrote a dissertation on Philippe (which he never submitted, however) (Mestan 215). Up to 1921 the unanimists exerted a considerable influence on the Czech avant-garde. According to Seifert's memoir, Artus Cemik, member of the Brno Dev$tsil group, corresponded with Duhamel and Vildrac, as well as with many other modem artists, such as the expressionists Claire and Ivan Goll {ABW 201). Duhamel and Vildrac visited Prague in March 1921,38 an(j although great aesthetic consensus initially existed between these unanimists and the Czech avant-garde, political differences soon arose, during which Teige accused Vildrac of political anarchism (Drews 86). According to Effenberger, this conflict indicates Teige's ambivalent relationship toward two forms of revolutionary artistic production, which at that time Duhamel and Vildrac on the one hand with S. K. Neumann on the other hand represent for him, and which in an ideological sense stand for the dichotomy between freedom and discipline, between anarchist temperament—that has traditionally had a different significance in art than in politics—and between communist discipline, between order and the adventurousness of the spirit. In this clash lies Teige's most vital problem. (584) As we have seen, Teige's perception of Neumann was to change again when the latter all too rigidly advanced Proletkult while the young theoretician was beginning to explore constructivism and to formulate poetism. 38April 1921, according to Smejkal. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 106 Likewise, Teige revised his opinion of Apollinaire, whom he had initially criticized on similar grounds as the representatives of "cubo-futurism" (this included Marinetti, but also Cendrars, S. K. Neumann of his vitalist phase, Ivan Goll and others): they all optimistically sang the praises of the doomed, war-mongering capitalist and colonial system ("Neue proletarische Kunst" 27-28). In an early review, published two days after his high school graduation at the age of nineteen, Teige praises Capek's recently published translation (in Gerven on February 6,1919) of Apollinaire's Zone: "Karel Capek translated 'Zone' in an exemplary fashion" and calls it "a truly pious Czech commemoration of the late poet" ("Apollinaire" 61; 51). However, at this time Teige skeptically dismisses the French poet's attempts to join painting and poetry in his Calligrammes or ideograms as "a dangerous attempt" operating on a false assumption (53). Obviously, he subsequently reassessed this opinion. Despite such initial theoretical reservations, there was hardly a poet in the Czech avant-garde who did not feel Apollinaire's influence, especially in his method, the "Zone-technique," as mediated by Capek's excellent translation. Czechs particularly appreciated the fact that the French poet set part of Zone in Prague, which he visited in 1902. Seifert pays a tribute in 1928, ten years after Apollinaire's death, both to the poet and to his Czech translator: "The superb translation, composed in bewitching, almost stunningly beautiful language, enchanted [us] at once" ("Guillaume Apollinaire" 69). But Seifert also acknowledges the mediator role of . . . dear Teige, who, clumsily puffing his pipe, would improvise for entire evenings over and over new translations of the poet's verse, knowing full well that at that time we would have in vain tried to decipher the mysteries of the French language, which then to us was a similar riddle as hieroglyphics on pharaohs' tombs." ("Guillaume Apollinaire" 69) In 1935, reviewing a new anthology of recently translated French poetry (by Horejsi and the poet Zdenek Kalista, with Seifert's assistance; foreword by Teige), Seifert calls Zone R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 107 "a living milestone" and a "revolutionary deed" which became the "fate of the post war generation" ("Apollinaire v Cech&ch" 177). Yet there is no mention of Karel Capek's pioneering work that essentially turned Apollinaire into a Czech poet (Brousek 41). The reason for the omission at this late point in the 1930s is hardly intergenerational rivalry. Previously, however, Capek as a member of the "Generation of 1914" and a frequent critic of the young avant-garde, was an embarrassing pioneer to acknowledge, despite his having revolutionized Czech poetry. Capek introduced a new intensity that he achieved by a matter-of-fact and direct, concrete, rather than metaphorical expression (Lev^, Bude literami vSda 228). He also chose natural diction and enriched Czech poetry by bringing in elements from French prosody, employing free verse and reforming the alexandrine which in his translation is looser, more free, prose-like and less determined by stress (Levy, ibid. 244). Finally, he "decanonized" rhyme by using slant rhyme, irregular syllabic quantity and assonance (Levy, ibid. 249)— long before Roman Jakobson was to recommend these means to Czech poets in the 1925 article "Konec basnick£ho umprumdctvi a zivnostnictvi" [An End to Academy Norms and Petty Tradesmanship in Poetry]. With his translation, Capek not only introduced Apollinaire, but contributed to the intensive French orientation of the Czech avant-garde and helped bring about the conditions in which poetism could evolve.39 Apollinaire, who himself absorbed futurist and anticipated dadaist features and styles, brought these elements into Czech poetry. Humor, puns and anecdotes, the play with 39The well-regarded critic Vaclav Cemy (1905-1987) in his informative memoir PamSti, vol. 1, describes how Dev&sil became synonymous with the young artistic generation and how poetism reigned supreme, engaging in polemical attacks against the established, "official" artistic generation embodied in Capek," ... although especially to Karel Capek poetism owed an almost instituting act without which its poetic representatives would have remained nearly helpless linguistically-the translation of Apollinaire's Zone"(157). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 108 homophony and homonymy and typographical experiments are part of the legacy that inspired the Czech avant-garde particularly during its poetist phase. All the international influences came at a time of fruitful exchange among European avant-garde movements, so that simple chronologies and genealogies that assume original creators and their imitators are difficult to trace. Perhaps the phrase "critical cosmopolitanism," that Frantisek Gotz coined to describe truly innovative criticism— one that takes into account "the world contexts" of modem Czech literature— can be applied to the literary production of the 1920s. Gotz observes that national cultures evolve in closest proximity to each other and intellectual exchange works fast and effectively; therefore, modem critics need to consider the international context: "We are pushing for the very same new forms, which [artists] in France, in Italy, in the new Russia, and actually also in the countries of Anglo-Saxon culture are striving for" ("Problemy" 184). It is clear from this that the Czech avant-garde rightly perceived itself as a contributing, vibrant component of the European artistic and literary scene. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 109 CHAPTER III: Seifert's Early Poetry, Its Context and Reception A. C ity in Tears and Proletarian Poetry Between 1919 and 1922 more than half of the twenty-one poems collected in City in Tears (1921) were published in leftist magazines and newspapers, mainly in S. K. Neumann's Gerven and Kmen or in the communist daily Rude pravo. It is characteristic of this phase that Seifert and his artist friends often added "Devetsil" to their names. The dedication of Seifert's first book to Neumann is heartfelt: "To the dearest of poets."1 True to the spirit of collaboration that DevStsil embraced in its earliest "proletarian" phase, Karel Teige supplied the artwork (lino-cuts) for the book's cover and frontispiece. The foreword is signed U. S. Dev&tsil [Um&ecky svaz, Artists Union] and was written by DevStsil's first president, the novelist Vladislav Vancura. It is typical both in tone and content for the optimism, pathos and the fervent, almost religious, belief in impending radical social change so ubiquitous in most programmatic declarations of the period.2 The foreword establishes the main themes of the collection: the poet is one with the working people who are unmistakably identified ("comrade"); his poetry is comparable to their daily labor and its function is to encourage and inspire revolutionary struggle; the collection does not celebrate civilization and technology, but indicts the suffering of modem working man. Vancura also echoes the book's revolutionary ardor, its child-like trust and naivete, in anticipating "a communist world . .. born in chaos as it reigned at the beginning of the earth." ^The terse inscription "To St. K. Neumann" on the second edition (1923) reflects recent discord over Seifert's turn toward poetism and the influence of Teige. The third edition (1929) returns to the original dedication (Pesat, Seifert 25). 2Moreover, as Pesat points out, Seifert was translating The Tzvelve by Alexander Blok concurrently with writing C ity in Tears (Seifert 37). Blok's work certainly abounds with lyrical prophesies of revolutionary change and religious symbolism. In his memoir, Seifert writes that Roman Jakobson suggested the translation to him, that it was poor, riddled with linguistic errors and that the poem at first did not particularly interest him (A B W 319). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 110 The image of a new genesis begot by chaos dominates Seifert's poem "The Creation of the World" and brings up the interesting conflation of religious and revolutionary imagery, evident not only in "proletarian" poetry but in its political, aesthetic commentaries and programs. In the prophesy of a new (better) creation, the proletariat, inspired by the thought of revenge, will transform the world into an idyllic, bountiful, peaceful place— a music-filled setting for love and meaningful labor, the din of which will sound "like fervent prayer" [52] .3 Biblical imagery and allusions appear most often as analogies. The revolution is anticipated with a similar longing like the second coming of Christ ("A Chanted Prayer"), whose "beautiful dream" is waiting to become reality [37]. In "Good Tidings"4 post-revolutionary Russia becomes a promised land offering salvation: "there in the east, in the cornflower-blue distance, / rises a wreath made from ears of rye, / hammer and sickle" [31].5 But most surprisingly, the poem ends with a subtly but significantly modified final line: "Glory, glory to God in the highest / and revolution to his people on earth." Where the Mass urges peace, Seifert substitutes revolution. It is apparent that revolution here is seen naively as something inevitable and beneficial, almost as an antithesis to the bloody spectacle that ^The page numbers in bracket correspond to the pagination of the individual collections (centered, bracketed page numbers at the bottom of the page), not to the dissertation page numbers in the upper right corner. The bracketed page numbers follow exactly the pagination of Seifert’s originals. 4It is dedicated to the writer Ivan Olbracht, one of the first representatives of the Czech intelligentsia to visit Russia after the October Revolution. 3Josef Hora's 1919 poem "Vychod a zdpad"[East and West] similarly treats Russia as a place of youthful renewal and promise, in sharp contrast to the old, decaying West. Czechoslovakia, the "small, free land" in the middle, should have an easy choice following Russian revolutionaries who "have taken from the cross crucified man, / returned the earth to him and his instruments—" [Orfeus 1(1) 1919:1-2]. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. I l l it most often turns out to be.6 In "A Chanted Prayer" revolution is likewise idealized; it is only nominally "cruel" because it is also "fair / into palms deals out to each, / poor and rich / the same share" [37]. And although there is talk about revenge and lack of forgiveness, these emotions lack as clear a conception as the detailed, almost bucolic, Edenic images of future bliss that dominate the collection. But the strongest blend of revolutionary vision, near-religious belief, and eroticism manifests itself in a short dramatic scene "Velkd scena" that Seifert published in early 1922. This revolutionary "morality play" employs allegorical figures or types like "Czechoslovakia," "The Bourgeois," "Shackled Worker," "The Crowd" and others. Towards the end, "Czechoslovakia" announces when the International begins to play: "Here it resounds / the song of the revolution, / my nuptial melody!" This is answered by the "Group of Workers": You called us and we obeyed, w e conquered the world with a song on our lips and the red banner now flies overhead! Only now the labor sacred and great like the prayer of the new century will make machines, hammers and chisels din, that will be the love song for your fertile womb, that will be angelic annunciation! (10)? The belief in the revolution equals religious conviction promising heavenly rewards for a wretched life: in the modem city ("City in Tears") "people have muscles of steel / and ever so profound a faith, / that the great day will come when wrongs are righted / and the brimful of their pain / into joy they will turn— " [49], There is not a shade of doubt in the entire book that the "salvation" indeed will come. The 6Compare how differently Seifert treats revolution in the last part of The Nightingale Sings Poorly. Five years and an actual visit to Russia (1925) separate the poems. ^"Velkd sc6na." Proletknlt 1(1) 4 Jan. 1922:8-10. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 112 penultimate poem "Poor," is narrated by a proletarian who first evocatively and in rich detail enumerates his meager possessions, only to profess his belief in the communist manifesto and to declare: I believe that the day will arrive, when I too will be content, I believe, that I too will one day be master and high, high, high above Prague I will fly in an aeroplane. [61] The revolution is hardly an abstract philosophical ideal but becomes a means to finding concrete material fulfillment and the same pleasures as the privileged classes enjoy.® "Prayer on the Sidewalk" expresses a similar sentiment while providing a specific contrast between rich and poor. Here the narrator dresses up in his Sunday best and contemplates a modest meal of herring and bread when, reminded of Christ, he regrets that he cannot work miracles and feed thousands with one fish and the bread. But as the "table of the street" is poor, so much more splendid are the delicacies beckoning from shiny store windows, and a healthy gluttonous appetite rather than indignation or social criticism motivates the narrator: The butcher's windows shone like altars in church upon morning mass, on their steps I would not mind kneeling the longest, and since even the doorways to shops were like heaven's gates with signs, with stars, listen, the street burst into hosanna on the organ. [17] Seifert takes liberties with religious metaphors but this use is not driven by sacrilegious, parodistic intent. Rather, the poet secularizes Biblical symbols in a fashion similar to the way that he concretely idealizes revolution— so that they may become concrete and tangible, material rather than transcendent. This secularization, in this ^Compare the extreme rendition of such a worker's paradise in the poem "Glorious Day" from Sheer Love that became notorious as an expression of sybaritic impulses. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 113 case when anthropomorphic qualities are ascribed to a heavenly messenger, infuses Seifert7 s poetry with a good dose of humor and creates an effect that Zdenek Pesat calls "poetic naivism": The guardian angel hardly always flies after you, perhaps he falls for a bottle of good wine, for fresh sausage, for ham, arid you, man, he utterly forgets. [19] Occasionally the symbolism reaches hyperbolic heights as in "Language of the Crowd," where the revolutionary masses who are compared to the chosen people of Israel, led by Moses through the Red Sea, become nearly omnipotent, God-like. They are a waterfall, an ocean and "tiny flames" which form a fire and then a wrathful thundercloud: " ... if we wanted to and spat on the sun, / it would go out" [22]. Apart from hyperbole, the poem captures the dynamics of a heady crowd intoxicated with the idea of revolution and with itself, its own power. The same operation that secularizes the angels, Christ and God, is inverted when an unknown, humble worker Josef Kulda, becomes a martyr and a Christ-like figure. The poem "December 1920" was doubtlessly inspired by incidents surrounding a communist-run attempt at a destabilizing general strike that on December 10,1920 culminated in clashes between armed police and workers demonstrating in front of the parliament in Prague. The unrest led to serious injuries and even fatalities, among them the 51-year-old locksmith Kulda, father of six, who died five days later of gunshot wounds. Interestingly, the account in the communist newspaper Rude prdvo likewise explicitly invokes the Christ-analogy when describing Kulda's appearance, "with his body pierced by several wounds, with a shot through his jaw, and with limbs painfully bruised in the fall, his body resembles the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 114 tortured body of Christ on the cross" ("Kdo je krvavjr pes?" 1-2).9 This poem triggered a confiscation to which the authorities curiously subjected the remnants of the second edition of Seifert's book (Pesat, Seifert 39). Even the conservative press protested the step that was not uncommon during the 1920s when after censorship mainly of the leftist press columns or entire pages frequently remained blank. Narodni osvobozetii claims that absurdly the collection was just recently withdrawn, after three and a half years on the market ("Konfiskace" 5) while the authorities respond with a counter claim in the same paper naming July 1923 and June 1925 as dates when the action occurred and blaming the original publisher for not submitting the first collection to mandatory screening ("Podle paragrafu" 4). Perhaps one of the reasons why revolutionary struggle in this collection has a dreamy, prophetic quality has to do with Seifert's anthropomorphic animation of inanimate objects and conversely in the "reification" of humans. In "Revolution" manikins speak to the reader about struggle and building barricades that they will undertake "if you living will not." They will be fearless and oppose soldiers "waxen faced," advance "to meet bayonets" and grasp victory with "wooden hands" [29,30]. The imagined sensational headlines reporting the manikins' triumph play with the absurdity of leaving the revolution to others, steadfast dolls no less. The success seems within reach if victory can be claimed by armies of dummies. At the same time the extended metaphor points to the fact that all revolutions follow a determined leadership, a vanguard, because average people need inspiration and courage. Here the playful admonition is not to be left behind when others bravely join in. The animation ^It is unlikely that Seifert himself was the author of the anonymous article although he may already have worked for the paper at that time. He primarily wrote commentaries on culture and literature. There is no doubt, however, that he witnessed the events up close. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 115 of a factory serves a different purpose. The poem "In a Small Suburban Street" depicts the factory as a sleeping monster that awakens at dawn to its blood-thirsty, oppressive activity when it fouls the air, sucks strength from the living and maims them. Technology here is portrayed as arrogant and bellicose when smoke stacks resemble cannons pointed at the entire cosmos. This nightmarish scene, however, dissolves when the narrator suddenly hears a peaceful lullaby at dusk from a nearby "suburban" proletarian home.1® This idyll, albeit brief, renders the factory's monstrosity and its underlying capitalist hubris useless. Conversely, humans are fragile like flowers in a hostile, denatured city, "the angular image of suffering" ("Introductory Poem") where all living things languish, "where enslaved is not only man, / but flower, bird, horse and humble dog" [10]. In "Children from the Suburb" the pale and sickly youngsters turn into violins whom the doctor and violin maker nurtures and fine-tunes to recovery, so that they may muster strength for revolutionary battle and " ... play from a red score / the revolutionary symphony" [24]. The final line, "And, I say, what a symphony it will be!" again betrays naive anticipation of an idealized revolution. The attention to detail is striking in the entire collection and authenticates the experience of the narrators— here in the poem one of the suburban boys. Lantner, the violin maker, actually existed in Prague. So did the Danek factory where the locksmith works in the idyllic "Evening on the Porch."11 In this poem some of the typical residents living in a poor working-class neighborhood like Zizkov come alive: a lamplighter, a "blind accordion player," "a consumptive ^Suburban here correctly follows usage, but the underlying concept is different. In Seiferf s time, suburbs (predmSsti) were the opposite of affluent American outskirts on the edge of town. Often they were simply poor working-class neighborhood in the middle of the city, much as in London. 11"Porch" (for pavlac) likewise might be misleading as it refers more to the galleries or walkways hugging the squalid multistory buildings where the residents spent part of their free time or attended to household chores. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 116 seamstress" and others. They rest after returning from the "battlefield of the day" [39].12 Evocative details (birds, slugs, flowers) construct the peaceful evening atmosphere that is broken when the initially mellow piano bursts into a jingoistic song. Similarly, the magic of a brief blissful moment is shattered in "Prayer on the Sidewalk" where the narrator, wearing shiny shoes in happy anticipation of seeing his sweetheart, witnesses the grisly killing of a small dog. The scene is replete with description. The narrator is reminded of his own mortality, of fleeting time and prays to die fighting on the barricades, not massacred like the helpless little dog under the wheels of a tram, another symbol of the hostile technological world. As opposed to the magazine version, Seifert cut the overly explicit line referring to the tram, "which you despise" (566). This poem may have inspired the little-known F. Hrusa's "To a Little Black Dog, Killed by a Tram." In the spirit of what Pesat calls "poetic naivism" of which Seifert is a major representative, the narrator in Hrusa's poem consoles himself that the dog will enter a concretely-rendered heaven for dogs thus prompting the "I" to wish for an easy death when it is our tum.13 "City of Sin" (reminiscent of Gomorrah) is a place harboring modem evil: "industrialists, plutocrats," "brutal boxers," "inventors and engineers" along with "generals, merchants and patriotic poets" [45]. The narrator condemns the latter in particular for celebrating the capitalist system and likewise wants to prevent the futurist or vitalist poet from singing a "servile accolade" for modem technology ("In a Small Suburban Street" [54]). Yet the vengeful God spares this sinful city for a loving couple strolling in the park. Thus amidst the "urban wretchedness" there are small l 2City in Tears in its early stages was entitled BojiSt Seine [Battlefield of the Day]. 13Cesta 4(13) 1922:199. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 117 moments of happiness, hope, and genuinely moving passages describing the modest longings of the poet-narrator's sweetheart ("A Poem Full of Coinage and Faith"). However, while she wishes "for a kitchen, tiny, quite small" and "curtains of pink lace" on the windows, the protagonist, "son of a tempestuous time," aspires to a different dream. He wants to be "one of the crowd," singing his song on the barricades [57,59]. He eschews love for the revolution. This subordination of personal erotic fulfillment to the higher end of communal struggle shifts in the next collection Sheer Love, where the beloved joins the battle with the protagonist. Likewise, in one of the three poems where war is a central theme ("Monologue of the Handless Soldier") the narrator, who would like to be able to embrace a woman, misses his hands that were tom off by a grenade in the war. However, more than not being able to love, he regrets that he cannot join the demonstrating crowd of strikers that is pelting violent police officers with stones [13]. "At the War Cemetery" also to some extent juxtaposes the woman's self-centered attention to her love and the protagonist's far-reaching, revolutionary dreams. Though initially they both talk about the dead soldiers and not about their affection, the woman's thoughts return to her relationship (she is picking a daisy's petals) while the man seeks to derive strength from a war memorial when reading the fallen men's names "as if saying litany to all the saints" [26]. The list of seven names, composed of German, Italian, Czech, Russian, French and Polish elements, corresponds to the final stanza's spirit of international reconciliation, forgiveness and brotherhood. The revolution, in other words, will unite disparate peoples, separated by capitalist wars. Seifert seems to suggest here that in death the soldiers have become a fraternity of victims that inspires the living to form a unified international front. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 118 Given the revolutionary spirit of the collection, the self-described role of the poet deserves some attention. In the "Introductory Poem" the poet takes on the cause of his "brothers." His task involves sharing the fate of the proletariat in the bleak and life- threatening urban or "suburban" environment. He cannot abandon the suffering and escape to an idyllic countryside; instead he chooses "leaning against the factory wall, I will choke with the smoke / and sing my song" [9]. And since he is living in a "tempestuous time" [58], each of his smallest joys turns into sorrow, as happens in "Prayer on the Sidewalk." His sharpened sensibility and the abundance of dreams, with which poets supposedly are endowed, let him suffer keenly [18]. The last piece, "The Humblest of Poems," completes the frame reaching from the first poem. At the same time the shift from hyperbolic self-aggrandizement to modesty is so dramatic in the short poem that both counterpoints have an ironic ring. The poet most likely is not taking liimself seriously and his grand gestures may just be revolutionary pathos. The "I" is a "prophet" standing on a mountain with hands spread out. He is a "sage," but also a revolutionary who will fire but also fall first, the first to help the wounded, "miraculous like God, / and mighty like God" [62]. The poet here appears as a spirit of revolution transforming itself into many roles. After the hyperbole has put him above God, it suddenly collapses: " ... and yet I am nothing / but, humbly resigned to the mercy of multitudes, / the poet / Jaroslav Seifert" [62]. This poem perhaps suggests the remoteness of the actual revolution, which— though anticipated— still seems to loom in the unfathomable distance, far from offering a tangible test of courage. The heroic stance of a sage and prophet at the beginning of the poem appears like sweeping self stylization of an ideal self while at the end the poet realizes his actual, present role: that of a servant and spokesman of the people. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 119 The collection as a whole changed considerably over time. As Zdenek Pesat notes, the second edition of City in Tears (1923) saw the addition of "A Girl," a long poem of nine parts (Seifert 38). It is a sympathetic treatment of the proletarian Marie Nov&kovd, who abandons the revolutionary cause for love (see Appendix A). The poem refers to the political turmoil of December 1920 and spans about a year after the clashes. Interestingly, Seifert changed the heroine's last name from Ulrychova (the maiden name of his future wife) in the magazine version14 to the more "generic," common name Nov&kovd. Only the two introductory stanzas of the poem "A Girl" survived as "A Song About Girls" in Sheer Love. The third edition of 1929 is again based on the first edition of 1921 (Viskovd 247,248). Furthermore, as opposed to the first edition, Seifert increasingly toned down the rhetorical emphasis on individual words by forming longer lines and by leaving out repetitions (Pesat, Seifert 39). A look at the magazine version of the poems collected in City in Tears shows mostly minor changes of punctuation, line length or word order. In those few cases, however, where more substantial changes occur, they are revealing. In the poem "Revolution" Seifert changes the perspective thus achieving immediacy and directness. The manikins themselves address the reader as opposed to the magazine version where they are observed externally. Seifert also somewhat muted the religious symbolism of "Good Tidings," entitled "Annunciation" in its Kmen version, and sharpened the revolutionary thrust of the poem by emphasizing that the "alms of manna falling from the sky" (and thus reliance on religious belief) belong to the past while the revolution will grow from new seed [31]. He also eliminated the analogy between the harbingers of revolution returning from the East to angels coming from Bethlehem. "The Humblest of Poems" is condensed in the book version. Previously, the poet was not only prophet u Proletkult 1(8) 1 Mar. 1922:115-17. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 120 and sage, but also a "star showing the way / to the nation unchosen," a "banner / that took the color from the dawn," a "mirror, / which molds people's masks" and even Jacob's ladder, "ladder of love," a bridge between heaven and earth.16 The "Children from the Suburb" in the book they specifically become boys, except for the title. In the magazine edition the doctor injects a strong note of pessimism, doubting that the poor children will ever recover from the effects of destitution and squalor. A first-person child-narrator then reminds the physician-violin maker of his task to keep healing the children, so that they may join the "red revolutionary symphony."16 This pessimism or doubt is entirely absent in the book version. An omission of uninhibited eroticism in "Prayer on the Sidewalk" sheds light on other poems that were not included in the collection and similarly exhibit strong sexual imagery. At the moment when the protagonist begins to pray to the black Madonna on the comer of Celetnd street and the Fruit market in the Old Town of Prague the magazine version includes this stanza: Alone amidst a vicious circle of civilization, an amazing machine around me, which is breaking and cutting and grinding and crushing me, this is the world, world of my life, the world of electricity, labor and inventions; and it is shaking like a passionate man at the moment of sweet ejaculation, so that later drained of strength he fears to look at the fruit of his love, the creation of steam, belts and w heels17 15Kmen 4(43) 20 Jan. 1921: 505-506. 16 & rven 4(1) 7 Apr. 1921:1. 17Kmen 4(48) 24 Feb. 1921:565-66. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 121 Man has created technology that he no longer controls; it enslaves and robs him of his faculties. Though Seifert does operate with startling images and juxtapositions and tries to experience external phenomena spontaneously and to make them accessible or familiar, he probably felt the sexual analogy had gone too far and distracted from revolutionary intent. After all, erotic love in City in Tears is still subordinated to political and ideological devotion. For similar reasons Seifert may have excluded the poem "Rhythm of the Street" from the collection. It abounds with personifications so common in the poetry of this kind (the day, the wind, smoke stacks and other objects or concepts have anthropomorphic qualities). The poem ends in a symbolic copulation between "life" and "the street," to an unmistakably sexual rhythm ("[life] falls inside of her [the street], / she squeezes him hotly with two sidewalks, / as if with hands, / squeezes him between her two legs."1® The themes that recur in Seifert's poetry at this point are hardly unique in the proletarian poetry of the time; only Seifert's plain, naive and spontaneous vision, making abstract ideas quite tangible and familiar by means of evocative details and startling contrasts, could be called his own. Just a casual glance at titles of poems published in the magazines alongside Seifert's verse reveals the preoccupation of proletarian poetry with ordinary objects and working-class people in the city adversely affected by technology and civilization; for instance, "Above the City" (A. M. Pisa), "From the City" and "Night in the Metropolis" (Josef Hora), "The Pavement" (Jih Wolker), "Death on the Street" (Frantisek Nemec), "Song of Multitudes" and "Spring in the City" (S. K. Neumann), "Aeroplane" (Milos Jirko), "The Girl from the Suburb" (Antonin Bebr). 18Kmen 4(18) 15 July 1920:205-206. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. A popular means of expression is religious imagery, as in Seifert, although to a varying degree. This is true, for example, of Seifert's schoolmate and poet Frantisek Nemec who in the poem "In Bethlehem" writes about "pale people" subjected to "the choking hand of factories / [that] is like a dozen razors" (35).19 Karel Schulz responds to City in Tears20 in a short prose piece entitled "Poz&r" [Fire] (from a collection by the name of Vzboufene m&to [Riotous City]) which echoes the same images of misery and sorrow: "Each tear, which carved its place in dust and pavement, is a place of birth. Only on the cross Revolution is bom, the joyous news, rebounding of a stone on water" (1). The city is overflowing with misery, "millions of hearts are walled in by this stony cube" and the lonely, estranged narrator exhorts the weeping people not to dwell on past suffering but to let their tears guide them to find a better tomorrow: "Tears are hot! City in tears! Yes, it is beautiful because it is the same as: city in flames" (1). Jindrich Horejsi's first volume, Hudba na ndmSstt [Music on the Town Square] (1921), contains poems condemning war like "Monologue of a Former Foot-Soldier." Horejsi's treatment of the city resembles Seifert's although it is darker and more melancholy. The street becomes a giant terrifying quarry dehumanizing man and turning him into stone ("Ulice" [The Street]).2^ In the poem "Automobil" the car itself speaks directly to the reader, very much like the manikins in Seifert's collection, but with a twist: it explains that all the machines employed in the war were slaves abused by their masters.22 Interestingly, this suggests an option that later allows poetists to 19"VBetleme." Orfeus 1(1) 1919:33-36. 2®Seifert's poem "City of Sin" in its magazine printing is dedicated to fellow DevMsil member Schulz. 2^Kmen 4(5) 15 Apr. 1920:49. 22Proletkult 1(17) 3 May 1922:258-59. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 123 return to a positive attitude toward technology and civilization. Machines are not perceived as negative per se; rather, they are neutral or even positive inventions, as long as they are used to the benefit of man. Horejsi's translation of Emile Verhaeren's poem "The Soul of the City" contains similar.themes and stylizations of the modem city. The piece ends with a familiar image: the stinking and cruel city is shrouded in mist and the possibility that "a new Christ" and redeemer may arrive is raised at the end.23 Likewise, in Ivan Goll's long Apollinairesque poem "New Orpheus" (1920) the poet- bard becomes a savior of humankind whose urban existence equals life in a dark underworld.24 Jaroslav Seifert's first collection was almost unanimously well-received in Czechoslovakia although, given its explicit and polemical program, most responses were motivated more by the reviewers' own political leanings than aesthetic criteria. The book sold out quickly and some of its poems, such as "Monologue of the Handless Soldier" were often read at worker's meetings and lectures (Brabec 255,257). This poem was among several from City in Tears included in the anthology Komunisticke ve fiery [Communist Evenings], that Seifert put together with S. K. Neumann in 1922. The communist press, in particular, rejoiced at having found a fresh voice of the revolution. Most critics praised Seifert's immediacy, authenticity, directness and simplicity. A. M. Pisa commends Seifert for putting the tenets of "the revolutionary proletarian movement" into creative practice, for expressing the "new human existence" and writing the best "poetry of the new man" among his peers ("Novy basnik" 20). The poet is seen as a natural, inextricable part of the collective, the masses. Pisa likes the 23Emile Verhaeren. "Duse mesta." Trans. Jindrich Horejsi. D&nickd besidka, Rude pravo 4(93) 22 April 1923:1. 24Ivan Goll. "Novy Orfeus." Trans. Artus Cernik. Kmen 3(47-48) 29 July 1920:320-23. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 124 concreteness and power of Seifert's poetic vision and admires "how daringly and manfully it moves in the raw reality of life" (21). Only mildly Pisa criticizes the occasional superficial "romantic gesture" or "thunderous pathos" but attributes these lapses to the poet's "warm emotionality and bright, vital wisdom" (21). He objects more strongly to Seifert's many references to Scripture and advises that Seifert find his own language. Though he is enthralled with Vancura's foreword, Pisa rejects as unspecific its formulation that urban civilization is the enemy and enslaver of man because to him it smacks of "Rousseauian romanticism"; instead, he suggests using the phrase "existing social order" (21), that is, capitalism. Pisa's evaluation of Seifert's earliest poetry some eight years later is no less positive. He notes Seifert's rootedness in proletarian sensibility, and the "delightful naivete" of the first verses where Seifert comes across as a "youthfully romantic hot head and dreamer" ("J. Seifert" 29). Pisa sees the greatest asset in Seifert's openness and sincerity. He rightly points out that the poet conceives of revolution primarily in emotional and sensory terms, exhibiting "from the start a naturally proletarian and healthily real hunger for the world" (29). Despite some overly rhetorical pieces, Pisa appreciates Seifert poems "in which he achieves the magic of human every-day life due to unaffectedly simple emotionality" ("J. Seifert" 30). Josef Hora's 1921 review likewise praises Seifert's "natural class empathy, inborn and urgent" ("Mesto" 3) but like Pisa he objects to the "constant, naive linking of the revolutionary present with Christian terminology" and to pathos that he detects at the end of "Good Tidings" (4). Yet these shortcomings, along with some "stylistic and tonal carelessness, trite and borrowed images," according to Hora fade away in the successful whole of the collection and its "heartfelt social sympathy" (4). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 125 With characteristic earnestness and reserve Jin Wolker appraises Seifert's contribution to the collective endeavor.of proletarian poetry and calls Seifert's debut a protest against futuristic and vitalist sensual aestheticism in the perception of civilization. As opposed to that, according to Wolker, Seifert shows how factories and machines, originally conceived to assist man, conspire against him ("Dve nove knihy" 194). More emphatically (though not entirely unjustifiably) Wolker disapproves of Seifert's "tendency to verbosity," which he perceives as dangerously close to mannerism, "the death of a poet": "We don't want poems about the revolution, but revolutionary poems, where revolution is the inner meaning, not a Bengal fire at the end" (194). Wolker apparently reacts against Seifert's unbridled preoccupation with sensory experience because he warns that "truly revolutionary" poetry needs to mine deeper and be informed by "courage and discipline" (194). Like other communist reviewers Wolker condemns Seifert's "overuse" of Biblical imagery. He cautions to exercise appropriate restraint to prevent mannerism, which, to him, is best achieved when metaphors emerge from ideas and not vice versa (195). This criticism already foreshadows arguments used against Seifert when he would break away from such rigid ideological strictures as early as in his next collection Slteer Love. A case in point are later communist critics like Zdenek Blajer— or literary historians forced to pay lip service to Marxist terminology and world view like Jin Brabec— who reproached the young Seifert for what they saw as spontaneous, passive trust and "inability to forge among his peers his own conception of art" (Brabec 257). Seifert simply is not sufficiently inclined to political orthodoxy and this is held against him as ideological "disorientation" or "hesitancy"; his "basic anti-bourgeois tendency" is "not solidified and extended by new ideological understanding" (Brabec 257). Brabec evaluates more perceptively Seifert's occasional rhetorical flamboyance, verbosity and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 126 pathos and does concede to City in Tears its genuine, fresh confessional character, unusually powerful effect and concreteness (255). Blajer echoes Brabec (and to some extent Wolker) when he regrets that Seifert chose "the changeful stream of existential sentiments" as a guiding principle for his poetry rather than "a certain political program" (279). He calls Seifert's subsequent rejection of "social science in writing" a moral selling-out for a "poet-communist," paradoxically insisting that Seifert as a poet thus limited his horizons (ibid.). Blajer puts Wolker above Seifert when it comes to "unaffected simplicity" and claims that the latter's self-stylization is far from representing the authentic bond between the proletariat and its artists. Similarly he condemns what he too perceives as over employment by Seifert of religious symbolism, a mannerist convention in his time (278). On the other hand, Blajer acknowledges Seifert's linguistic expressiveness, his "naturally and effortlessly flowing feeling," and the "ability to capture the most minute and hidden characteristic details" thus establishing intimacy, despite intermittent pathos. Understandably, what communist critics perceive as an asset, conservative reviewers find objectionable. Like many mainstream critics, F. S. Prochazka categorically dismisses class interest in art; a demagogue may employ "mob prattle" for propagandistic purposes but a poet bound by demagoguery is unacceptable ("Literatura" 490). Proch&zka mocks Seifert's "personal predilection for butcher's windows that to him shine like church altars" and detects empty stock phrases in a work that he at least considers "quite comprehensible," a pun culminating in a gleeful condemnation of A. M. Pisa's obscurity in Nesrozumitelny svaty [The Incomprehensible Saint]. The critic Josef Knap is able to see past the politics of Seifert's poetry and appreciates its truthfulness and authenticity. He considers Vancura's Dev&sil foreword R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 127 vacuous and dogmatic, particularly its insistence that aside from collective work of communism there is no modernity. Rather, he deems Seifert anything but "modem" or fashionable but something of a poet with universal qualities. To him, Seifert's best work, that puts him in the forefront of his poetic generation, manifests "profound experience and profound emotion of the human heart" ("Dva hlasy" 514). "Boyish naivete and rhetorical interludes" ("Poor"; "Language of the Crowd" and "Revolution") now and then abstractly echo propagandistic articles but cannot obscure Seifert's "heavily struggling moral striving" (515). The ultra-conservative Jarmil Krecar's vicious review of City in Tears (revealing unveiled anti-Semitism2^ and cynicism) is a rare exception. The best he can say about Seifert's debut is that he considers it best among the poetry of the young generation whose production, however, he dismisses wholesale as "embarrassing" ("Nove publikace" 182). The few kind words Krecar finds for Seifert's work, acknowledging "primitive grace of a new-bom poetic soul" and "pure, fervent emotion, enlightened by love" he immediately invalidates by claiming that these qualities "are stifled by ... impurity, bad taste, obtrusiveness and impertinence" (182). Contrary to fact and general opinion, Krecar claims that Seifert merely disseminates hollow communist propaganda which does not spring from authentic experience and that he does so "with a single-mindedness that it borders on a trait generally called stupidity" (181). As opposed to this, critics like Frantisek Gotz, a socialist with expressionist aesthetics, agree that precisely from the plainness and primitivism of Seifert's vision spring his "strong and beautiful" poems ("Vyvoj" 161). And Gotz does not hesitate to rank Seifert 2^Rather curiously, the "new star of communism" that the young generation professes to follow serves Krecar for confused diatribes against Jews, "the parasitic Semitic tribe," associated with a star since Biblical times (180). This is in keeping with Nazi perception of communism as a despicable Jewish invention. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 128 above Wolker when it comes to "a natural, untragic" perception of proletarian reality, with which Seifert is intimately connected due to his origin. This often-heard praise of the "natural proletarian" in Gotz's estimate accounts for "pure immediacy" and "something of a barbarian certainty about this world and this reality" that allows Seifert not to agonize over its problems (162). Most reviewers have thus from his debut correctly identified a "talented and promising poet" (Sedlak 12) and predicted noteworthy, substantial works to come. B. Sheer Love: First Signs of Poetism In his boldly-phrased, sweeping afterword to Sheer Love Teige explicitly rejects the pedantry of proletarian poetry that he finds "bourgeois" in its educational intent. Though Seifert's poetry indeed draws on what Teige calls the proletarian world, it now does so differently, extracting from it "a new creative spirit and a new boldness." This means that rather than celebrating abstract ideals and elevating the worker into pathetic heights, poetry now fully concentrates on popular entertainment and the proletarian's appetites and dreams. In an important programmatic change, Teige now allows technology to be praised because "from hammer to airplane" it is a product of proletarian labor. He does say that "class hatred" is one of the collection's themes and that the poet is a man of the people, an utterly sincere proletarian, yet the strikingly few poems in the vein of City in Tears more eloquently manifest the beginning departure from the previous poetics. Teige is right when he declares that Sheer Love (1923) eschews rhetoric, at least to a greater extent than the previous collection, whose longing for a distant revolutionary utopia has all but disappeared. The immediate pleasures and beauties surrounding the poetic self now matter more. They are mirrored in Seifert's R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 129 poetry that encompasses the "romanticism of this great century" and not only Prague but other cities, Paris and New York— "the entire world," Teige says. Not surprisingly then, the collection as a whole is less unified in focus than City in Tears, which it continues in some respects, but from which it also significantly departs. Thus Sheer Love is a transitional expression of changing poetics within DevStsil and foreshadows Seifert's full-fledged immersion into poetism with On the Waves of TSF. The shift away from the single purpose of proletarian poetry becomes apparent not only in Teige's afterword but at once, in the opening poem "Electric Lyre." This poem, in a pattern modeled after the works in the first collection, provides a frame for the collection extending to the final poem "All the Beauties of the World." The two pieces offer important clues to Seifert's assimilation process in response to theoretical changes initiated by Teige. Most importantly, the achievements of civilization are no longer uniformly condemned as hostile; on the contrary, Seifert poeticizes modem technology and sings its beauty. Moreover, romantic love is not an afterthought anymore, subordinated to the dictates of revolutionary struggle, but often becomes the central focus of a poem. The phrases and slogans of proletarian poetry along with religious imagery have substantially diminished and a new, more international orientation has arrived. With it come expressions of longing for exotic places and an interest in popular entertainment like film, the circus, or boxing matches (forgotten are the "brutal boxers" from "City of Sin").^6 ^Another indication of this interest in popular entertainment is Seifert's own prose attempt "Invisible Rider," the prologue to an Indian story, that he published in Neumann's Proletkult 1(17) 3 May 1922: 261-63. An unsigned article "Obrazy ze zivota" [Images From Life] in the same issue extols the educational effect of Buffalo-Bill-stories and the importance to the proletariat of film stars like Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. One can say that Seifert's universe has expanded.2'7 From the preoccupation with social change in his immediate environment, relying on a distant, idealized Russia, the poet now seeks to embrace all of modem life at once: "I want to sing out all that stirs humanity / even my love's dream, and that one is sweet; — / the street is my electric lyre..." [8-9]. "All that stirs humanity" is very inclusive and thus loosely unites all of the diverse elements in the collection. This poem in particular has a breathless quality about it; the reader feels the "frantic rush" and noise (no longer negative) of the modem world as Seifert enumerates its phenomena and startlingly juxtaposes them with traditional images like the Muse and the lyre. The poet still sings inspired by the "street" but the purpose for the song no longer is solely radical social change proclaimed from barricades. He professes to sing about modem technology that now is perceived as beautiful and superior to nature (for instance, the propellers that outpace and outfly an eagle). The traditional Muse invoked here inspires different creative endeavors, signaling a change in the perception of art: she hovers above American engineers designing skyscrapers, above bicycle racers, lion-tamers, circus clowns and cinema screens [8]. The poet plays an "iron song" and his instrument is the street, the electric lyre; power lines overhead are its strings. All this is in keeping with the budding tenets of poetism. The role of the poet has also changed a great deal and, interestingly, it evolves even between the beginning and end of the same collection. The former bard of the revolution now is "stupefied" by all the beauty of the modem world around him [59]. Worse, the poet has become superfluous and is replaced by the song of airplanes. Not 22This aesthetic expansion is paralleled by a new sense of spatial dimensions; note the many references to soaring flight skyward or to the stars, particularly when it is inspired by love or revolutionary struggle ("Poem of Spring," "Amorous Stanzas" or "All the Beauties of the World"). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 131 long before, in the first poem, he still seemed useful in celebrating modern civilization. Yet in "All the Beauties of the World" traditional images of natural beauty in poetry are subverted. Horns of automobiles are preferable to violins, so are electric lights that eclipse plants and flowers. Even the moon and other heavenly bodies, the subject of so much poetry and "vain dreams," are scorned [59]. Rather, the dream of today belongs to the cinema screen, to tall bridges and skyscrapers or to fast trains. And because all this is so astounding, beautiful and awe-inspiring, poetry ceases to matter: "And that which was sacred art only yesterday, / suddenly was transformed into things real and plain." This is the end of "invented beauty"; after all, "art is dead, the world exists without it" [60]. These are echoes of Teige's constructivism, according to which beauty is a measure of purpose and usefulness. At the same time, this is a manifesto against mimesis. Language and art cannot approximate the beauty of modern technology (and of nature to a lesser degree; art celebrating nature has been overcome) and both are fundamentally unreliable and doomed to oblivion: For greater truth is even in this little butterfly, which, from its cocoon, having gnawed the book of verse, will rise to the sun, than in the poet's verses, which are written on each its page. And that is a fact that no one can deny. [60] The poet is left behind mourning the departure of trains, ships and airplanes that are leaving for foreign countries, "over civilization's beauty silently I cry" ("Black Man") [60]. Even the "proletarian" themes in this collection have undergone changes; and if references, reminiscent of City in Tears, appear describing revolution or "the power of the crowd, which marches and annihilates" [7], they are tempered by the new orientation and subject matter. Ideas from the realm of proletarian poetry predominate in only about a third of the fifteen poems. "Hour of Peace" contrasts domestic quiet and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 132 "whirling life, which dins in alleyways" [19]. Yet the peace of the hearth is disrupted by a lonely, crying woman clutching her child. Outside the window beggars whimper and "gold is jangling" [20]. The speaker, playing his lyre, promises the weeping woman to change the world for her: " ... this whole sad and ugly globe / I will recast into verse of fine and sweet yearning" [ibid.]. Gone is the revolutionary deed, the shrill proclamation of sweeping change. Only a vague promise of future bounty replaces direct references to revolution, "on the poor table from little bread will grow" [20]. Rather, the poet of the barricades now offers verse about beauty, smiles and tenderness. Similarly "Verses in Remembrance of the Revolution," while earnestly praising the achievements of the dream-come-true in Russia, no longer subordinates romantic fulfillment to serving the political cause. Of these pieces, "Lullaby" most closely resembles the poems from the first collection. Here the contrast is between the sleeping child's innocent obliviousness and the harsh realities of the outside world. The lullaby that the mother sings to the child depicts a brighter, more just, almost pastoral future that she anticipates: — When from this doorstep yourself one day for the world you will leave, there will be no hunger and no more pain, this lonely world Garden Eden will be. The birdies will pick crumbs from your palm, and since there will be no more cruelty and harm, from forests hinds and fawns into streets will come, the streets will be blithe from windows banners will fly and people like brothers will love one another. [23] But before this idyll can come, outside "one day out of the blue" marching crowds with banners, the child's father among them, will sing revolutionary songs and bloodshed will be inevitable; therefore, the child is to sleep, so that he may not overhear the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 133 turmoil [23]. The tone here is free from loud sloganeering. Instead, one can detect a quiet certitude, yet revolution seems less than imminent. "New Year's Poem," omitted from the second edition (1948) along with "Poem of Spring" (Pesat, Seifert 43), can only be called "proletarian" in its contrasting of rich and poor and in manifesting the disarming working class vision that Pesat has termed "poetic naivism." The narrator expresses longings that are less revolutionary but rather material, pedestrian and sensual. Seifert achieves this in a way that is moving in its naivete but also in its humorousness. Like "Glorious Day," the poem that upon publication incurred a storm of nearly unanimous criticism and ridicule, the speaker's gluttonous appetite for fine food, wine and good living crowds out ideological ranting and stands in sharp contrast to the proletarian discipline bordering on asceticism that Wolker demanded. Significantly, the proletarian speaker's motivation has substantially changed. He wants a gold nugget of German financier Hugo Stinnes's riches to buy a warm fur coat for his girlfriend, around whom most of the action in the poem revolves, and to travel to the mountains with her. The poem is a naive dream and the speaker acknowledges this fact at the end, yet without bitterness, almost making fun of himself. Rather than calling for revolutionary action, the poet relies on love for consolation, warmth and renewal in the Spring. Stinnes seems to have deeply engaged the imagination of the poets as a modern-day Croesus since another poet, Adolf Hoffmeister, writes his "Message Home or My Love and Hugo Stinnes," where he dreams of having the financier's billions. He then would have a double-decker made ("100,000 HP strong"), learn to fly it and take his girlfriend for a ride to the stars.28 "Glorious Day" in part reads like a parody of proletarian poetry. It starts out describing manifestations on May 1, the traditional labor holiday. The "true proletarian 28"Vzkaz domu cili M£ mild a Hugo Stinnes." <5erven 4(19) 1 Sept. 1921: 258. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 134 bard" marches with the crowd of workers in good spirits, yet he is not too preoccupied to not notice an occasional whiff of flowers in bloom and in turn is tempted to write love poetry. But he returns forcefully to the task on hand to demonstrate and shout out demands against "that bourgeois bunch" [30]. As it continues, the poem sounds like a series of political slogans, in language reminiscent of the polemic style so customary in the newspapers of the time. Yet what may have started out as serious political demands for a more equal distribution of resources, slips into a very concrete wish-list of gourmand-like cravings: We citizens unfettered, free, at you, bosses and cowards, today we thunder into your ears: we want more, we want everything, we too want to dine on pork roast and cabbage, and for supper to have veal stuffed or fricassee; we demonstrate and strongly state: may you not forget none of you bosses up there, we too want to drink bottles of burgundy and eat marinated eel and we harbor a firm and indomitable belief, that one day we too will sit down in peace around tables with wheels of Swiss cheese and for all that grief and all that need from the plenty of the earth's lavish bounty we too want to choose among the most tasty, smoked salmon, casks of caviar and salami and since we firmly believe in the iron logic of history, we trust that we too one day will drink liqueurs, and for the wrongs, that we and our forebears endured, we and our offspring will then ride in automobiles. [30-31] "Firm and indomitable belief" along with "iron logic of history" are stock phrases in Marxist ideology; situated as they are in this tasty menu, they have a comic effect. However, I doubt that Seifert deliberately lampoons the cause of the proletariat. It is more likely that this plebeian rapaciousness appealed to him more than hateful speeches and staunch orthodoxy as he was trying to present the serious underlying social injustice. In addition, this wide-eyed, naive hunger is autobiographical and, as we have seen, characterizes Seifert's early years (chapter 1). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Humor of this and similar kind is a strong new component in Seifert's poetry— a trend that continues in the next two collections. "Poem of Spring" initiates the type of playful irreverence so common in On the Waves ofTSF. In the traditional season of rebirth, the speaker encourages a young female typist not to be afraid to love and for his punchline he modifies an important Christian principle: "don't ever be afraid, Miss, to love; / / and if someone kisses your right cheek, / turn the left one too" [11]. In a similar vein, "A Song about Girls" is plain anecdotic fun, anticipating On the Waves of TSF and imaginable as a popular tune. Then there is the naive and humorous vision of a sailor traveling to all five continents and having a "girlfriend" on each. The cycle of visits is essentially repetitive as the last stanza indicates, so are elements of the "plot," repeated almost in a refrain, thus suggesting drinking songs. The poet does not spare himself: In the "Prologue" to "Verses about Love, Murder and the Gallows" in a mockingly self-aggrandizing gesture, the narrator envisions his own monument in the town of J ic m ,2^ where he would stand on a pedestal in the park, lyre in hand, to watch young women, fall in love with them, yet never to be hurt. In "New Year's Poem," faithfully mimicking people's gossip, Seifert pokes fun at the traditional image of the starving poet that would be turned on its head if indeed he had a bit of Stinnes's gold and could parade his fur-clad sweetheart on Wenceslas Square. And while at first quite seriously assuring the "humble and abased" people that he will never stop being one of them, he then sheepishly asks for understanding if he wants a nice coat for his beloved [26]. Love is the reason and motivating force behind many poems in this collection; Sheer Love is indeed the appropriate title for it. "For sheer love," the poor tailor Trnka from Jicin strangles his wife and mother of four and ends on the gallows. "For sheer 2%eifert's wife came from JiCin and he often visited her on weekends. Naturally, he intimately knew the places where the town's lovers would stroll. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 136 love" the poet who narrates this lurid, melodramatic tale (Seifert adapted it from an authentic broadside ballad he heard as boy in Kralupy) hurries to the train to Jicin. There he imagines himself singing "the sad ballad about a hapless tailor" to the young lovers in the park who still harbor their untested dreams about love [39]. But the warning is not heeded, the lyre sings in vain, "for where flowers in the fall were burned by frost and the cold / in the spring again new blossoms will grow" [48]. Romantic love, but also the nurturing love of a mother for her child ("Lullaby" or "Hour of Peace"), establish themselves in this collection either in conjunction with revolutionary striving: "to the barricades, to the barricades, when revolution comes, / my beloved and I will go together" ("Amorous Stanzas," [33]) or as the sole focus of several poems; for instance, "The Little Ring," which resembles some of the poems in The Nightingale Sings Poorly with their shorter lines and more regular rhyme patterns. With the retreat of revolutionary drama into the background, Biblical references so often tied to it have likewise all but disappeared. They are not nearly as frequent and conspicuous as in the previous collection. In "Lullaby" quite appropriately "the lamp is hovering, / as if an angel to heaven were ascending" [22] and a little later the mother conjures up a soothing Edenic vision of a better post-revolutionary future— a vision that suits the purpose of lulling a child to sleep and thus adopts a child-like tone and language [23]. In "Electric Lyre" as the poet implores the Muse to give him strength, he sees his outpouring as "a modem song and today's sacred chorale" [9]. Thus, the song emanating from the street, the poet's electric lyre, displaces tradition, both religion and art, from its privileged position. In "All the Beauties of the World" the elevator busily travels between the floors of skyscrapers "like a rosary during prayer between bony fingers will bead" [60]. Occasionally Seifert uses a modem analogy from popular culture that seems strangely foreign in the context of the old ballad about the tailor R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Tmka. For instance, the scene leading up to the murder emerged "like on the cinema screen" [45]. New to the collection is the treatment of exotic, far-away places that likewise continues beyond Sheer Love and interestingly changes over time. Central here is the poem "Paris," dedicated to expressionist Ivan Goll, whose Zone-inspired poem "Paris Burning" Seifert translated and published in Neumann's magazine &rven in 1921 (Pesat, Seifert 53). Goll's poem, written in a brisk staccato pace, reads like many of the later poetist pieces exulting over the modem world, employing foreign place names, even passages entirely in foreign languages, and attempting to create simultaneous, "cosmopolitan" action.30 Seifert's "Paris," addressed to the speaker's girlfriend, contrasts the perceived gray boredom of Prague with the vibrancy of the city on the Seine. The speaker emphasizes that he misses neioness in Prague, a city which he describes as sadly uneventful and oppressive (the police shining their flashlights at lovers on park benches). He then embarks on a dreamy voyage to exotic tropical islands, to the Nile, and the jungles of Africa, only to lament having been bom "on the fiftieth parallel line," where Prague is located. His longing now extends westward to Paris with its boulevards, lights, cafes but also "famous painters, poets, killers and Apaches," and Ivan Goll, who like the poetic "I" loves movies and most of all Charlie Chaplin [16]. Paris emerges as an entertaining, sensual paradise: "And, really, Paris is at least one step closer to heavenly spheres, / come, my love, let's go to Paris" [ibid.]. This poem along with "Black Man" and to some extent "Sailor" most strongly anticipates the poetist collections to come; "Black Man" is a restatement of regret by the speaker that he was not bom elsewhere, in warmer and more exotic climes, places filled with mysterious promise which beckon "the melancholy poet" [56]. Sailors, along with 30Ivan Goll. "Panz hon." Trans. Jaroslav Seifert, derven 4(26) 8 Dec. 1921:357-61. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 138 palm trees, sandy beaches, jungles populated by wild animals and foreign peoples are some of the typical "symbols" or rather shorthand "buzz words" used by poetists to evoke a certain cosmopolitan, far-flung collage of the modem world. Aside from minor stylistic corrections, in this collection Seifert made few noteworthy changes in the poems previously published in magazines. Most appeared in Proletkult, the propaganda tool of the communist party edited by S. K. Neumann, and were not received as enthusiastically as Seifert's previous work. "Glorious Day" incurred the most vicious attacks and even Neumann, who after all published it along with several other poems, subjected the entire collection to severe criticism because he disapproved of Seifert's drifting away from proletarian poetry towards Teige's new theories. Neumann, writing under the pseudonym Josef Votocek, most harshly criticizes Teige's afterword, the programmatic shift it indicates, and his presumably pernicious influence on Seifert; he calls the afterword "boyishly reckless" ("K otdzce umeni" 220), "ugly," "pompous," and clearly is irritated at its professed "new boldness" (237). To Neumann, Seifert is "a soft and hardly intellectual poet," who more than any other member of his generation "succumbed to the ideological somersaults of comrade Teige" and turned into his "programmatic tool" (220). Neumann feels that Teige is abusing Seifert's potential for his own program and accuses Teige, "who stands behind this book [Sheer Love] like an evil spirit" of "vanity, imperiousness, unbelief and frivolousness" (221). Seifert, according to Neumann, until recently had been an unaffected proletarian, his poetry exuding "a virginally pure breath" and revealing the "naivete of an untainted heart and untainted mind" (220). Teige is made into a perverse despoiler of Seifert's innocence (the article abounds with sexual metaphors). He has R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 139 presumably tempted Seifert with sectarian intellectual games reeking of "bourgeois," literary cafes (220). Neumann objects most to what he perceives as a one-sided, reduced and simplistic vision of life because Seifert's art no longer is "class art" but slowly evolves into a "vulgarly sensualist direction" (236). What is missing from all the beauties of the world, he writes, is the most substantial part of life: the aspect of "struggle and labor" which alone ensures a profound vision of the entire world (237). Specifically, Neumann chastises "Glorious Day" for frivolously expressing the longings of the common people in a one-sided fashion and for downright caricaturing the longings of the "class conscious proletariat" (237). Against Seifert's preference of Paris to Prague in the poem by the same name, Neumann pits Russia: "But communism knows only one answer to this, and if they call from cafes: Paris! from our side we can only reply: Moscow! Brutally and unconditionally" (237). Not surprisingly, the few poems that Neumann likes are the ones with "proletarian" content which approach City in Tears both in theme and execution: "Hour of Peace" and "Lullaby." The pieces "A Song About Girls" and "The Little Ring" he finds "amiable" but to him they have nothing to do with proletarian poetry. "Verses About Love, Murder and the Gallows" Neumann calls "somewhat loquacious, but soft, musical and formally scrupulous" yet he also detects "small-town tastelessness" in the story. "A Sailor" reminds him quite favorably of primitive, naive painting while he dismisses "A Black Man" as "a mere game" (237). He admonishes Seifert to "look into the world and the proletariat much more deeply and seriously, without delusive programmatic lenses, so that he may one day really show us all the world the proletarian way" (238). In an earlier passage, in defense of City in Tears— which occasionally sounded "naive and hardly socialist" — Neumann says that such lapses R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 140 were then easy to forgive, "after all a poet is not a theoretician and a poem should not be a versified program" (221). The latter remarks make it seem as if strict adherence to "proletarian" art ensures a strangely conceived, paradoxical "objectivity," while the proclivity to other aesthetic or political programs is highly suspect and unacceptably partisan. This dogmatic double standard reverberates through much of the communist criticism of Seifert's collection and of Teige's poetist program. Other communist critics echoed Neumann's objections. Predictably, they savagely criticize Teige and his afterword and blame him in part for badly influencing Seifert. Julius Fucik calls Teige's lofty words "the most idiotic verbal expression in the past ten years" ("Verse," 21 July 1923:2). To him, Seifert in his second collection is genuine, unassailable, a poet who knows the material world and takes all his strength from it; however, he is also "soft and excitable," and though an original artist, Seifert is "easily swayed by external influences which prompt him to fall into extremes" ("Verse," 24 July 1923:2). This thinly veiled attack on Karel Teige culminates in the accusation that he uses the poet for his own purposes, bringing him dangerously close to "bourgeois" circles and ideas. Fucik finds kind words for several poems that he feels are informed by a "Soviet" spirit ("Song of Spring," "Hour of Peace" and "Lullaby") but he condemns "Glorious Day" as "roguishness committed against proletarian poetry: a collection of these roguish tricks was enough to discredit it completely" ("Verse," 24 July 1923: 2). Fucik objects to the categorical declaration that all art is dead: "We say that bourgeois art is dead, but we believe in the new art created by the new, wholesome proletarian class" (ibid.). It is indeed ironic that communist critics so vehemently oppose following a "party line" and allowing ideological dictates to enter art as soon as the program diverges from the "acceptable" tenets of "proletarian" poetry. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Criticism of Seifert broke down not only along the lines of party affiliation, but depended on the individual degree of political orthodoxy. Josef Hora, a communist critic himself at the time, likewise rejects Teige's afterword, but his criticism of Seifert is indulgent toward what he perceives as Seifert's catering to popular taste. To Hora, Seifert seems immensely readable because he is straight-forward, accessible and uncomplicated. At heart, Hora writes, Seifert is a "spirit of quietude and the idyll— be it a revolutionary idyll" ("Kolem nove poesie" 3). Yet the poet's world view gravitates solely toward positive phenomena and all too simplistically resolves contradictions, he claims and calls for a poet with more stamina, dynamics and restlessness to stand next to Seifert's "magical, but placid cove on the waves of modern poetry" (3). Similarly, A. M. Pisa, despite adhering to Wolker's sober and ascetic brand of proletarian poetry, does not dismiss the collection wholesale (although he thinks that it represents a "step back") and, contrary to other communist critics, does not object to the confluence of Teige's theory and Seifert's practice. He echoes Hora, however, when calling Seifert's treatment of civilization "a series of superficial sensual impressions and enthusiastic ideas without deeper existential reach" ("Z mlade lyriky" 4). Furthermore, he misses Seifert's former "morally critical" attitude toward civilization and considers his "inborn romanticism" detrimental to the present collection: "Seifert is a gently dreamy being, naively straight-forward and conciliatory: Intellectual tension is foreign to his verse; his emotions are uncomplicated and skin-deep but full of warmth and crystal-clear purity" (4). Seifert's new exoticism does not fare better. Pisa believes it lacks emotional spontaneity and truthfulness. His experiments with form, the ballad, Pisa finds lacking in discipline and dramatic flow. While some of the criticism may be justified, mostly it seems motivated by political criteria. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Particularly in the 1950s critics had to write in a certain way to get published. This is evident in the pirouettes of Zdenek Blajer and Jin Brabec. From his vantage point of 1959 Blajer remarks on Seifert's treatment of civilization, into which "Seifert rashly immerses himself and delights in its pleasant aspects" (280). Blajer diagnoses "diminishing moral strength that inspires true art" in Seifert and there is no doubt what he means. In spite of Seifert's unabating "geysers of poetic invention," his "social buttress, which forms the backbone of poetic personality" has shifted towards "Americanism," among other things, and a vision of the "street that is no longer proletarian, but a street of sensations and pleasure" (280). Two years before Blajer, Brabec dismisses the world of Sheer Love vis-a-vis City in Tears as a world that is "merely admired but not experienced and described with artificial primitivism" (259). He goes on to call Seifert's verses "didactic without original imagination and with heavy-handed imagery, thus becoming hollow" (ibid.) and concurs with Neumann's earlier judgment that Seifert is "indeed a soft, hardly intellectual poet, considerably passive at that time" (260). Brabec's overall assessment does not come as a surprise: "Sheer Love, aside from some inclinations to substantial poetry (for example, 'Lullaby'), yet which too much resemble apprentice pieces, is thus an image of Seifert's total disorientation" (259). "Disorientation" here means straying from the confines of propaganda art. Even the moderate socialist Frantisek Gotz complains that Seifert's poetry has become a versified program and equals the "passive acceptance of new formulas"; rather, a poet ought to give readers "sacred immediacy and a polyphonic melody of life" ("Prolet&rsky bdsnik" 312). He detects a clash between an ascetic new vitalism and a hedonistic "theoretical exoticism" resulting in a lack of unity (ibid.), but he gives Seifert credit for being an unsentimental, life-affirming poet with a lot of inner strength; R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 143 Faustian or Hamlet-like torment is foreign to him. Conversely, however, Gotz interprets this as an unfortunate lack of problematization (311). What Gotz and others ultimately perceive as a disadvantage, the novelist and poet Pujmanovd-Hennerovd commends. Although she mainly dislikes Sheer Love, she has rare kind words to say about "Glorious Day": "In it there is no division between animalism and spiritualism, something primal, without noble contradictions" and considers this a good premise (14). It seems fair to say that as Seifert adopted new forms of expression and was indeed easily infected by new ideas, mainly from Teige, his critics may have been disoriented by his experimentation. Their political agenda is evident since most of them agree on a basic characterization of Seifert's poetic personality but they obviously differ in their acceptance of it. Gotz's later assessment of the collection is more rounded than his early review. He merely castigates Seifert for not having broken with proletarian poetry more radically and sincerely because in Sheer Love "the revolutionary resolve is already somewhat forced and construed" and the poet seems to "force himself into the proletarian vein although his heart is already elsewhere" ("Vyvoj" 162). While it is a fair observation that the "wide and beautiful world" charms Seifert and overwhelms his hitherto narrowly focused "proletarian" vision, this is not a simple substitution but rather an expansion of the poet's universe, be it still very rudimentary, second-hand and naive. If communist and socialist critics found the collection deficient, writers for the "bourgeois" press sometimes had a field day in commenting on the work. Curt, gleeful dismissals of Sheer Love overshadow thorough analysis. Predictably, "Glorious Day" offered an easy target: Bartos Vlcek patronizingly announces Seifert's "unusual decline," pardy because he fails to understand the world evoked in this particular poem— as well as the collection, which-he rejects as unpoetic (169). Most critics gladly R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 144 took the insatiable proletarian's appetite literally: "It is greed: casks of caviar even! And what a good physical stomach it reveals. But even better, almost cemented with density, must be the 'intellectual stomach,' which tolerates and digests such POETRY" (A. Prochazka 335). And Josef Knap refers to Seifert latest collection as "'delicatessen' poetry" ("Dilo generace" 450), which actually seems quite apt considering that Seifert indeed was inspired by his youthful fascination with Mr. Kolman's Zizkov delicatessen store. Commentary on Seifert by the eminent senior man of letters and critic F. X. Saida was a rare exception to the shallowness of most criticism. He was one of the earliest champions of the young poetic.generation and specifically defended Seifert against charges that the poet opportunistically abandoned his colors: Seifert has done nothing more but remove the ideological scaffolding of his first book. He rejected an ideology which was standing between his heart and reality: he happily understood that he does not need it anymore. Revolution no longer is a cluster of ideas. Revolution now to him is —the hunger of a healthy stomach yearning for happiness, for delectation, for joy. This is Seifert's new realism; and like any contribution of sincerity to poetry, it too is beneficial. (Saida 50) On the same grounds Saida stands up for "Glorious Day": "You are twenty years old, you have a healthy stomach and an appetite for all the pleasures and joys and yet you are doomed to eternal appetite" (51). In his memoir Seifert himself extensively and with a good sense of humor describes the storm that broke loose following the Proletkult publication of "Glorious Day." The poem apparently originated as an occasional piece that Neumann asked Seifert to write prior to May 1, the international labor holiday. When Seifert delivered with his poem, Neumann reportedly grinned with guile and printed the piece. Seifert then explains how he offended with this poem not only the bourgeois but both socialist parties that vied for attendance at their annual labor manifestations in May. He R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 145 attributes half-jokingly the "pedestrian materialism" of the poem to his gluttony stemming from war-time deprivation, and he also blames Neumann for inviting him, "the thin-faced boy from Zizkov," to many hearty meals at a popular Prague restaurant. Seifert admits he got carried away and initially "roguishly" enjoyed the commotion he caused. But the fun stopped for him when Bohumil Smeral, the leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and editor of Rude pravo, "hinted that my verses were stupid and detrimental to the proletarian cause" {ABW 225). Seifert himself does not have a high opinion of this poem and writes that he deserved being attacked from all sides, yet his "somewhat reckless nature" did not allow him to dwell on the scandal too long. However, at work his future wife had to endure being teased by colleagues and superiors. With a light tone of apologetic amusement he then details Neumann's and other critics' opinions and ends with the positive assessment by Jan Rambousek who prefers Seifert's "sincere expression of healthy youth," rooted in the here and now to "old social poetry that thrived only on compassion with the suffering of the poor." Seifert then concludes, "so much talk about a piece of salami" {ABW 229). He is alluding to his youthful fascination with a nearby delicatessen store whose owner once gave him a taste of the unattainable delicacies. Seifert's modesty and hindsight aside, this narration sufficiently illustrates that in part "Glorious Day" was a deliberate provocation and that Neumann, despite his later polemic (mainly directed at his rival Teige), was party to it. Again, aesthetic criteria were evidently secondary to political (and personal) interests. C. All the Beauties of the World at Play: On the W aves ofT S F Perhaps the most conspicuous new feature of Jaroslav Seifert's third collection (published in 1925) is its striking typography and layout masterminded by Karel Teige. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 146 Different characters and font sizes, poems set entirely in capital letters, italics or big bold typefaces, picture poems or "lyrical anecdotes" printed in landscape format, are radical modernist innovations that Teige brought into Seifert's poetry. This novelty serves different purposes. Big and bold type or caps mainly emphasize an image or a concept. They also heighten the pronounced exoticism in On the Waves ofTSF. Foreign words, titles, place names are often highlighted in this fashion. Also, capitalization is sometimes erratic and may often indicate semantic division or again serve to stress the importance of the capitalized word. Doubtlessly, this new formal feature was a break with convention, in keeping with poetism's demands and in line with the deliberately provocative, irreverent attitude of its proponents. But more importantly, Teige emphasized the visual character of the new poetry and reinforced its playfulness. After all, poetry was to appeal directly, without the intermediacy of logic, values or ethics, to all five senses, most importantly to the eye, and elicit imtempered, primal, instinctual responses bypassing all rationality. Thus conventional meanings would be disrupted and awareness sharpened. Form thus expressed and reinforced content very much like Apollinaire's Calligratnmes (1918) had done before. "Eyes," "Abacus," and "Rebus" are cases in point. There typography supports content: the letters that actually look like bespectacled eyes, an otherwise unremarkable, amusing poem that actually is a pictorial representation of an abacus and a rebus taken literally when "rascal luck" increases in bigger and bigger typescript. Seifert admits that to provoke was a programmatic dictate and that the book was daring for its time, loudly and with "provocative chic" announcing on its pages the arrival of poetism (ABW 297). Thus the immediate, unquestioning acceptance of the manuscript by the small publisher V&clav Petr came as something of a surprise. Teige then raided and nearly exhausted the printer's entire stock of characters and instructed R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 147 the incredulous typesetter to execute the work to his "modem" specifications.31 Seifert characterizes the outcome as "typographical rodeo" (ABW 297). He recalls that readers relished "Abacus" most and explains that it was prompted by a childhood memory. Australian apples used to be exhibited in delicatessen store windows as precious commodities wrapped in silky paper, allowing a glimpse at their beautiful color. They were rare, he writes, and expensive (ibid.). Here again Seifert reveals himself as an impressionable young boy, his nose pressed against the window glass as he peered at the shrine of unattainable delicacies. The exotic precious fruit served him as an analogy for the breasts of the lover addressed by the lyrical "I." The fact that only about a dozen of the 49 poems and lyrical anecdotes comprising On the Waves ofTSF were not previously published in magazines and newspapers attests to the establishment of DevStsil in the art scene of its time. The publications open to Devdtsil now include those that are either run (Disk, Pdsmo) or co edited (Reflektor, Host) by its members. It is in these magazines and in the Sunday literary supplement of the communist daily Rude prdvo that Seifert between 1923 and 1925 published the poems that later entered his third collection. There are two significant differences between the magazine versions and the poems as they appeared in the book. The radical typography of the final book version is only matched by Host and Pdsmo precisely because Karel Teige collaborated on the graphics and layout of these magazines at that time. Only in two cases did the magazine version actually 31 In "Moderni typo" [Modern Typography] Teige describes the obstacles to his work: "In the choice of type I am most often limited by the supplies that the printing businesses, with which the publishers ask me to collaborate, have available, and I am frequently forced to accept typefaces that are less than satisfactory particularly where I have to give effect typografically to poetic texts that require a more complex optical image and a wealth of contrastive typesetting material" (234). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 148 surpass the final version in formal extravagance.32 Otherwise the overwhelming majority of these previously published poems is comparatively conventional, partly also for reasons of space. But the most significant change from the magazine versions to the book is punctuation. Perhaps prompted by Teige, whose typography must be seen as an independent artistic complement to Seifert's poetry, in the collection the poet dispenses with all but a few question marks, exclamation points and an occasional colon. Instead, he often uses space to indicate a pause or a more substantial break. Of course, disregard for punctuation is not a new invention, but it is radical in Czechoslovakia at this time. Again, Apollinaire was an important forerunner in a tradition reaching to Rimbaud, who began to break up conventional logical connections. Likewise, experiments with stream of consciousness, as writers were exploring the possibilities opened up by Freudian psychology, are a marked feature of modernist literature. The Zdne-technique, applied in the opening poem "Guillaume Apollinaire," which allows associations to flow uninhibited by punctuation and thus frees ideas to enter new (perhaps ambiguous) connections, creates the impression of simultaneity, easily transporting the reader by means of startling juxtaposition to distant places and back, jumping from image to image. Poetism attempts to do something very similar: to embrace the modem world in its stunning beauty and complexity, guided by anti-traditional, innovative, unideological, international principles and strongly influenced by film and photGgraphy.33 The result is "pure poetry" and art as adventure, play, and merry entertainment. On the Waves ofTSF is a logical continuation of Sheer Love as it casts aside all ideology and focuses on the 32"Fiery fruit" in Host 3 (9-10) 1923-24 and "Honeymoon" in Pdsmo 1(3) 1924-25; both show an abundance of caps. 33The critic Saida speaks of "accelerated, flickering poetry of the world, something analogous to film" (O nejmladSi poesii 56). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 149 playful, humorous aspects of "all the beauties of the world" while drawing on the latest achievements of modem art and the international avant-garde. The shift between the two collections also parallels the development of Dev&tsil under Teige's guidance away from proletarian art to full-fledged poetism. Teige's layout has a lot in common with the typography of poster art and he no doubt was inspired by outdoor advertisements and announcements, for example, for the circus, variety, boxing matches and such, with their large, bold type and shrill messages.34 Likewise, poetist poems-collages often employ pictographs, public signs and symbols of all kinds. To mix such elements with poetry was indeed a provocative innovation. But Seifert's poetry too, aside from several "serious" poems, often resembles ephemeral art conceived as if for immediate consumption, anecdotal and fleeting like an advertising slogan, sometimes deliberately bordering on the banal ("Philosophy"). Thus, form and content complement one another; in some cases, the typography even becomes the more interesting component.35 Teige is faithful to his tenet of joining popular culture and art to overcome their separation, and Seifert complies in his own way, not least in subject matter. After all, art was meant to be accessible to everyone and to be entertaining. Like modem painters, the poetists discovered the circus. Seifert's poems abound with "rosy ballet dancers," trapeze artistes, pierrots and clowns (specifically the then-famous brothers Fratellini), fire- ^ In "Moderni typo" Teige acknowledges the importance of advertising: "Particularly the development of advertising typography has brought to light the effectiveness of optical references between individual types o f fonts." Not surprisingly for a poetist and constructivist, Teige lauds advertising typography because it is highly functional rather than decorative, serving solely the purpose of promotion (225; emphasis Teige's). 35Teige himself explains the function of typography as a complement and means of expression in its own right: "When I was doing the layout for Nezval's Pantomima (1924) and for Seifert7 s collection of poetry On the Waves ofTSF (1925), the task of the typography was to complete [dobdsnit] this poetry and to transpose it into the visual sphere" ("Moderni typo" 234). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 150 eaters, and lion-tamers. Everyday objects and entertainment may inspire a poem or lyrical anecdote: a lightbulb, cigarette smoke, a pipe, tennis or manikins in hairdresser's windows (Seifert already discovered the manikins in City in Tears). Even condoms: Nightlife in harbor towns, its prostitutes and sailors of all races, likewise seems to have cast its spell on Seifert who at age twenty-two first visited the French Riviera with Teige in 1923. All this unorthodox endeavor follows the demands of anti-traditionalism. The young men (both still in their early twenties) set out to offend in a sweeping gesture of disrespect and irreverence. Not surprisingly, the book is dedicated to three innovators: to Karel Teige, the graphic artist and theoretician of poetism, to Vitezslav Nezval, who helped conceive and apply poetism in his own work, and to Jindrich Honzl, one of the founders of avant-garde theater, specifically the Osvobozene divadlo [Liberated theater] established in 1926. The title of the collection is deliberately anti-poetic, or put differently, it introduces into poetry something commonly not thought of as poetic, yet the entire collection is a poetic celebration of modem technology, particularly the kind that serves communication and spans large distances. Seifert explains in his memoir that the French acronym in the title, TSF for "telegrafie sans fil" [telegraphy without wires, or the wireless], was used in Czechoslovakia before the advent of the radio (ABW 296). In this context, it is not coincidental that the Eiffel tower in Paris, which occupies an important place in. this collection, became an icon to the avant-garde in general and to Czech poetists specifically. Besides prompting tributes from Apollinaire, Cocteau, and many modem painters, the Eiffel tower rightly serves as a symbol of modernity: As early as 1904 radio signals were first transmitted from the top of the tower; 1913 marked the beginning of world-wide communication with trans-oceanic radio signals— a breakthrough that corresponded with modernist interest in simultaneity R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 151 (Perloff 205). The Eiffel Tower began regular radio broadcasting in 1918.36 jn a way, the poetry in Seifert's collection seems intended to be seen almost as a transmission in what then was the most modem way possible: on the air waves, light and unencumbered by earth-bound wires. The intent to break with tradition and raise eyebrows is also evident in the motto with which Seifert prefaces the collection: "Light grief on the face / deep laughter in the heart." These two lines are the nearly "blasphemous" reversal of verses from the beloved Czech romantic Karel Hynek Mdcha's famous long poem Maj [May]: "Light smile on the face / deep grief in the heart." This gesture of disrespect could not go unnoticed by most well-read Czechs. The reversed motto programmatically announces the nature of the poetry to follow. It is a rebellion against romantic torment and profundity. Instead, it exudes light-hearted fun, clownishness, and a roguish attitude. Laughter is prominent, not grief, seriousness whenever it emerges, lightly subverted. The first line of the initial Apollinairesque poem ("Guillaume Apollinaire") tellingly announces: "We hate to remember things past let us forget" [7]. It is clear from the book's title and after reading the introductory poem with its explicit references to Zone ("Shepherdess Eiffel"), that no romantic afflatus, but radio transmitters buzzing with rousing news will provide inspiration: "an aeolian harp is Eiffel hark the wind of events and beauty / it swells the sails of art" [7]. Apollinaire is the dead helmsman of this ship, reverently addressed ("You") in capital letters.^7 This sets the tone for exoticism, merriment, experimentation, and for the celebration of technology. There is no question that technology is thoroughly positive 3f>Der grofie Polyglott Paris Reisefiihrer. 1991-92.20. edition. Miinchen, Germany: Polyglott, 1988: 208. 37This, though unusual in English (unless addressing God), is standard polite practice in correspondence, both in Czech and German. Pronouns referring to the addressee are capitalized. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 152 and exciting. It bridges the world and is fit to be poetry. The telephone replaces the archaic and extinct subject matter of poetry — "farms, elves and dryads"— and provides a degree of consolation to a lovesick caller ("!! Hello !!"). The entire collection appears as if transmitted "on the waves" of the wireless, the radio. Then there are "Words on magnet" (tape recorders) and gramophones. Not only modem instruments of communication but means of transportation likewise become beautiful objects; for example, the railway cars in "Honeymoon," "oh how beautiful are my railway cars" [13] or in "departure of a ship": "Farewell you ship beautiful ship" [14]. Similarly, there are frequent admiring references to airplanes. The poet's role in all this is to broadcast the world's beauty; the outcome of this enterprise is often shrugged off lightly and put down as insignificant, perhaps because beauty is something intrinsic in the modem world and thus cannot be added to externally by poetic vision or consciousness. In F. X. Saida's words, this new autonomy of poetry not only perfectly approximates reality, but transcends it with the help of the artist as catalyst: The poem here is an objective formation that is equally potent and equivalent to life: it is living its own internal life, of course one that shows more compactness and intensity than phenomenal life. The poet becomes a discoverer; he amplifies reality: from elements of reality he assembles a formation on a higher level of cognition. (Saida, O nejmladSi' poesii 54-55) Poetry seems almost palpable, physically (sweetly and stickily) present, even in the natural, not man-made world: To love poets the dying fauna of YELLOWSTONE PARK and yet we love poetry poetry eternal waterfall [...] but poetry R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 153 a honied moon drips sweet juices into flower cups [8,9] Poetry is ephemeral and thus devoid of weightiness: .. the golden-yellow firecracker dies faster than it flared up / may not all poems be more beautiful any longer than this one" [13]. This could refer not only to the brevity of fireworks but self-referentially to the poem "Guillaume Apollinaire" itself. Poetry clearly is not about profundity, about seeking "eternal verities," as a warning voice seems to interject in "The thief and the clock"; rather, it "is the art of losing precious time" [56]. In "Hotel 'Cote d'Azur'" poetry seems to write itself without the poet's authorship. The poet is idle, his longings grow "while the girls are having their hair cut." He is falling asleep: into the net of dreams red pineapple and yellow bananas and waves like backs of bitter fish turned into art by magic [19] The poet may have extraordinary senses and imagination ("oh what bliss a poet to be / to be a poet with the eyes of an eccentric," [27]) and be an "adventurer of beauty and passionate sleeper" [28]. On the other hand, writing is demystified as he takes to it naturally like a soldier to signaling: "I learn to write poems like a soldier learns to blow the bugle" [7]. Or in the same vein, he expresses the desire "like my girl's hair into lyrical hairdos I want to braid verses" [53]. An ordinary, mundane (and somewhat intimate) activity is infused with poetry or in turn poetry descends from the pedestal of high art. This is why, in an early deconstructionist gesture, a train schedule becomes "that book of poetry" [13], why it follows that the gardener ("Park"), while watering roses that he tends to and cherishes, turns into a poet and why it may suffice to play with inflections of four Italian verbs (and the sound quality they have in Czech) to create "modem poetry" ("My Italy" [21])3® The closing poem ultimately de- 38This almost certainly is a playful reference to Marinetti's linguistic experiments. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 154 emphasizes the poet's product ("muttering stanza") to the level of a common cold— an association that works in Czech because of homonymy between "rhyme" and "cold" or "flu." This mocking, self-deprecating presentation of course corresponds with the pronouncement in "All the Beauties of the World" from Sheer Love that art is dead. Certainly, with On the Waves ofTSF traditional, "lofty" and ambitiously profound art has been put to rest, along with proletarian poetry. Rather than enviously comparing home and abroad like the previous collection does, On the Waves ofTSF is almost entirely set in remote countries or the sense of place is obscured, thanks to a collage-like technique of associatively stringing images to evoke a cluster of unspecific, exotic locales. "Concert cafe" (its magazine title was "Europe") exhibits what seems an echo of Sheer Love, "Under our skies / only paper palms survive" and the speaker declares he is sad "here" when recalling a departed ship [58], but this comparison of home and abroad is not heavily contemplative, nor does it as clearly favor the foreign over the local. Occasionally, the designation of place seems artificial, its topographic markers approaching stage props. In "Evening at the cafe" this is hardly coincidental when the lyrical "I" is remembering Princess Salome and sees "Under an artificial palm a smiling black man / on his face a rose-colored mask of light" [27]. To evoke an exotic atmosphere, the collection is peopled by tropical tribes, blacks, sailors, circus artistes, dancers, prostitutes and replete with parrots, monkeys, pineapples, ostrich feathers— people and objects that certainly were far from the everyday experience of an average Central European person. The collection takes us to Manhattan, to the Statue of Liberty, which quite anthropomorphically scorches the wings of airplanes ("New York" [33]), to Africa, Marseille, Paris, the North Pole and to the equator; or we witness the recollection of "fair Omaki Vani," a Japanese geisha R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 155 (most likely on the e .casion of the devastating 1923 Yokohama earthquake and subsequent catastrophic fire) in "mirror square." The exoticism of On the Waves ofTSF is most enhanced by the inclusion of foreign place names and words in the Czech poems: Yellowstone Park, Hotel Cote d'Azur, Eau de Cologne, Marseille and Paris streets (Cours Belsunce and Rue de la Paix, respectively) and sights like the Isle If or the Trocadero, the Louvre and the department store Printemps in Paris. In "Concert cafe" the poet puts the word "dreadnought" for battleship in its English original in his text. The same applies to "Lawn-tennis," the glorious names of the roses in "Park" and to "My Italy," a poem that plays with Italian verbs. Hardly surprising in Jaroslav Seifert, this exoticism is also eroticized and love establishes itself firmly as one of his perennial themes. One needs only to remember "Abacus" and its Australian apples; the love poem "Nightlights," suggestively displaying the condom brand "Ollagum"; "All Perfumes," when a woman's hair becomes thickly liquid and sweet to taste or, finally, "Circus," with its thinly-veiled sexual tension between the dancer Chloe, fire-eater John, and clown Pom. That so much of the exoticism in On the Waves ofTSF is directly related to Seifert's evident fascination with the sea, ships, sailors and harbor towns, should not seem strange in a young poet coming from a small, land-locked nation in Central Europe who first visits the Mediterranean at the age of twenty-two. There are few poems without any maritime reference or image. The sea is both subject matter and powerful frame of reference for analogies and metaphors. As their titles suggest, poems like "departure of a ship," "harbor," "the sea," or "Verses about two who drowned" entirely center on sea-faring, providing Seifert with fresh means of expressing longing for far-away places as well as sensuality and eroticism. Most poems in this collection refer to the sea; only the extent varies. In "Guillaume Apollinaire" ships pass the city, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 156 the street becomes the bottom of the water, "the wind of events and beauty" drives "the sails of art" and Apollinaire is the "dead helmsman" [7]. In "Marble town" the sea is "a royal harp of glory" [18], one of several associations of the sea or ships with musical instruments. In general, the imagery relating to the sea is positive, dreamy and light. If one knows Seifert's memoir, however, it is easier to see a certain disillusionment that the young poet must have felt when confronted for the first time with this exciting, but also seedy environment. It filtered only faintly into his poetry in On the Waves ofTSF. "Marseille" ends with an image that has a sinister quality to it, of prostitutes sleeping, heavily embraced by black sailors [15]. It is better understood when several passages in Seifert's memoirs are taken into account. Seifert recalls how his fascination with the sea evolved to a point that it had to lead to disappointment. As a ten-year-old he saw two sailors in Prague and was literally dazzled. He implored his mother to buy him a sailor's blouse and decided, like many boys his age, to become a sailor himself (ABW 159). The young Seifert then encountered a sickly fellow student from a poor family who had been sent to the Adriatic for treatment and returned transformed, brimming with health and bringing with him a "box filled with the sea." The beautiful shells it contained excited Seifert's imagination and he writes that he trembled, nearly swooning with surprise and pleasure, when he touched them (ABW 161). And like most boys of his generation, he was an avid reader of Jules Verne's adventure novels. All this came to bear when Seifert arrived at the Cote d'Azur with Teige in 1923, saw a French dreadnought on the horizon (cf. "Concert cafe") and walked through the old harbor of Marseille. He was evidently shocked by the rawness of brothels, low dives and their occupants. It was there that he saw a small blonde prostitute walking with two "robust" black sailors, an image whose echoes reappear in "Marseille." Seifert's youthful romantic sailor dreams R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 157 evaporated vis-a-vis squalor and human misery and both men were relieved when they left the harbor (ABW 164). But the emotional fascination remained. True to the tenet of poetism to create poetry for the five senses, the poetic means at times indeed approach sensuous pyrotechnics. The collection is full of dynamic motion and sweeping gestures, of stars crashing into shallow pools ("Miss Gada-Nigi"), of angels falling like meteors ("My Italy") or "sparkling lemonade of stars [flowing] to earth from the skies" ("mirror square" [32]). Conversely, the speaker ("Guillaume Apollinaire") and a drunken pilot— in a wager ("!! Hello !!"), and cigarette smoke, all ascend as far as the stars. Inanimate objects become palpable because they are often startlingly animated or humanized. A coffee table in a cafe turns into a flamingo ("Marseille"), a rock becomes a bathing nude, a ship resembles a jingling sheep ("departure of a ship"), loading-dock cranes are giraffes ("harbor"), lamplight and sea waves are associated with human hair ("Street," "the sea") and in "All perfumes" the "fauna of musical instruments" makes music or imagery describing woman's hair engages the sense of touch, smell, taste and vision. Analogies are often striking, disrupting expectations: Violins float on the seas, the bow becoming a scepter in a black king's hand ("Concert cafe"), polar bears float to the equator and birds of the tropics approach the polar circle ("Words on magnet") or a ship resembles a crushed violin ("Verses about two who drowned"). In "Nightlights" the speaker observes an intersection and headlight beams of automobiles trigger the association with insects' feelers. Similarly, in "Hotel 'Cote d'Azur'" images are associated by virtue of sensuous closeness: from "sails" to "mint candy" [19].39 All this evokes a breathless, playful exuberance and creates an air of artificiality and strangeness. "Fever," for example, 39in Czech there is only a small step between the two concepts. The expression vStrove bonbdny for mint candy means literally "wind candy" for the taste of freshness it creates. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 158 reproduces in its striking imagery the hallucinatory perceptions of a patient with high temperature. In its magazine version, this poem was dedicated to the memory of Jin Wolker, who had died a year earlier in 1924.40 The patient mistakes a label on a bottle of medicine and ultimately the vision of impending death for a lovely girl at his bedside. Several poems rely on the homonymy or polysemy of Czech words and thus anticipate the more extensive word play in The Nightingale Sings Poorly: "Napoleon," "King Herod" and most heavily "The thief and the clock." Napoleon, reduced to a pipe ornament, brings about the thought that his imperialist dreams literally "went up in smoke." A grape (hrozen vina) that Herod is about to eat triggers associations with blood and guilt or sin (vina) of the female companion, echoing Oscar Wilde's Salome, that Seifert may have seen on stage or read in a 1905 translation by Otakar Theer. In "The thief and the clock" the entire poem is built around polysemy. To be in good spirits can mean to be well-tuned like a piano (the verb is naladit). Seifert uses the various meanings of the word "lead" in the sense of guiding but also seducing and in a physical sense as an electrical wire. And in the final poem, rhymes and the common cold or influenza are comically and self-ironically associated, thanks to the homonymy in Czech of rymy. The most common stylistic feature, clearly, is humorous playfulness. After appearing in the motto of the collection, laughter almost becomes a leitmotiv. The moon appearing in the window of the Palais du Trocadero in Paris evokes a "grinning murderer's face" to continue into the next line, "and it is funny for all things in the world are beautiful" [7]. This of course again echoes the poetist program. The moon's laughter reappears in "Marble town," where the speaker also remembers a smiling girl 40Reflektor 1(2) 1925:11. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 159 selling roses and is moved to the point of hilarity: "Those breasts of hers so tiny it is almost funny / a dove could cover with one bluegray wing" [18]. The harbor scene in "Marseille" includes women who will be recognized "by the sign of laughter" and a little later the lyrical "I" peers into the eyes of dead fish and is reminded of his childhood, a rocking horse and its eyes, "it was wooden and in them you could see your smile" [15]. The fragility of marital bliss is taken quite lightly in "Honeymoon," so is separation in "departure of a ship." The latter poem is too playful and artificial (the red stains are make-up, not blood) to be genuinely sad or shocking: The girls wept with them I wept i also wanted to wave my handkerchief they waved handkerchiefs blood-stained with the red paint of rouge [14] Then, most obviously, there are the funny punchlines of the lyrical anecdotes. "Lightbulb" briefly contemplates Edison's great invention from the standpoint of moths saved from burning in lamps that use open fire. "My Italy" seems almost nonsensical slapstick, with Mussolini riding along the Forum Romanum on a motorcycle and the poem being flippantly likened to "icy lemonade which is called Frappe" [21]. In "Discoveries," a poem that features a small map with Cuba in its center, the speaker irreverently dismisses Columbus's discovery of "unknown islands," and thus of cigars, with a light-hearted "Thank you Sir! I smoke cigarettes!" [41]. The play may reach absurd or grotesque heights when a violin bow floating on the seas becomes a scepter in the hands of a tribal king ("Concert cafe"). Even potentially tragic or sad things are subverted by laughter, true to the admonition given in "Lawn-tennis": "Forget your dark thoughts / and heavy hearts / Remember white lawn-tennis / and light rubber balls" [60]. In "Fever" the delusion of the hallucinating patient leads him to a discover death's grinning face which is "only a phantom and it is laughable" [63], The speaker in "Guillaume Apollinaire" is leaning R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 160 against an old cannon while remembering the French poet's head wound and feels like laughing. Likewise, war in "Fiery fruit" is unessential though Blaise Cendrars and his war injury are mentioned. Gone are great empires (Carthage) and significant events like the Russian revolution have passed. Images change so quickly that there is no time to dwell on any one of them. Zdenek Pesat rightly points out the poem's extreme "atomization" or fragmentation (Seifert 59). Mayakovsky is dead, but poetry (the one that exists in things, in all the beauties of the world) lives on. Similarly, in "Words on magnet" the war is more an aside that loses itself in irreverent word play: How can I tell the maidens about the world war and fright Let history paint the scene Battle-field palette is bloodstained Play of words Antennas grazing the sky and the last word of my poem is number two-hundred-forty-eight [53] The death of two lovers in a ship wreck ("Verses about two who drowned") is depicted in a poetically stylized, bizarre way. The juxtaposition of this hint of tragedy with the ennui of the resort restaurant has a grotesque, not a tragic quality. Similarly, the treatment of poverty has come a long way since the days of proletarian poetry. In "Rue de la Paix" the speaker observes "here beggars' faces are glued to glass / as if life were a desert / before this oasis of beauty in hostile lands" [65]. This Paris street is one of the poshest, so apparently the exotic scenery evoked earlier refers to some exclusive store window, a jeweler perhaps. Then the attention of the speaker focuses on a poor woman who is weeping: Are rains the perfume of the sky then tears are the perfume of the soul on Friday and Sunday I saw her cry With her tears I will scent my handkerchief this very day [65] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 161 This is a far cry from socially-engage poetry. Mixed signals confuse the picture. There seems to be a suggestion of compassion but also of underlying irony ("on Friday and Sunday I saw her cry") and vague eroticism. This is not to say, that Seifert's third collection of poetry is entirely devoid of seriousness or even melancholy, in spite of all the laughter. In some poems a graver, more somber tone emerges, foreshadowing the next collection, The Nightingale Sings Poorly. Among the lyrical anecdotes a more serious note is occasionally struck: "beauty" only half-jokingly contrasts "aging beauties" visiting a beauty parlor with the age-less beauty of the dummy in its window. Or "Wisdom" presents the simple truth that at old age, after life's commotion, upsets and pain, we tend to appreciate the simplest of pleasures like "our long pipe / / black swan" [37]. Loss of beauty and youth is also the theme of "Consolation": miss miss your face is gloomy because it rained on you all day but what should that little May fly say whose whole life was filled with rain? [49] While it has a humorous streak on the surface, it also allows for more serious contemplation of human life, happiness and the fleetingness of time. Passage of time and death conceived in a melancholy fashion are themes in the poems at the close of the collection, "Graveyard in Genoa" and "To be a fisherman." The former has little of the flippancy that pervades On the Waves ofTSF and seems to suggest that life is moving between "two ports," the cradle and the tomb, and whereas life ceases, the sea does not. And while the latter ends on a humorous note in its last stanza, there is a sense of melancholy in the conception of the past, what remains of it and what matters. The later development of the collection suggests that Seifert may have tired of the most radical eccentricities in the collection and in subsequent editions effectively dissolved the first 1925 version of On the Waves ofTSF, as Pesat and particularly the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 162 editors of a 1989 re-edition of the first five collections meticulously prove. The second edition of 1938 that Seifert directly supervised is a pared-down version of the original work, entitled Honeymoon, after the first main section of On the Waves ofTSF and its opening poem by the same title. The most profound changes affected the lyrical anecdotes. Most of them were eliminated, along with Teige's innovative typography and layout. Pesat points out that Seifert's rejection of contemporary experiments does not invalidate them; on the contrary, he says, they invigorated Czech poetry for generations to come with their associative imagery and by introducing humor and playfulness into poetry and thus with their lightness and 61an for a time eradicated inappropriate pathos and heavy-handed rhetoric (Seifert 64). And while Seifert at times may have put down his youthful experimentation, in his memoir he regrets that a planned facsimile edition of On the Waves ofTSF did not materialize because the political turmoil in 1968 intervened {ABW 298). A reprint in Czech appeared in a small exile edition in Konstanz, Germany (1976) and in German translation and facsimile edition put out by the small Viennese publisher Hora Verlag (1985) to honor the author's 84th birthday. Following the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989, On the Waves ofTSF was finally published in Prague as a facsimile of the 1925 original (1992). The critics of Seifert's time seemed, again, to object more to the new aesthetics of poetism propounded by Teige and practiced by Seifert along with his Dev&tsil peers than to his poetry itself, on its own terms. Frantisek Gotz correctly identifies On the Waves ofTSF as entering a new, Seifert's third phase, going after "absolute, pure lyricism" ("Seifertova cesta" 6). He does not object to Seifert's drawing on the beauties of civilization or the modem city. He calls him a "happy globetrotter— mainly by longing" and his vision "panglobism" {ibid.). Gotz does not seem to be surprised by this development as he has always perceived Seifert as an "unproblematic" poet, who R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. now discovered the "merry acrobatics of the mind," as defined by Teige, or in Gotz's words, "absolute spiritual clownishness" (ibid.). Seifert is seen as an unaffected, merry man who does not want to be a deep thinker and who liberated his poetry from logic both of ideas as well as syntax and thus often arrives at visual poetry and lyrical play. What Gotz objects to is what he sees as a short-lived and one-sided orientation toward the happy and jolly sides of life (he was to be right about the short-lived nature of this experiment). Poetry cannot exclude "all higher spiritual interests, least of all ideas" (ibid.). He does not like the fragmentation of this type of poetry and misses some kind of order in what seems to him a life that is nothing but an irrational tangle of incoherent states. In other words, Gotz expects from poetry to engage not only the instinctual, sensuous and emotional realm but more importantly to be in touch "with the soul, with the world of values, with reason, with social consciousness" ("Seifertova cesta" 6). In another assessment that is roughly contemporaneous with this review, Gotz adopts a more neutral, even laudatory stance. He traces the links between Seifert's first, second and third collections and finds a common thread: "Seifert's exoticism and panglobism grow out of his hunger for the world, the exotic, for the sensations afforded by a world metropolis. It is only a different form of his original position" ("Vyvoj" 163). Evidently Gotz is trying to establish a logical path in the development of Jaroslav Seifert from proletarian poetry to poetism. Gone are judgments of one sidedness. Now Gotz deservedly commends Seifert's "lyrical pluralism" which perceives the world as a "polyphony of forces, things and processes" and "leads him away from the monistic conception of revolutionary poetry which viewed the world as a unified progression toward social revolution" ("Vyvoj" 163). On the Waves ofTSF here is rightly seen as "an organic culmination in the development of this interesting R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 164 poet" (164). Seifert was a revolutionary, Gotz explains, because of his physical hunger for the world which in On the Waves ofTSF has been transformed into the knowledge that the poet cannot just describe external sensations, but must make poetry of things, not about things. In this respect the third collection arrives at radically new formal principles ("Vyvoj" 165). It seems as if Gotz himself finally succumbed to the enthusiasm of poetist theses. Reviews appearing in poetist Dev&sil's own publications naturally are bound to sing praises of the new artistic direction. Representative of other Dev&tsil-cntics, Bedrich Vdclavek in a German-language article,41 celebrates On the Waves ofTSF as a major achievement of radical innovation and pure poetry. What others criticize, Vaclavek predictably commends, on different theoretical grounds; for example, rejection of the past and of poetry's claim to eternity. Vdclavek even tries to counter the frequently-voiced accusation that Seifert deserted proletarian poetry and that poetism is shallow: "Today he simply works on a different thing; he is interested in other, more substantial problems [emphasis mine], particularly those of form and design" ("Auf den Wellen" 6). This break with proletarian poetry, particularly with respect to the treatment of civilization, Vdclavek tries to justify as a radical step to shed "the last phase of the old ideological poetry" (ibid.). At the same time he quite cleverly attempts to create the impression of continuity between the previous two collection of poetry and On the Waves ofTSF: "This synchronistic panglobism, these verses that are brimming with experience and synchronistically embrace the Whole World, what are they but the longing for an expanded, more gigantic world, which was already clearly audible in his previous two books?" ("Auf den Wellen" 6). Likewise, F. X. Saida, ever 41 Publications run by DevStsil members often included articles, poetry and short fiction in foreign languages, alongside the Czech, to enable exchange with avant-garde artists in other countries. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 165 the champion and apologist of the young generation, calls the Seifert of On the Waves of TSF "a pure dreamer indifferent to a rational order in the world" and "boyish humorist." Saida understands the need of the young poets to reject tradition and shows great insight into Seifert's personality and origin. He only gently criticizes the lyrical anecdotes, some of which, as he feels, unduly engage the reader's wit and adroitness because they approach cross-word puzzles too closely (Saida, O nejmladSi poesii 57). Josef Knap is less benevolent and indulging than Gotz or Saida and certainly not as exuberant as V&clavek. He evidently seems irritated at Seifert for evolving from each collection to the next and for not remaining in a clearly-defined, rigid category. This is why he insinuates that the Seifert of City in Tears was an insincere dissembler ("Okolo Seiferta" 635). Knap accuses Seifert of adopting the role of a proletarian poet as a "fashionable seasonal costume" (ibid.). Seifert, with his poetist "subjectivity of quirks and witty ideas," Knap says mercilessly, is "gallantly babbling," and "perfumed more than Wilde, with the witty logic of a Marinetti student" (636). He has kind words only for the poem "Guillaume Apollinaire," for whose dreaminess, melancholy, emotion, power and suggestiveness he gives Seifert credit. But as for the rest, he demands: "Less poetism and more poetry. The remainder has the value of degenerate artificial primitivism" ("Okolo Seiferta" 636). To adherents of proletarian poetry or believers in a socio-political function of art like A. M. Pisa at the time, On the Waves ofTSF seemed frivolous, vacuous and decadent. In an extensive analysis entitled "Kudy?" [Whither?] he elaborates his premise that art must be engaged and profound, dealing with existential issues that truly matter. Pure poetic play is inadmissible. Rather, art must follow absolute values and "truth" as opposed to boundless relativism. It is clear why Seifert's new collection and its underlying poetist sensibility would violently clash with this postulate. To Pisa, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. poetry and art are reflections of their time. Therefore, poetist poetry to him mirrors a certain contemporary saturation and decadence. He is alluding to a period in the mid twenties that was called "consolidation" because it was marked by a stabilization of the new democracy and the overall political situation. Many leftists viewed this strengthening of the system they sought to change radically with scorn. Pisa is harsh in his critique: "To admire poetism is a proof of insufficient or failing intelligence" ("Kudy?" 306). From the beginning, Seifert seems to Pisa a sensualist who remained on the surface— as opposed to Wolker's or Hora's asceticism— and relished shallow effect and attractive gestures (306). He also accuses Seifert of passivity for changing with the times and like Knap he maliciously criticizes the poetist reality as "painted and powdered so that it resembles rococo pastorals" (307). Poetism's relativism precludes genuine tragedy or heroism, Pisa says. The poetry lacks existential profundity; its "frivolous laisser faire" does not know "absolute faith, truth nor discipline, and the heroism and simplicity of great love and hate are foreign to it" (307). Poetism's success to Pisa means that it has no future because it caters to contemporary taste rather than consciously disregarding popular acceptance (308). He does acknowledge, however, that Seifert shows a "very strong sense for the word" and admits that "his cultivation of assonance surely means an enriching innovation for our poetic language" (308). In the light of these statements it is perhaps clear that Pisa and Seifert (along with theorist Teige) operate on diametrically opposed assumptions about art and the role of the avant-garde. The disagreement is not situated on the level of aesthetics, but politics, which to Pisa and others like him are obviously inseparable. It is interesting to contrast this early harsh assessment with Pisa's position in 1930 when, having outgrown the earlier sectarian infighting, he delineates Seifert's development much like Gotz does and displays none of the previous dogmatism. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 167 Rather, he is more descriptive than judgmental and admires Seifert's "fresh spontaneity," "emotional excitability," and "intoxicatingly light imagery" ("J. Seifert" 33). Similarly, years after the heated debates about social art, Josef Hora— who has increasingly "taken refuge from proletarian and revolutionary poetry into the landscape of the soul" (Seifert, ABW 44)— is able to see Seifert differently, as someone who has foremost been true to himself: The worker and the revolutions are intimately familiar to him; they are within himself. He does not need to search for them. He does not elevate them onto high moral grounds, but finds them every step of the way because they correspond to his own longing for human happiness: The warmth of the home, the joy of love, the pleasure of exploring things, of tasting them. This is why Seifert so painlessly bids proletarian poetry good-bye and throws himself headfirst and insatiably into poetism, which allows him to choose from the world that which is most beautiful, to dream, to touch, to make bouquets of colors, sounds and images and to conceive of poetry in general as a gift of a happy moment. He has within himself the capacity for enthusiasm, that poetic far niente, when the Muses descend on the poet to kiss him.... ("Mezi bdsnickymi knizkami" 165) As opposed to this, later Marxist critics like Blajer view Seifert as a split personality because in his poetry between 1925 and 1929 he oscillates between native themes, Moscow and Paris, and (wrongly, of course) chooses the latter over the former. Blajer condemns Seifert for what he sees as a renunciation or negation of his formerly- held ideals and misses serious social thought amidst Seifert's "epicurism" of those years (282). Like Blajer, Brabec perceives Seifert's third collection as a prime example of poetist contradictions and is bothered by "disturbing fragmentation and the affectedness of petty provocations" in On the Waves ofTSF. He dismisses the work as nothing much but a faddish apprentice piece: "The book is really more a document, a testimony than a work of art" (263). On the other hand, to give Brabec and others like him credit, if one reads between the lines, as most Czechs habitually did, there is sufficient veiled praise to show respect for the poet's achievements. Besides, the more "official" criticism and the streamlined press vilified an artist or person of letters, the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 168 more such campaigns often actually secured this public figure lasting sympathy and popularity in the public's eyes. D. The N ightingale Sings Poorly: Word Play Meets Melancholy Seifert's forth collection of poetry The Nightingale Sings Poorly (1926) is a transitional work quite like Slteer Love that marked the passage of proletarian poetry on to poetism. While there are enough characteristics relegating the book to poetism, some features point to Seifert's more intimate, confessional poetry of the 1930s and show a pronounced change of tone toward more somber hues. Like On the Waves ofTSF, The Nightingale Sings Poorly is a collaborative effort true to the spirit of avant-garde and internationalist Dev&sil: The book's motto comes from Jean Cocteau, the work itself is dedicated to the painter Josef Sima, who contributed three illustrations; the painters Jindrich Styrsky and Toyen (Marie Cerminovd) provided the artwork for the cover and Karel Teige designed the title page. Most remarkably, showing the amazing fluidity of post-war avant-garde criticism, the lengthy afterword is the work of Julius Fucik, only recendy a harsh critic of poetist Dev&tsil and now a skillful apologist, against his previously-held views but for Seifert's poetic and ideological development. Fucik correctly identifies a hint of sorrow accompanying "all the beauty of the world" celebrated in On the Waves ofTSF, "the most magnificent journey around the globe." Echoing Jules Verne, Fucik describes Seifert's voyage that he now perceives as logical and consistent taking the poet from Moscow to the West and back via the other side of the world, as a seasoned, "manly" traveler filled with conviction— in contrast to his boyish dreamy naivete of City in Tears. Fucik remains vague in his assessment of On the Waves ofTSF and instead claims that The Nightingale Sings Poorly is "a deepening and intensification" of Seifert's first, proletarian collection. On his quest for knowledge, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 169 Fucik insists, the poet has become more fervent but also more reserved thus finding his "uneasy and bitter place" in a time when the "bourgeois" sway over intellectual and political life has consolidated itself (Czechoslovakia indeed was enjoying a period of relative economic and political stability in the mid-twenties until 1929, a fact that primarily the radical left bemoaned). Certainly, to some extent Seifert does return to themes apparent in his first collection, like war or revolutionary Russia, but he treats them so differently in tone and form that Fucik's circular metaphor does not seem very apt. Rather, the traces of On the Waves ofTSF make The Nightingale Sings Poorly a logical extension of poetism, not proletarian art. After all, social concern and serious artistic endeavor was not entirely absent even from the "pure poetry" of On the Waves ofTSF; it had only temporarily retreated into the background and given way to playful experimentation. As was noted earlier, some of the poems in On the Waves ofTSF have a serious and even melancholy tinge which strikingly intensifies in the following collection. On the other hand, The Nightingale Sings Poorly is still firmly rooted in poetism when it comes to word play, associative chains, imagery, internationalism and icons of popular entertainment. Sweeping dynamic motions like "At the end of the universe / the will-o'-the-wisp dies in a shrub" [12] recall On the Waves ofTSF. And although Teige's original typography has again given way to a more conventional presentation, the fourth collection contains both poems without punctuation and those that return to it, often even after appearing without it in poetist magazines. Poetist heroes enjoying popular acclaim like Jules Verne and the polar explorer Roald Amundsen enter poems explicitly by mention or by veiled reference ("Girlfriends," "Ancient Wisdom"). Similarly, beauty is perceived in the very name of an everyday object, the French-made automobile Citroen [11]. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 170 The bizarre, the strange and exotic likewise still can be found although to a lesser extent. We encounter "pineapples and stars" [11], parakeets [43], medusas, sepias, and whale milk [13]. Or the imagery clearly betrays poetist sensibility when "gentle words leap like monkeys / on the page into quatrains" [42], "the moon is crawling in velvet darkness" [56], the "marble column magnetizes the moon" and "Like a drunken spider with a cross on its back / the monster cathedral staggers in the darkness" [52]. Similarly, word play and associations are strung together with great skill in "14th of July," "Ancient Wisdom" and in "Girlfriends," the latter with a sinister ring. The paronomastic play is often so visual and evocative that it indeed engages all five senses as the poetists intended. The poem "14th of July,"42 is pure playfulness, exploiting similar sounding words from the French. It is a calembour, wordplay— a word which in the poem most prominently meshes with Mr. Mirabeau (the French orator and revolutionary politician), the bird marabou and with boulevard. From Mirabeau in the first stanza, the sound association takes us to marabou, and then to an anonymous girl by the name of Marie who likes to drink in bars (bary in Czech). From here in the Czech it is close to barvy for colors and thus to the bonnet rouge of the French Revolution. Here auditory association leaps into the visual dimension. The poem ends on a funny note ("God knows where Mirabeau went / reciting that calembour" [19]). In "Ancient Wisdom" the chain of associations likewise relies on homonymy, homophony and polysemy in the Czech thus creating great problems for a translator. In the first stanza the climbing vine (literally "dog wine" in Czech) corresponds to both the howling dog (line 3) and the small glass of wine (line 4). The butterfly that gets 42Previously entitled "Slavnost revoluce" [Celebration of the Revolution], commemorating Bastille Day, the French national holiday. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 171 caught in the vine leads to the girl in the second quatrain. From butterfly we leap to pollen dust on its wings (pel) to Verne's Archipelago ("Archipel") and another of his books. From the fearsome world of adventure novels we are taken to domestic harmony and a rose petal circling in the draining water of a sink. The associations then revolve around water imagery: deep ocean blueness (modrost) corresponding by means of near homonymy and homophony with profound wisdom (moudrost); the rose petal evokes a ship's sail and a girl's blush. These playful transformations turn into nightmarish delusions in "Girlfriends" where the consciousness of two famous characters, Emma Bovary and Gisele (ballet), intersects with the writing poet's creative imagination. The poet, comfortably sitting by the stove, remembers the explorer Roald Amundsen4^ whom he imagines seated at the North Pole in his fur coat. The reflections of the fire on the walls conjure up the image of a flamingo and of spiders to which Emma and Gisele react with fear and violent rejection. The last quatrain contains an apparent reference to Emma Bovary's death. Poetist exotic internationalism, tinged with sultry eroticism, resurfaces in "Paravent," which describes a bizarre scene that may be the imaginative transformation of painted images on a folding screen (paravent in French) or a vase. A crushed mandolin is likened to succulent sweet fruit, a dragon munches chocolate while hiding in the folds of a robe worn by a Chinese man who is kissing a European woman and behind this screen a woman cannot sleep with erotic yearning. Echoes of Paris as a 4^The daily Narodni osvobozem reports in 1925 about Amundsen's upcoming expedition to the North Pole and the weekly Socialista 3(41) 19 Sept. 1925 announces the explorer's impending visit to Prague. The conservative literary weekly Zvon 27(31-32) 13 Apr. 1927 documents Amundsen's 1925 voyage to the North Pole along with several photographs and notes his forthcoming book To the North Pole by Plane. The explorer surely engaged the imagination of Czech writers and poets. Josef Hora devoted a poem ("Amundsen") to the Norwegian's achievements, celebrating casting his shade on unknown lands [Host 4(9-10) 1924- 25:260] and Konstantin Biebl wrote a brief eulogy upon Amundsen's disappearance in 1928 [ReD 2(1) 1928-29:18]. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 172 place of promise resound at the end of "Giant Mountains," referring to a Bohemian mountain range: "And our buses smeU of Paris / like snowdrops of spring" [26]. Yet overall, the treatment of native themes as opposed to foreign, exotic places is turning away from admiring celebration to a sober acceptance of the domestic climate. "An Apple Tree With Cobweb Strings" and "Three Bitter Seeds" are cases in point. In the former the speaker, doubtlessly identifiable as the poet himself, seeks refuge under an old weathered and bent apple tree to reminisce after seeing the world. The cobwebs of autumn turn the tree with its ripe fruit into a harp and the poet is listening to its song. Gone is the eager restlessness of the previous collection. The speaker here is looking for peace, beauty and solace "to heal wounds that are still smarting" [40]. Exotic, faraway places, with their enticing women, no longer hold the same fascination and exert their irresistible pull. The poet, having satiated his hunger for the world, now chooses quiet solitude, the smell of the apple (emblem of seduction) and the tree's song over "the idle beauty of foolish women" [40]. This new desire for serenity and silence is expressed more than once. In "The Hourglass" occurs the wish "Placid to remain / like the midnight moon" [12] and is echoed in "Ancient Wisdom": So calmly to learn to live in deep-seated and bitter wisdom motionless crab in deep-sea blueness of the ocean [16]^4 Similarly, "Three Bitter Seeds" displays little genuinely envious longing for foreign places in the way "Paris" in Sheer Love dismisses life in Prague as gray and boring in sharp contrast to the exciting pulse of the French capital. On the contrary, while acknowledging the exoticism of tropical climes, the poetic "I" here has come to realize his place in Central Europe and accepted it. Like the three citrus seedlings from ^The magazine version is more verbally descriptive of the emotional state; the third line more directly reads "Melancholicky krab" [Melancholy crab] [Pdsmo 2(8) 1925-26: 92], R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 173 Italy that cannot thrive in "the cold homeland" and long for their warm place of origin when planted in the strange and unfavorable climate, in just the same way is the addressee of the poem (it is dedicated to the admirer of exoticism and distant countries, fellow poet Konstantin Biebl) "transplanted into different soil. . . in wistful separation" [43]. In other words, the speaker seems to suggest that the writer of the letter from distant Java is equally unnaturally misplaced in "that hot cradle of earth" like the fading citrus trees that the poet tries to keep alive behind frosty windows in the middle of winter. But the winter sleep, the speaker reminds us, is only temporary and everything will reawaken with spring. This is far from resignation; rather, the attitude is one of quiet life-affirming acceptance that was to become Seifert's trademark in the years to come. More than the similarities that the present collection shares with On the Waves ofTSF, it exhibits marked differences in its treatment of love and introduces new or newly-conceived themes of death, war, revolution and annihilation. Images of destruction, not confined to war and unrest alone, and weeping recur throughout the collection almost to a degree of serving as a leitmotiv, much as laughter did in On the Waves ofTSF. Formally, at a first casual glance already there is an apparent tendency to shorter, more concise lines and to a stanza form that often resembles ballad quatrains with alternating rhymes. As early as in the opening poem "Moon on Wings" we witness an airplane crashing with a broken wing, angels weeping over the wreck. In "Verses" Abraham's tears make an angel ascend "in an ermine cloak" and the speaker raises the question R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. with whom to be alone and weep over the abyss [13].45 In "Ancient Wisdom" the poem ends with the wish "May shy girls blush with shame / and weep" [17]. In "Girlfriends" a table with a bouquet of flowers evokes a sundial and women's faces, "A shade of sorrow on cheeks," and Gisele suddenly breaks into tears [20]. Separation and farewell in "Three Bitter Seeds" naturally connote grief, so "into white handkerchiefs / people weep" and a little later the small green citrus fruit cling to the tiny tree "like bitter tears" [41]. Likewise, the sky may resemble "an abyss with floating icebergs / sprinkled with bitter stars" [23] or wisdom is profound and bitter [16]. Poems like "The Hourglass" and "A Song About Death" are replete with images of death and the passage of time. The title of the former poem indicates a time piece employing sand for a measure. We are taken to an Egyptian pyramid, "oasis of shadows," burial ground for "Famous sleepers!" [11] who will not be awakened by a vulture overhead and are guarded by the sphinx, symbol of the pharaoh and a demon of death in Greek mythology: "the surf of time / breaks against her breasts." The poem ends with the metaphor of life as a race towards the grave: "The highest score contestants / is death!" [12]. The serious contemplation of death in the latter poem is expressed in startling images: Pearls and jewels to the living we return like the suicide from the bottom bubbles of air [14] However, "A Song About Death" closes with harmless paronomasiic play exploiting the near homonymy of scythe (kosa) and blackbird or thrush (kos) as well as elastic spring (zavitnice) and envious, aspiring woman (zavistnice). 4^This phrase, "in an ermine cloak," creating a striking poetist juxtaposition, is missing in the magazine version of the poem. Likewise, there is no punctuation except for question and exclamation marks. The magazine version is more concrete and less ominous; the second line reads instead: "in the shadow of banners" [Pasmo 2(3) 1925-26:38]. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 175 Besides the first five poems in the second section of The Nightingale Sings Poorly that monothematically focus on war, images of destruction enter even presumably idyllic settings like the mythical one evoked in the poem "Giant Mountains": "A fir tree halved by lightning, blown-out window of cathedrals" and "like a battery of cannons amid profound peace / the earth slumbers below the mountains" [26]. It is less surprising that shocking images of death abound in the several war poems of the collection. According to Zdenek Pesat, Seifert's return to and impassioned treatment of war may have been inspired by Vladislav Vancura's 1925 novel Pole omd a valeZna [Arable and Battle Fields] and in turn partly influenced Frantisek Halas's first collection of poetry, Sepie [Sepia] (Seifert 70). "The Bread and the Rose" symbolizes the polarity of sustenance and the need for beauty and love. War is depicted as a universally destructive game of chance, like dice played on an overturned war drum, that brings about "hunger and dying" [29]. The drums in "Ballad" announce the coming of war and uncultivated fields resulting in poverty and hunger accompanied by tears. The bride is wearing a dress made of gauze and the groom is destined for death: "and she weeps, / that with a deceased she will sleep" [30]. Europe becomes the setting of a macabre, grotesque dance of death in "Old Battlefield." War is depicted as a crazy carnival where gas masks promenade "in the land of fools" [32], "collapsed chessboard" [33]. War annihilates everything and everyone: "Dead are friends, dead are foes, / dead we are all" [32]. The raging of war culminates in a metaphor paradoxically and effectively mixing the image of death and birth: The sun is turning the shade of things, the earth is pregnant with the dead. Already it is bursting, come and let's dance right around! [33] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 176 The war poems "A Ballad from the Champagne" and "The Parting Kiss" both use epigraphs that apparently were derived from newspaper headlines. The first quotes the conservative French daily Temps (he Temps, according to the magazine version of the poem) which puts the number of French poets who died in World War I at 4,000 men .46 The caption "Beautiful ladies were kissing American volunteers" prefaces "The Parting Kiss." The first of the two poems tells the story of the generic French woman Josephine (although associations with Napoleon's first wife may automatically arise), a vintner's daughter, who continues to grow wine with her brother following their father's death and after the war, which does not spare their vineyard: "Cannons they dug in between grapes in the vineyard" [35]. One soldier takes an interest in her but in the end what remains after the war is silence and loneliness when Josephine is spending quiet suppers with her vintner-brother. In the paper they read about the fallen poets and the poem ends with Josephine's agitated reminiscence and shocking conclusion: " — How many others there must have been / who did not know how to write poetry!" [36]. "The Parting Kiss" is written from the perspective of an American volunteer who has witnessed the inferno of Verdun, and is asking himself questions, consumed with sadness and longing, about why he is fighting in a strange land whose women and wine he does not know. The poem is full of evocative details recreating the horrors of war: "Above me it is not the firmament, it's the door to the world's sanitarium," the dead soldiers have "delirious eyes in veils of yellow gauze" [37] while the living already resemble corpses, "delirious eyes in the helmet's shade" [38]. And poetism left its mark even on images of horror: "Like empty tin cans of preserve / people rust here 46Reflektor 2(15) 1926:4. The Czech artistic biweekly R qm blikz 1(3) 26 Mar. 1919:23 cites a substantially lower number relying on French sources: 400 French men of letters killed in the Great War. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 177 and putrefy" [37]. The American soldier shortly struggles with the answer to arrive at the conclusion that he was motivated by love and is therefore going to endure everything ungrudgingly: "For the kiss of one little miss, / I will be silent, I will be mute" [38]. The question implied in this may be whether the price is not too high. Seen in such a light, the poem's erotic subtext would fittingly point to another strikingly different feature of The Nightingale Sings Poorly: a radically new presentation of love. The collection shows a disillusioned attitude toward love, at time bordering on cynicism— a change apparently not paralleled in Seifert's own private life. In "Verses" not only the compass is unreliable, but so are women who lie or "equivocate" [ 13]. "Yellow, Blue, Red" is all about deception and adultery: "We are seeking a girl without prejudice, without a mask / in the cafe between cups and stalks of straw in them soaking" [23]. The next lines make it clear that such women are rare. In autumn "ladies in their colorful robes" adopt camouflage hues like chameleons to escape detection when they cheat on their husbands and withdraw to secluded hotel rooms [24]. The black page boy who operates the elevator, "a melancholy rosary," is the only silent, knowing witness.47 The mechanistic motion of the elevator movement reinforces the cold deceit of adultery that indicates casting aside religious or moral principles or following them only superficially. The speaker in "Giant Mountains," who contemplates a camera that reminds him of a chamois and consequently of hunting, confesses: "I am no rifleman, I am scared, / a hundred times wounded by love." He goes on to dismiss love as silly weakness: "From the well of a girl's hair her lover drinks, / well, these are only foolish things, only love" [26]. And finally, as previously discussed, the reminiscing speaker in "Apple Tree with Cobweb Strings" renounces 47The analogy between elevator and rosary is a rare religious image that survived from Seifert's earlier works; he employed this same analogy in "All the Beauties of the World" from Sheer Love. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 178 temptations for solitude and for an apple that would be wasted "For the idle beauty of foolish women" [40]. This subdued, melancholy and even disillusioned tone pervades the final five poems in the collection's third section that were inspired by Seifert's 1925 trip to Russia and by Lenin's death in 1924. Seifert does not stand alone by any means in bewailing the Russian leader's passing. The communist satirical weekly SrSatec, that Seifert edited from October 1922 until January 1925, printed poems by Vitezslav Nezval "To the Memory of Nicholas Lenin" and by S. K. Neumann "About the Battlefield Within Us."4® Josef Hora paid his tribute with "Leninia" that appears in Neumann's biweekly Reflektor, where Seifert's poem "Lenin" first sees print along with a musical score; the composer, dramatist and Dev$tsil member E. F. Burian set parts of Seifert's poem to music.49 How exactly the grueling study trip to the USSR (October 15 until November 16, 1925) affected Seifert privately is difficult to ascertain from the anthology SSSR that was put out by the expedition's members in early 1926 and contained the group's itinerary. Judging from the final cycle of poems in The Nightingale Sings Poorly (two of which appear in SSSR) Seifert was not blind to the pain and suffering that revolutionary turmoil and violence had brought upon the country. Even the laudatory passages are far from uncritical glorification. The delegation's report likewise does not offer solely unqualified praise of post-revolutionary Russia, but its general tendency is sympathetic, even apologetic towards the revolutionary cause and its shortcomings. After all, the reason for the visit was familiarization with the Soviet system and the ^ "Pam&tce Mikullse Lenina." SrSatec 4(12) 1924:2; "O bitevnim poli v nas." SrSatec 4(12) 1924:3. 49"Leninia." Reflektor 1(2) 1925:5; "Lenin." Reflektor 2(18) 1926:2; the musical score "Je mrtev Lenin..." [Dead is Lenin...] Reflektor 3(2): 5. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 179 purpose of the subsequent publication of SSSR, according to the unsigned introductory remarks, was to canvass support for similar active revolutionary endeavor in Czechoslovakia (21). The delegation for the "Society for economic and cultural friendship with the New Russia" consisted of nine members; aside from Jaroslav Seifert, Karel Teige, the poet and journalist Josef Hora, the writer and translator Bohumil Mathesius and the theoretician of the theater Jindrich Honzl, the other members were labor representatives, jurists and politicians. The journey itself lasted three days and three nights by rail and took the delegates first to Moscow and later to Leningrad. They toured institutions of workers' life, their representative bodies, youth organizations, childcare and sports facilities, factories, schools, print media, cultural and scientific institutes, and Soviet prisons, along with visiting sights like art galleries, museums, the Lenin Mausoleum, and the Kremlin. Almost nightly they attended concerts and theater performances and met Meierkhold, "People's artist of the USSR," at his famous theater (352). The National Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an evening of lectures held by the Czech guests about the cultural situation in Czechoslovakia: Mathesius and Hora presented in Russian, Honzl in German about the theater and Teige in French about film and contemporary Czech art. The "evening of friendship" ended with readings in Russian and Czech, to which Seifert most likely contributed. The delegation also encountered writer colleagues and delegations from other countries (Norway and Greece). The Czech visitors witnessed the funeral of the people's commissar Mikhail Vasiljevic Frunze on November 3 and celebrations commemorating the eighth anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7; both events drew crowds reaching hundreds of thousands on the Red Square. In Leningrad the delegation visited the Eremitage, the university, the Academy of Science and the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 180 harbor, where it toured two icebreakers, but also remnants of Czarist splendor: the Peter-and-Paul-Fortress and the Czar's Palace. The remarks introducing the delegation's report SSSR show an awareness of the brevity and exclusiveness of the study trip (9). Therefore, the expressed intent is to draw up some of the typical traits of Soviet society. After all, this report and the visit preceding it was one of the first few actual encounters and exchanges between the Czech avant-garde and the new Soviet system. In general the authors point out that Soviet Russia is in a state of flux and ferment, that it is a "workshop" rather than a completed experiment (8-9). They state that the revolution has been institutionalized almost to a point of obtrusiveness, particularly in the modem Russian theater, but mainly they perceive the theater as vibrant and lively. The most stringent criticism is directed at the "messianic streak" of Soviet society which bears all signs of a period of struggle: "It is inconsiderate and hard, indifferent to suffering, incessantly on its guard and tense, intolerant" (15). It knows only one opinion, its ow n— which equals dictatorship in politics and censorship in cultural affairs (ibid.). This is hazily explained by current historical need that necessitates such measures if a new collective is to be formed and the struggle against individualism won (17). Similarly, the perceived puritanism in Soviet society is justified by putting it in the service of this very same struggle. In its summary the delegation's rationale surfaces most clearly: . . . we did not see the land and the revolution . . . but cities, people, a social order and a movement that has begun and runs into the future; we saw birth and growth, few definitive things, a lot of good will and work with difficult material; w e saw tenacious effort, hard life, keen tempo and heavy sacrifice; we saw unveiled dictatorship, strict censorship and conscious violence perpetrated by a minority against a majority, justifiable only by the certainty that it is removing still greater violence (19-20) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 181 A delegation of leftist intellectuals, favorably predisposed to the Soviet experiment, is willing to give a lot of credit to what it perceives as a hopeful and emerging society. At the same time, it is evident that the visitors did not overlook obvious shortcomings and injustices. For example, in another unambiguously phrased criticism the delegation in the interest of social balance regrets apparent anti-intellectualism and disrespect for theory (20), yet in general it is clear that it has great hopes for the future of the USSR. In how far Seifert himself was willing to strike a favorable balance and dismiss the rawness of Soviet life for future promise, remains the stuff of speculation. As an artist with a vivid imagination he was probably more taken by outward symbols both of revolutionary struggle and by remnants of the era it tried to erase. Seifert's human compassion has always surpassed his political persuasion and as we have seen, even his earliest "proletarian" poetry exhibited more a naive infatuation with a dream than dogmatic revolutionary iconoclasm. The five poems about Russia are contemplative and somber, a far cry from revolutionary celebration, class hate or sloganeering. Not surprisingly, in a collection pervaded by images of war and destruction, symbols of death and decay predominate in the poem describing sad mementos of the October Revolution ("Moscow"). The glass cabinets in the old palace are likened to tombstones, the Kremlin wall is still bloody and "death guards the burial grounds of history" which is rife with ruin and putrid splendor: Rotten rings, a moldy diadem, A coiiier, which stiii smeiis sweetiy. Decayed robes of dead czarinas with an eyeless mask, a stare of death and damnation. [47] It is evident that Seifert is preoccupied with the human condition at large, transcending mere partisan interests. Even "A Song About Moscow," which most closely resembles the proletarian poetry in Seifert's first collection, is devoid of animosity but centers on R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 182 social justice. In the new society gold is worthless; instead, bread becomes treasured currency. "Lenin's City" blends images of the horrible recent revolutionary past, hopeful vistas of tomorrow and a poetist internationalism. The harbor is a friendly meeting place of different races and indicator of prosperity. At night the symbols of the past (the cathedral, icons, the Winter Palace) interfere and remind of bloody struggle. Yet the revolution explains the blood bath, the writing of red verses on walls: "It was the revolution. / / That's all" [53]. This treatment of the revolution is radically different from Seifert's first collection, where revolution was the means to reaching a happy future utopia, a dreamland for the workers. In this collection's cycle about Russia, however, revolution is a serious matter and the poet's vision is roaming the past rather than the future. The eulogy "Lenin" depicts the ailing Russian leader as he dreamily recalls past as well as present achievements and "sees Europe / and the struggle of classes" [55]. He then is laid to rest by grieving multitudes. The last stanza of this final poem in the collection must be seen as a programmatic statement reaching beyond the poem itself. It refers to the title of the book and suggests the difficulty of expressing human grief and suffering: "For the sorrow of the world, / my dear poet, / nightingales sing poorly" [57], The poem "At Our Lady of Iberia" is perhaps most interesting of the five Russian pieces because it unites many disparate elements. The note accompanying the poem's magazine version explains: "'Our Lady of Iberia' is a small, 'miraculous' chapel in Moscow at the entrance to the Red Square. It was spared as a curio of Czarist Moscow. Above it shines Marx's motto in golden letters: Religion— the opiate of the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. people. Near the chapel there is a lively and noisy bazaar on the sidewalk."50 This bazaar setting is described in the poem. Among the useless relics of the past like a broken rapier, a silent phonograph, paintings, a horseshoe and other refuse of the revolution, one can buy Lenin badges for a ruble, which some communist critics have interpreted as Seifert's trivialization of and thus disregard for the revolution. It seems indeed that the poet is more fascinated by the patina of these relics and the secrets that they keep in his imagination than he is inclined to pass judgment and use them for propaganda purposes. He is more of an observer who records what he sees than an ideologue. As his observation drifts, eroticism enters. Amid the bustle he discovers silk brassieres on a long pole. The juxtaposition of "that trifle that is all finery" to the bloody and gloomy Kremlin wall is striking but in keeping with Seifert's earlier style [51]. The poet is reminded of Jean d'Arc and her body armor, so the bras "for maiden's hearts and breasts" become "Love's armor, before it is pierced / by a lover's hands" [51]. The magazine version proves that by eliminating some extremely concrete details Seifert muted any remnants of proletarian poetry and "poetic naivism." The first two lines of the last quatrain originally read, quite in the spirit of Seifert's earliest poetry: "They too are armor those brassieres / for the breasts of our comrades and their courageous hearts."51 Conservative critics for the most part by 1926 still have not made peace with the new poetic generation, as Arne Novak's or F. S. Prochdzka's negative responses to The Nightingale Sings Poorly attest. Their brief reviews are malevolent and superficial. Prochdzka chides Seifert for his use of false rhymes and assonance, because "to the ear 50Reflektor 3(19-20) 1927:25. In fact, both the chapel {Casovnja Iverskoj Bozej Materi) and the Iberian Gates (Iverslde vorota), that opened onto the Red Square, were destroyed in the late 1920s, suffering the fate of many Russian churches. 51"U Matky bozi iberske." Dflnicka besidka, Rude pravo 8(186) 8 Aug. 1926:1. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 184 of a civilized person this is a black jazzband" (322). Moreover, he apparently mistakes "The Parting Kiss" for a statement of the author himself instead of seeing that Seifert assumes the persona of an American volunteer. Nov&k misses logic, direction and a goal in the collection's "reeling" or "staggering." Disregarding all nuance, he brushes Seifert off as playful, cynical and bored and declares poetism dead (9). Pavel Fraenkel likewise detects ennui in Seifert's latest collection and finds it uneven, reaching from "ridiculously fashionable" playful verses marked by "boyish prattling" to poetry exhibiting gentle sensitivity and introspection (he names "Ballad," "A Ballad from the Champagne" and "The Parting Kiss") (155). Fraenkel's review of Seifert's fifth collection Carrier Pigeon (1929) illustrates what he finds wrong with the poet. He dislikes his sensuality which, as he sees it, was in Seifert's generation wrongly elevated to art due to what he calls "lifelong infantilism" or "permanent puberty." Seifert's books, according to Fraenkel, epitomize the production of the poet's generation with its "melancholy, yearning, and all-powerful relativity of our emotions and passions" which have presumably led to utter nihilism. Seifert's work too, Fraenkel believes, is characterized by nihilism, boredom and indifference, "weapons of a sensitive heart" (203). In the same vein, Josef Heyduk, reviewing the poet's fifth collection PoStovni kolub [Carrier Pigeon], summarily delivers broadsides against the entire young generation and Seifert in particular, whom he declares dead as a poet (82). He bewails the perceived lack of mystery, metaphysics, order or structure. Instead, contemporary poetry shows chaos, sentimentality, "irresponsible prattling," and cynicism (81). Furthermore, Heyduk objects to what he sees as weak metaphors that exist for their own sake, without proper "architecture" (82). Again, it is evident that old and new poetics and philosophies are clashing. Nevertheless, sometimes it is unclear how these R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 185 critics arrive at their judgments. The charge of (decadent) ennui and nihilism, for example, could not be more untrue for Seifert. Josef Hora favorably receives the latest collection. He commends the new wealth of subject matter and remarks on the strong impact of Seifert's USSR trip that, according to Hora, in its poetic transformation hastened Seifert's departure away from "one-sided poetism"; ideas, so long theoretically denounced, now return into his poetry ("Nov6 b&sne" 3). Hora perceives both proletarian art and poetism as artistically exhausted and overcome, each having enriched Seifert's poetry. To A. M. Pisa, who never quite embraced poetism, the latest collection constitutes a welcome development. He attests to Seifert's "inner and artistic maturity" that took the poet from the rhetoric of the first two collections, and from the "metaphorical verbosity" of On the Waves of TSF to a new melodic conciseness ("J. Seifert" 32). Pisa detects irony, "the defense of emotion, wounded by skepticism"; in the subdued tone of the poems he sees an awareness of fleeting time and of death as well as a spiritual perspective (33). In an earlier extensive analysis of the new collection Pisa hails its "liberating significance for the author's own evolution but also for the orientation of the entire modem poetry" ("Slavik" 113). He praises Seifert for revealing his own individuality and his own lyrical melody. This courage to exercise creative freedom stems from Seifert's "manly coming-of-age and artistic maturity" (ibid.). Contrary to conservative critics, Pisa commends Seifert for not being preoccupied with complex inner life "nourished by dark recesses of the subconscious" and for being free from dizzying depths and whirls ("Slavik" 113). Pisa admires the melodic spontaneity of the latest collection (he favorably singles out Seifert's sophisticated experiments with sound, assonance, and internal rhyme) and identifies the abandonment of poetism both in content and form, Seifert having culled from it only its positive attributes (115): R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Formerly, the purely decorative imagery created "a cold mosaic of metaphors" but now his poems are informed by "a coherent flow of unified sensations" (114). Pisa dismisses Fucik's afterword as "naive (at best)" and pronounces the Russian poems the weakest portion of Seifert's book because the poet remains on the surface seeking the traces of the revolution in the smallest and entirely concrete details on hand. Yet the promise of "Lenin" he ranks with the admirable poem "An Apple Tree with Cobweb Strings" ("Slavik" 116). The influential critic and university professor F. X. Saida admires the 1926 collection which he calls a complement of On the Waves ofTSF: "[Fjeeling, which was entirely banished from his third book, replaced by a tide of sensations and a play of colorful sparks and lights, has now returned into Seifert's poetry as if through the backdoor" (58). Like Pisa, he commends Seifert's return from exotic remote lands to the home and detects "an attendant light sobering-up, a certain languor stemming from emptiness that these remote countries left in him" (59). This new feeling pervading the latest collection, according to Saida, is discreet, "woven with invisible thread," and written between the lines. There are no grand gestures or even any gestures at all (ibid.). Instead Saida finds "verbal crystals" (59) and attests particularly to the Russian cycle "crystalline beauty" (27). The previously cited critics from the 1950s differ in their assessment of this collection and in their views on Seifert's trip to the USSR. Zdenek Blajer disregards any need for subtle differentiation and lumps On the Waves ofTSF, The Nightingale Sings Poorly and Carrier Pigeon together as proof of Seifert's "schizophrenic split" which presumably culminated in Seifert's leaving the communist party in 1929 (282). Then, according to Blajer, Seifert renounced his "progressive past" and his "spiritual crisis, accompanied by chronic skepticism" was never to leave him again but left him prone to R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 187 "depressive moments." According to this pseudo-psychological assessment, Seifert used poetism as his "oasis, consolation, mental morphine" (283). Even the cycle of poems from Russia leaves Blajer cold. He finds them lacking in taste and the perspective on the Soviet Union— basically "unsocialist" (282). Jin Brabec, however, views Seifert's trip to Russia as something of a catalyst for his artistic growth (263) and echoes Pisa's assessment that the poet has matured, experienced creative renewal and "found his place," after transcending the sphere of his peers and now forging his own inventive path (265). Brabec praises the poetry's "firm, metaphorically rich form" and Seifert's new economy of expression; his poems no longer are a mere "confusion of impressions and beautiful metaphors" (264). Brabec also favorably comments on Seifert's thematic return to his native land resulting in an achievement that to him is unparalleled in the poet's work so far. A self-characterization in 1926, even though it generally oscillates between seriousness and flippancy, sheds some light on Seifert's Soviet experience and his orientation in the second half of the 1920s. He still asserts the credo of proletarian art "that apart from communism there is no modernity" and describes a powerful impression from his trip: When I was in Moscow on the anniversary of the revolution, I found myself in the flowing enthusiastic crowd heading toward the Red Square. At that moment I was dying with longing to become the poet of these people. Mayakovsky was not. Jesenin even less so. It is difficult. ("Jaroslav Seifert o sobe" 38) The underlying issue here is the role of the poet. Seifert moreover says that writing poetry is basically a luxury, that workers read litde poetry and that they are right. Still, he insists, "I write for no one else and never will" (37). He would like to be useful like a physician but admits that poetry is his trade, the only one he knows. He also dismisses the books he has written so far as poor and claims he is indifferent to and annoyed by R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. them (38). This rejection points to a change of direction, both in poetics and philosophy that was to be accomplished in part in his next collection Carrier Pigeon (1929) and culminated fully in his mature introspective poetry of the 1930s. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 189 CHAPTER IV: Theories of Translation A. Existing Translations of Jaroslav Seifert As stated in the Introduction, Jaroslav Seifert is still, more than ten years after his Nobel Prize award, receiving less attention from scholars, critics, and translators than his stature and the quality and volume of his work would deserve. Both English- language criticism as well as English translations of his poetry have been slow in coming and remain confined to a handful of books. This chapter discusses in detail existing translations of Jaroslav Seifert's works into the target languages I can most competently judge (English and German). Given the subject of this dissertation, the emphasis will be on Seifert's early work and its translations before I present (in the next section) a rationale for my own practices in translation. It is perhaps important here to point out again the political circumstances enveloping Jaroslav Seifert in the 1970s until the mid-1980s. Seifert often received visitors from abroad who were interested in his work. George Gibian, for example, came to see the poet before publishing The Selected Poetry o f Jaroslav Seifert featuring the translations of Ewald Osers. Paul Jagasich, too, traveled to Prague before and after Seifert's death in early 1986. The ailing poet was naturally flattered by the occasional tribute which foreign visitors accorded him and was pleased to see that they were working on translations of his works, particularly given the fact that during the 1970s Seifert was virtually ignored by the official Czech press and by critics. However, as Jana Seifertovd suggested to me, her late father in what was then a staunchly communist regime in Czechoslovakia had no control over the actual projects that were completed R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 190 in the West and no means to verify the credentials of his visiting admirers. Often he was not even asked permission for publications, much less received any compensation or honoraria stemming from foreign publications. Publication in emigre presses was the most frequent outlet for persecuted and prohibited writers in Czechoslovakia, such as Seifert, who did not expect any compensation knowing the non-profit, volunteer nature of such enterprises. 1. "Traduttore, traditore"?— The Practice of Paul Jagasich and Tom O'Grady Paul Jagasich of Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia, is a translator who hardly deserves this epithet, and his work can serve as a textbook example of what can go wrong if someone's enthusiasm exceeds his capabilities. Perhaps most problematic is Jagasich's limited proficiency in the Czech language, coupled with a lack of understanding of the subtleties of meaning in English poetic language as well. Seifert's daughter Jana, whom Jagasich visited in Prague in the past, told me in a recent telephone conversation that Jagasich admittedly translates word for word with the help of a Czech-English dictionary and only a basic smattering of Czech. It is mainly for this reason that Seifertovci and her brother repeatedly denied Jagasich permission to publish his recent English translations of their late father's work. Jagasich's practice can at best be justified only if the translator uses exhaustive cribs or trots (what the Russians call podstrodnik), provided by a competent, experienced native speaker, informant, or linguist. Even so, most translators of poetry and fiction rightly frown upon this translation method. They believe that exceptional command of both source and target R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 191 languages is indispensable to a satisfactory— and even more so to an excellent— rendering of a work of literature. In 1981, along with the poet Tom O'Grady, Jagasich succeeded in placing The Casting of Bells (1967) with a small publisher, the Iowa City-based The Spirit That Moves Us Press. As of 1992, the two colleagues at Hampden-Sydney College had collaborated on four Seifert collections, none yet from the poet7 s early poetry. However, by 1992, Jagasich alone, prefacing his deficient rendering of Over the Waves ofTSF [sic], claimed to have twelve volumes of Seifert7 s poetry to his credit as a single translator. According to Jana Seifertova, Jagasich has apparently set out to translate the entire Seifert oeuvre and with his New Year wishes to her sent along yet another unauthorized volume despite the heirs' resistance.^ The Nightingale Sings Out of Tune (1992) is, along with On the Waves ofTSF (1992) the second of my present translations that Jagasich attempted and apparently published himself, with the help of the college, in limited editions of approximately twenty copies each. I will discuss here four of Jagasich's volumes, three written with O'Grady. Nevertheless, despite Seifert's heirs' denying Jagasich the permission to publish his weak translations, Seifert is represented by these substandard English versions held in several of the largest U. S. libraries. In the following I will provide detailed, representative examples from Jagasich's (and O'Grady's) well-intentioned but unsatisfactory undertaking. Interestingly, the two collaborators preface their The Casting of Bells (1983) with something that could be interpreted as a (much-needed) disclaimer: ^Telephone conversation on January 2,1995. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 192 Our rendering is a mere attempt to capture some of its grace. Anyone who dares to stand between a poet and his language must do so out of love, out of a humble desire to have other people celebrate the poet's craft. What is offered here is a rendering into English of a rich sensibility, not an exact and finished poetry. This translation is an introduction to the poetry of Jaroslav Seifert. We tried to stay as close as possible to the original. We encourage others to continue with his work, to better shape it, to hone it, someday, into that real, precise voice living in another world. (5) The apparent modesty professed here would have been best served if the "translators" had refrained from their "labor of love." Staying "as close as possible to the original" is vague and mistakenly points in the direction of literal or at least close translation. In reality, the Jagasich/ O'Grady versions reveal a lack of understanding— both linguistic and interpretive— and abound with arbitrary choices. Seifert's first poem "Prologue" begins with the one-line statement "To be a poet, that is not easy." The translator team renders this opening claim clumsily and imprecisely as "Being a poet is not quite so." Seifert's narrator proceeds to dramatize the heightened perceptions and trials of a poet's existence. Jagasich and O'Grady are misled by the pronoun-free verbs of the Czech original and thus fail to realize that neither the lark in the woods is the agent in the first stanza nor a dove in the second, but that a poet on a walk perceives his beloved and her feminine beauty in nature. A comparison of the first two stanzas should suffice; my close translation appears on the right Being a poet is not quite so. To be a poet, that is not easy. The lark appears in the forest In the woods he discovers a nightingale Fiying over the nest circling over the nest And cannot stop thinking and cannot help remembering —Oh, you sinful bliss: — oh, you sinful delight— Warm, tossed-up mold the warm, tousled hollow Under my lover's arm. in the sweetheart's armpit. A dove goes through the same woods He walks deeper into the woods Because she hears voices, because he hears voices And all gently quivers around her. and all around everything shivers lightly. I am now watching And imagine! A group of young women — Quite nearby he beholds R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 193 One there; another: Those that disappear quietly And evoke only yearning. downy wombs of young women, first one, then another, which recede into hazy indistinctness and leave behind only yearning. Oh no, No, 1 am only leaves and blossoms. And the rose-colored flowers of trees Which sparkle after a rain: So beautiful in the daylight, But then, at night... and rosy trunks of pine trees, which are shining after the rain. It is most beautiful in the daylight and then at night. these are only leaves and a blossom But I cannot be this. (9) But I am not the one! First of all, a lark evokes entirely different connotations than a nightingale does, for which Seifert uses an obsolete, poetic expression (stnbrohlasek). The translators mistook the comparative form of "deeper," hloub, for the word holub, meaning "dove." A "warm, tossed-up mold" (line 6) misses the erotic tone of the original. In Seifert's version the narrator seems to distance himself from the poet presented in the piece who hears voices and believes to see naked young women in the forest. The first person "I" appears only in a one-line refrain "But I am not the one!" which appears three times. Yet all this is ignored as Jagasich and O'Grady pay little attention to point of view in the poem. Not some undefined "I" is leaves and blossoms (line 17), but the poet's delusions are. The translators leave out a line and render 11-13 (in my version) so that it barely resembles the original. Seifert is much more expressive and specific about what the poet sees, not just "a group of young women" but their "downy wombs," their pubic hair, in other words. This apparition does not just "disappear quietly" but the idea is of a slow receding into the haze. I hope that this example illustrates the problem. While the translators claim literalness, their choices are far from precise and are scarcely close to the original. Their decisions are not even justifiable by strictures of form as this poem is in free verse and R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 194 varying rhythm. Therefore, it is all the more surprising to see the arbitrariness of punctuation, capitalisation, and layout in the Jagasich/ O' Grady version. Some of this apparent freedom clearly stems from linguistic incompetence and the outcome is anything but "elegant" or interesting. For example, the next stanza of "Prologue" describes women tending the wounds of victims on the battlefield:".. .and they hurry to the wounded, / to carry their bloodied heads / on the stretchers of their bosoms." This is turned by Jagasich/O'Grady into the following: "And put our bleeding heads / On a stretcher's white pillow— / They do the least to us" (10). This version misses the point of the passage, so typical for Seifert, and resorts to unwarranted padding where the poet is succinct and almost terse. The sloppiness and lack of insight of the whole undertaking become apparent in the next poem, erroneously titled "I Don't Look at People's Souls." (The original poem is untitled but the first line reads "I have not searched for the human soul.") The last quatrain is shown in comparison, my rendering on the right: The most egregious mistake here obviously pertains to trussing the name of the famous ballet and reproducing it as if it were some Czech body of water. This is all the more strange, as labut' means "swan" and hence a well-rounded translator ought to make the appropriate connection. Moreover, the translation team mistakes "crippled" (zmrza&ny) in line 3 for "frozen" (zmrzly). To render "aging" as suffering (line 4) points to another linguistic misunderstanding. In addition, the tone again is grossly She who had so often Danced on Labut Lake Has gotten frozen toes And suffers. (11) But she too who in Swan Lake many times danced on her tips, has crippled toes on her feet and is aging. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 195 misrepresented. The English version sounds clumsy and almost flippant where the original connotes bitterness and a tragic sense of the passing of beauty and time. Thus for Jagasich/O'Grady to lay claim to "a rendering into English of a rich sensibility" (5) misses the point. What they render is anything but Seifert's sensibility; the point of view is entirely their own; whether it is "rich," is likewise debatable. The "deficiencies" — to borrow Ortega y Gasset's term— that is, the losses in these translations vis-a-vis the original Czech, are impossible to systematize and are not justifiable by formal challenges, since these are in fact minimal. The grave flaws of this first attempt by Jagasich and O'Grady are perhaps evident. Therefore, it is perhaps all the more noteworthy that in his short biographical sketch on the dust jacket of his Over the Waves ofTSF, Jagasich implies that the Nobel Prize committee based its choice of Seifert in 1984 on this very English translation— a vain dream indeed.2 An equally ineffective (and sometimes wrong) job was done on Seifert's 1951 collection Mozart v Praze: Tfindct rondeaux [Mozart in Prague: Thirteen Rondeaux] which appeared from Spirit That Moves Us Press in 1985 in a bilingual edition entitled Mozart in Prague: Thirteen Rondels. Here of course the strict form of the rondeau poses an additional challenge. Jagasich and O'Grady made their English rendering rhyme following the original where each of the thirteen pieces follows the pattern ABBA ABAB ABAB A, each rondeau consisting of three quatrains and a final single line. It is evident that the translators slavishly imitate the form, not the tone or content of 2 His actual statement is less straightforward than that but clearly points in this direction: "... The Casting of Bells (1983 - this volume was used by the Nobel Committee)-----"In reality Seifert's work was widely known among slavists who had championed the poet for over a decade before the Jagasich/O'Grady English translation appeared, and before the award was given. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 196 Seifert's original. Yet even the formal transposition leaves a lot to be desired: the lines are long and cumbersome where Seifert's are elegant and poignant. Where his rhyming comes effortlessly— here he has the advantage of the greater variety of inflections in the Czech language— the English version is heavy-handed and contrived. False rhymes like "hooded-flute," "chaste-grace," "ghosts-glow," "beneath-leaf," "here-seared" would be justifiable given the difficult form if the content were rendered so as to resemble Seifert's poetry. Before undertaking actual detailed comparisons, I would like to point out a significant change in the two translators' prefatory note. Where they previously embraced what they perceived as literalness, they now explain that they included the Czech originals not to invite comparisons but to indicate the differences between SL and TL. They quote the Czech poet Miroslav Holub (b. 1923) as pronouncing Seifert's early work to be nearly untranslatable because it relies so heavily on the sound patterns and devices of the Czech language; Holub concludes, according to Jagasich and O'Grady: "The best we can hope to do ,. . . is to create an equivalent poem that reads well in the current tongue." The translator duo then explains its translation theory: Indeed, the English here is intended as a copy of the original only to the extent that we have tried to capture the spirit of the Czech language while keeping the rondel form. A translation which is too literal might not bring over the form, and one that succumbs to the demands of form alone might lose something of the spontaneous and the unpredictable aspects which are so much a part of Jaroslav Seifert's poetry. But form is obviously at the center of these little dances, and so lines were shaped and turned where necessary to keep within the pattern— but never so much, we hope, as to take us entirely away from the meaning, the intent, or the grace of these tightly constructed poems. (Translators' Note, n. p.) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. These statements can again be seen as "disclaimers" aiming against charges the translators almost seem to anticipate. While it is true that the Czech is a richly melodious language, of which Seifert took ample advantage, English likewise is a musical tongue with a predominance of vowels and one that boasts unusual lexical variety. The task indeed should be as Holub suggests "to create an equivalent poem in the current tongue." The word "equivalent" deserves more attention, however. Most translators will agree that it primarily means to create an adequate poem that reads well in the target language by itself, yet without violating the original from which it has been conceived. The extent of this "faithfulness" or "freedom" is still a hotly debated issue. In my own practice I try not to forget that I am translating, not writing a poem of my own. This means that I try to leam as much as possible about the context of the SL text, its genesis, Seifert7 s poetics, etc.; and with all this in mind I attempt a creative transposition into a self-contained English poem that embodies the most important features of the original. Ironically, this is in part what the translator team Jagasich/O'Grady claims to be doing. Yet given the outcome, even if accorded a lot of good-will, their renditions could more appropriately be called "variations" or "imitations," along the lines of Ezra Pound's and Robert Lowell's practices in "translation." That is to say, a poet-translator such as Lowell may choose to give free reign to his imagination, in a work that is basically "inspired" by a single or several features of the SL poem, and he therefore bases the TL text loosely on the original. Often excellent poems result from such endeavor, but unfortunately not so in the case of Jagasich/ O'Grady. The question that still occupies many literary translators, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 198 however, is how far a translator should go and beyond what freedom the product ceases truly to be a translation and instead becomes a variation or imitation. Form indeed is at the center of the rondeau; Seifert may have reread Mallarme or Musset's efforts in this form At the same time, Seifert himself experimented with a variety of styles and forms but never subjugated content solely to form Slavish adherence to form usually happens at the expense of other expressive means. In the case of poetry that primarily relies on musicality, I agree with Paul Verlaine who refen ed to rhyme as faux bijoux. I would argue that rather than rigidly attempting to foist the rondeau form upon an English version, Seifert's Mozart in Prague would have been better served had it been rendered in a looser form, with occasional rhyme, alliteration, internal rhyme, by maintaining the relatively short lines and their rhythm, and by respecting the poet's tone and musicality. In fact, by relying on form too much, the two translators actually sacrifice "the spontaneous and the unpredictable aspects which are so much a part of Jaroslav Seifert's poetry," as they themselves say. They ignore the fact that the poet's lightness and spontaneity are the result of careful craftsmanship. This "unpredictability" does not give license to translators. Jagasich's and O'Grady's "shaping and turning" of Seifert's verse has had the effect the two seemed to have feared; it took them indeed "entirely away from the meaning, the intent, or the grace" of Seifert's poetry and failed to "capture the spirit of the Czech language." A few examples may illustrate this (Jagasich/O'Grady's version is on the left, my translation on the right): I. I. I'd like to play a singing flute, If I could play the flute, while these poems are rimed in place! like I can do rhyming verse! She wants nothing but a dance, Why words? What are they R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 199 for her the words are brutal, and the cold wind rants at the hooded windows, the dark season's forgotten face. I'd like to play a singing flute, while these poems are rimed in place! I look for a grave. Fog covers the route. Gates close behind me, a hand of grace. No, not yet! Here I stay, my boots halt as the dead whisper, white and chaste. I'd like to play a singing flute! to her, who wants to dance, if only the wind she hears in a long winter's dark silence? If I could play the flute, like I can do rhyming verse! I seek a grave. Behind the barred gate looms darkness and they closed perhaps. No, not yet! Standing I remained, whispering here before the dead: If I could play the flute! Although my rendition of this first poem does not adhere completely to the rondeau form and mainly utilizes slant rhyme and internal rhyme, it shows, I believe, that to be close to the original does not mean to be literal and to disregard form. Jagasich and O'Grady allow themselves "exuberances" (Ortega y Gasset) that are difficult to explain even with strictures of form. Why a "singing" flute? Why poems "rimed in place"? There is no indication in the original that words are "brutal"; rather, the speaker regrets that he does not know how to play a flute which he believes his beloved, who likes to dance even to the sounds of the winter wind, would find more enticing than mere words. The third stanza is replete with'unjustifiable padding. The original does not mention fog but speaks of twilight or winter darkness. There is no sign of "a hand of grace," nor are the dead whispering or being "white and chaste." Here rhyme prompted this addition, but unnecessarily, as my rendition shows. The scene evoked in the original is entirely different: the speaker is the one whispering in the silent winter dusk at the cemetery. While far from claiming that they are publishable alternatives, my ad hoc translations represent Seifert better than the Jagasich/O'Grady pieces. The thirteenth R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 200 rondeau may be a case in point, partly because it seems to describe the translation team's practice (my rendition is on the right): The English poem is indeed leaden and wordy, where Seifert's original sounds light and effortless. The first line refers to the poet's self-deprecation, to his doubts about his art. At the same time, it connotes typesetting where lead was used. While heaviness is implied, it is not expressed literally and it certainly does not causally stem from the speaker's longing for the Muse. Rather, the speaker bewails the fact that the Muse has been eluding him. The third stanza is the culmination of ineptitude. The speaker has in mind the Muse's pink leg, that he briefly glimpses— not his own "pink foot" which is “wrapped"', (italics mine). Skepticism about language and a sense of the elusiveness of inspiration, so skillfully suggested in Seifert's original, is entirely missing in the Jagasich/ O'Grady version. Predictably, Jagasich's and O'Grady's translation of Jaroslav Seifert's wartime volume of poetry Sv&tlem od&id (1940), Dressed in Light, suffers from similar defects. Since this long poem does not belong to the poet's early work, and I hope to have shown the fundamental problems riddling the Jagasich/O'Grady collaboration, I will XIII. XIII. My poems are heavy, like molded lead, from this desperate longing after the Muse. I'll stand with her before the threatening truths, and I will stare, suddenly, at the gates of the dead. Forgive me, but my eyes become suffused with the seven-colored light the rainbow sheds. My poems are heavy, like molded lead, from this desperate longing after the Muse. My wrapped pink foot carries me quickly ahead, and my eyes glance, always, after writing sad news to those skies beyond the word said where our steps carry the heart alone and bruised. My poems are heavy, like molded lead. My verses are made from lead, for that Muse I yearned in vain, I go after her, but to my dread at the graveyard gate I stand again. I am scared that vanish she may in a seven-hued rainbow from view, my verses are made from lead, for that Muse I yearned in vain. It is eluding me, the rosy leg, I only observe how after her gain she rises to the skies beyond words, to where steps cease to be gait; my verses are made from lead. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. not go into detail here. Rather I will briefly address the translators' rationale. In their foreword, the two claim that Seifert's long poem has not yet been translated; however, The Selected Poetry ofjaroslav Seifert contains a translation of the first canto by Ewald Osers. The elusive translation theory professed here recalls the previously-discussed volumes: .. .[T]he effort here was not to attempt to twist the poem into an English which perfectly matched its original Czech form, but rather to try to capture the feeling of the moment—and in doing so mix in occasionally the rhymed pattern with the conversational. (7) This again is a very ambiguous statement. It indicates a desire for freedom, yet understanding what "to capture the feeling of the moment" means is difficult. Does "feeling of the moment" signify the historical circumstances, when Seifert faced Nazi censorship and had to write "between the lines"? Or does "feeling of the moment" circumscribe the whimsical nature of the translators' efforts? However one interprets this, one thing seems clear: at this point Jagasich and O'Grady embrace freedom from form, which in itself may be commendable, depending on the formal circumstances. They continue: For translators, of course, the problem is enormous. There is simply too much here to bring across, and perhaps one shouldn't dare, one shouldn't attempt it at all. And yet we realize how important this poem is to the history of the twentieth century really, not just to the history of Czechoslovakian culture. (8) While I agree whole-heartedly with the assessment of Seifert's stature and the importance of his work, the bright-eyed surprise ("There is simply too much here to bring across") expressed in this foreword is naive. Complexity is at the heart of literary translation, particularly when it comes to the translation of verse. This is the case both R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 202 of Casting o f Bells and Mozart in Prague and should not have come as an unexpected revelation to experienced translators. Even where Seifert is at his plainest, this very simplicity is deceptive and a result of meticulous crafting. As Elisabeth Bishop observed in her notes for a Vassar College talk on translation, when it comes to translation of poetry, a good poet-translator can only hope to capture one, or a few at best, of the original's dominant features. This is a given and many commentators on translation have noted this. Rarely will a translation ever turn into a "copy" of the original as Jagasich and O' Grady put it in their preface to Mozart in Prague. Reading this new disclaimer, one would wish the translators had modestly desisted as they allegedly considered doing. Given the qualifications of the translator team Jagasich/O'Grady and their substandard products, their humbleness is appropriate but should have prevented them from seeking publication: This little effort at translation was one that we hesitated about, lingered over, considered again and again. And then, in the final analysis, of all the work we have done by Seifert this one seems to have brought the most joy. It has made us, as translators, not only understand the man he was, but the way he loved. (10) Love of translation and of the author one renders into another language are certainly important prerequisites for success, yet they should not stand alone; instead, they need to be backed up by solid competence, critical acumen, and research. It is not enough to justify a highly deficient product by calling it a "little effort at translation," even if that is exactly what it is. In addition to linguistic and creative proficiency, the need to do research becomes even more evident when one approaches Jagasich's solo attempt Over the Waves ofTSF, apparently published by the Hampden-Sydney College in 1992. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Interestingly, the "Translator's Note" contains no remarks about translation but unsuccessfully seeks to introduce the reader to Dev$tsil — the leftist artistic association of which Seifert was a member in the 1920s— to poetism and to the context of On the Waves ofTSF. This introduction and the text on the dust jacket are riddled with factual errors. Both attest to Jagasich's confusion in dealing with the subject matter at hand. To begin with the very title, "on" is more appropriate than "over" because of the Czech preposition na and since telegrafie sans fil (TSF) also meant the wireless, the early radio, hence "on the air," "on radio waves." Moreover, Jagasich wrongly calls the Czech avant-garde aesthetics of poetism [poetismus in Czech] "poetics," \poetika], and is confused about the historical sequence of artistic and aesthetic movements when he places surrealism before dadaism and cubism. He likewise erroneously claims that On the Waves ofTSF meant the end of poetism as a movement. The biographical note about Seifert also contains several tell-tale inaccuracies that attest to the translator's carelessness and lack of insight. Although it is correct that Seifert did try his hand at translation, he did not do so for a living, as Jagasich suggests. Seifert's knowledge of foreign languages was limited. This is why, unlike Paul Jagasich apparently, he always relied on informants for linguistic assistance. It is perhaps needless to add that Seifert's translations were for the most part successful. Furthermore, it is imprecise and misleading to speak of Seifert as a defender of "Czech nationalism." It would be difficult to convict the poet, who was a patriot and to whom the nation looked up for moral leadership, of chauvinism. The political survey relating to Seifert's life is similarly jumbled and confused. For instance, the Prague Spring occurred in 1968, not in 1969. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Upon reading the clumsy and obscure introduction, one wonders why Jagasich did not address simultaneity and the appeal to the senses, for example, that were so central to poetism as a modernist movement. But what amounts perhaps to the most complete misrepresentation and betrayal of Seifert's On the Waves ofTSF is the "respectful" dedication of the translation "to President George Bush In Grateful Recognition of All His Achievements in Establishing World Peace." A translator should not appropriate an author for such idiosyncratic political purposes. Similarly, Jagasich handles punctuation and capitalization in an erratic and arbitrary fashion. Although he otherwise evidently translated from Seifert's first edition of 1925— teeming with typographical experiments and nearly devoid of punctuation— Jagasich's punctuation and capitalization neither follow the first edition of On the Waves ofTSF, nor its later re editions where the poet made substantial changes following the first printing— added punctuation, and effectively dissolved the collection, the rest of which he then called Honeymoon (see chapter 3). Typography, for instance, was highly significant in this provocative avant-garde experiment. Under the tutelage of his friend, the Dev$tsil theoretician and graphic artist Karel Teige, Seifert conceived of the futurist-inspired typography and layout of the first edition as an important, almost self-sufficient means of expression. Jagasich ignores this aspect of the work. Another of his poor choices concerns the inclusion in this volume of "art work" which is entirely inappropriate for this Seifert collection of experimental poetry; some "naive" illustrations appear to have been supplied by a member of Jagasich's family. Then there is the before-mentioned claim on the dust jacket that the Jagasich and O'Grady translation of The Casting of Bells "brought wider recognition and respect for [Seifert's] subtle genius" and, by extension, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 205 may have precipitated the Nobel Committee's decision. This implication is outrageous; rather the opposite would have been true: Seifert would not have been awarded the Nobel Prize had it relied solely on the existing English translations, least of all on those prepared by Jagasich and O'Grady. As to the translation of On the Waves ofTSF itself, it is yet another confirmation of Jagasich's perhaps "idealistic" but misguided endeavor. The poetic anecdote "Napoleon," for example, loses the element of bemused hilarity in the first two lines, while the "punch line" comes across as too flat, too explicit, where Seifert is playful: My little Gambier pipe has a bowl that looks like the emperor's head Well, hello you great emperor! Is your head finally clear of smoke-filled dreams about world supremacy? (66) My version, which follows Seifert's typography and type arrangement MY GAMBIER PIPE ENTERTAINS ME GREATLY THE EMPEROR'S HEAD IS ITS FUNNY BOWL GOOD DAY FAMOUS EMPEROR! HAS THE DREAM OF RULING THE WORLD AT LAST EVAPORATED FROM YOUR HEAD? [48]3 Similarly, the point is weakened in "Consolation," where Jagasich renders "May fly," or dayfly, the epitome of ephemeral existence, as "butterfly": Young lady, young lady, why cry about the rain that falls all day? What should then the butterfly say about his whole life washed away? (67) miss miss your face is gloomy because it rained on you all day ^The page numbers in brackets refer to my translation of On the W aves ofTSF in this volume and follow the pagination of Seifert's originals. As opposed to the dissertation pagination top right, the bracketed references can be found centered at the bottom of each page in chapter 5. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 206 but what should that little May fly say whose whole life was filled with rain? [49] Elsewhere Jagasich supplies (incorrect) interpretive help with his translation; when Seifert uses the title "Words on magnet" [Slova na magnetu], the translator turns it into the rather literal "Words Written On A Magnet." Likewise, the title "Flaming Fruits" ["Fiery Fruit"] unintentionally seems to point to an entirely different frame of reference. The poem "Hallo" [sic], for instance, contains several inexplicable "exuberances" and outright errors: the third line ("that love of yours is driving me to desperation" [54]) is rendered as: "Your lovely chat makes me quite unhappy" (72). When in the third stanza Seifert invokes "candymaker Love" who makes ice cream from vanilla (line 3), Jagasich turns this into "and confectioner makes love poems out of vanilla icecream." The second line of the fourth quatrain shows how little Jagasich apparently understands imagery. Instead of using something like "On the icicle flute an aria I blow" [54], he translates the line as "I strum an aria out of a few icicles" (72). The point is that icicles resemble flutes while strumming characterizes string instruments. The final stanza gives away a translator who does not understand the original. My rendition follows: I shall never die of the disease called yearning. I mix happiness with cards and cocktails, how sad the funeral of Fratellihi brothers would be, 2 Pierrot deuces with the lute over the streets of Hostcn ^73) And if it were not for love's grief sickness afflicting me I would mix my pleasures like cards and cocktails how sad would the funeral be for the brothers Fratellini pierrot with a lute and boston [55] The sentiment expressed in the first and second lines of the original (and my version) differs from Jagasich's. Cards and cocktails are used in analogy to "pleasures", not as R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 207 another element to be "mixed." The multiple meanings of the Czech verb michat, signifying both to shuffle cards and to mix drinks is unfortunately lost here in both versions. But Jagasich's misunderstanding is clear in the last line where "boston" denotes a popular dance of the 1920s and possibly a card game. The city of Boston most certainly is not the site of such revels— as Jagasich would have known had he done a little research and possessed some knowledge of Seifert's intellectual ambiance and love of anything French: the brothers Albert, Paul, and Francois Fratellini were fairly well-known Paris-based clowns, one of them performing in the costume of pierrot. Several examples from selected poems may complete this discussion. The poem "Concert Cafe" reveals again the same lack of sensitivity for Seifert's poetry. This is Jagasich's translation: The violin performs a dread-nought maneuver over the waves it floats, the captain's hat flies from his head circling the ship as a white seagull. (76) My version: Maneuvering dreadnought meets a violin on the waves the captain's hat flew away circling the ship White bird [58] Here Seifert's stringing together of frequently disparate images, one significant mode of poetist practice, and the resulting multiplicity, indeterminacy, and simultaneity, disappear in over-interpretation (lines 3 and 4). The first two lines contain what probably is another linguistic or conceptual error. The battleship (a dreadnought) meets an unlikely vessel on the waves, a violin. The poetist longing for exotic climes and its bold imagery is somewhat obscured in the third stanza (my version on the right): R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 208 Under our skies grow only paper palmtrees empty streets with shell houses on the barren ocean floors. (76) Under our skies only paper palms survive shells of empty streets on the bottom of evenings [58] Likewise, the poem "Fever," initially dedicated to fellow poet Jin Wolker, who died at 24 of tuberculosis, appears ineptly executed. The third stanza follows (my translation is the second one): Nurse coming out of the dark closes the summer night window, the moon like a yellow crab crawls over the glass blood, wind, mercury. (82) The nurse comes in the twilight closes the window of the summer night and the moon yellow crab creeps along the pane "Wind" for "perfume" in this context makes little sense and the comparison "like" (a yellow crab) is not found in Seifert. Furthermore, in the first stanza of the original, lines 1-3, there is no first person point of view, which Jagasich adds ("His red eyes watch me / deeply sunk in dreams and pillow / the sick man nods" 82) as compared to my version: "Eyes half-closed / sinking into the softness of dreams and down / the patient dozed" [63]. The most egregious and at the same time the most hilarious of Jagasich's unwitting errors is perhaps the following. In the poem "With a Coquettish Lady" the translator shows that he is not aware enough of connotations of the most obvious kind (the first stanza below, my version follows): blood mercury and perfume [63] With a coquettish lady dressed in jockey shorts he chats on horseback and hands her a rose. The lady is a muse, whenever she tries to smile he kisses her in the backward gallop ride. (75) R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 209 With a coquettish lady himself in jockey attire on horseback in the park For a first rose he reaches the lady is a muse when she offers a smile and backwards she kisses his lips [57] The amazing gaffe in the first line ("jockey shorts") is painfully evident. Furthermore, in Jagasich's version it sounds as if the woman, not the man, were wearing the scandalous briefs. The air of chatty conviviality likewise misrepresents Seifert's tone. The poem is deliberately ambiguous in several important instances: for example, where exactly all of the real or imagined action occurs and whether the second stanza still describes the rider, perhaps himself the poet of the last quatrain, who daringly pierces the rose with a rapier ("And in his office like a fencer / the rival with a fencing mask in the mirror / rapier in hand the hurled rose he pierces" [57]). The third stanza concludes as follows (my translation is the second one): That was my heart, the lady moans; good-bye beautiful dream, forever bye y'ol! The poet wakes from the dream and turns around to pierce his own image in the mirror dumbfound. (75) This is my heart wails the lady adieu my beautiful dream The poet falls into a reverie and in a while through his mirror image he runs a rapier [57] The second line sports an American Southern flourish that is entirely out of place where "adieu" would be the appropriate greeting. The gap in my translation of the first line is deliberate; it follows Seifert's own practice. In the poet's original there is only a subtle hint but no absolute certainty that all of the previous action has been the poet's dream. The word zasnit describes daydreaming, reminiscing, or falling into reverie, not sleeping. It is not clear in the original who exactly says "adieu my beautiful dream" and there is no indication whatsoever that the poet is "dumbfound." R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 210 I believe that I have sufficiently illustrated the perplexing practices of Paul Jagasich, with and without Tom O'Grady. After studying their work, one is reminded of the often-cited Italian epigram "Traduttore, traditore"; this pretty pun unfortunately does seem to apply when some translators misappropriate and misrepresent their chosen poetic subject, especially in the name of amateurish infatuation. Although individual mistranslations of the kind I described can be quite funny and entertaining, as a whole they are pernicious, particularly if, as here, the perpetrator seems stubbornly bent on translating the entire Seifert oeuvre. Such irresponsible translation practice gives the already marginalized profession a bad name and hurts the reputation of the brutally violated poet. 2. Ewald Osers and Other Seifert Translators Into English Ewald Osers so far has delivered the most trustworthy translations of Seifert when it comes to accuracy and knowledge of the subject matter at hand. Undoubtedly Osers is familiar not only with the Czech language, but with Seifert as a poet and with the context, in the light of which Seifert needs to be seen. Before examining Osers's translations by themselves, I will compare a translation by Lyn Coffin to Ewald Osers's rendition of the same piece. Like Ewald Ossrs/s work, Lyn Coffin7 s 1.980 rsndaring Ths Plsigiic hAotiiitusTii and bilingual edition of Seifert's Morovy sloup (1977) ranks among the more successful and competent translations of Seifert's poetry. As opposed to Paul Jagasich's and Tom O'Grady's attempts, this project received capable support from SVU Press (an outlet of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in the U. S.), whose editorial board then R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 211 included such well-known members as Uubomxr Durovic, William Harkins, Rene Wellek, George Gibian and as its managing editor, Ladislav Matejka. In Seifert's long poem the plague is an allegory; the readers of samizdats and of the 1977 West-German emigre edition understood it to apply to repression under communism. As Harkins points out in his foreword, Seifert here returns to some elements familiar in his early work: free verse and "a 'city in tears/" while now the aging poet has long outgrown his youthful infatuation with an abstract ideal of communism and assumes an anti communist stance (ix). At the same time, Seifert himself in his afterword to the 1981 edition of Morovy sloup cautions the reader not to fear the volume's title. In a gesture typical of him, he writes that he primarily associates a meeting place for lovers with the plague column and discloses that he considered naming the work "Book of Kisses" so as not to shock his readers (115). Lyn Coffin's translation reveals linguistic competence and the striving to render the original faithfully while also preserving its lyrical beauty. Overall, this English version is readable and interesting. The greatest objection one could make to Lyn Coffin's translation is its occasional awkwardness and verbosity leading almost to over interpretation of Seifert's piece. Short verses in Seifert are often rendered in lines twice as long— unnecessarily so, given the freedom of form in the original and the efficiency of both Czech and English. Finally, the tone is sometimes uneven and takes on too colloquial a note, although of course Seifert's original also features plain language. Several examples follow, along with a comparison of some passages taken from Ewald Osers's selections, which for the most part are more concise and to the point and thus more adequately represent the original. Osers's selections are apparently based on a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 212 version dose to The Plague Column of 1981 that reprinted Seifert7 s "definitive" version from August 1979, whereas Coffin relied on an earlier text. Most of the significant deviations in Coffin's and Osers's texts can be explained through the different source versions they used. The differences between the two translators start with the volume's title. "Monument" is a broad term and could encompass statues and other memorials, not just specifically the plague column that Seifert has in mind and that in the Middle Ages and subsequently was customarily erected when dtizens gave thanks for being spared after a plague epidemic. (One such column with four angels and the Virgin Mary stood on the Old Town Square in Prague in Seifert's youth [Harkins ix].) Osers rightly renders the title as The Plague Column. In his capitalization of some key words that thus emphasizes their allegorical function ("the hour of the Dragon's Claw," "the hour of Smiles," "the hour of Wrath," "the hour of Despair," "Death's turnstile," 81) he follows one of the revised versions while Lyn Coffin translated from the first Czech £migr6 publication of 1977, a volume that is devoid of such tell-tale capitalization. Osers capitalizes "column" itself throughout the poem, which departs from Seifert's practice. Generally, Osers's version is more idiomatic and succinct and he maintains an even tone, except perhaps for the rare exceptions of "whence" and "thither" (81,82) which have an unwarranted obsolete ring. On the other hand, he is right in rendering Seifert's "k tumiketu Smrti" (1981; 61) as "to Death's turnstile" (81) rather than as "to the tourniquets of death" in Coffin's version (5). Several examples may suffice: When the bubonic piague flourished in Prague, When bubonic plague was raging in Prague they used to bring the dead there. they laid the dead around the chapel. They stacked them one on top of the other in layers. Body upon body in layers. After many years the stack of bones looked like Their bones, over the years, grew into R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 213 a badly-structured campfire burning slowly in a white storm of caustic lime and clay. (Coffin, M orovy sloup 15) rough-stacked pyres which blazed in the quicklime whirlwind of clay. (Osers, Selected Poetry 82) Osers's translation is at first glance shorter and more efficient. There is no doubt that "raging" (Seifert uses simply the verb "to be") describes the plague's effect more aptly than "flourished" does (line 1). "Burning slowly / in a white storm" (Coffin) creates a contradiction where Seifert employs the word hofely and where Osers appropriately chooses "blazed." The next example likewise shows the trend in Coffin to wordiness while Osers attempts to be concise, very much like the original: I stood on the tavern steps in Olsany On the steps of the Olsany taverns in the evening - 1 used to listen I used to crouch at night to hear to the men who dug graves and shouldered corpses the corpse-bearers and grave-diggers as they sang their cynical drinking songs. singing their rowdy songs. (Coffin, M orovy sloup 15) (Osers, Selected Poetry 83) In the original there is no indication whether the narrator stood or even "crouched," he merely listened, but Osers renders the last two lines in particular with much greater precision and simplicity. "Rowdy songs" describes neurvale pz'sn£well while "cynical drinking songs" borders on over-interpretation. Czech drinking songs are mostly bawdy or sentimental, but rarely "cynical." The third line is especially awkward in Coffin's rendering (for noside mrtool a hrobniky). Such narrowing of meaning occurs in the analogy, "like a scuba diver, clinging to a slim amphora" (39), where "diver" (potdpdS) would have been sufficient. The following example shows a rare instance when Osers himself appears wordier than necessary and evidently errs in the choice of tenses: The plague still rages and the doctors The plague still rages and it seems the doctors have apparently taken to calling the sickness ' are giving different names to the disease by different names, in order to prevent panic. to avoid a panic. Its still tire same old death though, Yet it is tire same old death R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 214 nothing else, and so contagious not even the smallest creature can escape. and nothing else, ' and it is so contagious no one alive can escape it Whenever I look out the window, thin horses are pulling the ill-fated wagons with their narrow caskets. Its just that bells aren't much in use now, one doesn't paint crosses on one's house and no one relies on juniper smoke. (Coffin, Morovy sloup 25) Whenever I have looked out of my window emaciated horses have been drawing that ill-boding cart with a shriveled coffin. Only those bells aren't tolled so often now, crosses are no longer painted on front doors, juniper twigs no longer burnt for fumigation. (Osers, Selected Poetry 84) The first stanza is more concise than Lyn Coffin's, but the last three lines of the second stanza could use some tightening. The bells are not specified (so "those" is not needed); they refer to the formerly frequent tolling of the country's and Prague's many bells, a practice which the communists discontinued. "For fumigation" may have been left out. In the second line "ominous," or "portentous" could have done the trick better than "ill-boding" or "ill-fated." But in general, Osers's translation comes across as more elegant and sensitive than Lyn Coffin's occasionally awkward verses, as the following example illustrates: Then one day we met But suddenly we met at the steps of the fountain at the steps of the fountain, and, after, went different directions at different times, we each went somewhere else, at another time differently, on different sidewalks. and by another path. (Coffin, Morovy sloup 33) (Osers, Selected Poetry 85) An interesting question about the translation of place names arises in the case of the "Mala Strana cemetery" (Coffin, Morovy sloup 21) and "the Little City cemetery" (Osers, Selected Poetry 84). Mala strana, or Kleinseite in German, is the picturesque left bank of the Vltava (Moldau) river in Prague's very center. Tourist guides sometimes do not translate it at all or render it as Lesser Quarter or Lesser Town, yet unlike the German name, this term has no tradition. "Little City," although close enough as a R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 215 translation, is not commonly used. In general, the practice among translators tends to be to translate telling place names. Though Seifert uses a conversational tone ("Jenom si nedejte namluvit, / ze mor ve meste ustal."), translating the lines as "Don't let anybody con you into thinking / the plague here is over," rings too colloquially (Coffin, Morovy sloup 25). Osers's "Don't let them dupe you / that the plague's at an end:" (Selected Poetry 84) similarly strikes me as too slangy, where "Don't let them fool you" would have sufficed. There are several such instances in Coffin's rendering of the poem. In a section that Osers omits, Lyn Coffin translates the terse line "'Mlc, mesto, neni slyset jez!" as "Shut up, town, I can't hear water going over the dam!" (53). "Hush, town, I can't hear the dam!" would have been adequate. Similarly, she renders the Czech appellation for "nurse" (sestfidko, or sestro—from sister, or nun) as "Little sister" (39), which clearly conjures up different, interfering connotations. Before examining Ewald Osers's few selected translations from the four early Seifert works that I rendered into English, a brief discussion of J. K. Klement's and Eva Stucke's authorized translation and bilingual edition of Wreath ofSonnets/V&nec sonetu (1987) seems useful. Contrary to the Jagasich/O'Grady collaboration, this is a serious and competent undertaking, where the translators exhibit an in-depth understanding of Seifert, whose authorization they sought and received. The slim volume was put out by the reputable exile press in Toronto, Sixty-Eight Publishers. The bilingual preface, each version clearly addressing a different audience, reveals the translator team's goal "to preserve the original idiom by adhering strictly to its meaning as well as to its rhyming and rhythmical structure" and their hopes that "they have succeeded in approximating R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 216 the original closely enough to give the English-language reader an appreciation of the formal skill, dignified craftsmanship, and beauty of Jaroslav Seifert's A Wreath of Sonnets" (12). It also becomes evident that the translators belong to the school of translators who emphasize formal features of poetry and feel rather ambivalent about poetic prose renderings of strict poetic forms. This is perhaps why they chose a Seifert work that is a formal tour de force. The volume contains fifteen sonnets, rhyming ABBA CDDC EFE GGF with symmetrically alternating nine and eight syllables, where rhyming lines have the same number of stresses. Klement and Stucke call it the "Seifertian Sonnet," a complex modification of the Shakespearean variety (8). Not only does each poem begin with the last line of the previous sonnet and the first lines of the fourteen sonnets comprise the final, fifteenth one, but the sonnets II, VI and X follow the even more rigorous structure ABBA CDDC EAE GGA, thus making "The Wreath [...] not a simple collection or sequence of fifteen sonnets, but [...] a single poem of fifteen distinct constituent parts, a complex, highly structured organism" (10). As the preface suggests, Klement and Stucke are concerned to remedy and explain the lack of critical appreciation which Seifert experienced prior to his Nobel Prize award, and even after it. They attribute this misperception in Western countries partly to existing translations which, as they rightly put it, do not adequately represent the poet (9). They explain this situation through critiquing the tendency of translators to focus only on Seifert's late free verse works which may be obscure because they thrive on specific geographical and national references. Moreover, they say, since Seifert is not a philosophical poet, the prose-like form of his later poetry and its specifically Czech references are lost in translations of lyrical prose which do not render elements of R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 217 melody and rhythm of the original and make the poet seem unremarkable (11). Their answer is to choose a work of daunting structure which they propose to translate in its strict form "to preserve the original idiom of the poetry"— which encompasses meaning as well as rhyme and rhythm— better than "free translation" (volne pfetlumo&ni) could. Only then, will the English-speaking world be acquainted "with the true Seifert" (se skutefriym Seifertem) (11), and his remarkable talent. Although Klement and Stucke do an admirable job rendering this complex serial poem into English, their premise is somewhat questionable. A Wreath of Sonnets is hardly fully representative of Seifert, who experimented with a wide variety of forms in his six decades of writing and as often embraced free or irregular form as he did strict or fixed rhyme and rhythmic patterns. The translators themselves explain in the preface that this volume was a rebellious act directed against Stalinist critics who had denounced the poet's "formalist" tendencies. Seifert responded by crafting a piece that was the pinnacle of formal achievement (8). But more important than this issue of whether Seifert— or any other modem poet, for that matter— is best represented by strict poetic form, is the translator team's tacit assumption that it is possible to transport both, form and content, structure and meaning, from the original into the target language. They insist that they succeeded in "carrying over" (a reference to the etymological root of translation) the before-mentioned characteristics of the sonnets into English and wonder whether their rendering will conjure up in an English-speaking reader emotions and impressions similar to those of the reader of the Czech original, particularly in the light of the fact that poetry has a wide audience in the Czech speaking community (11). There is little mention of the poetry translator's classical R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 218 dilemma: what to compromise on, the form or the content, and which is the most characteristic feature of the original, thus deserving to be preserved most completely and adequately. Klement and Stucke clearly lean toward faithful rendering of (strict) form as it, to them, apparently most reassuringly defines what poetry is. To these translators, the transposition of Seifert'"s intricate sonnet form into English constitutes the ultimate challenge. It is indeed a technical challenge; however, the sacrifices in terms of meaning, lexical choices, and, most commonly, the addition of padding due to the requirements of the form, are discreetly omitted from the brief prefatory discussion. Moreover, where Seifert's rhymes seem to flow naturally (here in the first sonnet), the English rendition sometimes reads forced, although the use of false rhymes is perhaps unavoidable: Yet, may the alarm sirens, please, At’ sireny vsak nad domy take off their helmets, silent, muted. daji si radsi prilbu s £ela, They haven't stopped yet, they have hooted, beztak nam jeste nedoznela the sirens of hour consciences. (16) sir6na naSich svgdomi. (17) Yet, on the whole, the project has integrity and attests to the translators' considerable skill and formal mastery. They also must be commended for debunking one of the persistent myths (propagated by the before-mentioned poet Miroslav Holub and others) about translating Jaroslav Seifert, according to which anything he wrote before the mid-1960s is "virtually untranslatable" since the poetry relies so much "on devices of sound and musical technique." The authors rightly point out that English with its lexical variety more than compensates for the richness of Czech inflections that greatly facilitate rhyming (12). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 219 Ewald Osers, although the most accomplished Seifert translator to-date, likewise seems to subscribe to the belief that the poet7 s early work (again, this effectively rules out anything written at least prior to 1950) should best be left alone. George Gibian's preface to Osers's translations in The Selected Poetry ofjaroslav Seifert reveals the three main criteria for inclusion in the anthology: "intrinsic quality, representativeness, and translatability" (14). In practice, this means that the authors preferred texts dealing with "universal themes" to poems drawing strongly on specifically Czech themes. Gibian explains why most of the selections in the anthology stem from the poet's mature and late work: "The poems of Seifert's early and middle periods often depended so heavily on effects of sound that they lose much of their quality in translation or are altogether untranslatable" (14). A little later Gibian explains this in more detail: Not only is Seifert a genius at finding surprising, original rhymes, but he mingles meters and rhythms with patterns of vowels and consonants, assonances, internal rhymes, and half-rhymes. Particularly untranslatable are his harmonies based on long vowels, which in Czech are independent of stress and carry phonological meaning (unlike those in English or Russian). (Gibian 15) However, Gibian also admits that "the chief qualities of [Seifert's] poetry can be conveyed in translation, and they enjoy universal human appeal"; furthermore, he rightly remarks on the poet's lyricism (particularly in the early work), the charm and magic of his poetry (15). The former statement counteracts the pronouncement of untranslatability. Certainly, some of the key features of Seifert's poetry occasionally fall by the wayside in a translation, but it is certainly true that internal rhymes, half-rhymes and assonances, for example, can be imitated in English. Lyricism is a universal R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 220 characteristic and can be attempted by a translator. Even if the result is not always completely satisfactory, Seifert's poetry in translation should still try to convey the poet7 s sensuality, his eroticism, and hedonism (Gibian), to the English-speaking reader. Moreover, besides its aesthetic stature, the thus translated poetry may yet have a very specific historical value and be of interest as a piece of the modernist puzzle in the Europe of the 1920s. Osers himself elucidates his translation practice in a short essay where he analyzes two Seifert poems, "Song of the Native Land" [from Pfilba hliny (A Helmetful of Earth), 1947] as well as "And Now Goodbye" (from The Plague Column). He eschews theory from the start, proposing instead to "try to justify (if I can) what I did" (89). Then he briefly presents the shortcomings both of the traditional Russian school of translation, which stresses poetic form over content, and of the Western school, whose insistence on functional equivalence Osers finds problematic.4 He seems to feel confined by prescriptive rules and argues that effects of the same feature may differ between languages and audiences. What he proposes instead does not come as a surprise when one considers recent and now commonly accepted precepts about translation: I believe that each poem is a multi-factorial construct, that each individual poem must therefore be examined by the translator for the relative importance of its different ingredients— what the Germans would call their Stellenwert—, that each poem has to be examined for the text-specific degree 0 ( A r i O l I I I n T 1 W t S A A ^ A y m o l a I a t w a w ^ c A V/ligllIUUi)> f (UIU aOutVUC V /l lO IVlUkUi VlVUIVllOi (Osers 91) fu n ction al equivalence essentially denotes the goal of a translator to achieve for the TL reader an equivalent effect as the SL text had on the reader of the original, form being merely one of the features of the poem (Osers 90). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 221 In other words, a cautious evaluation is called for, one that approaches each poem anew with a set of tools most appropriate for it. Rather than relying on reader response and expectation, as the concept of functional equivalence does, this method foregrounds the text itself, whose expressive means dictate or suggest the appropriate transposition into a foreign language. This principle also tacitly acknowledges that in a given poetry translation, not all features of the SL text can always be transported into the TL; instead, a hierarchy of choices or a priority list of most characteristic stylistic and other features must be established. It is also implicit in this method that the translator needs to be a good judge or critic of the material if he or she hopes to make justifiable choices. Most translators today would probably agree with these basic principles and with the simple advice Osers gives to aspiring newcomers: (1) By all means read all you can about the translation of poetry, but remember that each poem is an individual entity and creates its own rules. (2) Listen to the poem. Live with it in your head. You won't have to reflect very hard to discover which are the more important and which the less important elements in it. (3) And finally: don't translate a poem unless it speaks to you, unless it switches you on. If you aren't excited about a poem, you won't do a good job of the translation. (Osers 98) These guidelines point in the direction modem translation theory has taken. Douglas Robinson in The Translator's Turn (1991), for instance, recognizes the importance of intuition in the translation process. Robinson calls the "gut feeling" of the skilled translator, who simply knows when something jeeZs right, the somatics of translation.5 While we may agree on the theoretical formulation of such principles, the degree to ^Before Robinson, Vladimir Prochazka likewise accounted for intuition: "The considerations that I am talking about here were really going through my head as I was doing the work... often almost instinctively" (103). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 222 which they are actually met in a given translation, may remain open to debate. The third recommendation reflects a widely-held view that a special affinity ought to form between the poet one translates if the rendering is to be successful. Mary Ann Caws made a case for this verity in her presentation "The Ethics of Translation" at the 1994 MLA Convention in San Diego. In general, translators would seem to want to apply themselves to their thankless task only if they truly admire the poet whose work they have chosen. Overall, Osers's practice is characterized by careful observation of the source text, complete understanding of the intricacies of Czech language and culture, and by literalness— the latter occasionally at the expense of poetry, however. Still, among the existing translations, Osers's renditions of Seifert's work are the most faithful English versions and best represent the poet. In the above-mentioned essay Osers seems to pride himself on indulging in very few "liberties," so much so that he says "my translation is semantically so close that even Nabokov would have approved" (98). He insist on deviating from Seifert's text only where English idiomatic usage and functional equivalence demand it. This claim, however, does not always hold and shows the limits of objectifiable "rules" in translation. Rather, translators often seem to rationalize ex post choices they have made intuitively and which, due to their obviously subjective nature, may not seem justifiable to other translators and readers to the same degree. The poem "And Now Goodbye" may serve as an example before I turn to a brief discussion of Osers's selected translations of Seifert's early poetry (Seifert's original is on the left): R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 223 [•••] Miloval jsem tuto fee. A ta, kdyz prinuti mlcici rty, aby se zachvgly, snadno primeje milence k polibkum, loudaji-li se cervankovou zemi, kde zapada slunce pomaleji nez v tropech And that which forces silent lips to quiver will make young lovers kiss as they stroll through red-gilded fields under a sunset slower than in the tropics Poezie je s ndmi od pocatku. Jako milovani, jako hlad, jako mor, jako valka. Nekdy byly moje verse posetiie Az hanba Poetry is with us from the start. Like loving, like hunger, like the plague, like war. At times my verses were embarrassingly foolish [...] (Osers 96) [...] (Osers 97) The second line of the excerpt in Seifert unambiguously refers to the (Czech) language which in the preceding line the speaker professes to have loved. It expresses a common Seifertian theme, according to which language and love are closely associated, words being instrumental and yet often woefully inadequate vis-a-vis the unspeakable. In Czech the grammatical gender of language (feminine) and the following feminine demonstrative pronoun ta clearly establish this reference which is blurred in Osers's somewhat awkward version, "And that which forces silent lips " When a translator takes such pride in literalness, he should perhaps not add young to lovers and leave out easily in line 4. But the contraction of lines 11 and 12 into a single line is a graver deviation because it robs the original of its lightness and simplicity, turning it into an unwieldy, long line, "embarrassingly foolish" being a particular "clunker." Osers may sometimes make choices in his vocabulary and style that are debatable, but his translations are reasonably close and qualitatively best among the existing English translations because they provide a reliable introduction to the English-speaking reader who wants to grasp why Seifert received the Nobel Prize in R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 224 literature in 1984. Osers's translations are artistically as well as formally adequate in overall effect and successful in capturing the "essence" of most of Seifert's work. Obviously, in translation personal preferences are involved and lead to different choices. It is a commonly accepted fact that translation, which requires reading and interpretation, is ultimately idiosyncratic although, naturally, the choices should be justifiable and objectifiable to some extent. Or as John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte put it in their Introduction to The Craft of Translation: We know that two different translators will never come up with exactly the same translation, since their initial way of seeing a work varies according to the presuppositions they bring to a text. No two translators perceive every moment in a text with a similar awareness or intensity, which leads to varying value judgments within a text about what elements should be chiseled out for the act of transplantation from the source-language situation into the target language, (xv) Not only is there variation between several, more or less valid translations of the same text but even one and the same translator may decide to render a text differently than he or she did the first time around: Mention needs to be made of the translator's own perspective, which precedes any kind of interpretation. Words don't find their equivalencies in the new language, nor do cultural expressions, and the translator will never approach a text twice the same way. [...] On one day the translator might say "maybe" and on the next day "perhaps" for the same word in the source-language text. (Biguenet and Schulte xiv) With this in mind, the following examples of differences between Ewald Osers's translations and my own may suffice. In general, Osers engages in a moderate amount of padding to achieve an occasional rhyme, where I tend to use inversions. His lines for the most part turn out longer even than Seifert's irregular and occasionally relatively extensive lines, a problem that could be alleviated if Osers dropped unnecessary articles, for example. As to punctuation and stanzaic form, Osers does not follow the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 225 original as closely as I do. Moreover, he seems primarily to have correct English usage in mind, which excludes the use of inversions and other creative means that might seem "foreign" in an English version, yet constitute an addition or innovation in the TL. For comparison, what follows is an excerpt from "Introductory Poem" or "Town in Tears," as Osers calls it, from City in Tears, Seifert's first collection (my version follows below): Yet were I to flee to the wood and the deer, to the flower and the brook, such sorrow would weigh my heart down that, without turning to look at all the beauty and quiet and passion, I should go back to the town, the town that welcomes one in its ice-cold fashion, where the nightingale ceases to sing and the pine-wood loses its smell, where not only man is enslaved, but the flower, the bird, the horse and the humble dog as well. (Selected P oetry 21) yet if I fled into the woods to the deer, flowers and springs, such a sadness in my heart would abound, that without even looking around, how much beauty, peace and passion there is, I would return to town, into the city, which welcomes man with its iron virtue, where no nightingale sings and no fir sweetly smells, where enslaved is not only man, but flower, bird horse and humble dog. [9-10] It would be difficult to maintain that there are fundamental differences between the two versions. Upon first glance, my rendering is more concise, the lines shorter. The only major deviation is "ice-cold fashion" in line 3, where Seifert explicitly uses the word for virtue, ctnost which he characterizes as "iron." I thought this expression worthy of preserving as it has an estranging effect as an image even in Czech. I also chose the word "city" over "town" because the focus here clearly is on industrial development and its negative impact on all living creatures. Seifert undoubtedly has Prague in mind, which qualifies for a city, not a town. The next poem, "A Song About R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 226 Girls" from Sheer Love, may further illustrate some of the generally minor differences (my version on the right): Across the dty flows a mighty river, seven bridges bestride it A long river runs through the town's center, across it seven bridges reach. along the embankment walk a thousand pretty girls on the embankment stroll a thousand lovety girls, and no two are alike. From heart to heart you go to warm you hands in love's great wanning flame; and different is each. Rom heart to heart you wander to warm your hands amidst rays of love warm and magnificent along the embankment walk a thousand pretty girls on the embankment stroll a thousand lovety girls, and they're all the same. (O sers, Selected Poetry 24.) and none of them is different [28] Both versions make an attempt to rhyme the second and the fourth lines of each quatrain, following Seifert's original. Each captures the tone, content and form of Seifert's poem. The only reservation I have against Osers's version is "a mighty river" in the first line. This has the ring of the Mississippi or at least the Ohio River to it, while Seifert without question had in mind the modest Moldau River, which bisects the city of Prague. When it comes to Seifert's experimental poetist volume On the Waves ofTSF, I believe that Osers should have been more daring in his translation and more willing to violate conventions and expectations. After all, Seifert does the same: his lines are often choppy, rich with unexpected juxtapositions and disparate images strung together, as in "Fiery Fruit" — "Red-Hot Fruit" in Osers's translation (my version on the right): To love poets the vanishing fauna of Yellowstone Park And yet we love poetry poetry the eternal waterfall Long-range guns were shelling Paris Poets in steel helmets [...] Sacred birds on slender legs like shadows rock the fate of worlds To love poets the dying fauna of YELLOWSTONE PARK and yet we love poetry poetry eternal waterfall Long-range cannons were shelling Paris poets in helmets [...] Sacred birds like shadows on thin legs sway the fate of worlds R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 227 Cartilage is dead And the wind plays in the sugar cane a thousand clarinets Carthage is dead and the wind plays sugar canes a thousand clarinets The star was struck by lightning A star was struck by lightning and it's raining The water's surfaces swirl like taut drum skins Revolution in Russia the fall of the Bastille and the poet Mayakovsky is dead and it is raining surfaces of waters tight drums whirled revolution in Russia capture of the Bastille and the poet Mayakovsky is dead Butpoeby a honeyed mood dripping sweet juices into the flowers' calixes but poetry a honied moon drips sweep juices into flower cups (Osers, Selected Poetry 25-26) [8-9] The two excerpts again are very similar. I follow more closely the original layout and typography of Seifert's first edition for reasons that I detail in chapter 3. In line 5 ,1 dispensed with the article, making "eternal waterfall" less explicitly linked to "poetry." "Cannons" seem more appropriate than "guns" while Osers's verb "shelling" strikes me as better than my original choice "shooting at." Adding "steel" to helmets seems unnecessary in the context of war and is not warranted by the original which Osers otherwise follows very closely. In lines-12 and 13 Osers has the wind play in the sugar cane while Seifert7 s version clearly evokes the image of sugar cane as a kind of a flute or clarinet, which the wind plays like an instrument. The absence of articles in Czech makes both choices, "a star" or "the star" possible. However, in the associative context here of the French and the October revolutions and given the practice in Soviet Russia to place red stars on top of buildings, the definite article appears to be the more obvious choice. In lines 16 and 17 the connection between the water surfaces and whirling drums is less obvious than Osers makes it when he turns line 17 into a simile. The two images of water and drums are strung together associatively and clearly there is a leap R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 228 from one to the next; using the more conventional "like" erases that leap. "Calixes" in the final line is rather harsh and unpoetic where the image evoked is one of sticky sweetness. Like Seifert I use a finite verb (drips) in the penultimate line. Osers's participle more directly attributes "a honeyed mood" to "poetry" and narrows the associative link. Whenever a translator attempts to rhyme, a certain amount of padding can be expected. This is the case in the poem "Honeymoon." Yet rather than trying to yoke a poem into a rhyme scheme, a translator should try to attempt rhyme and to use inversions if this is possible without distorting meaning and violating usage (unless, of course, such violations are a feature of the SL text). I underlined the additions in Osers's version that I find unwarranted: If itwere not for afl those foolish kisses If it were not for those foolish kisses we'd not be taking honeymoon trips to the sea — we would not go on honeymoons but if it weren't for honeymoon trips yet if it were not for the honeymoons what use then all those wagon-lits? what good would Wagons lits do? Perpetual fear of railway station bells, Unending anxiety of train station bells ah wagon-lits, honeymoon sleeping cars, wedding cars ah Wagons lits all wedded happiness is brittle glass, that marital bliss is like fragile glass a honeyed moon stands in a sky of stars. a honied moon is descending My love, look at the Alpine peaks outside. My dear in the windows can you see the Alps we'll let foe window down, we'll smell the amaranth. let's open the window for perfumes wide foe sugary white of snowdrops, lilies, snow— see foe sugar of snowdrops supple snow of lilies behind foe zvagon-lit's the zvagon-restaumnt. behind Wagons lits is Wagon restaurant Ah ivagons-restmmmts, cars for a honeymoon. Ah Wagons restaurants wedding cars to stay in them forever and to sup forever to be their guest and then to dream with knife and fork on dreams that end too soon. about happiness in marriage over delicate cutlery HANDLE WITH CARE GLASS FRAG ILE! THE SIDE UP! HANDLE WTIH CARE CAUTION GLASS! And one more day and then another night. And yet another night and yet another day two marvellous nights, two marvellous days like these. two beautiful days and two beautiful nights Where is my Bradshaw, that poetic book, Where is my train schedule that book of poetry oh but the beauty of my wagpns-litsl oh how beautiful are my railway cars Oh wagpns-restaurants and wagons-litsl oh Wagons restaurants and Wagons lits Oh honeymoons! (Osers, Selected Poetry 27) oh honeymoon [13] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 229 Aside from padding, wagons-lit’s in line 12 points to a typographical error while lines 14-15 border on over-interpretation. Line 16 strikes me as too long and cumbersome. As far as punctuation, capitalization and the use of italics are concerned, Osers engages in a practice entirely his own. Neither the first edition of 1925 nor a scholarly edition of Seifert's first five collections (1989), which is based on last revisions by the author, matches Osers's version. But most importantly, Osers introduces an inappropriate frame of reference by narrowing the meaning of "train schedule" (jizdni fad) in general by calling it "Bradshaw" (line 19). The three poems from The Nightingale Sings Poorly that Osers chose to include in The Selected Poetry o f Jaroslav Seifert—“Moscow," "Apple Tree With Cobweb Strings," and "Panorama"— are similar in method and perhaps need not be discussed in detail. Overall, I hope to have shown that Ewald Osers's practice by far surpasses Paul Jagasich's and Tom O'Grady's attempts, and is preferable to Lyn Coffin's translations. Eva Stucke and J. K. Klement, with their emphasis on formal criteria, rank in a class of their own because their goal is quite distinct from the goals of the other translators. As far as Seifert's early work is concerned, it is best represented so far by Osers's few selections. No other able translator to-date has attempted to translate the early volumes into English in their entirety. 3. German Translations of Jaroslav Seifert As mentioned earlier, when Seifert was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984, the situation on the German market was similar to that of English-language publishing. In the bookstores only one slim volume, selections from Seifert's late R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. poetry, was readily available in German translation: Im Spiegel hat er das Dunkel, ably translated by the poet Oily Komenda-Soentgerath and published by the small press Horst Heiderhoff Verlag. Predictably, after the award, there was a modest rush to accommodate the demand from the reading public and to benefit from the author's recent exposure. Seifert's memoir Alle Schdnheit dieser Welt [All the Beauties of the World] appeared in 1985, translated by Hans Gartner, and it achieved success sufficient for a paperback edition in 1987. The Swiss press Coron Verlag published Der Regenschirm vom Piccadilly [An Umbrella from Piccadilly] and Die Pestsdule [The Plague Column] in one volume (1984); unfortunately, the name of the translator is not included in the bibliographical information available from German libraries— it is a deplorable but frequently encountered practice to omit translators from such publication information— for example, in the United States from Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data. The year 1985 saw publication of Oily Komenda-Soentgerath's translation of Seifert's immensely popular Czech volume Maminka [Mother], Was einmal Liebe war. That same year the book Der Halleysche Komet [Hailey's Comet] was published, the German version provided by the highly regarded translator Hans Peter Kiinzel. This very collection by the same translator appeared in 1988 in a paperback edition alongside the volume Der Regenschirm vom Piccadilly. Since dealing with all German-language translations of Seifert's work would transcend the scope of this dissertation, I will focus in some detail only on Seifert's early work in German translation, of which only On the Waves ofTSF has been translated. This volume appeared in 1985 in Vienna, Austria and was published by the small press Hora Verlag. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. The book, Aufden Wellen von TSF, is a meticulously executed facsimile edition of Seifert's 1925 version of On the Waves of TSF. This translation was done by a team which used a time-honored yet controversial method: a Czech-born informant, Eva H. Plattner, supplied trots or cribs which were then recast into poetry by contemporary Austrian poets, Friedrich Achleitner, H. C. Artmann, Gerhard Riihm, Peter Weibel, and the Czech-bom writer Jan Faktor. The result is encouraging. The collection is readable and not slavish to the SL poetry, yet generally faithful, down to the last typographical feature of Karel Teige's graphic experiments. The text on the dust jacket explains the intent of the publisher and editor to complement Seifert's poetry with congenial partners. Representatives of the Wiener Gruppe (Achleitner, Artmann and Ruhm) were recruited, since their aesthetic program closely resembles Seifert's earlier poetist endeavor. Artmann himself is a translator from several languages into German while Achleitner is a proponent of concrete poetry. All participants have ties to experimental art of some kind. The publisher is careful to refer to the efforts of the team of poets as Nachdichtungen (paraphrase or free versions), not translations, yet the outcome is very close to Seifert's original and at the same time it is aesthetically self-sufficient, as any poetry translation should be. The distribution of the 49 poems among the poets is as follows: Riihm has sixteen poems to his credit, Artmann fifteen, Weibel seven, Faktor six, and Achleitner five. Eva H. Plattner's extensive Afterword does a fine job in creating a context for On the Waves of TSF and poetism. The remarkable feature of this volume is that the team decided to dispense with the conventional German capitalisation of nouns and except for names and some beginnings of lines used lower-case characters throughout, thus approaching Czech R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 232 usage. This in itself constitutes a gesture of defiance and has an estranging effect on the German reader quite in keeping with Seifert's provocative 1925 edition. Likewise, the German version is characterized by unconventional features such as omitted articles where normal usage would require them (for instance in titles of poems) and transliteration o ift as ss. Furthermore, the German translation is very "efficient," that is, concise throughout, which in part becomes possible when compounds are used or when verbs are left out even where Seifert used them. German grammar, of course, allows greater liberty than English with fragments, run-on sentences, and word order; thus, a translation of Seifert into German is significantly aided by such grammatical similarities with Czech structure. Achieving efficiency is essential since German words tend to be longer than either Czech or English words and since approximating the original's line length ought to be among a translator's priorities. The translations represent an accurate German equivalent of Seifert's poetist original. Gerhard Riihm, who was wisely given the greatest number of the poems in this volume, is the most congenial partner to Seifert. When he attempts the casual rhyme of the original, he does so effortlessly and without much padding. In some cases he dispenses with rhyme entirely, like in "Hochzeitsreise" (Honeymoon). He seems to have most fully understood Seifert's playfulness and occasionally pleasantly surprises the reader with original sound patterns, such as internal rhymes and alliteration, that imitate successfully what Seifert achieves in Czech: "ein matter schmetterling landet auf rosen in ihrem haar" [7, line 15]; "auf wellen von wolken durchschwebt sie die nacht" [19, line 12]; "und kosten dann kosten honig holder haare / die auf weisse kissen fliessen" [31, lines 11-12]; "Um kaltes gluhbimenlicht / flackem fliigel in R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 233 rastloser hast" [38, lines 1-2]; "Voll veilchenduft ist das fragile glas des winters / will verse in lvrische frisuren flechten wie meines madchens haare" [53, lines 1-2].6 The second stanza from "Worter auf magnet" [Words on magnet] may illustrate this artistry with sound even more fully: Wasser gefror im exotenaquarium bis zum boden goldfische starr verharren zwischen zarten grasem und mitten im januar bliihen papierrosen Eine halbkugel neigt die nacht sich glasem [52] Riihm's renditions of "harbor" (hafen), "the sea" (meer), "Hotel 'Cote d'Azur,"' "My Italy" (Mein Italien), "Nightlights" (Nachtlichter), "All perfumes" (Alle diifte), "Lightbulb" (Gliihbime), and "Lawn-tennis" are excellent because he strikes a perfect balance between creating a German Seifert -poem and yet producing a readable, witty, and original piece in its own right. Ruhrn's versions are "minimalist," in the sense that most are concise and terse where Artmann's are excessively chatty and padded.7 Riihm only rarely misses the exact point of a Seifert line. In "Hochzeitsreise" (Honeymoon), however, he moves a phrase to the point of reversing the line's meaning. In line 19 ("Where is my train schedule that book of poetry") he writes "Wo ist der gedichtband mein fahrplan" [13].® This important poetist feature, where ordinary objects are elevated to the realm of art or conversely, where art infuses everyday life and ordinary objects, is lost here: "Where is the book of poetry my (train) schedule." ®The bracketed pagination is identical with the page numbers in brackets in this dissertation, chapter 5 and thus equals the pages in the first edition of 1925. 7Cf. a line like the following: "mond gelbe krabbe kriecht die scheiben hinauf" ("and the moon yellow crab creeps along the pane") [63, line 7] ®The English equivalents are taken from the translations in this dissertation. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 234 The book of poetry thus becomes something of a programmatic guideline, a meaning far removed from Seifert's poetist sensibility. Such instances are rare, though. Ruhm's versions are very convincing both as "translations" and as poems. Seldom does Riihm succumb to what becomes a mannerism in H. C. Artmann's renditions of Seifert's poetry: the temptation to engage in the creation of unusual compound nouns to the point of excess, for example, in the lines "sieh den schneegldckchenzucker den linden lilienschnee" ("see the sugar of snowdrops supple snow of lilies") [13, line 11] or "Chrysanthemenbiische straussenfederleicht" ("Crests of chrysanthemums like light ostrich feathers") [28, line 5). What is forgivable in Ruhm's poems because it occurs very rarely, becomes obtrusive in Artmann's pieces: "wie hirten ihre schellenschafchen leiten" [14, line 8]; "liebesstemgestimtes madchen" [18, line 17]; "seerosenstumm," "wogenblau," "morgenpalmen," and "honiggel"— all in the poem "Verse auf zwei ertrunkene" (Verses about two who drowned); "taschentuchflocklein," "pfeifenrauchweiss," and "reifglitterkreis" in "Eispoesie" (Ice cream poetry); and "faulgewassem meeresbuchten," "palmenbaume," and "muschelhauser" in "Konzertcafe" (Concert cafe). If used sparingly, such means could be applied to advantage, yet in such a great number they sound artificial to a German speaker. Moreover, significant distortions of the original's meaning are most frequently found in texts composed by Artmann, who also takes considerable liberties with the order of lines and the use of enjambment. For instance, in the poem "Flammende friichte" (Fiery fruit) several instances of such important divergence can be found: Man liebt die dichter die aussterbende fauna des YELLOWSTONE PARKS R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 235 und wir lieben die gedichte den ewigen wasserfall derpoesie [8] [■••] Heilige vogel auf diinnen beinchen wiegen sich wie schatten im wandel der welten [...] doch das gedicht der honigmond tropft seine siissen safte in die bliitenkelche [9] As for the first excerpt, in the original there is not an addition but an opposition between "to love poets" (line 1) and the love of poetry itself (line 3). "Man liebt die dichter" is not the same as "To love poets." Artmann also substitutes gedichte (poems) for poesie (poetry), thus making the reference much more specific in scope. Where Seifert is deliberately "choppy," Artmann takes the freedom to narrow meaning and to combine phrases that are not as evidently linked in Seifert's text ("den ewigen wasserfall / der poesie"). Thus the sudden juxtaposition of images, so prevalent in the original, is lost. In the second example Artmann destroys the deliberately absurd and hyperbolic image of birds on thin legs that "sway the fate of the world." Finally, the third example manifests another narrowing of meaning that Artmann engages in frequently. The line "doch das gedicht" is not equal to ale poesie ("but poetry" ). In "Park" Artmann over-interprets "stream of water" {proud vody) as being identical with ihe fountain mentioned in the Iasi line. Yet the jet of water could be both springing from the gardener's hose as well as the fountain. In the same poem Artmann renames what probably are registered varieties of roses, Perla sn&tu (Snow Pearl) into Schneeperle im heumond. This is probably an attempt to achieve a modest slant rhyme (heumond-kommt). In the piece "Verse auf zwei ertrunkene" (Verses about two who R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 236 drowned) Artmann engages in a great degree of padding for rhyme, to the point of introducing a religious reference not suitable for this Seifert collection: psalmeti [23, line 17]. Over-interpretation is also at the root of a choice in the poem "schonheit" (beauty). Rather than have the manikin in the hairdresser's window merely watch (dwd) "the wrinkles of aging beauties," Artmann whites: "Unveranderlich schon belachelt sie die falten / der altemden kundinnen " The reader would understand the irony without being explicitly told that the manikin is gloating. I suspect that the choice was driven by its sound quality: In "Friedhof in Genua" (Graveyard in Genoa) Artmann's narrowing of meaning, after an otherwise well-rendered third stanza, detracts from the poem's ancient analogy between seafaring and life's journey (Seifert's original is on the left, then follows Artmann's, along with my rendition on the right): Dva pristavy Zwei hafen Two ports 6 Janovane ihr Genuesen oh Genoese More se vzdouvi An land ist noch The sea is swelling a neustane keiner genesen and will not cease Zivot a more Zivot a more Seemanslos Seemannslos Life and sea Life and sea "Seemannslos" means literally the fate of sailors or seafarers. Yet in the original the permanence of the sea is contrasted against the fleetingness of human life where Artmann's third and fourth lines bring the poem exclusively into the maritime realm, suggesting the sailors' pull toward the sea, not more. Achleitner, Faktor, and Weibel, each represented with roughly the same number of poems, together comprise less than half of all poems in A u f den Wellen von TSF; therefore, it is difficult to establish idiosyncrasies and general features of their R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 237 particular styles in their Nachdichtungen. Achleitner is responsible for only five short lyrical anecdotes which are well-done except for minor details. Faktor's poems contain numerous examples of padding solely for the purpose of rhyme and of redundancies that only Riihm was able to avoid. Weibel frequently resorts to inversions that even in German, which allows for great variety of word order, sound either strange or archaic. Padding or inversions often result when rhyming is attempted. However, more objectionable in Weibel's poems here is the unwieldiness of some lines which could be tightened by eliminating articles, prepositions and other dispensable elements—a tightening and economy of expression that Riihm commands so well. Weibel likewise uses compound nouns frequently, which adds to the impression of affectation primarily attributable to Artmann: "stemenlimonade" [32, line 5]; "und im nebelgespinst eine stemenewigkeit / / Tickende stemenuhr abglanz der unendlichkeit im clownsgesicht" [33, lines 8-9]; and, finally, the strange creation "Diese reime lettemzerwuhlt" [68, line 14] to rhyme with verkiihlt in the penultimate line. To achieve a slant rhyme in the last line of this final poem Weibel introduces the obscure word trenzen (the bellow of rutting deer) which sends even native German speakers for the dictionary and in the context of a cold may wittily correspond to blowing one's nose. Seifert, on the other hand, for the most part uses simple, commonly understood vocabulary. If trenzen is an Austrian regional expression, as matura (high school graduation exams) is in the lyrical anecdote "Augen" (Eyes), it is inappropriate since Seifert himself avails himself of standard or colloquial language, but not of regional dialects. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 238 Finally, in "Der dieb und die uhr" (The thief and the clock), which is almost entirely based on homonymy and polysemy, Weibels line "Hahnchen mal kraht mal turtelt gesungen" [56, line 6]^ misses the opportunity to use the German equivalent Hahn of the Czech word kohoutek (rooster or cock) that like in English can also denote the hammer of a firearm. The use of Seifert's diminutive kohoutek is inappropriate in German (Weibel's hahnchen) because more than anything else it connotes a grilled chicken and the double meaning is lost. Despite such shortcomings, all texts in A u f den Wellen of TSF give the reader an acceptable introduction to Seifert's poetist phase. This German rendition of On the Waves of TSF can serve as a model for an English-language version, especially when it comes to typography and the careful attention to the context of the original. In this particular instance the team effort doubtlessly paid off. This method, however successfully applied in such rare cases, should be the exception in translation rather than the rule. After all, the functions that a translator familiar with both the SL and the TL combines in one person are separated into informant and TL poet. The feeling for nuances of meaning and usage is lacking in someone who must rely on cribs and on feedback from their provider. Hence, the collaborators need to work together very closely to ensure both linguistic accuracy and artistic success. A translator who knows both languages reads and interprets and then reproduces (or rather recasts) the poem in the target language, all in more or less one process. This process is fragmented in a poet-informant team where each participant supplies only part of the necessary ^Cf. my translation: "The cock sometimes crows and sometimes it fires a gun" for Seifert's line: "Kohoutek nekdy kokrha a nekdy spousti" [56, line 6] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 239 skill. For this reason many literary translators frown on the practice. However, in the case of A u f den Wellen von TSF this method clearly produced a respectable result. B. The Present Translations and Their Theory Many precepts informing my own practice that went into the present translations have already surfaced in my criticism of existing translations where they were formulated as the occasion offered itself and tacitly guided my judgments of other translators' work. What follows, therefore, is a closer look at my choices, or rather the values and assumptions underlying them. I agree with Edmund Keeley that it is dangerous to speak about translation in general terms and th a t" ... any discussion of the craft of translation by an individual translator. . . has to be as subjective and limited as, say, that of an individual poet commenting on the craft of poetry or a novelist on the craft of fiction" (54). After all, since translation involves interpretation, different translators arrive at different readings of a text and with different, often equally valid justifications for their choices. To recapitulate, it is easier to translate the later Seifert than his earlier poetry because he increasingly dispensed with formal modes such as rhyme and strict rhythmic patterns and came to rely less and less on paronomastic means, such as puns and word play. The playfulness of his early poetry, particularly the markedly poetist collections On the Waves of TSF and to some extent Samd laska as well as Tne Nightingale Sings Poorly, expressed itself in anecdotes and witty aphorisms, and relied importantly on such sound patterns as alliteration, assonance or euphony in general, so that any R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 240 translator who decides to tackle this kind of poetry will face great difficulties, whether he or she translates into German or into English. Several theorists of translation, among them most prominently Jin Lev^, have likened translation to a "game with perfect information," not unlike a game of chess, in which each move of the player/translator predetermines a path from decision to decision; each choice is based on previous alternatives and in turn influences choices to come (Bude literami vSda 74). The translator must at first make important decisions, after having researched and critically analyzed the poetry in question as much as possible in the attempt to understand and uncover the entire particular palimpsest of meaning. Although many theorists as well as practicing translators believe that translation is an "art," this is not to say that it does not necessitate solid craftsmanship, that is, more or less conscious and rationally justifiable decisions based on a maximum of knowledge about the work to be transplanted into another language. On the other hand, there is a sense of intuitive "rightness" that most translators lay claim to when they come to realize their rendering "feels right." Douglas Robinson in The Translator’s Turn, calls this the somatics of translation and it seems a legitimate phenomenon that attests to the creativity needed in translation. But only solid grounding and understanding will help the translator to decide which features s/h e can sacrifice most readily; usually this will involve formal strictures as they are in most cases impossible to recreate to the same extent in another language and are in the case of these Seifert works not absolutely essentia! to the aesthetic impact of the poetry. The English translator David Bellos rightly claims: "Each book calls for its own particular R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 241 kind of transformation" (13). The brilliant Czech translator Pavel Eisner similarly writes in a 1936 essay on things untranslatable: There are of course firm limits, where liberty would amount to betrayal if not villainy. Yet to delineate such limits in some schematic way is an impossible undertaking. These are flexible limits that change from one case to the next, and it is necessary to sense them with tact, enlightenment, erudition. Every translator should have some grounding in philology and linguistics. And every translator should know his author in terms of literary and social history. (Eisner 682) The reluctance to set up and abide by general prescriptions also surfaces in William Weaver's discussion of his own translation practice: "[The translator's] instinct will be guided by his knowledge of the author's work, by his reading in the period. It will almost certainly not be guided by any rules, even self-made ones" and a little later he adds: "Because there are no rules, no laws, there cannot be an absolute right or an absolute wrong" (117). Although evaluation standards become very hazy here, Weaver makes an important point about instinct and erudition. Since translation involves reading and interpretation and constitutes an amalgamation of cultural, linguistic and aesthetic criteria (Schogt 103), it is questionable whether an all-encompassing translation theory and irrefutable translation quality assessment could ever become possible, despite at least one attempt at the latter.10 In practical terms, all this means that when translating Verlaine, for example, v v c e c u t i.c a e x x iV u i o p c i u > c v v i u i o x a v i o n j u u u u i u v i m e/x i a i j aiin. aaO c c u u d i i u u i u i v e u j v n conveying the most essential characteristic of Verlaine's poetry: musicality. This is all 10Juliane House established a pragmatic model for translation quality assessment and studied different versions of the same translation to systematize divergencies in a 1981 publication that received little attention by translation theorists and practitioners, perhaps due to its strictly linguistic focus. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. the more excusable as Verlaine himself, in L'art poetique referred to rhyme as faux bijoux. It follows that the translator must strive to work congenially with respect to the original in order to achieve a comparable effect in the target language with means that are often quite different from the means employed in the source language text. Levy quotes a 1913 article by linguist and translator VilSm Mathesius in &ske theorie pfekkdu: .. more important than the sameness of artistic means [in poetry translations] is the equality of artistic effect" (216). Eugene Nida calls this the "dynamic equivalence" (Bassnett-McGuire 26) and Peter Newmark insists that "[t]he principle of equivalent- effect is the one basic guide-line in translation" (132). Vil6m Mathesius also coined the barely translatable term pfebasnit for this particular practice of poetry translation (the root of the word is basert for poem) as opposed to mechanical, "formalist" translation. Roman Jakobson, who declared poetry by definition untranslatable, comes close to Mathesius's concept with his term "creative transposition" (Jakobson, "On Linguistic Aspects" 151). The most specific translation of pfebasnit is probably John Nims's: "One cannot translate a poem, but one can try to reconstitute it by taking the thought, the imagery, the rhythm, the sound, the qualities of diction— these and whatever else made up the original— and then attempt to rework as many as possible into a poem in English" [emphasis mine] (306). Similarly, Walter Benjamin in his famous essay "The Task of the Translator" claims that a translation should not strive for "likeness to the original," but should be "a transformation and a renewal of something living" (74). These particular views of "fidelity" have arisen in the wake of linguistic structuralism which repudiated the Aristotelian idea of meaning. This is also where much of the disagreement or divergence between individual translators comes from. As R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 243 John DuVal puts it: "We measure the success of a translation not only by its identity with the original, but also by the appropriateness of its differences" (36). However, translators may agree on the goals of their activity but may employ different means to achieve them, or they may transgress what other translators consider acceptable limits of "liberties" with the SL text. The term "equivalent effect" is not unproblematic, particularly when it comes to measuring it or establishing standards. Jin Levy recognized this when he distinguished between translation theory and the translator's pragmatic activity: Translation theory so far has been normative, it demands from the translator the optim al solution; actual translation practice is usually pragmatic: the translator chooses from a scale of choices the one which promises m axim um effect at m inim um effort. That is, intuitively he opis for the so-called m inim ax strategy. (Bude litera m i vSda 87) [italics Levy's] The concept of equivalent effect or functional equivalency replaced the traditional, Aristotelian notion of fidelity, or translation as mimetic substitution. In this context, Samuel Beckett's self-translation— or rather, his bilingual variations in English and in French— offers an intriguing, yet in the normal translation practice probably unparalleled paradigm. In Beckett's case the translator is also author, unassailably so. As such, he enjoys an authority and freedom to institute changes and to explode traditional ideas about the relationship between original and TL text that a "mere" translator csrinot clsim with. ths ssmfi legitimacy. A similarly daunting area are the various metaphors attempting to conceptualize the role of the translator. They range, for example, from Walter Arndt's perception of the translator as a "gray eminence" (Leighton 163) and the 18th century precept of a "portrait painter" that Dryden introduced (Bassnett-McGuire 60) to Robert R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Lowell's and Ezra Pound's free-wheeling imitations and to poststructuralist views like Venuti's, according to which a translator's humble self-effacement is pernicious, leading to still more invisibility (5). From this last vantage point the translator is seen as an imperialist accomplice in the "colonial enterprise" of political as well as cultural domination and hegemony (Niranjana 3,21; see also Venuti 5). This notion of translation as a hostile, aggressive act is promulgated by George Steiner through his reading of Heidegger and Hegel (297), but Steiner perceives of translation as a four- stage process which he calls hermeneutic motion, where after the disruption of transferring meaning follows the final hermeneutic act which restores balance and parity (296-301). In her response to the recent trend toward hermeneutic investigations of translation, Marilyn Gaddis Rose rightly observes that "Translation remains both the purveyor and destroyer of hegemony" (265). In the case of a Seifert translation the latter of the two alternatives would seem to apply concerning a relatively little-known and misrepresented poet from a small nation is made accessible to a wider audience whose language and culture exerts a global dominance. Following Jin Levy, Andr6 Lefevere points out the revitalizing potential that a translator brings to bear on the target language and literature: He is a literature's safeguard against parochialism and inbreeding. He counteracts these two tendencies by enriching his native literature with what is valuable in other literatures, and also by keeping foreign works that played a formative role in the evolution of his native literature alive in that literature. Translation is, therefore, not only a literature's link with the tradition it is a product of, but also any literature's potentiality for change and rejuvenation. (105) Similarly, Ezra Pound with his bold assertion of "making it new" insisted in his translation practice on expanding the boundaries of English poetic form (Kenner 9), R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 245 although most literary translators would not necessarily be comfortable with the liberties he allowed himself. Pound characteristically answered to such charges: "As to the atrocities of my translation. .. all that can be said in excuse is that they are, I hope, for the most part intentional, and committed with the aim of driving the reader's perception further into the original than it would without them have penetrated" (Leighton 152). Thus, similarity of intent and the goals of translation does not guarantee agreement on the means employed in their attainment. The benevolent perceptions of translators' roles typically emphasize mediation: translators as negotiators, diplomats, go-betweens (Bellos 12). John E. Woods likens translators to performing artists (Jin Levy chose actors) who interpret a text as a violinist interprets a musical score (Harman 7). Bellos also uses the imaginative analogy of the translation process as a changing room where the "linguistic couturier" acts to "reclothe the naked body of the text" (ibid.). Vladimir Prochdzka, a distinguished translator and member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, says about a translation of his from German: "... sentences and entire passages first had to b e... melted down in my mind, and then recreated in Czech" (104). Interestingly, Margaret Sayers Peden uses a similar image to Prochazka's and contrasts her intentions to Walter Benjamin's.11 Benjamin had compared translation to joining together pieces of a broken vase, implying some inevitable deficiency in'the translator's undertaking: I like to think of the original work as an ice cube. During the process of translation the cube is melted. While in its liquid state, every molecule changes place; none remains in its original relationship to the others. Then begins the process of forming the work in a second language. Molecules escape, new molecules are poured in to fill the spaces, but the lines of 11In the "The Task of the Translator." R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 246 molding and mending are virtually invisible. The work exists in the second language as a new ice cube—different, but to all appearances the same. (Sayers Peden 13) It is perhaps easy to see why the metaphor of the ice cube is more satisfying than the broken vase analogy. It eloquently describes the translation process while making clear that the translation is not a patch work. This said, in translating the early Seifert I mean to preserve the playfulness, wit and humor which he brought to Czech poetry and which influenced poets to come. Sidonia Dedinovd makes this point when criticizing Alfred French's spotty, awkward translations (very few of Seifert) in his 1969 survey The Poets of Prague, where it becomes evident that French assiduously gave rhyme a special precedence over all other features of the poems: In poetry translations, I think, the corresponding simplicity and clarity of expression, and the preservation of musical rhythm should have priority over frequently very forced attempts to maintain rhyme which even in the original poem is the least valuable virtue (DSdinova 121). This means that to produce an optimal rendering of Seifert's early work, the translator should try to recreate sound patterns as far as possible, in instances that are equally expressive in English or German, but do not necessarily occur in the Czech original in the very same place. Such concepts as "intention" and "the 'spirit' of the work" have been sufficiently problematized by recent literary criticism to make the theorist of translation wary; nevertheless, a translator owes to the SL author as well as to the TL reader a recreated readable product with as many of the original's characteristic features as possible without violating too much the TL syntax and general usage. On the other R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 247 hand, sometimes precisely the effect of "foreignness" may be desirable and may attest to the excellence of a translation if this effect is called for by the nature of the original— for example, in the case of experimental poetry where violations of conventional means and expectations are an integral part of the work. This condition certainly applies to On the Waves ofTSF. Moreover, in the light of recent poststructuralist theory, particularly in the view of Lawrence Venuti, translators should cease to collaborate in their own marginalization by continuing to turn out smooth, fluent renderings; instead he postulates "abusive fidelity" and "resistancy" or, in the words of Philip Lewis, whom Venuti quotes, a "strong, forceful translation that values experimentation, tampers with usage, seeks to match the polyvalencies or plurivocities or expressive stresses of the original by producing its own" (12). Again, while such an approach in pragmatic terms may be called for in certain types of texts, as a general pronouncement this is hardly practical or useful for the literary translator. When I think of the translation process involving On the Waves ofTSF, the truth of the statement demanding that extended study and research are necessary beforehand, becomes evident. I started out with incomplete information and revised the translations accordingly with the new insights in mind. Even now I keep going back to revise as my perceptions of the translated poetry shift. I have gone almost full circle from rendering Seifert's works entirely without rhyme, to an attempt at occasional rhyme (and what I hope is a justifiable amount of inversion) to renewed doubts as to whether Seifert's casual rhyming should be reproduced at all. In that sense, John F. Nims is quite right in applying Paul Valery's dictum about poetry all the more to translation: "A poem... is never finished; it is abandoned in despair" (Nims 319). R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 248 One essential insight attributable to research concerns the very title of the collection. Initially I liked the alliterative quality of On the Waves of the Wireless. Further consideration of the context of this work, however, convinced me that Seifert most of all meant to be provocative (cf. the poem "Nightlights," which features the plural of the condom brand name "Olagum") and deliberately "anti-poetic"; hence, a sober, technical title including "TSF," the now obscure acronym for "Tel6graphie sans fil," seemed the right choice. Research for the four collections involved not only going back to original sources to examine contemporary criticism of Seifert's work, but also required the study of newspapers and magazines from the 1920s in Prague; in addition, it meant seeking out city maps and travel guides of the time in order to understand better the topography of Seifert's early poetry, so much of which is specifically and meaningfully located in Prague, Jicin, Moscow, Paris and the French Riviera. As a matter of philosophy, some poetry translators (John F. Nims, for example, and the above-mentioned collaborators Klement and Stucke) believe that the artistic form is generally superior to the semantics of a poem12; from this philosophy follows that form is that which ought to be transposed as faithfully as possible into the TL text. I would hesitate to commit to an "either or" of form versus content. It is the most prominent and characteristic, the most important feature(s) of the particular work in question that the translator should attempt to transpose. Andre Lefevere likewise 12Nims says: "If there is a question of priority, it is clear that the form determines the subject and not the subject the form. I would suggest that the translator's responsibility, then, is at least as much to the form as to the ideas. Form, after all, as paced by line length and rhyme escapement, is the choreography of the poet’s spirit" (309). If this is a general aesthetic doctrine, I would hesitate to agree. The importance of form as well as of content or meaning is relative. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. rejects too rigid and narrow approaches to poetry: "In short, the reason why most translations, versions, and imitations are unsatisfactory renderings of the source text is simply this: they all concentrate exclusively on one aspect of that source text only, rather than on its totality" (99). Where sound patterns are concerned— where Seifert uses alliteration, for example— the translator should try to render as much of the alliterative pattern as he or she can without of course significantly distorting the semantics. The work of Gerhard Riihm (see above) best exemplifies the actual results of this ambition. Similarly, Karel Teige's striking typefaces and layout complement Seifert's first edition of On the Waves ofTSF in important ways and clearly have a programmatic poetist function (see section C of chapter 3). Such a remarkable feature is worth preserving faithfully along the lines of the German version Aufden Wellen von TSF discussed above. The greatest difficulty not only in On the Waves ofTSF but also in The Nightingale Sings Poorly is Seifert's use of homonymy and polysemy to create puns and word play. The resulting several layers of meaning can rarely be recreated and are at best conveyable into English (or German) by means of glosses and annotations. At most, one can strive to imitate such sound effects and try to decide which semantic meaning of the several possible ones allows for the greatest freedom of association. (See the before mentioned example from On the Waves ofTSF "To be a fisherman" [68], where Seifert pairs rymy which means both "common cold" in that context as well as "rhymes".) The resulting irony and smiling self-deprecation of the lyrical "I" will inevitably be "lost in translation" (or so Robert Frost defined poetry in his famous dictum). The way out of this dilemma, as mentioned before, are notes and annotations— clearly a compromise R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 250 artistically. It is inevitable that any translation and be it excellent by all measures, contains what Jos6 Ortega y Gasset called "deficiencies" and "exuberances." In other words, there are always losses but those may be offset with gains if the translator is creative in his or her own right. (The best example would be Karel Capek's congenial translation of modem French poetry in Francouzskd poesie nave doby, which transformed and enriched Czech poetic practice.) This creative freedom expressly does not mean w hat some translators regrettably do as a matter of principle: padding lines and other additions to make verses fit formal strictures like rhyme patterns. It means subscribing to Jin Leva's "illusionistic translation," that is, a translation which becomes a functional equivalent of the original for the TL reader. The reader knows s/h e is reading a translation but expects the translation to preserve the qualities of the original (UmSni pfeldadu 40). One instance where I believe my translation succeeded quite well, maintaining most of the sound quality and wit, is in the poem "14th of July" in The Nightingale Sings Poorly [18]. This is due to the fact that most of the paronomastic means rely on French words and proper names and thus they work out in a similar fashion both in English and in Czech. As opposed to this, a feature almost inevitably lost in translation in the specific case of On the Waves ofTSF is some of the "exoticism" of the collection. Seifert evokes the longing for the wide world by using foreign words and spellings. This effort at interspersing his poetry with foreign references and thus to create an exotic "flavor" is most striking in the titles of poems, such as "Rue de la Paix," "Lawn- tennis," "Hotel 'Cote d'Azur/" or in phrases like Wagon lits and many more. The name Yellowstone Park, in "Fiery Fruit" is likely to evoke very different associations in R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 251 Seifert's contemporary reader (or even the average Czech reader of his today) than, say, in a North-American audience for whom this outlandish and remote park is much "closer to home." Similarly, if the Czech poem is titled "Lawn-tennis," the estranging effect is clearly evident; it vanishes in an English rendering while it is maintained in the German version discussed earlier. One very "creative" solution would be to reverse the relation and give the English TL poem a Czech title. Conversely, references that would seem natural and familiar to a Czech reader today, may strike an American as "exotic" in the translation from Czech. And yet, although we must accept that losses in translation are inevitable because some meanings, connotations and references are ineluctably tied to language and culture, there is likewise a constant of meaning that despite gains and losses remains conveyable (the "invariant core" of the original poem, according to Anton Popovic; Bassnett-McGuire 26), and can be communicated between languages and their audiences. Any translation may provide different sensory and semantic impressions than the original does but each such experience is justified in its uniqueness sc long as it is shared by readers who appreciate it— for whatever reason. I entertain the hope that these poems, interesting perhaps even as representations of Czech modernism, may find their audience. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE EARLY POETRY OF JAROSLAV SEIFERT: TRANSLATION THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume II by Dana Loewy A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) May 1995 C opyright 1995 D ana Loewy R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 252 Chapter V: The Four Original Translations of Seifert's Early Works A. Translation of M 8sto v slzach, P rvni verge [City in Tears, First Versesl by Jaroslav Seifert 1921 (To the D earest Am ong Poets St. K. N eum ann) translated by Dana Loewy 1993 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 253 C O N T E N T S [Foreword] Introductory Poem [9] M onologue of the H andless Soldier [11] December 1920 [14] Prayer on the Sidewalk [17] Language of the Crow d [21] C hildren from the Suburb [23] A t the W ar Cem etery [25] Revolution [28] Good Tidings [31] The End of W ar [35] A C hanted Prayer [37] Evening on the Porch [39] City of Sin [45] The Screen at the Cinem a [46] In the G arden Gethsem ane [48] City in Tears [49] The C reation of the W orld [51] In a Small Suburban Street [54] A Poem Full of C ourage and Faith [57] Poor [60] The H um blest of Poems [62] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. [FOREWORD] 254 A poem is not an phantasm , but a difficult and inconsiderable achievem ent like a w orkm an's labor. The Revolution pervades th e w orld; the new order of production is setting in. O ur tim e rum bles w ith the explosions of w ars, class struggles, the fall of civilization, and a com m unist w orld is being bom in chaos as it reigned at the beginning of the earth. W itty and silly fabrications of m en of letters count for nothing. Yes and no, your approval, com rade, and your defiance are voiced in this book of verse and all th a t w hich is from your conquered w orld has entered into it. Because you are destitute and unfree, and because you live only halfway, you are destined to say n o m ore often than yes. Your poet cannot do otherwise. You will not read about the glory of the city but about its tears. For the vale of tears is yours. The revolutionary song will exhort you because struggle is your tool. This book is about class and you are its contents. N ew York, roaring w ith its m agnitude, the business enterprise before you is m onstrous and hostile. Well then, m ay it no longer exist! New, new , new is the star of com munism. Its com m unal labor is creating a new style and beyond it there is no m odernity. U. S. Devetsil R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 255 INTRODUCTORY POEM A ngular im age of suffering is the city and the great event itself before your eyes, reader, you are opening a book unobtrusive and plain and the song begins. W ith its fame the city has not vanquished me, its majesty and m agnitude have not enchanted me, I love stars, w oods, springs, m eadow s and flowers and I will return into their m ysterious embrace, yet as long as any one of my brothers will be suffering, happy I will not be and inflam ed by the injustice of the w orld ceaselessly like now, leaning against the factory wall, I will choke w ith the smoke and sing my song. A nd still the street is foreign to me, it flies like an arrow flung fiercely to conquer the w orld and in the rhythm of my blood will never m esh the wheels and running belts, they shackle m y hands and the hands of thousands, so that, w hen the heart is calling, com panion m ust not and cannot em brace companion; yet if I fled into the w oods to the deer, flowers and springs, [9] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 256 such a sadness in my heart w ould abound, that w ithout even looking around, how m uch beauty, peace and passion there is, I w ould return to town, into the city, w hich welcom es m an w ith its iron virtue, w here no nightingale sings and no fir sweetly smells, w here enslaved is not only man, but flow er, bird, horse and hum ble dog. Good reader, who you are reading these lines, daydream for a while and rem em ber this, that the angular image of suffering before your eyes is the city; indeed like a flower m an feels, d o n 't break do n 't pick d o n 't step R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 257 M O N O L O G U E O F TH E H A N D L E SS SO L D IE R O ne day out of the blue I died in the doctors' arms, surprised from a life suffered through and a sinful lance pierced m y heart and a hand, their w hite hand, deprived m y body of its w hite hands. For tw o days in a cold grave I slept, but on the third I gloriously rose from the dead, face like lightning, vesture like fallen snow, naked I lay on a pillow and the sun, the sun overhead w as my halo; like a god's m y eyes w ere burning, but inside of me, but inside of me on a day unblessed nevertheless died tw o good hands of m y body. The lady who stood next to me bore sadness in her eyes and as if she loved me, [ 11] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 258 she sm iled a t m e compassionately, but I told her seriously: dame, two hands the lord gave, two hands the lord took, praised be his name. Never did I curse fate, endure I did a lot, w ith G od's grace I will endure this too, Lose sleep over it I will not. Only once in while, w hen p ast m e w ent a w ench w aiting to be em braced, m y eye w ith tears glazed and you hands, you good hands, right, left, I craved. Until one day, I d o n 't know w hen, it w as a strike perhaps, people took to the streets again. Treasures, behind w hich the heart closed shut, I think, they did n o t desire then, they only w anted to lam ent to God and people how the hand w ith rings is choking them [12] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 259 and commits abuse, they only w anted to lam ent their m isfortune, w hen suddenly sixty police officers invaded their ranks. They told them to the face that it is not hum an nor democratic and that they should be asham ed to beat up people just like that. The pavem ent is hard, will it bear this injustice? Why be surprised, that then w ith anger, w ith excitement they threw stones at them. Then for the first tim e I did commiserate, my hands, my dear hands, that you w ere taken once, once, by a fiery grenade. [ 13] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 260 D E C E M B E R 1920 In jail, w here you w ait for the sun to no avail, is a table and it is as poor as a flow erbed devoid of flowers, sad like a cage after the bird flew away; only a loaf of bread on it shines like the sun and a cup is sipping sadness. O n this table they sowed the seed of pain, that in their hearts they no longer could contain and from it a flower, like a lily, grew, but it had a red blossom, w hich was as sad as hum an misery and beautiful like the world. Near this blossom a w hite dove alighted one m om , and revealed to the whole w ide w orld, that it was Josef K ulda's soul and came right from the hospital; how sw eet w ine is, w hen you drink it, so bitter is life, w hen you live it but still that it is a beautiful thing, that it is a palm filled w ith sweets, landscape after a rain, longing for happiness, [14] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 261 that it is the sun, w hich is bleeding like a w ounded deer, philosophers' stone, well of joy, a shepherd's song played on a shaw m , that it is the eyes of a pretty girl, into w hich one m ight gaze and the heart bursts into song: only once a year blossoms May, love only once in life. This w ord flew like a bird into the net of stars and above the stars this w ord w as m ade flesh, so that it m ay dwell am ong us. The innocent descended from heaven like a flow er's blossom, cam e like a perfum e into the street, unrecognized, he knew his own, w hile the hum an heart clamoring beat in w arning, that the innocent cam e like a perfum e into the street, descended from heaven like a flow er's blossom. Little does it m atter that the friend is dead and that he already smells, [ 15] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 262 he began to w eave a prayer w reath from w ords and sighs, to lay on w hite clouds; inside his soul he turned his eyes and in a magical prem onition he gazed at him w ith a smile and said: Josef Kulda, I bid you, rise! And lo, he rose and had the sun not shone as if to a dance, he w ould have cried, he rose and w alked lightly in the graveyard, so as not to soak his clothes w ith dew, he w as like a reverie and he had a w holly different face, he w as like a groom, unhappy w ith happiness and smelled of rosemary. [ 16] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 263 P R A Y ER O N THE S I D E W A L K I p u t on my Sunday shoes, having polished them, to m ake them shine like the stars on street pavem ent and because I w as hungry, I thought: perhaps for a gold piece you can buy Baltic herring, a sixkreutzer w orth of bread and am ong so m any noble feasters you too will be guest at the table of the street, for dinner set and modest. W ith a single fish and one slice of bread sadly I could not have fed thousands. The butchers' w indow s shone like altars in church upon m orning mass, on their steps I w ould not m ind kneeling the longest, and since even the doorways to shops w ere like heaven's gates w ith signs, w ith stars, listen, the street burst into hosanna on the organ. I w as thinking about my pretty beloved, how I'm going to come to her a t night and how into her skirts devoutly I'll lay m y head, pity th at m y hands cannot m ore tenderly envelop her, like the slender stalk of white bindw eed the stem of mullein. [1 7 ] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 264 But alas, they say life grants dream s to poets in excess, no, life never gives you anything free, into deep m isery turns each m y tiniest joy. M aybe I have a different heart and different eyes. W hen I felt happiest and a fair-haired w om an gazed at m e from a w indow , a tram struck a small dog, one of those pretty ones w ith a pink ribbon, w hich it had, so they may find it am ong thousands like it at first glance. The street fell silent at once, only som ew here farther away roared an iron shutter in a store like a w ounded lion and som eone cried out terrified; likely it w as the woman, w ho had been looking at me, w hen she beheld blood gushing high. The poor thing has its body cut in three, the head com pletely m ashed by the wheels and I w ept; I felt like a child standing over a broken doll, even like a sinner I did penance and beat m y chest, w hen from its hot flesh steam rose to the heavens, yet it w as only then that I loved that dog, w hen it no longer needed m y love. [18] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 265 This happens w ith people all the same; in the w hirl of the day and everyday din w e pretend, th at w e d o n 't even know each other, b ut if one of us beholds another in a coffin, he learns, th at in reality he quite liked him and should have smiled a t him a little at least while alive, having failed to shake his hand. In the m idst of life and yet in the m idst of death you walk, thinking perhaps of great deeds, elated w ith a thought that will save the w orld, b u t before you realize it, you are rolling in blood u nder the wheels of tram s, you die like that w hite doggie w ith a pink ribbon. The guardian angel hardly always flies after you, perhaps he falls for a bottle of good wine, for fresh sausage, for ham , and you, m an, he utterly forgets. Pensive I reached the com er of the Fruit m arket and Celetna and kneeling dow n on the sidewalk, 119] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 266 I raised m y eyes to the black M adonna, w ho is standing here and over m y head she holds her hand, and I prayed: V irgin Mary, since it is necessary that I too die, d o n 't let me die like that dog, let m e die one fine day o n the barricade of the revolution w ith a rifle in my hand. [20] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 267 L A N G U A G E OF THE C R O W D Loving ourselves, w e are a crow d, having invaded the street, w e are a waterfall of hum an flesh and seething passion, w e are w ine sparkling in the street's cup, w e are an ocean, overflow ing in space, w e are a crow d, a hundred thousand heads, w e are a tw o hundred thousand hands, w hich passionately pound on G od's kingdom 's gates, w e are a miracle beyond miracles, exhilarated ranks, w e will create overnight the universe. The street w hich arches over us, is the Red Sea's waves turned to stone, w hich Moses separated w ith a magical w ave of his hand, for G od w illed it so, th at his regim ents reach the opposite bank, w ithout w etting their feet; b u t w oe to the ranks of enemies in shiny arm or, thev will die in it, j ' w hen it closes over their heads [ 21] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 268 and drowning, they will curse their pharaoh. W e are a crow d, w e are tiny flames, blazing out of the earth's crater, w hich have united into a vast fire of pow er and excitement, w e are a cloud, lightning from cries dinning darkly w ith thunder, w e are the petard of w rath, w hich w ill burst at the decisive m om ent, w e are a crowd, if w e w anted to and spat on the sun, it w ould go out. [22] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 269 C H I L D R E N F R O M TH E S U B U R B In the hospital w ard, w here nurses dance like dancers betw een bottles w ith a skull and sw ords and betw een flames of distress, w e stood half naked and pale like chalk w e boys from the suburb, for vanquished w e all are and on the chests of all it kneels suburban wretchedness. The w indow s spoke to us in a strange, obscure speech of happiness. A doctor cam e to us w ith dark glasses, under w hich smiles w ere erased, (those w ere glasses of dissemblance, perhaps also a bad omen,) his hands shook under the burden of our stares and he w as sad. Yet w hen he lay his hands on us so gently and lovingly, indeed he seem ed so wise to m e like m aestro Lantner, m aker of violins and w e w ere violins m ade from m aple w ood, each of us played some m erry or sad song from his life. [23] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 270 For a w hile he listened to us, but w hen he realized that none of these songs w as played right and that all of us are faulty or out of tune, he sounded us all carefully, played the ribs' strings quietly and sang: e — a — d — g g — d — a — e You know , boys, you all m ust get well once more, so that w hen in the w orld's streets that great concert w ill be, you all can play from a red score the revolutionary symphony! A nd, I say, w hat a sym phony it will be! [24] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 271 A T T H E W A R C E M E T E R Y Violets bloom in the spring, H eather bloom s in the autum n, but memories, deep in the heart sown, blossomed today inside me, w hen the path betw een graves I w alked leading forth m y beloved w ith a pink scarf, w ith a w hite daisy. I w as thinking: W hat if all those w ho are lying here, burdened the heavens w ith their prayers for a little love and for grace, surely the w eight of prayer heaven w ould break, snuffed out, the sun w ould tumble, stars falling w ould shake and turn dark, the m oon w ould lose its light; to earth it w ould all fall between houses, onto streets, on grass betw een flow ers for the love of those w ho loved and for the sin of those w ho had sinned. Luckily they all rem ained silent and fell, to die, [25] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 272 and then w hen the bayonet still w arm from their hands w as tom , to be carried by a second, third and fourth, again quietly they w ould lie, m y beloved picked the daisy's petals, saying: he loves me, he loves m e not, b u t I m used, w hat m ay mean that statue stem and stony and as if saying litany to all the saints, I read the nam es of the dead w ritten in golden print, invoking them in heaven on our behalf to plead, w hen w e will need strength. D on't I know that one day great w onders will come and all the dead here from the dead will rise: Raguz Stojan, Tadeus Dyak, Passereau Charles, Fedregolli Silvio, Cechonovic Jefim Semjonovic, K azsakar Georg, Pokom y Frantisek and they all, all of them all around, w hen the angel calls from the sky eye to eye they will stand, [26] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 273 but instead of seeking, for a deadly strike, the heart under the other m an's coat, they will all embrace, plant a kiss on the face and will shake hands as friends. [27] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 274 R E V O L U T I O N A rdent in the m idst of life w e stand like W ilde before his judges, gentlemen, ladies, misses, as if w ith our hand w e w anted to break the day, before it crushes us w ith eyes of am azem ent. To the tender mercies • w e are throw ing our bodies in your m idst and a glassy smile will w edge itself into our eyes, in threes, in fours, in fives as w e stand in our shop w indow s, w e teach suffering, and sowing our beauty w ith motionless fingers on street pavem ent, w e are weaving, w e dye w ith blood, w e sew banners in red, the skies, houses and flowers w e tell, that the revolution will be tom orrow perchance. [ 28] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 275 The banner like the sky swollen w ith w ind one of us will unfurl, a standard, a cry on a pole, into w indow s onto people will hurl: hence we, if you living will not and gentlem en w ith shiny top hats and ladies dressed for balls, from hairdressers' w indow s sad manikins w ith beautiful hairdos united in solid ranks w e will m an barricades. Machine guns no one will stop crashing w orlds and if thousands of soldiers they send for us, us against them will stand u p waxen-faced. The sun like a bugle in battle will blow into silence, across dead bodies and under banners we will ru n forw ard to m eet bayonets, [29] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 276 until the river running dry, will billow w ith blood, w hen w e throw open the gates. All at once into the w orld to the four w inds radios and telegram s will fly and tom orrow the w hole w orld in new spapers will read, that in Prague w indow m anikins hoisted the red flag above the town. Then only will come those w ho had been afraid and not even w ith force dared w ithstand, then only will people come w ith sham e to take the great victory, victory, victory from our w ooden hands. [30] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 277 G O O D T I D I N G S For Ivan O lbracht O n alms of m anna falling from the sky into our hungry palm s, no future race m ust any m ore have to rely; from hundreds of tasks w hich aw ait them today, w e will m ostly im plant in their hearts you, revolution, eternal, grow ing by the second like a seed well-w atered by dew. Lo, from distant voyages explorers are just returning, carrying on a crow bar in their hands an enorm ous bunch of red grapes, fecund, sweet like a day dangling from the sky and good tidings, that in the east lies a beautiful land, w hich bears justice. Farewell to you, our land, native land, it is not w e w ho are not w orthy of you rather it is you w ho deserves us not, there in the east eyes see salvation, there in the east, in the cornflower-blue distance, rises a w reath m ade from ears of rye, ham m er and sickle. [ 31] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 278 A nd the file of the grateful already sets out, old m en, children, m en and wom en, happiness unending on their faces their yearning gazes they fasten w here the sun rises; a chorus of angels fluttering their w ings above accompanies their longing w ith song: Glory, glory to G od in the highest and to his people o n earth revolution. [32] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 279 T H E E N D O F W A R O n the forehead bearing fiery signs, over the body w ounds w hich will fester, from the whole w orld to us the w ounded came som e of w hom did not w ant to, did not w ant to, yet die they did as soon as tom orrow or the day after tom orrow, and others lived despite death, despite w ounds and pain, like living torches of sorrow. O n the w ay from the station their sweethearts aw aited them like a vernal avenue, w hose boughs alm ost topple over w ith joy over their return and w ith the m irth of youth; their m ouths w ere red like a bough's crim son bloom, for whose touch greedy lips pined and w hen they shed petals in rays of hot gloom on them fruit w as ripening, w hich an eager hand yearned to pick. U nder their smiles turm oil turned into sw eet dream ing, across the banks of lips love w as oozing softly and gray days became holidays suddenly. A nd their w om bs w ere like the surface of Jerusalem 's lake, which, quietly lying in the sun, still, w aited for the angel to fly dow n from heaven, to stir it w ith the touch of an am orous quill. [35] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 280 Blessed, who believed that marvel as related by the old legend in the Gospel of St. John, in the fifth chapter, to w it that he instantly recovers, w ho first hurls himself deep into holy water. The hapless ones dream ed of their happiness in deep sorrow, in their ponderous grief and dove ardently into the still w aves of a w om an's lap arm s flung open, so th at at least a good w om an be their fate, now th at fate w as not a good w om an to them. [36] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 281 A C H A N T E D P R A Y E R Brought low by a crow n of thorns from G od to man, breaking he gave away his beautiful dream and now he is w aiting w hen it will be fulfilled. W hen hum an hearts are filled w ith his love till they overflow and in the m eantim e revolution cruel, fair into palm s deals out to each, poor and rich the sam e share. O h Lord, leave us, behold, it is getting late. In the nam e of love w e do not forgive sins com mitted, in the nam e of love w e harshly avenge lives of the hungry and wrongs, w hich m an, created in your image, did unto his brother on earth, in heaven, on sea. [ 37] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 282 Yet the poet he is still in turm oil: Lord, as they torm ented you w ith unm anly pain, having w reathed you a thorny crow n of rose coil w hy w o u ld n 't they at least allow those roses to remain! [38] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 283 E V E N I N G ON THE P O R C H I. The evening usually is still like a frozen waterfall, b u t the porch it is the embrace of Virgin Mary, those w ho from the battlefield of the day carry aw ay their w ounded bodies, will seat them selves on it nightly and it will clasp them w ith bars like a w om an w ith fingers w ould embrace them lightly; the sky is full of stars and under the stars for all w ounds, for all w ounds there is balm. Acacias across over the tracks ring w ith scents like the belfry on the village green, to rouse m en and w om en from their sins, but lovers entw ined their bodies passionately and severely, and so it seem ed that on the hillside many entw ined hands w ere praying silently and devotedly, that the angel brought tidings of love to an am azed Virgin M ary. Pity, now that the porch w as that fortunate saint, that those, w hom she sheltered, have long, long been crucified. [ 39] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 284 II. Clank! It w as once, as if som eone had throw n a stone into the w indow . The night w as sweet, as if a bell had begun to sway in your infatuated heart and the thick black spider's w eb of silence w as pierced by song, w hich invades the universe like w ater a crack in a ship on the sea. It w as the landlord's daughter playing a piano tune, that little blonde w ith eyes of blue, w hom I daily hum bly implore to love me and to w hom m y soul bends its knee. Hey! It w as a m erry tune, it w as a tem pestuous tune, one th at in the "W hale" bar a m ariner choir m ay croon. I quickly thought about her m aiden body, her tender fram e com posed of rosy bones, on w hich pliant flesh trem bled w ith the tide of joy; I quickly thought about her simple gaze, w hich she fixed on the music like on a lover's eyes and love, great love soared inside of me from toe to head like sap inside a w hite birch tree on a spring eve, that tree at night has not a single leaf and the shoot swishes in the w ind, [40] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 285 b u t at daw n it has com e to leaf, unrivaled in the w orld by any book and on each a poem. It's a pity th at already four officers visit that miss, one of w hom will take her for a wife and w ith life's distress appease; pity, I w ould have had her like a garden in front in w hose soil roses, reseda, bluebells, melissa w ould flower, and w hose gravel paths at night m y fingers w ould travel. She played, w hile our hearts, those indom itable ham m ers pounding the w orld's treasure-filled vault, grew silent altogether and the universe w as no longer that ship, invaded by song like w ater, it w as m ore a glass, filled to the brim w ith beauty and w e drank from it to the bottom, to the bottom deeply, until the head tilted back and a tear entered the eye; after all it is beauty w e need, like love, bread and water, so that filled w ith it w e m ay do everything beautifully, so that a lover m ay utter beautiful w ords to his beloved and poets w rite their poems. H unger, pain, anguish, grief, anger and love left us like birds, w hen sum m er lengthens its shadow and w e being, at that m om ent w e only were, [ 41] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 286 w e w ere like a stone is, a tree or a flower on a green m eadow, nothing m ore, nothing more; w here w as th at city, those streets, those cursed factories, w orkshops and machines, w here w as th at hard bread, w ater, poor table and rickety chair? Each of us forgot all his w orries and falling into the bottom less present w ith all senses, he w as happy, after all m an is happiest w hen least of his bliss he thinks. Father often puffed at his pipe and lit matches that died, being nothing m ore than an im age of hum an bliss, on a bough a bird piped in its sleep, perhaps it had a beautiful dream and slum bered on, and slugs feasting on fragrant flowers w ere disguised by shadow and the song alone rushed into the silence like a suicide into the depth below, b ut we, w e the people on the porch w ith all our heart deplored deeply, w hen this night allured us so sweetly the hillside across w ith acacias abloom and the song echoing, that here u nder the starry sky w e could not lie until the end of time. W hen it w as already late and rather likely that som e neighbors next door w ished to rest, [42] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 287 once m ore as if into the grass, as if quickly posies to pick, into w hite keys her hands she im mersed, b u t now, dam ned! from deep slum ber filled w ith magic w e roused resolutely an d clasped hands. T hat's w hy she longed to lull us w ith th at beauty, that beauty like in the deep forest the wily Sarka that knight lulled w ith kisses and horns filled w ith sw eet wine, this is why, so th at now she could burst severe and blithe into th at song, which patriots intone and misses in national garb, th a t song, w hich is bravely sung by w ould-be legionnaires, w hen on the nation's holiday the street cheers them and the flags into their m ouths fly, th at insolent song, stirring and hollowly pathetic about high black boots and a saber w hetted to cut both ways. Ho! From deep slum ber filled w ith magic w e roused resolutely an d clasped hands. O u r house is tiny, somewhere on the outskirts of the city, a G od-forsaken place w here sleepers are aw akened by roosters, yet w ho w ould guess how m any folk can be cooped up in it, if they are needy; [ 43] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 288 next to me lives a blind accordion player, above m e a consum ptive seamstress and a lim ping sailor, next door a locksm ith at the Danek factory, a lam plighter and an unhappy w idow , in the basem ent the caretaker couple and they all today forgot about the torm ent from their w ounds, because the evening w as fine, it came, dressed w ounds and having poured oil like a Sam aritan, it pleased w ith sw eet w ords, b ut that song snatched away the dressing and the w ounds sm art again, luckily that pain came in due time, th at pain m anly deeds w ill incite; faith and hope arched up in us like bridges across an abyss, faith by courage is joined and for this song I devised an ending utterly different and plain: w e too will not die on straw, w e too will die in the field of battle and w e fall off the horse, the saber too will ra ttle ----- III. The evening usually is still like a frozen waterfall, but the porch it is the embrace of Virgin Mary, those w ho from the battlefield of the day carry aw ay their w ounded bodies, will seat them selves on it nightly and it will clasp them w ith bars like a w om an w ith fingers w ould embrace them lightly; the sky is full of stars and under the stars for all w ounds, for all w ounds there is balm. [44] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 289 CITY OF SIN The city, city of industrialists, plutocrats and brutal boxers, city of inventors and engineers, city of generals, m erchants and patriotic poets black w ith sin it overstepped the bounds of G od's w rath and God ranted; a h u ndred times he vow ed retribution to that town, rain of brimstone, fire w ith roaring thunder and a hundred times he relented, for he always recalled that once he had vow ed, that for tw o just m en he w ould spare his tow n doom and his w ord not to keep seem ed harsh to the Lord; for in the vernal park tw o lovers w ere roam ing breathing deeply the perfum e of haw thorn in full bloom. [45] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 290 T H E S C R E E N AT THE C I N E M A Im paled by a ray, a little w hite cloud slipped dow n on it and because it could be sliced like ice cream, having cut, w ith long stares of their eyes people nailed it onto the w all of the cinema and so that it w ould not overflow like dough on a pastry board swelling severely, they fram ed it. Crucified, little w hite cloud on four sides, how you've insisted upon our eyes, w e all fell in love w ith you, saying: this is beautiful, this is a marvel, God! But ah, you are a sheet too from Procrustes' bed, dear life, dear life, w hen you are lying on it in bloody torm ent, aren 't you afraid, that they m ay cut off your legs or hands? The devout one delights: U pon m y honor, this is a clean altar cover, [ 46] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 291 from the chalice stream s a beautiful dream and on the patina lie pieces of Christ for the Eucharist. However u pon you I like m ost m en who have iron fists and w om en w ith small, pliant breasts; I think to myself: screen, hey hooray, here pass m e one that's real for me to kiss and feel. You are that handkerchief, that Veronica passed to Christ at Calvary and into which, for her, he im pressed his portrait; he thought to himself: w ith love she m ay have from me, at least it w ill be enshrined in her m em ory, God be w ith you, God w ith you, m y sweet, God w ith you, God w ith you, m y Jerusalem. [47] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 292 I N T H E G A R D E N G E T H S E M A N E Between pebbles, bugs and serpents shyly my bare foot I set, on my w ay in the garden to pray to my God; to each m an such a m om ent appears, his peers m ute to his inquiries, the giddy m om ent is tolling like a bell and m an unable to depend on fellow m an enters Gethsemane and kneels d o w n ... I too loved seven beautiful virgins, w ho saved up oil for the w edding night, I too have m y dream , yet today w earied by life I kneel on the grass w here saxifrage blooms, to clasp my hands and say: Father, if possible, m ay your angel fly here and if he w o n 't help m e drink, at least m ay he take aw ay this cup from me; it is easy for you to rule, but how can I, I a boy the sm allest of the small that cup of joy, that cup of sacred fervor alone drain to the bottom all? [48] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 293 CITY IN TE A R S If this w orld miracles knew and tears, that flow from poor m en's eyes, into one great river grew, these salty tears from cries w ould flood streets, squares, factories, banks and palaces and cries and moans, rushing upon the city ceaselessly, w ould destroy it, until of it only a w asteland and bare ruins rem ained, w here at night w andering, a jackal w ould wail; if only then a Jeremiah could be found, to cry over the tow n deep from his soul. But m an does have a heart and the cruelest heart know s a sweet m om ent of forgiveness, m y pain so sad, someone else's the saddest, and so, town, life's joy and m y pain, town, there is no other rem edy, b u t for me to forgive you and forget all, for people have muscles of steel and ever so profound a faith, that a great day will com e w hen w rongs are righted and the brim ful of their pain into joy they will turn — and for this our tom orrow [49] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 294 already I w ould forgive you all, m y town, m y street and house, b u t that your lookout towers, spires and chim neys u n d er the clouds have left no room even for the sparrow — and if I loved you a hundred times more, that I could not. To the w isdom of m y heart m ore eloquently the bird speaks in the dust of streets and the aeroplane into the sky m ay it fly, be it to the M ount Everest or M ont Blanc! [50] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 295 T H E C R E A T I O N OF TH E W O R L D The earth will be a place desolate and sad, through the sieve of stars a lark into heavens will descend and its singing incomplete will end, fum es w ill put out the sun and obscure stars; in gardens the frost will set icy blossoms aglow and neverm ore shall w e behold the blue sky above us, never w ill the linden trees bloom like they did before; there will be no springs issuing from mountains, in w ires alone little electric currents will flow, and never will colorful flowers be sweetly redolent, streets w ill fill up w ith poisonous gas, how ever still like G od's spirit hovered over valleys, over houses m etam orphosed into steel and sorrow, over factories, shivering w ith the din of machines, the thought of revenge will hover, until w e come, until w ith our m ight one w ith the vengeful thought w e becom e and create a new w orld w ith an alm ighty deed. O nly then will a new sun be bom , not that poets' toy, perhaps a golden plate, perhaps a disc set ablaze, yet the sun, from land w e shall a sea of azure w ater separate and a single banner weave to fly. on ships of the five seas, [ 51] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 296 sw ords and cannons w e shall forge into plowshares, once m ore to dig furrow s into hallow ed soil, into w hich w e will sow swollen seed, so that again grain m ay bud and daily bread w e had each, pow der-m agazines w e shall sack, fortresses raze and a new cathedral build, w here there w ould be no gods, nor angels w ith shiny w ings, w here everyone w ould be God and himself w ould com m and and labor again — this tim e labor truly holy will m ake machines, ham m ers and chisels ring and its song will rum ble deeply in every city like fervent prayer. O n the sixth day how ever lovers again will tread silent paths and the girl holding flowers in her arms, will w eave a colorful w reath of blossoms, indeed her body will be fragrant like ground broken in March, w hich is w aiting until living, sw eet seed sinks into it; and before reckoning how m any silver stars the G reat Bear m ay have, nourished by the w ord of love, bewitching and plain, into the furrow of her body a rare seed is laid, w hich will grow. O n the seventh day a seven-hued rainbow arches across the w orld, the loveliness of May lilies fills the breast, having conceived the beloved spent by the new ness of things will rest. [52] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 297 The seventh day be a holy day. M ay the m achine grow silent, the ham m er be still, m ay all violins reverberate and m ay the flute trill its soft song. The seventh day be a holy day. A nd a holy day it will be from this day until the end of the w orld. [53] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 298 IN A S M A L L S U B U R B A N S T R E E T It begins in the m iddle of tow n and leads far into suburban fields, w inding in a very roundabout way, those living in it, I trust, in thousands do not count their m oney; at night a w alker is alm ost a miracle and if he strolls, then from the acacias, suffering near w alls facing the dark factory, shadow s fall on their backs hum bly under his feet. A t night the factory lies on a bier like Jairus's daughter, the m ourning blanket of night her form shrouds and though my steps nim ble like the knell's thunder and though the crow sings a funeral tune beneath the clouds, dead she is not, is not, b ut is sleeping. This deathly silence collapses unto itself at the crack of daw n, w hen the sirens resound and idle wheels begin to turn, until from this din the factory aw akens to her everyday living. A nd w hen I passed by, I w as searching for vicious w ords and blasphem y, w ith w hich to hum iliate this her majesty, to strike the pen out of the hands of the poet, w ho today still w anted to create for this im age of civilization and capital a servile accolade. [54] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 299 The air oozing steel here saps the strength of the living and driving belts tear off hum an limbs w ith thoughtless force, as if m erely in the m eadow they w ere chrysanthem um s to pick, only so th at the m achine m ay feed on tepid blood; lo, how the pressure gauges preen, appraising strength, lo, how the cylinders gleam, lo, how high the smoke stacks stretch, as if they w ere gun carriages, the m uzzle trained at the stars, they are preparing for great wars, in w hich vain m an even the cosmos w ould like to vanquish. A nd w hen I stood before her, suddenly to m e w ould w hisper from a small w indow of a cottage, w hich seem ed even smaller, sounds in the sweetening dusk, it w as a lullaby and it gently soothed m y aching soul: rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye and I felt the pow er of these sounds, not only did they conquer silence, but they also hum bled the beauty of the factory, proudly loom ing dark, those sounds splashing like ocean waves, tall w alls could not w ithstand, under their w eight the entire factory trem bled, over all reigned victorious w ith its might: rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye. A t that m om ent I knew the uselessness of a curse and I w as just, [55] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 300 after all that factory itself curses and itself indicts, am idst thousands of hearts. M ay she here rem ain, may she loom tall w ith her stacks in the clouds, indeed for the bliss of the needy, for the bliss of the w hole w orld she is quite unnecessary. [56] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 301 A P O E M FU L L OF C O U R A G E A N D F A I T H I know, you are playful and gentle, affectionate of heart, I know, w here your glory lies, the glory of your life, in your tim e you w ant to have, d o n 't you, hum ble quiet and hum ble peace. You w ish for a kitchen, tiny, quite small w hite and silent like a dove sailing above, on the wall brass pots in w hose glaze at yourself, your youth and beauty you w ould gaze, in the w indow s curtains of pink lace and in the flow erpot a blossom, w hich shyly became fragrant at daw n and were sweetly redolent until nightfall; this w ould be your kingdom full of smiles, w ouldn't it, this w ould be the w orld attained for w hich you pray, still like a Sunday on the village green at the break of day, plain like those tw enty years of your life; there w ould be so m uch glory, w ouldn't it, w hen in an ardent beat [57] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 302 the m ortar w ould toll in your h and like a belfry's bell, as you crushed sugar, cinnam on and poppy seed, w hile in the m orning breeze beneath the w indow on a bough a bird trilled its melody. Yeti the son of a tem pestuous time, perhaps m an, perhaps boy, perhaps child in the torrent of events I steep m y hands, day by day tum bling forth; I am like vernal w ind across the lands, w hen a blue sky arches to span the w orld, w hen lilacs silently bloom and ice bursts on stream s, I am like vernal w ind, which, sw eeping the w orld, stood in w onder over the first flower of spring; and that w as you, that w as m y love for you. But today I brace m y elbow in vain against fate, nothing anym ore will save me, because a dream , a great dream deludes m y w eak heart w ith its glory; I stand on the palm of Europe, w here millions crowd, aw aiting the day, w hen the signal will resound, w hen the first blood on the decisive day stains cobblestones, [58] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 303 w hen the first w ounded fall, on the barricade, on the barricade w ith my song I shall stand one of the crowd. I know , you are playful and gentle, affectionate of heart, G od's maiden, w ho meekly yields to m y embrace, b u t I, no, I d o n 't w ant, I don't w ant you, farewell, but you don't need to be sad, behold, lilies bloom and roses and daisies, farewell and visit me one day, w hen I die. [59] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 304 P O O R I have a w indow, in it float spring skies like a small ship on a river w ith a pink flag, I have a dog, he has hum an eyes, I have a blue notebook and on its pages thirtythree lovely girl's names, I have a sharp pocket knife and a pistol, in m y tie a ruby pin, I have a love who dances on the spring lawn, (at night w e go by the graveyard into the fields and since she is a hairdresser, her hands, face and hair are fragrant, as if not in a featherbed but in a bouquet of roses she had lain yesterday) and so that I d o n 't forget, I have an em pty box of polish, a sad, bone-dry flowerpot in the w indow , a flower on my coat and tears in m y soul. W hen I'm home, I d o n 't have to w atch the street always at the stars too I gaze, a com b I play and I chant, [ 60] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 305 m y fingers drum on the oak table apace and it feels like som eone's embrace. Clearly someone is going to say: this for m e w ould not suffice by m y faith and if it is enough for you, I w ould not be enough for m e ,------ oh, yes, I too w ould surely be glad, if m ore I had, yet I am a wise pauper: for I am learning from the orbits of the stars and believe in the com m unist manifesto, I believe that the day will arrive, w hen I too will be content, I believe, that I too will one day be m aster and high, high, high above Prague I will fly in an aeroplane. [61] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 306 T H E H U M B L E S T OF P O E M S O n a m ountain high and inclining tow ards the city standing hands w ide open, I am a prophet, w ho is leading the way and augurs the poor their glorious future day, I am a sage w ho advises in times of hopeless pain, holding in m y hand a blossom that will never fade, I am the one, who in the revolution will fire first, b u t I am also the one, w ho will be first to fall and w ho will be first to kneel to dress w ounds of the w ounded, m iraculous like God and m ighty like God, I am more, I am still m uch more and yet I am nothing, but, hum bly resigned to the mercy of m ultitudes, the poet Jaroslav Seifert. [ 62] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 307 B. Translation of Sam d Idska [Sheer Love] by Jaroslav Seifert 1923 translated by Dana Loewy 1994 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 308 CONTENTS Electric Lyre [7] Poem of Spring [10] A m orous Stanzas [12] Paris [14] H our of Peace [19] Lullaby [22] N ew Year's Poem [24] A Song A bout Girls [28] G lorious Day [29] Verses in Remembrance of the Revolution [32] Verses A bout Love, M urder and the Gallows [37] A Sailor [51] A Black M an [55] The Little Ring [57] All the Beauties of the W orld [59] [Afterword] [61] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 309 ELECTRIC LYRE The stillness of the forest w ith blue skies, w hen calyces close under the w eight of darkness like at night w eary hum an eyes, the bubbling spring w hich through green grass in its surface bears a reflection of stars, this m agic my youth never knew. Before I begin to sing in a frantic rush about things th at are and that I adore, through the din of cars, bells, chimes and wires, before I begin to sing of the beauty of propellers, advancing in the supple caress of clouds w ith force, and thrusting the eagle, about to fly higher, back below, about the m achine's iron, that bum s w ith a lum inous glow, about the pow er of the crowd, w hich marches and annihilates, and about my heart — like an autum n leaf it flutters in the w ind of daily events, burning w ith love's flame, that is pink and clean; before I begin to sing in this everyday din, to you, Muse, I tu rn as it is ancient use, come to m e today and kindly shake m y hand; [7] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 310 Muse, my m odem M use of our time, w ho w ith a shy m otion a t night at eight unveils the red curtain on the w hite screen of the cinema, come to m e today, the creative hour is arduous; Muse, you w ho soars in an am azing haste over the helm et of the cyclist, w ho at forceful pace sweeps boldly along the stadium 's track. Muse, you w ho guides the hand of the engineer, as he draw s a blueprint of an American skyscraper, come to m e today, w aning is m y vigor and I take hold of m y pen w ith fear; proscribed M use of the street, you w ho w itnessed w hen on the canvas of the circus w ere painted beautiful pictures, in w hich a black m an resists a tiger's clutches; Muse, you w ho hovers over the head of the lion-tamer, w hen he cracks the w hip and curbs fearless predators; Muse, you w ho holds the hoop for the foolish clown, for w hose jokes the circus roars like the ocean; Muse, you w ho know s how tenderly w ith your hands to hold the reins to guide the unruly steed, upon whose head a w hite danseuse stands; you good M use, understand m y perplexity, I w ant to sing out all that stirs hum anity even my love's dream , and that one is sweet; — [8] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 311 the street is m y electric lyre, I w alk in its m idst, like strings above m e are wires, an iron song I w ant to intone for the city of stone, m ay it be a m odem song and today's sacred chorale; therefore, Muse, com e and give m e strength, and so that this song of m ine m ay be fine, bend your w hite brow over m y lyre. [9] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 312 POEM OF S P R I N G Miss, you sit in the office am ong typew riters, the sun of spring brilliant on your fingers and your hands are shaking, Jesus Christ, you w ould surely like to have an airing. Isn't it true, life is beautiful beyond m easure, the bench in the park m ay be very hard, yet people in love w rite poem s w ith all their heart and will even that hard w ood treasure. I know, to love is not so easy, m an is tossed back and forth by love's tide, for a little while he soars u p into the sky, the ray of the sun follows at his side, yet out of the blue the Earth's relentless w eight, strikes him back dow n and harsh reality ties him to the ground; d o n 't w orry about it though, fiercely in a w hile you will blaze to the stars, falling into an embrace, for you are young, tw enty years old and at that stage any m erry love is grievous, [10] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 313 because love is like the entire universe: w hile it m ay be bitter, it tastes delicious. A nd if you believe me and I can offer you friendly and true advice, d o n 't ever be afraid, Miss, to love; and if someone kisses your right cheek, tu rn the left one too. [H I R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 314 A M O R O U S S T A N Z A S Give m e your hand, my beloved, give m e both your hands, I am glad, that you delight me so and that I too delight you, I m ay be small and not m uch that m eets the eye, m y love though reaches to the silvery star, m y love is m ore pow erful than all the states in the w orld, m ore terrible than all arm ies w ith their cannons' fire and its force is beyond com pare w ith the force of electric engines, and those if only they desire, could the universe even w ith its stars dem olish entire. For love is som ething enormous; you can see it for instance in this, th at if the w hole w orld w ere w aging w ar and a lot of blood w ere flowing, in the sky like crim son angels fiery shrapnels of steel w ould fly, th at if the w hole w orld saw revolution, still som ew here in green grass lovers w ould have tim e to clasp hands and face to face to incline. [ 12] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 315 Give m e your hand, m y beloved, give m e both your hands, I am no longer afraid that love could play a trick on m e in these revolutionary times, times w hen an arm y of soldiers and hordes of troopers ready to charge they stand and m illions of poor w orking stiffs are preparing for a determ ined battle, to show the right of overw orked fists and for that dam ned toil earn them selves a little bliss and joy. If for love I am losing m y head and have nights sleepless and drab, if all day for love I w ill sigh and out-cry m y eyes for tears, d o n 't be afraid, m y good friends, that am id this love's blaze I will forget that w hich to us is dearest, that I forget the poor's w oe and wretchedness an d that love w ill prevent, that I raise the banner of hopes, no, not that: love for great things carries aw ay m y heart and if m y beloved all so firmly around her neck w ould tie m y hands and ever m ightily her love to her lap dragged m e nether, to the barricades, to the barricades, w hen revolution comes, my beloved and I w ill go together. [ 13] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 316 P A R I S A Ivan Goll I no longer feel like strolling along the river banks, w hen over Prague misty darkness is hovering, the w ater is m urky, it has no .meaning, it em pties into the Elbe som ew here near Melnik; I no longer delight in roam ing the sam e streets w ith nothing new to see, and in sitting on a bench in the park at night, w here police peek at couples w ith a flashlight; here everything is so sad, even things taking place, life never derails in its trace, and if something comes to pass, some uprising, strike or killing, all w ill again conspicuously grow chilly. My sweet, isn't everything here rather silly, there is no delight for us in this place. A nd since it was not granted to me to be bom som ew here on the verge of a dark African jungle, w here the white heat of the sun inflames all into fire and in the branches auburn m onkeys tum ble, since it w as not granted to us in the w aves of the Nile to bathe our bodies, looking into the eye of a voracious crocodile, R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 317 on the w aters to pluck lotus blossoms, leaping to escape from lion's fangs, w hen hungry,, to feast on juicy coconuts and to slum ber in the tem pest of waterfalls, since it w as not granted that w e, natives black and curly, could to our heart's content bask in the rays of the blazing sun, why, w hy did fate mete out to us to live our life in the streets of this tow n on the fiftieth parallel line, w here foreign to all is any fierce and fiery sw ing and good people breathe w ith such difficulty, w here w ither m ust all em otion, before it even inflames, w here people's necks are encased in stiff starched collars, w here instead of birds we rather listen to jazz-bands and lions to see w e go only to the menagerie? Since it w as destined to be and in this stony city around machines, ham m ers and levers hardened soft fists and iron civilization already m eans so m uch to us, that am idst trees and m eadow s the city w e will miss, since w e are forever bew itched in labyrinths of factories, w hich reek, w hy, w hy did fate m ete out to us to live our life just here? There in the w est on the Seine river is Paris! A t night, w hen the skies there light up w ith silver stars, on the boulevards stroll crow ds am ongst num erous cars, there are cafes, cinemas, restaurants and m odem bars, [ 15] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 318 life there is jolly, it boils, swirls and carries away, there are fam ous painters, poets, killers and Apaches, there new and uncom m on things occur, there are fam ous detectives and beautiful actresses, naked danseuses dance in a suburban variete, and the perfum e of their lace w ith love addles your brain, for Paris is seductive and people cannot w ithstand. O f the local poets I treasure very m uch Ivan Goll, for he likes die cinem a as well as I, and believes the saddest of all m en to be Charlie Chaplin. Boxing matches, that too is a nice show, w hen m an is wistful and sighs for all his devotion, clank, an eye for an eye, clank, a blow for a blow. In the sky slowly the G reat Wheel is revolving and w hen at sunset Paris is already dim w ith shadow , lovers are taking w alks together along the Trocadero, and if earthly d u st w eighs dow n their shoes, so that heavenly beauty they m ay also taste, to the stars up the Eiffel they fly in an electric lift, holding one another gently around the waist. H ere everything is so sad, even things taking place, life never derails in its trace, and w hen I fall asleep as night darkens in the w indow , I dream that at Pere-Lachaise in the thujas the nightingale sings. A nd, really, Paris is at least one step closer to heavenly spheres, come, m y love, let's go to Paris. [ 16] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 319 H O U R OF PE ACE A poet's instrum ent is the lyre, m ay it resonate, w hen your hands in shackles are encased by the w orld of today, w hen w hirling life, w hich dins in alleyways, in the w indow flashes by, w hen cars drive and horns cry, the factory tow ering w ith its black chimneys and a m om ent of quiet m eans great happiness. A poet's instrum ent is the lyre, m ay it resonate, a w om an w ipes a tear from her eye, lifting a child into her embrace. There are things in this w orld that seem, there are things that are, hard is the bread that daily w e deal and it grows bitter under a gaze; com fort the w retched one, the w hole w orld she held to her fluttering heart and now that the edges of reality h u rt her hands, now as over her ow n child she bends full of burdensom e malaise, of the entire w orld her tiny, w eak infant is too heavy to bear in her embrace. [19] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 320 W indow panes and in them green plants separate the w orld from her, they are like sordines on violins; w hen the street is droning, the w orld dashing, here only h u m is heard like that of bees and the w orld, it seems like nothing but flowers, w hen through this w indow perceived; but out there beggars are w him pering prayers of need, but out there gold is jangling and if the stars shone a thousand times m ore brightly, in the streets there w ould be filthy m ud, and if the earth w ere different a hundred times, people's souls w ould always be covered w ith grime. Woman, you w ho w eeps over everyday fate, I implore you, don't you falter, for you, for you the w hole w orld w ith m y hands I w ill alter and this w hole sad and ugly globe I will recast into verse of fine and sw eet yearning; the present barren for love like a stone, yet when they touch, hands are miraculous, on the poor table from little bread will grow and in your heart you will again feel young joy. A poet's instrum ent is the lyre, m ay it resonate, and my hands fell into its strings like birds, there is still beauty w hich does not decline, it waters flowers w ithered in the heat and w here there is beauty there is a soft smile, and w here there is a smile, there is tenderness, and w here there is tenderness until the end of time, loneliness you will not sense. [20] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 321 Listen, softly my fingers play in the strings a m ost beautiful melody, There are things in this w orld that seem, there are things that are — and song, fade aw ay !. Only the last tone m ay reverberate like w hen forever love is dying in m emories shyly, be silent, lyre, poet's instrum ent: the baby in its cradle is crying. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 322 LULLABY Between four walls the ceiling is sagging, a m other is rocking her little child, above them the lamp is hovering, as if an angel to heaven w ere ascending and fluttering its wings disturbed moths. The cradle is rocking from side to side, the m other's eyes fill w ith tears and as if through crystals the baby she sees and as that cradle is rocking and rocking, the m other is singing: • — So content sleeping here you lie, m y sw eet little child, and before the stars light u p the sky, your m om m y will rock you; but outside, between tall residences, in tow n squares and betw een palaces, people are pacing and lamenting, returning hom e from work. — D addy will come soon. — So content sleeping here you lie, my tiny little child, sm iling you cannot divine, w hy poor people so often m oan and cry, w hy people each other a slice of bread deny. [22] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 323 — D addy will come soon. — W hen from this doorstep yourself one day for the w orld you will-leave, there w ill be no hunger and no m ore pain, this lonely w orld G arden Eden will be. The birdies will pick crum bs from your palm , and since there w ill be no m ore cruelty and harm , from forests hinds and faw ns into the streets will come, the streets will be blithe from w indow s banners will fly and people like brothers will love one another. — So content sleeping here you lie under lock and key; sleep well and slum ber, so that you w o n 't hear, w hen one day o u t of the blue beneath the w indow s a lovely song will ring, w hen all the poor w alk by and sing, — D addy too will go w ith them — w hen overhead the red banner flies, shots resound and smoke w hirls in the skies and som eone falls w ith blood in his eyes. The m other falls silent, the song still softer grows, dusk gives w ay to night, a night deep and m urky, lam plighters light lam ps w ith long poles, slowly the cradle keeps rocking and as it is sw aying and swaying, the m other softly sings: — lala, lalalala, lalalala, lala. [ 23] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 324 N E W YE AR' S POEM O n the waves of H am burg's harbor m oors a heavy ship, on the w aves your steam er moors, Mr. H ugo Stinnes, and on top of all the riches, that in your coffers you keep, from America it still brought you a load of large, heavy and shiny lum ps of gold. Yet w hat w ould you say, w ealthiest of men, if one day I slipped into your abode a t night on tiptoe, so that you w ould not hear my step, and if from that robber's pile of your prize I stole a piece, a tiny glittering nugget, w hich w ould flame like a fragm ent of the sun the size of a bird's egg. To be sure I w ould not buy a black horse for it, though it m ust be awfully nice to ride along Stromovka, the horse's hooves stam ping the violet's smell and the beauty of the bluebell, and ride up to the sum m er-seat and to the little pond downhill; w hen in love, I d o n 't consider myself much, m y dearest, I rem em ber only you, for if w e love, w e split our hearts in two, from the w ound opened by kisses pow er will gush. [ 24] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 325 Surely it is sad w hen nearly num b w ith cold w e stand on Celetn& at the furrier's w indow and behind glass from the jungle a beast of prey bares its sharp fangs and its fur heavy and w arm w idely displayed it lazily lounges there prone, vainly w arm ing the glass case's w ooden floor. So that you do n 't freeze like a flow er in winter, to prove m y love, to prove that you I w ant to cherish, for that piece of gold I w ould have sew n from a rare pelt a gray little fur coat, w ith w hite blotches. A w hole m onth already I have thought of little else and in m y m ind I see you how very becom ing the gray little fur coat w ould be w ith w hitest ermine, thick and shaggy, so you w ould be hard to embrace. W hat a stir it w ould create on W enceslas Square, w hen I led you through the flowing queue of people! Perhaps people w ould maliciously talk right there, after all m an only pain will not envy his fellow man. Surely they w ould say: Look here, this is a proletarian poet, since w hen is poetry today such a lucrative trade? For so long he w anted bravely to die on the barricade, until it brought him nice pay; now , that his sweetheart such a precious fur has acquired and struts around tow n like her ladyship in a fur coat, likely he surrendered his revolutionary lyre and he hardly writes verses about the revolution. [ 25] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 326 Fools, you m ay think w hatever you like, for all I care, that perhaps I w on the class lottery you m ay speculate, or even that w riting verse pays off now adays — — for you, people hum ble and abased, for you, m y proletariat, m y heart is beating w ith zeal, in the first line for you I will always stand, w hen the bugle briskly bids to combat, from you I originate and for you I truly feel, and so m y pockets will always be em pty. W hy though shouldn't I for m y sw eet buy a little gray fur coat speckled w ith white, it is cold, like a tiny bird frost and snow she fears, for holes in her pockets she cannot tuck in her hands; a m uff w hich she has w orn perchance five years, like an old and scruffy dog it is only shedding fur, w hen the w ind blows, from it in tufts hairs will fly, even if w arm ed w ith her breath her hands are numb. I w ould w alk on her side in the cold and freeze, m y w hole body shivering and chattering teeth, yet she w ould always w arm me w ith those hands of hers, m ost gently clasping me to her w arm th, m y num b nose she w ould always press to her cheek, w hich is fragrant like bitter chocolate, and she w ould caress me peck after peck, until the w arm th of love revived me. Then w e could em bark on a journey by rail [ 26] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 327 perhaps as far as the G iant M ountains, to high peaks and to valleys, w here the air is full of frosty snowy filaments, w here there is only frost and frost, w hite snow and silence, w here from the sky frozen birds fall to earth into the snow and people on skis as if devoid of reason glide d ow n the slope, w here even the bells in belfries are bursting w ith the frost and everyone m ust carry along a flask w ith a drop of rum . Farewell, m y dream s, you are too radiant and impossible, on the w aves of H am burg's harbor m oors no vessel, Mr. Stinnes has no heart and .his safes are burglar-proof. A t the cafe w indow m y love and I are sitting together, in it the frost is painting a tangle of flowers on a m isty panel, so that we m ay not see the street of the rich —; and here at this table w e shall w ait for the first sw allow on the aeroplane's w ing to alight, until the poet, praising love, w rites a poem of spring, until the vernal w ind m akes telegraph lines sing, and lovers once m ore in groves will stroll, along the w ay w hite May lilies to pick. [27] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 328 A S O N G A B O U T GI RLS A long river runs through the tow n's center, across it seven bridges reach, on the em bankm ent stroll a thousand lovely girls, and different is each. From heart to heart you w ander to w arm your hands am idst rays of love w arm and magnificent, on the em bankm ent stroll a thousand lovely girls, and none of them is different. [ 28] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 329 G L O R I O U S DAY As it behooves a true proletarian bard, on the first of M ay I w as on Wenceslas Square, joining the ranks of carpenters, metal-workers, laborers and cobblers, am ong those, w ho have little or nothing at all, n o t a penny in the pocket, in the heart w oe thousandfold and under red banners that w ere flying passionately, w e vociferously cried out into the blue sky speeches full of defiance, force, insults and pride, the tinkle of gold and tricky talk of socio-patriots in a roaring storm of cries quickly to drown. Spirits were high, in the quivering w ind the perfum e of bird-cherries from som e faraw ay green, it beckoned to sing a song of spring, full of cheer about the sun, about love, to honor all am orous couples, b u t w e in the nam e of rights and in the nam e of justice, did w e come, in order to dem onstrate against that w hich they burden us w ith today. Away w ith the bourgeoisie, the idol of capital m ay tumble, long live Russia, hail to you Third International! [29j R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 330 No w ars, no swindles, nothing of that kind, w e w ant a new w orld, a w orld to our measure; for life is lovely and flowers smell sweetly, the earth is breathing a new, balm y pleasure and w e the m ultitude today w ere hungering for her. For too long w e have toiled for that bourgeois bunch, for too long w e have p u t ducats into their pockets and there was no leisure for us to lounge in Stromovka, w ith its fragrant acacias, lilacs and violets and precious exotic flowers for bourgeois nostrils, w here in the restaurant busily and m errily all day w aiters will carry m ugs of beer to the tables and an arm y band clam orous m arches will play; to be sure, in the nam e of rights and justice w e are fed up we have had enough of all this, and he w ho all his life know s nothing but fast, w ishes for once, freed from all misgivings, calmly to sit dow n at a bountiful table's repast and to listen to beautiful sounds of music, as if it w ere the quivering of angels' wings. W e citizens unfettered, free, at you, bosses and cow ards, today w e thunder into your ears: w e w ant more, w e w ant everything, w e too w ant to dine on pork roast and cabbage, and for supper to have veal stuffed or fricassee; w e dem onstrate and strongly state: m ay you not forget none of you bosses up there, w e too w ant to drink bottles of burgundy and eat m arinated eel and w e harbor a firm and indom itable belief, [30] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 331 that one day w e too will sit dow n in peace around tables w ith w heels of Swiss cheese and for all that grief and all that need from the plenty of the earth's lavish bounty w e too w ant to choose am ong the m ost tasty, sm oked salmon, casks of caviar and salam i and since we firm ly believe in the iron logic of history, w e tru st that w e too one day will drink liqueurs, and for the w rongs, that w e and our forebears endured, w e and our offspring will then ride in automobiles. For this is w hat vengeance dem ands, so it m ust be, this is our great dream and strong shield in the field, and this is why on this glorious day, on the first of May, hearts filled w ith anger and yearning, w e took to the street. Beside me w ith joy, clutching a carnation in m y hand, w ith m y eyes I counted the throng unending and long. [31] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 332 VERSES IN R E M E M B R A N C E OF THE R E V O L U T I O N The autum nal m ist in the walls of the street w as swiftly broken by m etal files of automobiles, and red banners, of which there w ere thousands, above the heads of the crow d fused into a blazing fire, and those w ere not long telescopes on the look-out tow er, nor w as there hardly a bearded astronom er, those w ere gun-carriages of cannons, as red guardists sought to tear dow n to its foundations the old order and on the horizon, on street pavem ent and in poor soil as well as in the hum an palm, they discovered the five-pointed star, w hich will shine like the m orning star from afar, it w as no dorm ant volcano that erupted and yet Europe trem bled, and rattle did the w indow s of governm ents and departm ents, it w as no lava, w hich w as flowing tepid all about in stream s, it w as blood, blood, blood of hum ans, to that polyphonic m elody w e listened w ith piety, and fools, in those days we did not believe, thinking that all this was not at all possible, that it w as not force, b ut th a t it was a miracle, [32] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 333 and w hen overnight w ithin reach a new land suddenly emerged, w e thought it w as a mirage. A nd w hen we p u t our fingers into the w ounds today and the fallow of the earth w ith hum an blood dressed five times has yielded crop, five times it w as plow ed, it is not a dream , it is not a dream , witnesses of these deeds w e cam e to be, and today our hearts stirred w ith strange sense, perhaps since the revolutionary breath of those days blew hotly into our face. W hen today this glory, this glory we see under the blue of the firm am ent and w hen of ourselves we feel asham ed, that for our weakness only a w onder we w anted to believe, w hen w e know w hat w as only yesterday, and know w hat m ust happen very soon, w hen w e know that it is our fate to sacrifice our blood for the good of the poor, w hen w e know that the land w ill be ours tom orrow and that for our magnificent resolve this land will be m uch m ore lovely, w hen w e know the delicious m om ents at night u nder an apple-tree, w hen the apple-tree is blossoming the M ay night fragrant w ith the strong perfum e of spring, w hen revolution m ust, m ust arrive tom orrow, w hen w e have a sw eetheart w ith hands soft as snow, [ 33] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 334 w hen w e know all this, I w ould like to know, w hy even today w e m ay find som e cow ardly m ate, w ho, gazing into a skeleton's hollow, w ill meditate: to be, or not to be, ah, that is the question. [ 34] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 335 VERSES ABOUT LOVE, MURDER AND THE GALLOWS PROLOGUE For sheer love I hurried aw ay to the railway the stars w ere veiled by the fum es from the speeding train, the night w as fair, for each night is marvelous, the w orld seems just, sleeping under the haze of darkness. Jicin's tow n square is m ost lovely at nighttim e. Smile at me, statue of M ary, from beneath your golden lashes, in the com pany of the black shadow I am lonely, the m oon entered the tow er w indow and soon in the dark it vanished, smile at me, statue of M ary, from beneath your golden lashes, before your fair eye in the quiet of the arcade I pass by. The tow er's tip is like a magnet, sw im m ing in circles across the sky, into the m iddle of the tow n square it is draw ing em erald stars and if only one, am ong those thousands suspended above, plucked loose, fell onto the square from the sky's expanse, resem bling a drop of w ine in a delicate cup of glass, [37] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 336 u nder your feet a vast glow w ould overflow, for the star w ould shatter on the fountain's step of stone and from profound dark an awfully haunting scene w ould arise; it w ould not be a dream , a phantom , or deluding lies, b u t an actual town, stretching below beneath tall peaks and on the horizon m ountains, snow, lakes and deep ravines, on the slopes herds of cows and bloom ing w ild roses. This tow n I love like none other in the w orld, a great deal of my life I pass w ithin its walls, pity, that there am ong the roses no joy for m e will thrive and that journeys there drank from m y tears, hearing m y sigh. If in tow n the majority fell to com m unist comrades, I w ould request from the fam ous council of the city, w hen I die surely a m onum ent for m e to raise som ew here at the end of Linden tree avenue near Libosad; on a tall pedestal of w hite m arble legs astride I w ould stand lyre in hand, so that I could gaze at the tow n and the stars overhead. The Linden tree avenue, surely the w orld's one and matchless, w here nightly all the tow n's pretty girls will w ander, and I w ould glance into the eyes of every lass w ith a gaze welling forth from a heart of ardor. That perhaps w ould be bliss vast and unceasing, to be in love w ith all girls right and left, to love all girls and have a heart of stone and undying, to love all the girls and never to be mislead. [38] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 337 Frozen in a m oved gesture I w ould stand above the Linden trees, heavily fragrant the linden trees w ould din w ith the buzz of bees and for the lovers, dazed w ith that perfum e and their love, am idst am orous w hispers and kisses a song of love I w ould sing: that to love someone is not facile and effortless, softly the lyre w ould ring: strum , strum , strum , strum , the sad ballad about a hapless tailor I w ould narrate, w ho also loved and w ho in the end by the hangm an w ith his hem pen noose w as stripped of his love's dream. For none of those w ho are strolling here today has yet seen how fearfully grave a thing love can be. Each is m erry and m erry, joyfully their love's dream they dream , yet you, m y lyre, into their am orous w hisper you w ould th ru m about unhappy love a sad and m ournful tune: strum , strum , strum , strum . [39] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 338 BALLAD Just like a cloud is pierced by the spire of a tower, so w as the quiet love of Jan Tm ka, tailor in Jicin, he loved his wife, for in any w om an's embrace w e alw ays conjure u p life's fairest fantasy. O ver a low cradle, w hich like a calm heave lapped against the cham ber wall, the w om an leaned and the tailor sewed, fond w ords to the m achine's beat in harm ony fused w hen they echoed in her melody. A nd in the nook four children, head to head w ould sleep, to them belonged m other's smile, w hich she shared, giving half to her mate, w hom she loved dearly, half to her brood, whose fate night and day she'd aw ait. So tim e passed and w ith time years am assed over the fam ily's happiness, living in plain silence, apart from the current of events, away from the world. Yet the devil never sleeps; the tem ptation of sin on his w ing is sweet-tasting, you extend your hand hesitating and that instant [40] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 339 w om an's embrace engulfs you and your lip to a lip clings, as if soon you w ere to perish and so in haste the sweetness of her breath you w ished to taste. W hy only did you come, you, the soap-boiler's fair child, from blue w oolen fabric to have a dress made, you knew your beauty's tem ptation and that the tailor w ould not w ithstand, you knew that your body is a m arvel delicious w ith sin, that your breasts are like grapes while the m other's chest has w ithered, her beauty she gave to her children indeed like honey the flower w ith its fragrant blossom gives the bee, you knew that w hen the tailor took your m easure and w hen over your w hite fram e he bent, your body he w ould touch w ith his hand and your bosom 's buds he w ould long smell. The willfulness of fate toyed w ith the poor tailor laughably, once sitting from daw n till dusk, he sew ed w ith ceaseless industry, yet since into that fair m aiden's eyes he has gazed, w ith all devils the w retched tailor is possessed; he is sad like a child and w hen he w ields his needle from his w indow he watches the square sighing quietly. The statue of Virgin M ary is sm iling at the blue sky, to her he raises his eye ever so hesitant and shy, the bitterest lot in the w orld is the lot of love, at m ournful lovers the lovely Virgin does not smile. Then came long nights filled w ith grief and tears, her ow n suffering felled the pitiful wife, the cradle has stood still and the tiny child weeps, yet m other has no w ords of solace for it; [41] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 340 only hot tears drip from her eyes onto w hite lace, dusk has arrived, ajar into the night the w indow is silent, thirteen tinny stars glisten above the blessed Virgin, at the "Paris" cafe they are playing a w eepy song bent over her ow n pain, the w om an is crying and sighing. The m oon and stars rise in the clouds, it is now that lovers vow to love till death m ay them part and the tw o w ho cuddle strolling are a couple exceedingly comely, dazed is the tailor by the gaze into her dark eyes, the m oon gleams in them and he is w alking in his sleep and on the w ings of passion he rises into giddy heights of the night; for his passion he forgets his w ife's bitter tears, he begins to dream new dream s on his lover's bosom, he is like a butterfly in the calyx of a pretty blossom and th at w hich he sees in one sole gaze from her eyes, no poet in the w orld in w ords could cast. In the star-filled night, high above Jicin, Zebin is flowering pink, in the dark a bird his nest is seeking, lovers w alk the avenue alone hand in hand in the shade, the best pillow is the green m eadow sm elling of cum in, w hen no one any better will provide. First the wife cried, now w ith her five children weep, first w ith tears she reproached and now she nags him w ith w ords, into his sweet infatuation she blends bitter venom her w eeping is like an ow l's nocturnal song. [ 42] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 341 — W hat have you done, tailor Tm ka, know n across town, grave, the gravest is your trespass, irremissible sin, m oon cease your light and you stars, aw e him w ith dark, w hen at night he will w ander som ew here in the park. For a bit of love the tailor suffers all w ith resolve, for a bit of love he endures any woe, only the children he pities, w hen his eye rests on that, he feels so anguished that tears he w ants to shed. A nd already people in tow n are talking, shouldn't he be asham ed and w hat a disgrace around tow n scandal to create, yet his heart trem bling w ith the beat of nightly kisses the tailor returns at the cock's crow m ornings late in his dream at daw n his hands im plore her shadow. The smallest child in w hite dow ns calmly sleeps, it hears not how his lover by sweet nam es he calls in his dream s and the rest of them scared at their father stare w hen delirious, while m other w ith eyes ablaze, at the w indow , in her palm s holds her teary face and w ith a w hite handkerchief tear by tear will erase. In the end Tm ka came to see that it could not go on like this and the w eight of fate on him heavily cam e to rest, life was nothing to him but a string of painful suffering and love only a brief flash of bliss aw fully scarce. [ 43] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 342 This w as no longer that first hard blow of a heady wave, he w ould m use w ith the clock, glum ly striking on the spire, yet in his lover's arm s his dread he could no m ore escape, w hen in his tangle of feelings he felt utterly mired; and reeling betw een tw o w om en day after day, he saw that som eone else rolled the dice for his bliss, w ho will finally arrive and grim ly proclaim: punishm ent for trespass or for love the sw eetheart's kiss; yet no one w as com ing and the tailor in his thoughts w ould surm ise, that w e ourselves each our good fortune devise: —Either m y neck I break, then comfort, Lord, m y w idow , or the wife passes aw ay — and on her grave green m yrtle will sprout, w hich into your hair I will braid, w hen I take you across the square as m y bride in w hite w hile the trum pets, violins and clarinets sweetly play. Devilish tem ptation fuels the tailor's force and in his m ind he is painting his deadly design, in his m ind around her w hite neck he lays the noose, for the price of her death he will know happiness, he will kill his wife, hang her, and the people will say: dear soul, the aw ful pain she couldn't bear, took her ow n life, the good unfortunate w om an, the tailor is a villain, m ay he one day find w hat it m eans to love and not to be loved. That day, w hen in him this decision came to fruition, everything turned into things beautiful and kind: the flowers fragrant and the w ind forces legs to dance, pity that each day floats away w ith the evening cloud. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 343 In the gas lantern, w hich illum inated street com ers, the w hite m antle slipped dow n and gas burned scarlet, along the m ast the light w as oozing dow n, as if it w ere blood, onto the cobble stones of sidewalks into crim son pools. The last drunks carried it on the soles of their shoes into hom es, w here their w ives w ere still awake, and those traces glowed red in the dark and bloody, as if som eone had killed, as if a m urder had occurred, the pond's nocturnal surface-quietly entered w indow s, u nder dow ns sleepers w ere dream ing their sm all-tow n dream , but one w indow was w ide open, from the dark a colored im age appeared, like on the cinema screen, over the cradle a w om an leaning and a m an inclined to the w om an, he holds her hands and gazes at her kindly: D on't cry, w om an, I surely love you, d o n 't cry, for m y children my life I w ould give, for they are mine, and the w om an w ith tears in her eyes she m ust smile and into the tailor's eyes too peer warm ly; rising from the cradle, she hesitates shyly, and she lovingly clings to her husband, nervous the tailor fingers in his pocket the hem pen noose w ith his hand. D on't cry — w om an — I surely love you, d o n 't cry, he w as overcome by a strange com passion for his wife, but gaining control the w ord of love he in her throat tightened w ith a noose and her eyes, those eyes, that w anted so m uch still to smile, they stared at him bulging terribly all this while; air only she grasped w hen she groped for his hand and the tailor scared, the noose quickly pulled tight, [45] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 344 w ith her hand she braced herself and then she fell hard, rolling dow n on the ground beneath the cradle. Then his hat he took and left. Bulging eyes after him are turning w ith a ghastly stare, as they had w atched tearfully w hen he w alked away, the tow n square w as silent, but hum m ing w as the tailor's head, as if columns of soldiers he faced and ten drum m ers w ould just then drum , a m uffled march: da d a da da dum dum dum , yet all w as quiet and the tailor w as alone, tow ering in m id-square w as only a statue of stone, thirteen tinny stars w ere shining in her eyes. It w as night and the stars then w ere curiously lovely, above the tip of the spire the m oon stood still and the tailor on the step to the stony fountain in a broken voice to the em pty silence complained: F o r s h e e r lo v e I b e g o t of c h ild re n fiv e, fo r sh e e r lo v e I h a d to ta k e a n o th e r life. Five orphans are w eeping and so sad I am, folks, folks, do not dam n me or condem n. F o r s h e e r lo v e I b e g o t of c h ild re n fiv e , fo r sh e e r lo v e I h a d to ta k e a n o th e r life , in the linden trees m y love is w aiting and it feels so sweet, folks, folks, do not dam n me! But a black cross on the table stands and a candle bum s and love things the judges in robes do not understand, rheum atism plagues them and their faces are w an, [46] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 345 they speak of love, passion and kisses yet an eyelid they will not bat. For tears the tailor cannot see outside into the land and he feels sad because he know s that had he planted m yrtle on the grave, someone else perhaps m ay have plucked it today. The w orld's saddest place is the prison courtyard, a flower does not bloom there, nor the sun shine, b u t a song is heard soft and low from afar, the clock striking at times shatters the silence, in a hem pen noose the tailor Tm ka now does hang poor wretch, not even a snow-white lily in his hand. [47] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 346 EPILOGUE It is spring again, soaring to the stars, the bird sings, and it sings near m idnight late, as it used to sing last year, again it's a night of spring and Zebin is flow ering pink, to their beloved's blouses, fragrant w ith bunches of violets, yearning the lovers once m ore trustingly lean, each is m erry and m erry, joyfully their love's dream they dream in vain the lyre sang: strum m ing, strum m ing, strum , about unhappy love a sad and m ournful tune; lovers rather listen to the nightingale's song, w hich is not the same, w ith its pain thus it fulfills relentless fate, for w here flowers in the fail w ere burned by frost an d the cold, in the spring again new blossoms will grow. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 347 A S A I L O R O n the sea shore a lighthouse is burning into the night, eleven sailors are shooting craps at the bar nam ed "W hale" and drinking grog from steam ing cups; the tw elfth sailor is not there. The tw elfth sailor is w earing a blue cap and a shiny black m ustache, truly becom ing him, he is roam ing the harbor in a colorful throng blow ing smoke from his pipe to the yellow moon. For this sailor from the vessel Olympic, w earing a shiny m ustache and a blue cap, the perils of love he scorns w ith m irth and rather than shooting craps at the bar nam ed "W hale," he chooses to leave the round of eleven and roam s the dockside street. H e know s full well that this very evening, am ong the girls, thousands of w hom here he w ill see, m ay at least one be w ho will surely greatly fancy his black m ustache and blue cap, so it is better to w ander the narrow p o rt alleys, than to shoot craps at the bar nam ed "W hale." R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 348 The tw elfth sailor is aw fully strong and his heart is bold, on this globe there are five continents and on each continent m any a port, one of them is always the m ost magnificent; and on his voyage around the w orld the sailor his m ustache will twirl, in agreem ent w ith the captain the Olympic in one of them will land. And he found for him self one beauty in each, w ho fancied his m ustache and w hom he vow ed his brief love; in agreem ent w ith the captain the Olympic will always dock there and the sailors go ashore. Yet rather than sit in the bar nam ed "W hale" w ith his eleven mates, he is missing from their round and w ith his cap and tw irled m ustache he is w andering on the shore late at night, until far on the sea open and w ide in inky w aves the rays w ould shine. A nd w hen he goes aboard again, he never mourns; he knows, that in tw o short m onths, am ong the thousand girls w ho are in the port, he will seek the eyes of his second love by the yellow light of the moon. W hen the second one too sees him off in tears and far aw ay from her he sails, [52] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 349 sitting on the deck of the ship under steam his third sw eetheart gladly he anticipates. And this one is black as night and her eyes are tw o stars, that at night w ould gleam. The fourth sw eetheart lives in an Eastern land and she also loves his m ustache and his cap, w hen they part she carries chrysanthem um s at her heart and from her slanted eyes tears stream dow n her face; but there is no tim e for this grief, the ship's funnel gushes forth w reaths of smoke, the captain is standing on the bridge and the vessel sails onto the rippling sea. And roam ing on his voyage around the w orld, to the fifth continent he sails, the sailor pleased his m ustache he tw irls and sits on deck in the shade. W hen w ith the fifth sweetheart too he parts, deep night has fallen at sea, the ship's funnel gushes forth smoke in wreaths; only then does the sailor know grief, for on the shore no lighthouse beams, and m oved at the stars he gazes in the sky. To him it seems that in the constellation of fair Cassiopeia, w hich looks like this: [53] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 350 his five sweethearts sadly at him smile; five stars, five tear-stained faces, five smiles, m oving one to tears, in the constellation five stars above the sailor shine, his sweethearts about him reminisce; on each star he sees a teary cheek, onto bosom s that are red, black, yellow, brow n, w hite silently tear after tear drips, sw eethearts in Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa and America are w eeping for their mariner. Yet the ship on its voyage around the w orld again it is approaching the first port, m errily the sailor again his mustache he tw irls and rather than shoot craps in the bar nam ed "W hale," w hen the ship docks there, he chooses to leave the round of eleven. [ 54] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 351 BL ACK M A N A fresh breeze blows on the O cean's shores and betw een em pty conches and pieces of w ashed-out corals content black w om en prostrate they lie, w hile the w aves of the high tide slowly rise; I believe, it is a sad lot to be nothing but a European, to this fate m yself I cannot resign, God, if only to sit in the shade of palms, or like those black w om en on the shore to lie. A nd this black boy bids farewell to us today; forgive me, M aster John, you I m ust envy, tw elve days from now on the shore w ith black w om en you w ill play, the train is beginning to leave, the ship is sailing and the aeroplane flies above the sea and I sitting in the train station's restaurant, over civilization's beauty silently I cry, w hat use are aeroplanes, those m etal birds, to me w hen in them I cannot fly, and in clouds above m e into the distance they fade. Oh, M aster John, first w e m ust explode Europe to the clouds, [55] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 352 for until then are locked u p and bolted shut all those marvels and magic charms; perhaps then, w hen the captain for a friendly handshake w ill ferry the melancholy poet to Africa, across the ocean, billowing w ith fierce w aves into tropical climates, thousands of miles away, into a land of w ondrous events and beauty, oh, M aster John, w e will m eet once m ore then, maybe, maybe, on the shore of the Ivory Coast. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 353 T H E LITTLE RING There, at the curve in the road, near the flow ering jasmine, a little silver ring I dropped, I rem em ber this often. We recall this often me and you, a tiny stone fell from it, it was like periwinkle pale-blue on a stalk of green. The tw o of us for it stooped low, in the dust our hands met, harebells in bloom w ould toll and w e both then wept. They ring in the honeym oon the harebells in bloom, one another w e chose, and yet w e parted soon. Then a short tim e passed and — this is how things go, — jasmine again blooms on the path, and another now I hold. [57] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 354 There, at the curve in the road, the mem ory is overgrow n a silver ring I no longer own, instead I w ear a ring of gold. To m y finger it has come to cling so tightly, as you I m ay clasp, H alf my heart I m ay have lost, yet I will not lose this little ring. [58] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 355 ALL THE BEAUTIES OF THE WORLD At night, the black skies of streets w ere ablaze w ith lights, how beautiful w ere the ballet dancers on bills betw een black type, low, very low gray aeroplanes like doves had sw ooped dow n and the poet rem ained alone am ong flowers stupefied. Poet, perish w ith the stars, w ither w ith the flower, today no one will m ourn your loss even for an hour, your art, your fame w ill w ane forever and decline, because they resemble flowers in the graveyard; for aeroplanes, w hich are fiercely soaring up to the stars, in your stead now sing the song of steely sounds and beautiful they are, just as lovelier are the jolly electric blossom s on the houses in the street, to the flow erbed variety. For our poetry w e found utterly new kinds of beauty, you moon, island of vain dream s, burning out, cease to shine. Be silent violins and ring you horns of automobiles, m ay people crossing the street suddenly begin to dream ; aeroplanes, sing the song of evening like a nightingale, ballet dancers, dance on bills between black typeface, the sun may not shine, — from tow ers floodlights beam into the street they will cast a new flam ing day. Falling stars w ere trapped in the iron constructions of lookout towers, [59] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 356 before the cinema screen today w e dream our fairest dream , the engineer builds bridges in the w ide Russian plains and high above the w aters will travel our trains and on rooftops of skyscrapers w hen the lights b u m brightly, w e take walks, w ithout feeling the need to recite poetry and like a rosary during prayer betw een bony fingers will bead, the elevator rises betw een floors a hundred times a day and gazing from above, you will behold all the beauties of the w orld. A nd that w hich was sacred art only yesterday, suddenly w as transform ed into things real and plain, and the loveliest pictures of today w ere painted by no one, the street is a flute and it plays its song from daw n till night and high above the tow n to the stars aeroplanes glide. Well then, adieu, allow us to leave you invented beauty, the frigate heads for the distance across the open sea, muses, let dow n your long hair in grief, art is dead, the w orld exists w ithout it. For greater truth is even in this little butterfly, which, from its cocoon, having gnaw ed the book of verse, will rise to the sun, than in the poet's verses, w hich are w ritten on each its page. A nd that is a fact that no one can deny. [ 60] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 357 [AFTERWORD] Seifert is putting out a second book of poetry. And this epilogue w e address to all those w ho liked City in Tears. For Sheer Love is alm ost cyclically connected w ith Seifert's debut, being its other hem isphere—and in technical term s both its expansion and its opposing pole. W ith these tw o books the first period of Seifert's developm ent as a poet has been exhausted and completed. Sheer Love has no traditions besides its ow n and the one that is the atm osphere of today's youth and today's revolution. In term s of subject m atter it is exclusively situated in the proletarian world. From it the collection draw s a new creative spirit and a new boldness. A new boldness! This and the longing associated w ith it it sings. No one's fabricated illusions about the w orker. It tears dow n the w retched martyr-like, pathetic nim bus, w ith w hich he was endowed by the bourgeoisie and false socialist poets. It show s the w orker in his true light. It celebrates his m ost primitive physical dream s, w hich are: sacred am brosia and sacred nectar in all secular forms. It celebrates his spiritual pleasures, w hich are: loyal love of the beloved and the child, enthusiasm about collectivity, respect for revolution, determ ination to sacrifice himself. It celebrates his social pleasures, which are: song, dance, play-acting, distant European and exotic homeland, all the beauty of the w orld, new beauty. It honors the fruit of his w ork from ham m er to aeroplane. It celebrates his class hatred. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 358 A nd the poet as a m an and as an artist is entirely from the proletarian w orld. H is is absolute sincerity. H is instrum ent is the lyre and his broad, w avy rhythm s have nothing in com m on w ith the rhetorical. Neither fleeing from reality nor into utopia, nor anyw here else, in his poetry there is rom anticism of this great century. In his poem s lives IQadno, lives New Y ork—lives Paris, lives Jicin, Prague, the entire world. H is basic tem peram ent is dreaminess. H e has an adm irable gift for linking literal, standard tendencies (political phrase, journalistic term ) w ith an absolutely poetic and fantastic streak. His w ork has nothing to do w ith the current Philistine allegorical "tendentious" social poetry, that today is produced w holesale w ith bourgeois intent of education, m orality and instruction. A nd to conclude: Sheer Love grew out of the revolutionary climate of Devetsil and is its authentic expression. DEVETSIL R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 359 C. Translation of N a vlnach TSF [On the Waves of TSF] by Jaroslav Seifert 1925 To Teige, Nezval and H onzl Light grief on the face Deep laughter in the heart Translated by Dana Loewy 1991 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. G uillaum e Apollinaire contents 7 Fiery fruit 8 H oneym oon HONEYMOON 13 departure of a ship 14 M arseille 15 harbor 16 the sea 17 M arble tow n 18 Hotel "Cote d'A zur" 19 Park 20 My Italy 21 N ightlights 22 Verses about tw o who drow ned 23 FROZEN PINEAPPLES AND OTHER LYRICAL ANECDOTES Evening at the cafe 27 Eccentric 29 All perfum es 31 m irror square 32 Miss G ada-N igi 33 Circus O A King H erod 35 Ice cream poetry 36 W isdom 37 Lightbulb 38 beauty 39 Rebus 40 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 361 Discoveries Street Eyes Fan Abacus The Poet N ew York N apoleon Consolation Love Philosophy W ords on m agnet !! Hello !! The thief and the clock w ith a coquettish lady Concert cafe Lawn-tennis Cigarette smoke Fever Fate Rue de la Paix G raveyard in Genoa Silken handkerchief To be a fisherm an 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 54 56 57 58 60 61 63 64 65 66 67 68 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 362 GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE We hate to remember things past let us forget looking around from the bottom of the street eyes turned up it was You I had on my mind poet as you walked by years ago and said smiling: Shepherdess Eiffel In autumn ships pass the city like languidly flowing years where did Your Muse go when You said good-bye to Paris I met a thousand women in the streets and none was so beautiful but the star of Bethlehem Etoile still shines I learn to write poems like a soldier learns to blow the bugle when in the barracks window he puffs up his cheeks into golden metal and drawn-out sounds flutter their wings flying across the streets Paris is the mirror of Europe in it I see Your smile I rise I rise on this ladder to the stars in iron boughs a pink ballet dancer plays the guitar a tired butterfly reclines upon the roses in her hair but too small is a day to encompass the whole city from the Trocad6ro window vaulted the moon grinning murderer's face and it is funny for all things in the world are beautiful I embrace the stony breasts of the sphinx at the Louvre entrance thinking of Your wife as she weeps over a book of verse but the golden-yellow firecracker dies faster than it flared up may not all poems be more beautiful any longer than this one above the city of Your evenings that you loved so much Your head in white bandages I see before my eyes forever and it is funny I am leaning on the mount of an old cannon the darkness is closing before me the Guide to Paris an aeolian harp is Eiffel hark the wind of events and beauty it swells the sails of art Oh dead helmsman [7] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 363 F I ERY F R U I T To love poets the dying fauna of YELLOWSTONE PARK and yet we love poetry poetry eternal waterfall Long-range cannons were shelling Paris poets in helmets but why count the dead of unhappy love? farewell Paris! We were sailing around Africa and fish with diamond eyes were dying in the steamer's propellers it hurts worst when w e reminisce Black man's lyres and the aroma of hot air at home not before midnight ripens the fiery fruit of chandeliers and Mr. Blaise Cendrars lost a hand in the war Sacred birds like shadows on thin legs sway the fate of worlds Carthage is dead and the wind plays sugar canes a thousand clarinets [8] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 364 And meanwhile on fragile parallels of the earth H I S T O R Y clings hundred-year-old ivy I am dying of thirst Miss Muguet and you will not tell me what wine might have tasted like in Carthage The star was struck by lightning and it is raining surfaces of waters tight drums whirled revolution in Russia capture of the Bastille and the poet Mayakovsky is dead but poetry a honied moon drips sweet juices into flower cups [9] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 365 H O N E Y M O O N R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 366 HONEYMOON If it w ere not for those foolish kisses w e w ould not go on honeym oons yet if it were not for the honeym oons w hat good w ould W agons lits do? U nending anxiety of train station bells w edding cars ah W agons lits that marital bliss is like fragile glass a honied m oon is descending My dear in the w indow s can you see the Alps let's open the w indow for perfum es w ide see the sugar of snow drops supple snow of lilies behind W agons lits is W agon restaurant A h W agons restaurants w edding cars forever to be their guest and then to dream about happiness in m arriage over delicate cutlery H A N D L E W IT H CA RE! C A U T IO N G L A SS ! A nd yet another night and yet another day tw o beautiful days and two beautiful nights W here is my train schedule that book of poetry oh how beautiful are m y railway cars oh W agons restaurants and W agons lits oh honeym oon [13] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 36 7 departure of a ship I p u t on beautiful spectacles w hich do not make m e wise Do you like almonds? Such m om ents are the bitter alm ond of good-bye Farewell you ship beautiful ship the waves are like hillsides steep and pilots w ho guide you like a shepherd a jingling sheep I lost a tiny collar button today I cannot leave kindly tell m y tender beauty to stop coming to m eet m e The girls w ept w ith them I w ept I also w anted to wave m y handkerchief they w aved handkerchiefs blood-stained w ith the red paint of rouge A nd foreign countries beautiful lands fine lace of beautiful danseuses shepherds play their shawms you can w in more at a gam e of dice Above the sea a policeman stands hesitant perhaps he also w anted to say farewell the rocky shore was bathing nude and bare and he did not see her then. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 368 Marseille The fisherman leaning from the boat is fishing till dusk fish are peculiar beauties red golden and alien and octopi in the water so iridescent completely vanish from your gaze in the mesh of the net Woe to you stars silver coins unlocking the heavens the pirate ship is already rising moon in the sky a little table sits next to you in the coffee house like a flamingo standing on one leg asleep by the sign of laughter those girls you will recognize the surface of the sea is the mirror of stars and lights black men at night are blacker still a hundred times and you beauty before whom many have already kneeled your eyes are deep as the sea near the isle of If I don't know if anyone could be found this night who standing near you with you could resist sin A year of one's youth the Count of Monte Christo everyone has remembered certainly on the seashore to be sure fish eyes are like your rocking horse's eyes it was wooden and in them you could see your smile like in the eyes of fish dead here in a pile a hazy tiny star flickers in the clouds 33 jazzbands in the famous street Belsunce with the new dawn one after the other grows silent all harlots are now asleep don't wake them from dreams and next to each a black man his dark hand rests on their breasts with all its weight as if a black spider enveloped their hearts with an ominous web [15] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 369 harbor ANCHOR still one beautiful hope at the end a dead oyster is ascending toward to the ship HELMSMAN in the evening to walk about Marseille on the shoes still the Singapore dirt SHIP in the rigging of the mast between lanterns a parrot and a monkey thought they were at home NIGHT a soldier and a girl remained at the cafe alone the bottle cast the shadow of emperor Napoleon SHIP'S PROPELLER when to the dance everyone had gone from the deep water lilies to the surface would float CRANES to sleep grotesque giraffes in long files moved on along palm trees of a land unknown ri6! R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 370 the sea When from wanderlust we suffer to ourselves we say: SEA W AVES SEA W AVES in a rosy envelope our love w e declare and then kissing women's soft hair to ourselves we sa y : HAIR WAVES HAIR WAVES Girls were bathing in the sea early Sunday the sea and their hair melt into one wave crest the sailor begins to sing another melody scanning the horizon in a crow's nest Waves and waves ripple and ripple and on shore they finally rest [17] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 371 MARBLE TOWN The marble square of this town like a flow er bed o f fluttering parasols Lights flowers flowers lights and the sea a royal harp o f glory whispered w ith strings o f waves sparkling when sails like the cheeks of a girl singing swell w ith w ind filled w ith flowers The town is sinking into mire slowly in the spire hangs the sun a bell so golden Love remained alone of glorious history Flowers love and a Chinese lantern Birds and sailors vie w ith each other in song that light at sea it is not a blossom it is not even a light it is a foreign liner and like a fan o f silver pearls the sky conceals the moon’s laughter When a girl w ith the love star on her brow sells you roses w ith a smile A nd lovely she is when I picture her in m y m ind Those breasts o f hers so tiny it is almost fu n n y a dove could cover with one bluegray wing [ 18] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 372 HOTEL "Cote d'Azur" And waves like backs of bitter fish into the net of the sky when the fisherman dozes on the sea shore the hotel "Cdt6 d'Azur" Memory of love the sign of cancer my sweet past and sweet pineapple from the shell of evening Venus is bom And this goddess in a green tricot on the wings of seagulls in a sailing boat on waves of clouds across the night she rides The painters' brushes already dried up with colors oh poetry idle is the poet while the girls are having their hair cut my longings grow And above the terrace the hotel "Cdtc d'Azur" I am falling asleep into the net of dreams red pineapple and yellow bananas and waves like backs of bitter fish turned into art by magic Sails s»r»r? m i n t r a n /i t r * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 7 [19] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 373 Park A stream of water like playful fingers into stony lyre strings in the hands of POETRY and the gardener with his hose in the middle of the path a poet has become And became a grower of roses which he adores he is dying of love while watering them those roses Lady 'Waterloo and Star o f France in July Snow Pearl When autumn comes. and the saddest blossoms of all when lovers around the basin upside down will stroll See Archimedes is drawing circles in the dirt light rain is falling onto the fountain's spurt [ 20] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 374 MY ITALY STO STAI STA STIAMO STATE STANO In spite of broken wings angels fall headlong like m eteors onto roofs of hangars the Renaissance skies are em pty FO FAI FA FACCIAMO FATE FANO Along the Forum Rom anum M ussolini on a motorcycle goes Italian gram m ar's four irregular verbs see m odem poetry DO DAI DA DIAMO DATE DANO Perhaps this is not a poem bu t w hatever it m ay be m ay it be say icy lem onade which is called Frappe VO VAI VA ANDIAMO ANDATE VANO or a confession of love in the garden Boboli. [ 21] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 375 N ightlights o On which page in which dictionary tender words of love would I find for I am not a poet and the night closes in on the silver crossroads and its light L Sphinx moth night owl feelers of lights automobile black carpet of night crescent among stars The clock is singing night Before you if I kneeled L I would impress my likeness into your palms Open your hands and palms an angel spreading his wings two chairs and on the table yellow lamplight A so that you are with me lay your lips on my cheek a kiss long and lingering like a song Curtains of white Through the lace of tiny cushions we gaze into the street G Automobile sphinx moth of the silver crossroads night owl and the child love's third star in the cradle falls asleep You sing with your hand touching its white down u Love is a prayer granted this very instant of grace the world fades under the gaze like a movie scene hold me close an angel with his own wings embraced pleasure closes our eyes and we cannot perceive M Like a distant storm screams of lights rage the velvet shadow of your profile fell upon my hand in which dictionary and on which page S would I find words of love worthy of a man m oon rose and raven [ 22] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 376 VERSES ABOUT TWO WHO DROWNED That ship was like a crushed violin and the sail like the tom -off w ing o f a bird The last star was fading on the horizon W hat happened? Sailors do you hear? What happened sailors come on! A nd it is too late Face of a woman so very young it flow s on the waves like a white water-lily lying fla t on his back his hands spread out a sailor follows her through the sea quietly Dolphins scare shy mermaids above the salty wave a sea gull chokes with laughter dead one whereto are you drifting on the waves like a white w ater-lily with a dead sailor Cutlery already chimes at the resort restaurant like birds awakened under the palm tree A h a hom is the upturned trunk o f an elephant which is melting a tone like gold in its deep A n Englishman yawns in a sail ofD aily-M ail a silver wave is turning an em pty shell a bunch o f grapes lies on a crystal plate and from a melon drops o f blood well But suddenly like an em pty glass the flute fell from lips horrified the bird cried and a wave sw ept the shell away a lady fainted upon white table linen and then talk in the restaurant stopped A nd the dead floated to the feet of the Englishman his monocle to the ground he dropped [23] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 377 FROZEN PINEAPPLES AND OTHER LYRICAL ANECDOTES R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 378 Evening at the cafe Princess Salome you are strolling through my dream I see your head of hair between goblets and grapes oh what bliss a poet to be to be a poet with the eyes of an eccentric The waiter carries his head on a silver tray I want to hide from the world like a mouse in the sand where did that banner on the red ship's mast cruise and why is the anchor a sign of hope if here I feel so sad and that song will not awaken the dead danseuse? Under an artificial palm a smiling black man on his face a rose-colored mask of light At that moment the great love in my heart I overcame yet her shadow follows me through the night [27} R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 379 Through the night across a hanging garden of withered stars when I adventurer of beauty and passionate sleeper leaning on the heat of an American stove as if to sleep forever I desired remembered frozen pineapples Crests of chrysanthemums like light ostrich feathers on the table cards fate loves burden [ 28] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 380 ECCENTRIC Snow forever w hite and forever you m ust love her w hen w hite flowers of fog w ere falling onto the quay resem bling pierrot half light half dark my features I feel sleepy love iron rings in granite on the quay Are you thinking of Marseille? Tam bourines A w hite dove brings a letter w ith a double seal there is m any a pretty thing that w e love to see w hen in the pocket the last crow n will ring! Smoke from a small steam er's stack that you fancy is it you m aking breakfast for yourself C aptain Sir? and w e thought of w hales of argosies and of the sea in the w ind of waves shiver trem bling coral reefs [29] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 381 W hy are you so very sad adventurous lady? Your sadness of glass entrust into a m an's hands already a pale star entered the w indow roosters sang d aw n early You are my w itness in w ine cups w ithered petals of rose cold tears under a threefold laughter's m ask oh eccentric! resem bling pierrot w ho is feeling sleepy I know for love m en w ith rapiers will fight after all you m ust love her forever forever snow forever w hite [30] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 382 A L L P E R F U M E S At the magnificent springs of "Eau de Cologne" flow ers w ere shaking off their pow der airy pollen This w as the spa of ailing beauties alone bathing in the silver of m irrors A nd in the colonnades fauna of musical instrum ents to the rhythm of the song uncoils a snake That melody I know to that melody all Europeans should dance and sway To dance around the small piano long to sniff at blossoms on the girl's hat and then taste taste the honey of flaxen hair w hen on white pillows it will flow [31] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 383 mirror square Mirror square of frozen sea portrait in the deep without fragrance an underwater flower blossoming in the mirror a smile it is not you or is it maybe she is still asleep fair beauty Omaki Vani Sparkling lemonade of stars flows to earth from the skies and the word like a golden coin will echo Behind the blue screen may I only behold the tender shadow and for three words of love I will buy smiles An electrifying comb in a palm so tiny the hand is rising the hand is sinking to live without love fair Omaki Vani Telegraphy without wires Airplanes without an engine Bleeding wings before me Horror shaking the earth and Yokohama in ruins Omaki Vani fair beauty I am afraid for your tall hairdo with the long pins [32] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 384 166 (jdda- Yji^i Night extended raven wings drum of darkness Miss Gada-Nigi perched on the trapeze below in the sand the clown like a bird asleep the snow of his dreams falling Gada-Nigi smiles at the stars through a crack in the canvas listening to the ticking of the watch on her wrist she learns to dance on the head of a rearing steed and in the lace of fog eternity between stars Ticking watch on the clown's face reflection of infinity in the circus wagon a child broke into tears hands reaching out for the stars of mother's breasts and bird song was swaying on the branch of jasmine when backs turned the lovers and the suicidal man under the luminous parasol of the street lamp they saw a star falling through a thousand-year-old night as it died among the water-lilies of the shallow basin Oh Miss Gada-Nigi do not contemplate the stars for the lines of the hand enclose fate the clown me and you only lovers die of love unwittingly just listen in a kiss two slim flutes of breath fell silent [33] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 385 CIRCUS Today for the first time John the famous fire-eater pressed the little dancer Chloe to his chest A N D LITTLE C H L O E W AS STILL A V IR G IN Pom the clown that same night outside the circus sent out to the audience to greet them a B IG B A LLO O N T O D A Y F O R T H E L A S T T I M E [34] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. King Herod 386 WHEN HE RAISED A GRAPE TO HIS LIPS HEROD KING MURDERER OF INNOCENTS ON HIS HAND TERRIBLE TRACES OF BLOOD BUT WHAT KIND OF SIN BURDENS YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND TERRIBLE TRACES OF BLOOD WHEN YOU RAISED A GRAPE TO YOUR LIPS [35] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 387 ICE CREAM POETRY Pass me that bouquet o f snow roses It is already spring at the North Pole? Oh no it's only angels loith wings o f snow and one may think W hy not? This isn't snow that flake o f handkerchief I already see the window in the pipe's ivhite mist laugh you people standing under eaves laugh m y gentle manikins On the roofs o f houses siveet ice cream all that you see here is beautiful so eyes o f glass are melting with tears these are no tears o f laughter Oh no It is already spring at the North Pole and one may think W hy not? [36] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 388 Wisdom all those loves that caused hearts to bleed were only silly foolishness in the end we will love our long pipe black swan [37] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 389 Lightbulb Around the cold light of bulbs whirling wings' tireless buzz And Mr. EDISON having raised his eyes from a book he was reading smiles He has saved the lives of a vast number of moths! [38] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 390 beauty You say that the manikin is smiling ironically in the crystals of the hairdresser's window? Forever beautiful she watches the wrinkles of aging beauties who visit her twice a week [39] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 391 Rebus RASCAL LUCK RASCAL LUCK RA SC A L LUCK RASCAL LUCK RASCAL LUCK . [40] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 392 DISCOVERIES In the year 1492 the Genoese Christopher Columbus discovered unknown islands Thank you Sir! I smoke cigarettes! R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 393 Street S q u in t your eyes when walking the street at night [from your office] each lamp for hair has long beams of light which you would in vain try to see then wi th y ou r eye s open [42] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 394 Eyes OOh daisy eyes OOh daisy eyes how lovely they a re! . it's only poor students who must wear specs to graduate [43] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 395 Fan A GIRL'S BLUSH TO CONCEAL COQUETTISH EYES A DEEP SIGH IN THE END WRINKLES AND A BITTER SMILE ON THE BREASTS A BUTTERFLY PALETTE OF LOVE WITH COLORS OF FADING MEMORY [44] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 396 AB A C U S O Your breast--------------------------------------------- is like an apple from Australia • • Your breasts-------------------------------------------------------------------------- are like 2 apples from Australia — -------------------------------------------------------------------------O------ O -------------------------------------o o • ----------------- how I like this abacus of love! — R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 397 The Poet sang and sang of sadness of youth which is dead while on his chin there were still traces of the milky way [46] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. NEW YORK THIS IS NOT THE MAIDEN OF ORLEANS THIS IS THE FAMOUS STATUE OF LIBERTY WHICH BEARS THE TORCH AND SCORCHES THE AIRPLANE'S WINGS [47] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 399 NAPOLEON MY GAMBIER PIPE ENTERTAINS ME GREATLY THE EMPEROR'S HEAD IS ITS FUNNY BOWL GOOD DAY FAMOUS EMPEROR! HAS THE DREAM OF RULING THE WORLD AT LAST EVAPORATED FROM YOUR HEAD? [48] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 400 Consolation m iss m iss your face is gloom y because it rained on you all day but what should that little May fly say w hose w hole life was filled w ith rain? R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 401 ■ Love those d yin g o f cholera exhale the aroma of M ay lilie s in h alin g the aroma of M ay lilie s w e are d yin g of love [50] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 402 PHILOSOPHY remember the w ise philosophers life is nothing but a moment and yet when w e were awaiting our beloved it was eternity R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 403 Words on magnet U p until the equator a w hite bear sleeps on floating ice in the polar circle a bird from the tropics dies the night cracked open like a n ut at m idnight sharp w hite star In the exotic aquarium the w ater has frozen to the bottom golden fish do not move between fragile limbs and in m id-January paper roses have blossom ed The glassy hem isphere of night is falling H ouse am idst a park purple crystal from afar even m ay the boughs of trees be as bare and plain as perches for stuffed birds in the school cabinet or a beggar's cane Spring is returning love letter from M enton in the shirt pocket m elted the frozen seal the magical nuances of perfum es do you know in one lim pid drop the arom a of spring Carnival masks vanish into the dark street startling rats a show er of confetti falls on slim window-sills into the snow and w ords rem nants of stars tum bling into silence from the broken record on the gram ophone [52] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 404 The fragile glass of w inter is full of violet flair like m y girl's hair into lyrical hairdos I w an t to braid verses indeed have you not found in the park on a forlorn trail girls' lost hairpins? H ow can I tell the m aidens about the w orld w ar and fright Let history paint the scene Battle-field palette is bloodstained Play of w ords A ntennas grazing the sky and the last w ord of m y poem is num ber tw o - h u n d r e d - f o r ty - e ig h t . [53] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 405 ! ! HELLO ! ! Since fauns, elves and dryads suffered extinction it w as necessary to invent the telephone! Hello! that love of yours is driving me to desperation a sw allow is sitting on the telephone pole A t dusk w hen the dew has cooled w ither will the flower but from the famous Capitol to M anhattan's skyscrapers the beauty of w om en has not w ithered even for an hour in the snow of exotic pow ders and vapors To be sure the love sick are sustained by poetry and for you the gram ophone your love w ill bem oan after all candym aker Love from vanilla he makes ice cream and is shivering w ith the cold The cuckoo in the clock a hundred tim es has called O n the icicle flute an aria I blow See starry notes that song is already old in Paris there is the m agasin Printem ps A nd in the Radio bar w agers a drunken pilot that he will reach the stars before you finish your cigarette V/hat countless pleasures life could allot b u t poets do not have w ings [54] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 406 A nd if it w ere not for grief love's sickness afflicting m e I w ould mix my pleasures like cards and cocktails how sad w ould the funeral be for the brothers Fratellini pierrot w ith a lute and boston [55] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 407 The thief and the dock Forever running are the clock and the thief poetry is the art of losing precious time Better to seek eternal verities and heed my warning words of advice HAVEN'T YOU FORGOTTEN TO WIND UP YOUR WATCH? The cock sometimes crows and sometimes it fires a gun those who tried to lead were led astray And as Moses once led the Jews through the desert we have electrical leads IS YOUR PIANO WELL-TUNED? because being well-attuned is a gift from God who feeds us daily with honeycombs Too bad that no one resembles him so that we might not feel sad in the street of Mirth [56] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 408 w ith a coquettish lady W ith a coquettish lady him self in jockey attire on horseback in the park For a first rose he reaches the lady is a muse when she offers a smile and backwards she kisses his lips A nd in his office like a fencer the rival w ith a fencing mask in the mirror rapier in hand the hurled rose he pierces in a hazardous wager This is m y heart wails the lady adieu m y beautiful dream The poet is lost in reverie and in a while through his mirror image he runs a rapier [57] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 409 Concert cafe M aneuvering dreadnought meets a violin on the waves the captain's hat flew away circling the ship W hite bird H ow ever the violin bow pow ered by w arm currents w as borne to unknow n islands into the rotting w ater of coves U nder our skies only paper palm s survive shells of em pty streets on the bottom of evenings There am ong balm y scents the black king of the island is enthroned bow in his hands [58] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 410 There the heads of his subjects dance around him in a circle w ide like the black dots of crotchets and from the grasses snakes spring in the curve of the treble clef Violin only softly you m ay sing Europe is sleepy is sleepy and stars she will fling [59] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. LAWN-TENNIS Forget your dark thoughts and heavy hearts Remember white lawn-tennis and light rubber balls Oh old guitars and mandolins histories are dead and wandering knights Listen to the racquets' wailing strings in wicker easychairs [60] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 412 CIGARETTE SMOKE bite of the viper venomous pallor moon poetry malady of black men and monkeys and this malady soft pillow of ennui icy compresses for the night when vicious fevers alight cigarette haze ascends tourist in the Alps the sun and the abyss [ 61] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 413 above a steep ravine the Montblanc peak acrobatics of roses from clouds it rises to the stars which are drunk by the pillow of ennui poetry [ 62] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 414 Fever Eyes half-closed sinking into the softness of dream s and dow n the patient dozed: snow spider rose The nurse comes in the tw ilight closes the w indow of the sum m er night and the m oon yellow crab creeps along the pane blood mercury and perfume O n coconut m atting shadow s are playing take Africa's tem perature in hell of ague devils are dying glaciers have a fever W hen the patient raises his eyes from the deep of dream s an unknow n girl at his bedside arrives and carries a w hite flower betw een her teeth how m ight it smell? O h no It is only a phantom and it is laughable the label of the medicine on his table: death carries a w hite dagger between the teeth [63] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 415 Fate We used to play chess on terraces of cafes black w hite checkers Like the chessboard of night squares of pillows and of darkness black and w hite We could not help b ut think of Longchamp the rearing horses how ever did not run farther than to Your fingers w hich I adore Y our naiis uie color of early spring flowers the distance from lips to lips Kiss Tom orrow m orning Yet w hat good w ere m y castles and paw ns It happened in m idsum m er on terraces of cafes and it w as the gam e of love [64] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 416 Rue de la Paix When diamond dew gleams on frail ivory in glass tamed wild beasts a bird of paradise fleeing from them alighted on a bed of incense Leopards wolves and polar bears When the glacier of silky fabrics with in-woven flora floats away and pearls explode in its wake here beggars' faces are glued to glass as if life were a desert before this oasis of beauty in hostile lands And weeping for the lot of misery into five pieces the girl broke the hard crust with a bit of dry loaf Are rains the perfume of the sky then tears are the perfume of the soul on Friday and Sunday I saw her cry With her tears I will scent my handkerchief this very day [65] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 417 Graveyard in G enoa A ship rolls in and on shore a sailor sprawls and remains prone How far to the graveyard? Six tapers a team of swans takes you to the tomb Lifefarers seafarers Two ports oh Genoese The sea is swelling and will not cease Life and sea Life and sea r 6 6 1 i v v j R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 418 Silken handkerchief TO SEE HANDS TYING SNOWDROPS SNOWDROP BUD HALFBLOOM FLOWER VISITING CARD OF SPRING MONOGRAM OF POETRY WHITE STRING WHY DO GIRLS SMILE IN WINDOW PANES WHICH ARE WEEPING IN THE APRIL RAINS THE TREE BOOMS LIKE A HARP SWAYING WITH SWEET MUSIC PALE HANDS IN A GIRL'S LAP WITH A FLOWER AS IF BREATHED ONTO GLASS MAY I NEVER SEE AGAIN THE PLASTER CAST ON THE PIANO OF BEETHOVEN'S HANDS A WORLD FULL OF HORROR FULL OF BEAUTY TENDER AT LAST LET ME FORGET AND REMAIN FOREVER ALONE A RING WITH A PEARL IN A SEAWEED TANGLE VISITING CARD MONOGRAM PATENT LEATHER PUMPS AND HEAVY ARTILLERY [67] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 419 To be a fisherman To be a fisherm an in the Sahara and a bottomless ship's captain look that is all that will rem ain b u t it is not im portant here We say: photos of' dead sw eethearts this is sadder than Pompeii a tiny bunch of dry lilies-of-the-valley w hen it is May We say: everything is dead this is sadder than Pompeii photographs of dead sweethearts w hen it is May A n d that's all that will remain This m uttering stanza is m y final rhym e Each year we have our usual influenza and for days w e cry [68] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 420 D. Translation of S la v ik z p iv a s p a tn g [The Nightingale Sings Poorlyl by Jaroslav Seifert 1926 "The Nightingale sings poorly" JEAN COCTEAU To the painter Josef Sima translated by Dana Loewy 1994 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 421 CONTENTS I. M oon on W ings [9] The H ourglass [11] Verses [13] A Song A bout Death [14] Ancient W isdom [16] 14th of July [18] G irlfriends [20] Paravent [22] Yellow, Blue, Red [23] Panoram a [25] G iant M ountains [26] II. The Bread and the Rose [29] Ballad [30] O ld Battlefield [32] A Ballad from the Cham pagne [34] The Parting Kiss [37] An A pple Tree w ith Cobweb Strings [39] Three Bitter Seeds [41] III. Moscow [47] A Song A bout Moscow [49] At O ur Lady of Iberia [50] Lenin's City [52] Lenin [54] AFTERWORD A Journey A round the W orld R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 422 MOON ON WINGS H yacinth flower the pope's crown the pope sleeps now his beauty sleep Behold m y pipe cloud of incense hyacinth bud suits me well N ight full of beauty m oon turned pale the airplane broke its w ing D eath hangar of peace Thrust from the sky Therm om eter m ercury gushed to the ground Angel of m ourning over this wreck of pinions of wings weeps w ith yearning [91 R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 423 You love of mine sweet surf tide The m oon plays the guitar shines [ 10] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 424 THE HOURGLASS The pyram id is glowing oasis of shadow s crystal of history A venom ous fly is guarding the corpse of the queen Famous sleepers! them will not disturb the vulture that circles the sphinx is m ute A centennial spider weaves a w eb of som e density Behold w hat ennui rages in the Egyptian city French-made cars pass us by the beautiful nam e captivates no one Citroen? Pineapple and stars and here sw eet wine W here are you Egyptian woman? [ 11] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 425 Placid to rem ain like the m idnight m oon Europe never again will m y eyes behold you D eparting autom obiles cannot go farther than the shore At the end of the universe a will-o'-the-wisp dies in a shrub Those not afraid to ride saddle the sphinx they m ay try the surf tide of time breaks against her breasts The highest score contestants is death! [ 12] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 426 VERSES W ith w hom to be lonely, w ith w hom to be alone and gape over the abyss? A nd weep? O ld A braham once shed tears and an angel ascended in an erm ine cloak. I d o n 't know w here the north is, the com pass lies and all girls equivocate, Go to the fork in the road, the pole w ill indicate three paths at once. A strong smell wafts from hairdos of Jewesses, those are comets sweeping. M y eyes are circling in nothing but ellipses, w hich cannot be seen. We have forgotten the muses, they d ■ not have wings. To have m edusas, oh m edusas, for lovers, w hose kisses are embers. From corals a staff and then go one's way, w here sepias rule, to taste the milk of the w hale, that someone m ay pour. A dieu, adieu, adieu! [13] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 427 A SONG ABOUT DEATH Die w e m ust even if unwillingly The voice of the knell is dying Unwillingly Pearls and jewels to the living w e return like the suicide from the bottom bubbles of air A nd so we die needy we die ordinary w ith gold teeth in a w hite gum Perhaps it is only a smile of pure gold It is not as fearsome as w e are told W hat does death m ean May it w het its scythe W hen the thrush sighs it is sleeping [14] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 428 Spiral oh elastic spring W hy are you w eeping my aspiring one w hen the thrush sighs and sleeps? [15] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 429 ANCIENT WISDOM The dogrose climbing vine has caught a butterfly A dog has begun to howl softly tinkled a small glass of w ine The girl resembles the butterfly Too bad all the pollen dust W hen the Archipelago bursts into flames the fire is m irrored by the waves Jules Verne died N ever m ind The astonishing adventure is alive Buried treasures the m oon and fear of reptiles D on't be afraid W e have peace and sw eet good cheer The rose petal in the sink races against the hand on the clock So calmly to learn to live in deep-seated and bitter w isdom motionless crab in deep-sea blueness of the ocean [ 16] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 430 Rose petal rose petal rosy sheet the ship and her sail May shy girls blush w ith shame and w eep [17] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 431 14TH OF JULY Asleep is the venerable Mr. M irabeau so is the history of barricades in Jardin des Plantes sleeps the m arabou the m ost melancholy of birds O n July fourteenth revolution and the street Mr. M irabeau in his wig Marie is playing the violin W ho is this Marie? The m arabou drinks m uddy w ater wiser than Mr. M irabeau Indeed from barricades w ine flows and naughty M arie likes bars W hoever likes colors loves the cap of liberty W hen the poet invented the calem bour oh calembour the boulevard exploded w ith laughter His feathers ruffles the m arabou [ 18] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 432 Oh Marie! To the Jardin des Plantes soared a solitary m arabou and G od know s w here M irabeau w ent reciting that calembour [19] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 433 GIRLFRIENDS This year for the last tim e w e celebrate Christmas. Gisele and Emma are holding hands. A round table and a bouquet for the ladies A shade of sorrow on cheeks, sundial. Little Gisele suddenly weeps. Those aren 't bells, those are m y loafers. I am sitting by the stove quietly writing.verse: at the N orth Pole, Mr. A m undsen, is sitting there in a fur coat. Fire b u m s in the stove. But how m uch so! O n the ceiling roam s a red flamingo. [ 20] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 434 It has a nest in the fiery heat. Emma has a dream: strangle it, strangle it, pluck out its feathers! Gisele turns pale, horror of horrors, those aren 't shades, those are spiders. Revolver in hand, aim at the comer! Shoot at the spider's heart, kill the spider! No, I will not kill it, it I know. Glistening in its silken threads I saw a false diam ond. O n the bosom a rose for three sous. From its w eb the spider will w eave us a m ask for the ball. [ 21] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 435 PARAVENT The singer has stepped on the m andolin fig full of juice The Chinese straightens his eyes and kisses a European w om an in the folds of his robe a dragon crunches chocolate The European w om an w ith tw o rosy fingers she slants each eye sm iling a t the Chinese m an in the m irror of snowy night Seashell Vase of porcelain w ith w et lilies From blossom to blossom from ship to ship on the sea lem on eyes From star to star a tightened string azure zither of the sea The w om an caresses her ow n breasts and cannot sleep behind the paravent. [ 22] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 436 YELLOW, BLUE, RED We are seeking a girl w ithout prejudice, w ithout a m ask in the cafe between glasses and stalks of straw in them soaking. They are like cornflowers betw een w heat and w e pass them on the unplow ed ridge. It is a certain art, I'd say, it is tightrope walking, for above us is an abyss w ith floating icebergs, sprinkled w ith bitter stars. Then comes autum n, it is hardly ever anything new or peculiar, a cold, lime-blossom tea and sitting at the fire, yet w e always marvel at all this again. Yellow, blue, red leaves in the parks, ladies in their colorful robes readily resemble chameleons, it is, then, actually mimicry, so they are not seen by their husbands, w hen them they deceive. [23] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 437 Ah, the little, dear black page boy, he know s all there is to know and so he smiles, standing silently at his lift like a therm om eter w ith black m ercury. The lift is falling, the lift is climbing between floors, a melancholy rosary and w e are ascending in it, escaping our sweethearts, w ho pursue us w ith their kisses, as far as the rooftops, w here from starched air artificial roses bloom, th at no one sees. 124] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 438 PANOR AM A The stag is retreating, the smoke of his antlers rising, behind the leaf of fern listen to the star and softly, only softly.' Plates replete w ith fruit and nights of stars, I w ould like to pass you this bronze plate and become a barber. O h hairdressers, w eary hands are gliding on sm ooth hair, the comb is falling, the sculptor dropped his chisel and in the m irror eyes have frozen. N ight has fallen. You are asleep? Shatter the softness of your featherbeds! M idnight hour. Electric lamps. Dark, light, dark half light and see: the m ountain crest combs the sky's shock of hair and stars are falling like golden lice. [25] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 439 GIANT M OUNTAIN S A photographic cam era on a delicate tripod, a chamois w ith a single big eye. I am no rifleman, I am scared, a hundred times w ounded by love. From the well of a girl's hair her lover drinks, well, these are only foolish things, only love. The river accompanies us silently, the guitar the song. A fir tree halved by lightning, blow n-out w indow of cathedrals. D on't be alarm ed my girlfriends, like a battery of cannons am id profound peace the earth slumbers below the mountains. If I only knew w hich w ords will befall me, w hen the snow falls! The lumberjack alone can hew silence w ith his ax and from the deep of the w ood fairytales will rise. A dieu, Krakonos, it is so sad, Your boots we are fleeing across enchanted land. A nd our buses smell of Paris like snow drops of spring. [ 26] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 440 THE BREAD AND THE ROSE The w orld stretched out betw een tw o poles like m uleskin Between tw o things life bread and a rose The w orld drones Drum s drone For puny things a great w ar Victor and vanquished hom e they go H ow far how far is hom e A pair of dice tw o magic w ords in the com et of history bread and a rose O n the overturned drum play again fiercely shaking the com et in your hand O n the muleskin of the w ar drum for our love hunger and dying [29] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 441 BALLAD The mill is grinding penury, eyes in tears cling. O n the dead point a dead m an is sleeping. The dru m reverberates and tears take its place on the way. O n four mill blades penury scrapes. Of w hite gauze is the bride's w edding dress and she weeps, that w ith a deceased she will sleep. W ar is coming, w ar is coming, endlessly tim e is turning, w inters come, springs come, Decembers and Mays. The plow of w ar is plow ing deep the flowery land and the surface of the sea, w hich to blood is turning. [ 30] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 442 W hat will grow from the furrow , w hen bloody seeds you have sown? The sky has thundered and m urders piled, yet no end in sight. An exploded grenade, I will take the em pty fragm ent and w ill come you to congratulate on your w edding banquet. I will raise it aloft, like a glass in a toast, blood will flow onto our heads. U nder the dark star the land of people is consum ed. The mill reaches woefully into the sky like a throne of penury. [31] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 443 OLD BATTLEFIELD The sun is turning the shade of things, w ind blades are breaking delicate mills. W e are in the land of fools, come, let's dance once, twice. H ow come that in the graveyard w e m ay dance betw een life, between death? W hy not, w hy not, my danseuse, in the land of fools? The little foot soldier in trenches of fragrant soil his rifle makes a cross over his head. For the last tim e he falls asleep in his helmet, good night! The king falls from his throne and the throne collapses, false prophets are raising their voices, th at in the m outh of cannons birds are building nests and the birds have left. U nder the tow er battlem ent a horse's shadow races for its em peror, for his shadow. D ead are friends, dead are foes, dead w e are all. [32] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 444 Is it the land of fools and w ho is its master? The carnival has begun, esteem ed masks! In gas m asks w e w ill not perish in clouds of gas! The sun is turning the shade of things, the earth is pregnant w ith the dead. Already it is bursting, come and let's dance right around! It is night, it is m om and in the fog it is daw ning, shrouded in rags they all sleep. It is the cloak of harlequin, the land, collapsed chessboard, it is EUROPE. [33] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 445 A BALLAD FROM THE CHAM PAGNE 4,000 French poets fell in the world war. "Temps" O n the palate you taste w ine and in w ine I delight, tell m e Josephine, how do you like the Cham pagne? Your father w as a vintner, it w as in the war. It is long ago, you recall, how he w alked the vineyard in a hat of straw . A bottle sits on the table its neck delicate, as I drink, of blood I m ust think, of som ething frightfully sad. Early one day in her embrace her dad passed away, she w ept little Josephine, bu t tim e is the sweetest remedy. [34] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 446 It was a horrible day, w orse followed, w ar came, soldiers came. Cannons they d u g in betw een grapes in the vineyard. Josephine, are you still sad? Josephine w alked out to the vineyard, she was alone. A soldier saw her there: w hat's your nam e girl? His arm around her waist, he jingled his spur. * Josephine's brother is grow ing up fast, the w ar has long, long since passed, It is plain — like his father he w alks the vineyard in a hat of straw. Softly singing, he studies the grapevine, fragile stalks he ties up w ith bast. H ow heavy full bunches of grapes are, w hen they ripen. Evening comes, a star sweetens the sky, the young vintner is hom ew ard bound, on his w ay one star has given him light, and w hen he arrives, there are a thousand. He is eating supper silently drinking wine, in the paper he is looking quietly reading. Have you seen .yet, dear Josephine, how m any poets fell in France? [35] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 447 Four thousand! The things that w ar will perpetrate! Josephine is silent. Silence all around, now and then betw een teeth a glass of w ine w ill resound. She reminisces. H alf smiles, half tears make her lips trem ble lightly. — H ow many others there m ust have been w ho did not know how to w rite poetry! [36] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 448 THE PARTING KISS Beautiful ladies were kissing American volunteers. I will never forget that which I witnessed on that day, the w indow s of cathedrals rattled, at Verdun high w ere the flames. The w ar w as burning like a beacon, trees shook dow n to their roots. Above me it is not the firmament, it's the door to the w orld's sanitarium . Like em pty tin cans of preserve people rust here and putrefy. From a loophole I gaze at the stars, I am fighting for France. For France? A land I have never before seen! So why do I take u p m y carbine, w hy am I aiming to shoot and kill. It rains on the dead, delirious eyes in veils of yellow gauze, I gaze in their eyes, the dead face as if he cries. [37] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 449 It rains on the living, delirious eyes in the helm et's shade, w hy do I gape, w hy am I here, w hen I feel so sad? For sw eet France? Could she taste better than m y home? I d o n 't know her wom en, I have never tried her wine. For the kiss of one little miss, at hom e across the sea, at home; w hen I w ent to w ar, she touched m y face w ith her lips. She p u t her hand in mine, I pressed it and lost w as I, I w as so needy/1 w as starved, her ring I kissed. Shall I blame her, to em bitter my m em ory, tasting so sw eet shall I curse her, shall I weep, or laugh heartily? W orld w ar, break loose, Rumble cannons buried in the soil! For the kiss of one little miss, I will be silent, I will be mute. [ 38] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 450 AN APPLE TREE WITH COBWEB STRINGS R uddy apples have bent the regal stem like a harp, autum n has draped it w ith cobweb strings, wail and play m y player! W e are not from that land w here oranges ripen, w here grapevine tw ines around Ionic colum ns, its grapes sweeter than the m ouths of Rom an wom en; w e only have the apple tree, w arped severely by fruit and age. A nd beneath this apple tree w ould sit he, who perhaps had seen Parisian nights, Italian afternoons or the m oon above the Kremlin, hom e he returned all this to rem em ber. In verse a soft and serene melody, w hich could be played in those spider's strings, I overheard. [39] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 451 W here to go for beauty, the sea, cities and m ountains, w here will trains take you for your peace to heal w ounds that are still sm arting? W here? The gazes of w om en and their breasts w hich w ould swing your head into a lush and exotic dream , are not enticing? A voice, redolent of far horizons, beckons, your land is small! Do you w ant to rem ain silent, w hen tem ptingly it speaks to your yearning? It is after noon, one fruit I will pick from the apple tree and long smell at it. To be alone, beyond w om en's tears and beyond their smiles, to be home, solitary, w hen a familiar song resounds in the boughs. For the idle beauty of foolish w om en an appie is wasted. [40J R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 452 THREE BITTER SEEDS To Konstantin Biebl Three bitter seeds as a keepsake I received, I wave a handkerchief as a sign of grief. As a farewell gift three orange seeds, into w hite handkerchiefs people weep. I planted them in a pot w atering them diligently, for it's poetry, Italy's export, to the cold homeland. Good! They have grown. How they bloom I d o n 't know, crimson, blue, yellow ashen blossom? the flam ing blossom will fade soon. On the stalk cling green fruit like bitter tears. 141] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 453 W ho is weeping, w hose tears are they? From the seeds you gave me, m y orange grew but did not ripen. Well here it is not at hom e that precious blossom, all here m ust seem foreign like frost. The sun is chilly the soil is different, dew will fall and a strange w inter come and a foreign spring. A letter flew in from afar. W here in the w orld is Java? I reminisce about your little seeds and here the snow is falling. W hy w rite about it, if one does not know? O n the ocean float glow ing isles. H op, gentle w ords leap like m onkeys on the page into quatrains. [42] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 454 A nd in vain to m y ear I lift m y cane of bam boo, it is silent, m ute and w here w ould I drink milk of coconut, if our cow does not have it. A propos, do in their ears black women there flowers and parakeet feathers wear? So how do you fare in the rosy place? I believe it is the eternal craving of m y little trees in the w indow glass, w hich shiver, w hen they feel the snow falling outside; just so, transplanted into different soil, you are one of the seeds of mine in w istful separation. For it m ust feel strange to you that hot cradle of earth, in w hich blossoms sway w hile birds are singing in the m iddle of o u r w inter w hen frost glazes our sun. [43] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 455 It is in vain that I w ater my trees and vain to breathe w arm th on faded leaves. To sink into sleep, sleep like a snake m ay sleep and suddenly at hom e to awaken, w hen it is spring! [44] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 456 MOSCOW It is long since they danced the m inuet and long since the harp has last played. The glass cases in the old palace have become tom bstones for the dead. There w ere battlefields, the bloodied Kremlin wall still bares its teeth. Bear us witness, you w ho are dead, buried in velvet. Glasses em ptied of wine, banners low ered over these past times, a sw ord that tries to recall from w hose fist it did fall. Rotten rings, a moldy diadem, A collier, w hich still smells sweetly. Decayed robes of dead czarinas w ith an eyeless mask, a stare of death and dam nation. O n the floor lies the czar's orb, em blem of authority, rotten and worm-eaten. This is the end, it is over under golden domes, death guards the burial grounds of history. [47] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 457 Suits of armor, em pty like golden nuts, on carpets of singular designs and Empire coaches travel backw ard into the past, no horses, no passengers, no lights. [48] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 458 A SONG ABOUT MOSCOW The false little teeth of your dom es in snow y gum s they shine. Factories puff and smoke in a circle wide. We d o n 't care a straw for diam onds and for your glittering gold. N ow adays w e pay w ith bread ready in hand. Skilled jewelers, leaning on their kneading troughs, w ork liquid gold and m ake round loaves. H ow delicious it smells this gem so poor and plain, w hen the sliced half a m other takes to her children. A nd in their metal voice bells announce to the entire land in a deep bass: Bread! Bread! Gold is worthless! . 1 49] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 459 AT OUR LADY OF IBERIA From things religious to secular, from prayer even to crime. A t O ur Lady of Iberia on the w alkw ay there is a bazaar. A Lenin badge for a ruble. Give m e one, little blue-eyed girl; others have it and none of them is poorer, I will buy the badge too! Paintings, lamps, a horseshoe, a pot, all the things w aiting here for us. The place looks as if a cannon shot had dem olished a bourgeois palace. The phonograph is staunchly silent it cannot sing revolutionary songs, likely it rem em bers the m om ent w hen it played for a noble miss. A gainst the wall someone leaned a rapier, it m ay be broken, but not deceased, gone is its spring, which it had once in the hand of a cavalier. [ 50] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 460 Old books piled on a heap, oh w hat w isdom each of them m ay keep. Dostoevski's despair they hold, there Pushkin's passion is grow ing cold. It is turning inside o u t here a past that will never reappear; here w orkers tread, here soldiers tread and w om en in bandannas of red. Then there is som ething am using, so delightful and w hite as snow, for the ladies brassieres of silk are strung up on a long pole. The Kremlin wall is gloomy and bloody back there it is m ute and grudging, right beside it they are offering that trifle that is all finery. But I know, now I know Jeanne d'Arc I remembered, as she marches to battle in silver arm or and a sw ord and beauty crow n her head. They too are arm or those brassieres for m aiden's hearts and breasts. Love's armor, before it is pierced by a lover's hands. [51] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. LENIN'S CITY 461 The form er palace of the adm iralty, An Em pire conch, of w hich Venus w as bom w ith a sailor's cap. It w as a small miracle. That's all. The harbor com m ander welcomes a Chinese captain they are shaking hands. The w hite the yellow. The ships stuffed w ith butter, chocolate and tea lie a t anchor unmoving. It is night. Like a drunken spider w ith a cross on its back the m onster cathedral staggers in the darkness. In the colonnade, am ong black icons the clam or of revolutions thunders. The W inter Palace is colored w ith blood. The m arble colum n m agnetizes the moon. Blood flowed here. Snow is falling. Red and white. At night it horrifies. [52] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 462 City on the Neva. M etropolis of poets. The saber w rote red verses on your walls. Instead of love w ords here cannons roared. It w as the revolution. That's all. [ 53] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 463 LENIN To the end o f glory The ruins of palaces have crum bled on cracked columns w hich will m older aw ay to the end of glory. That w as Russia w hich w e beheld, w hen the Kremlin's golden dom es burned like candles on a coffin. A nd m eanwhile Moscow rippled on the w ings of banners her streets boomed w ith the labor of w orker's hands, until walls began to burst. Full of grapes, full of life it w as a charm ing village atop the ruins of Pompeii W hile below peace reigned and death, under the paw s of cats m arble dust of antique sculptures. [54] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 464 In a chaise longue already seriously ill and old like a frail shadow and an old tree Lenin reposed. Death is draw ing near and little time remains, a few sunny autum n days and winter. His face turned to w here glow the m irrors of Montblanc, he beheld the w orld's face, he sees Europe and the struggle of classes. A bird, shot down, plunges am azed into the willow brush and in underground vaults of banks, w here grow s that gold bullion in coils, dogs, lazily trailing along the columns, guard well the golden m arshes, over white sheets of paper, betw een ciphers blood is gushing. He sees cities and masses in m otion spilling over like a black shadow in the glow of lights and he hears the song, that he loved so dearly. [55] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 465 It is not a love song, that sweetly rings w hen the night draw s near under the sw eetheart's w indow (the m oon is craw ling in velvet darkness) This w as a song which they w ere singing into czars' ears beneath palace w indow s, w hen machine guns w ove a speedy death. And the im age vanished, the sweet voice fell silent. A touch of snow veiled his sight and he sees Moscow. Proud and loud rang out the step, w hen below the Kremlin wall the guards w alk to and fro and terrify Europe and terrify the w orld. Then he lifted his eyes from the deep of dream s and a dry leaf, tom off the tree by another tree, descended to earth slowly, until it fell. [56] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 466 O pen the windows. Pain closes the eyes in the background of red fabrics. They have lifted the deceased and the grave is opening. Dead is Lenin. The m ultitudes have stirred. Step slowly. The claw of grief w ill hew. For the sorrow of the w orld, m y dear poet, nightingales sing poorly. [57] R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. [AFTERWORD] A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD 467 (Unless it is perchance for a very technical purpose: filling these last few pages of the book) I don't know w hy Jaroslav Seifert has an afterw ord w ritten for a collection sufficiently good as to not needing to be covered up by critical loquacity—a collection too precise and clear to require a com m entary. It is already beyond the bounds of hum ility if w e m ust adm it that this here will be nothing b u t an extract of the poet's verses, w hich m ay be a decent and m ore than com m on feature of insightful essays, but w hich am ounts to a som ew hat conspicuous pointlessness in an afterword. In an afterw ord to Seifert's book. Jaroslav Seifert is not and never has been a problem. N either in term s of merit, nor in term s of intentions. W herever he w as headed, w hatever he set his m ind on, w hatever he had to voice at a given mom ent, he always expressed it precisely and unequivocally; he never adm inistered the funds of am biguous m ysteriousness. This is w hy each of his collections—each for these very sam e reasons self-sufficient and in itself com plete—caused the m agazines to respond to "a significant turning-point in his w ork." The first o n e—"City in Tears," m arked the birth of proletarian poetry—of course. The second collection— abandonm ent of proletarian poetry, em bracing of civilization. The third o n e — rejection of ideology, orientation tow ard pure poetry, to poetism. The fourth collection—to d ay —a nightingale singing poorly, perhaps indeed som ething m ore than a m ere fourth in a row , perhaps indeed a turning-point, perhaps R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 468 indeed a case that goes deeper and is m ore exceptional because it absorbs his entire w ork and turns him back like a m aelstrom into his personal unfathom able center, a point on a straight line into a vortex, on w hich lies his artistic origin and w hich he approaches as he deepens his poetic evolution in sm aller and sm aller circles all the way to the depth of its apex. Jaroslav Seifert is not and never has been a problem. Perhaps this exonerates those fools, who turned him into a schema and w hom his clarity and precision expressing his m ental direction in vain contradict as they undertook to search in him the rom antic, the w riter of the idyll, the sensualist servant of anything, fatefully passive, w ithout deliverance. W hy n ot the opposite? A realist poet, an absolute civilist, w ho is actively seeking knowledge; w hy not that w hich he is, as a full-blooded m em ber of the young generation? An enemy of romanticism, opposed to the idyllic and a relativist only in his dual relationship to the things m ost dear to him: poetry and social revolution. This latest collection fully attests to this. It is com petent like a final link com pleting a certain epoch, like the last stop on Seifert's first great journey around the w o rld —travels devoted to familiarization, to expeditions into unknow n lands filled w ith beauty and sorrow. A Journey Around the World M OSCOW The red banner rises above the City in Tears. "There in the east eyes see salvation, there in the east, in the cornflower-blue distance " M oscow is bringing the good tidings of his vision of future justice and beauty. A boyish R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 469 adventure senses the heroic breath of barricades, of rose-colored death and red resurrection. The sun itself, the entire universe, not even his beloved, are capable of outweighing the idea of revolution. PARIS The beloved, after all! Impossible to deny sheer love. Impossible to deny the w orld and its pleasures; impossible-to enter m onasteries of renunciation. Secular verse, m ay it rhym e w ith Soviet verse. Secular verse. The world! The w orld? Paris! The antithesis of Moscow, its dream t-up exclusiveness is the counterw eight to the poet's youth. "A nd, really, Paris is at least one step closer to heavenly spheres " "Paris is the m irror of the w orld." ALL THE BEAUTIES OF THE WORLD A irplanes are soaring from the skies and transatlantic steam ers are flooded w ith the load of poetry. H arbors, the ocean, Marseille and Italy, N ew Y ork and yachts, skyscrapers, pineapples, all the perfum es of the w orld, all the beauty of the w orld, all the nations of the w orld, blacks, Chinese, poets, steel construction and exotica. The m ost magnificent journey around the globe on the w aves of TSF. "Life swim m ers ocean swim m ers life and sea life and sea." ALL THE SORROW OF THE WORLD Behind the din of jazz bands, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, in the coral lagoon—sorrow. O n the bottom of the sea—death. The sorrow of the mayfly, w hich w as bom on a rainy day. The sorrow of the w ine that is bleeding. "A nd if it w ere not for grief love's sickness afflicting me, from w hich I am d y in g .. .. " R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 470 Something like w ar pervades the verses, w ar and destitution, the menacing w eight of all the w orld's beauty that the poet as discoverer entered. The last nation on earth: the proletariat. A nd having traveled the globe, he is returning. Lo, M OSCOW from w hence yesterday he undertook his great expedition seeking knowledge; lo, Moscow, w hich he left yesterday for the w est to find it today com ing from the other end, anew and new, entirely different, not the sim ple play of barricades and red banners, but drudgery, gray w ork, w ith rusty blood on the K remlin w all as a profound trace of necessity and redem ption. This is the history of Jaroslav Seifert's w anderings, his gain, evolution; follow the m ap of the w orld that is precise and w ithout obscurities and m ark w ith tiny pennants the places of his encounters. H e undertook a journey around the w orld and w as not belated, the benighted one. After the w aves on TSF we hurled at Seifert the charge of deserting the proletarian cause. W e w ere not right. N ot because his poetism could not be placed am ong bourgeois art, but because City in Tears is not fundam entally different. W e capitulated in the face of his pure poetry's form al results. We capitulate today faced w ith his approaching of social unrest. And if the song about all the beauty of the w orld fades aw ay in this poor singing of the nightingale, if this collection postulates the recognized sorrow of the Earth and its heaviness, it does not m ean this is the poetry of TSF at its best, b u t w ith its help this is a deepening and intensification of the verses from City in Tears. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 471 City in Tears is m ade of faith, of w ords and elan. The nightingale sings poorly because it has understood. There he called for deeds and the tow ering revolutionary wave provided buoyancy. H ere know ledge leads. The self- sacrifice of the "Poem Full of Courage" is sweet and boyish. The reserve of the latest verses is bitter and manly. It is the difference betw een dream and conviction. "O n the palm of Europe, w here millions crow d," in the nam e of the throng, the poet today does not renounce a w om an "gentle and playful and affectionate of heart." You will not take the revolution's nam e in vain. It is sim pler and m ore real: "For the idle beauty of foolish w om en an apple is w asted." Seifert has become more fervent since learning about the w orld. H e found even today in that gray fog of preparations and agonies w hich they call consolidation his place as a poet, an uneasy and bitter place. A nd in his ow n fate he expressed untheatrically the hopeless lot of intellectuals of his entire generation. For the sorrow of the w orld, my dear poet, nightingales sing poorly. That's all! Julius Fufik R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 472 CHAPTER VI: Explanatory Notes A. C ity in Tears [M€sto v slzach] Table o f Contents: It is standard practice in Czech publishing to place the table of contents at the end of books; moreover, the first two of Jaroslav Seifert's volumes do not provide page numbers in die table of contents which I supplied in brackets. For the sake of convenience I moved the tables of contents to the beginning of each collection. Pagination: I follow the originals in layout and pagination. The page numbers of the originals are enclosed in brackets and located on the bottom of the page and do not correspond to the dissertation page numbers which can be found in the upper right comer. Whenever there are references to specific poems or quotations from them in the other dissertation chapters, the page numbers in the text will be enclosed in brackets and thus they refer to the original pagination of each volume of Seifert7 s poetry. Title: Originally this collection of poetry, Jaroslav Seifert's first book (1921), was entitled BojiStgdne [Battlefield of the Day]. Dedication: Seifert dedicated his first collection to his mentor, the poet and journalist Stanislav Kostka Neumann (1875-1947), who helped the young poet to get published and to get a start in journalism. Foreword: Signed U. S. Dev&sil [Artists Union Devetsil], the prefatory remarks were written by novelist and physician Vladislav Vancura (1891-1942), Seifert's friend and fellow member in the influential avant-garde artistic group DevStsil, which during the 1920s first embraced proletarian art and later turned to constructivism and "poetism" as programs of a new lifestyle and creativity in all artistic disciplines. During the early phase of proletarian art it is a trademark for the artists— true to the idea of collective endeavor— to sign the group name or to add Dev&sil to their names in by-lines. Dev&sil [literally "Nine-Power"] means butterbur and is a resilient medicinal herb. The name originates from a book by the brothers Karel and Josef Capek. [14-16] December 1920: This was a time of strikes and turmoil, two years after Czechoslovakia had emerged as an independent state from the ruins of the Austro- T -T nr»rrpripn Pmniro T » rU o « rjomArrofir Parhr F a caIiF im I III tj/AA >,/ •* AiCll UtS. VAlUCliVdlV V U i\ W/VWAUA a / U A . Ua * .J h/«>^&At kV into a radical (Bolshevik) faction, soon to become communist, and a moderate (Menshevik) wing. The communists unsuccessfully tried to stage a crippling general strike but violent clashes with police erupted and resulted in several deaths when the police opened fire into the crowds. Seifert most likely witnessed the demonstrations in front of the Parliament in Prague when Josef Kulda [14, line 17; 16, line 7], a 51-year-old locksmith and father of six, was shot on Dec. 12 and soon succumbed to his injuries. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 473 [15, line 4] shawm or shalm: [OFr. chaume or chalemie, from L. calamus] a wind instrument, resembling the oboe, having a globular mouthpiece enclosing a double reed (Webster's). [15, lines 13-14]... this word was made fle s h ,/s o th a t it m ay dwell among us. John 1:1-14. This is one of many scriptural references in City in Tears. [17, lines 6-7] Gold piece and sixkreutzer, for zlatka and Sestak: This points to one of the many challenges in translation when it comes to specific historical objects. The first, a guilder or gulden, signifies coins once current in much of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The second is a small Austrian and German coin, Sechser or Sechsling, comparable to a sixpenny or nickel. [17, line 19] hosanna: an exclamation in praise of God. [18, line 10; 19, line 16] tram: streetcar [19, line 25 - p. 20, line 4] Fruit market and Celetnd: Two streets in the very center of Prague, near StaromSstske namSsti [Old Town Square]. The reference in the poem is to a life-size effigy of the Virgin Mary that can be found in a niche in the fagade of an old patrician house, Diem u &me Matky bozi [House at the Black Madonna] on the comer where the two streets intersect. [22, line 9] petard: A metal cone filled with explosives; in ancient warfare it was fastened to walls and gates and exploded to force an opening (Webster's). [23, lines 7-8; and pp. 54-56, "In a Small Suburban Street"] suburb, suburban: Unlike the usually wealthy suburbs on the outskirts of cities in the United States, in Prague— as in London— the word suburb (pfedm&ti) denotes a squalid neighborhood, or even slum, often located quite close to the town's center, as in the case of Zizkov, Seifert's working- class birthplace. [23, line 20] maestro Lantner, maker o f violins: In Seifert's time a well-known Prague manufacturer of string instruments and repair shop. Established in 1862 by Ferdinand Lantner, since 1891 run by his son Bohuslav. [28, line 3 ]... like Wilde before his judges: Reference to dramatist, poet, novelist and essayist Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) who was tried for homosexual conduct, found guilty, and spent two years in prison (1895-97). [31, dedication of "Good Tidings"] Ivan Olbracht Journalist and writer (1882-1952) working for the leftist, communist press and Seifert's early mentor. This poem celebrates Olbracht's recent return from post-revolutionary Russia, with "good news" from the country that many leftist intellectuals believed to hold all promise of a more just social order. In its magazine version the poem was even entitled "Annunciation." [32, lines 8-11] G lory,/glory to God in the highest/and to his people on e a rth / revolution: Significant transformation of "Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth" from the Roman Catholic liturgical hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo. Seifert R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 474 substitutes revolution for peace in a defiant gesture, yet his conception of revolution is more idyllic than ferocious. [35, line 20 - p. 36, line 5] Jerusalem's lake: Seifert himself gives the reference to the New Testament in the poem (John 5:2-9) which describes the healing of the sick in the waters of Bethesda, the small lake or pond north of the Temple in Jerusalem. [39-44, "Evening on the Porch"] porch: While it may have a function similar to porches in the United States, here it refers to the galleries or walkways found in the backs of squalid tum-of-the-century working-class tenements in the Zizkov neighborhood, where the residents attended to their household chores but also spent part of their free time. [43, line 8] S&rka: A character from Czech mythology. According to legend, Scirka is a cunning leader of the Czech Amazons, who withdraws to the woods and vows revenge on the entire male gender for the infidelity of her lover. The knight Ctirad and his retinue of warriors set out to humiliate and punish the Amazon women. From a distance, they hear the cry of a woman bound to a tree. Not realizing that he is stumbling into a trap, Ctirad is smitten with the woman and liberates her. She offers him and his followers a drink prepared for the purpose, first making them merry and later inducing sleep. She then calls her Amazon sisters and a blood-bath ensues in which S4rka accomplishes her revenge. The Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824- 1884) wrote a symphonic poem Sdrka, which became part of the cycle My Country (1874- 79). [46, line 18] Procrustes' bed: In Greek legend, Procrustes (also Damastes) was a robber of Attica. He placed his victims upon an iron bed. If they were longer than the bed, he cut off the redundant part; if they were shorter, he stretched them until they fitted it. He was slain by Theseus. [47, lines 10-11] Veronica: According to late medieval legend a woman, who was to become St. Veronica, handed her handkerchief to Jesus on his way to Calvary. After wiping the sweat from his brow, Jesus returned the handkerchief which bore his exact likeness. Three Italian cathedrals and churches lay claim to the handkerchief. [48, "In the Garden Gethsemane"] Garden Gethsemane: Matt. 26: 36-57; Mark 14:32-53; Luke 22:39-53; John 18:1-13. [48, lines 10-11] seven beautiful virgins: Matt. 25:1-13. Reference to the parable of five prudent virgins who saved and took along their lamp oil for the wedding night as opposed to five who did not, thus signifying the ready anticipation of the Son of God. [49, line 9] Jeremiah: The prophet who gave his name to a book in the Old Testament lived in Jerusalem during die time of the fail of this city to the Babylonians. His laments over the fate of the city of Jerusalem can be found in Jer. 15 and elsewhere. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 475 [50, line 8; 61, line 18] aeroplane: To choose an archaic spelling of the word seems appropriate as Seifert also used an archaic word for airplane. [50, line 9] M ount Everest and M ont B lanc The highest mountain on planet Earth and the highest peak in Europe, respectively. [54, line 7] Jairus' daughter An afflicted twelve-year-old, thought dead, whom Jesus heals. Mark 5:21-43. In the second edition of City in Tears (1923) Seifert inserted a long poem entitled "A Girl" between "A Poem Full of Courage and Faith" and "Poor" (see Appendix A). The heroine, an unremarkable "generic" revolutionary is aptly named Marie Nov&kova. Nov&k is one of the most common Czech names, comparable to Smith in the English- speaking world. In the magazine version, however, the female protagonist bore the maiden name of Seifert's future wife, Ulrychovd. B. Sheer Love [Samalaska] The pieces "Poem of Spring" and "New Year's Poem" were eliminated in the second edition of 1948 (Pesat, Seifert 43). [11, lines 6 -7]... and i f someone kisses your right cheek,/turn the left one too: Playful variation on a fundamental principle of Christian love. [14, "Paris"] Dedication to Ivan Golk The poet and journalist Ivan Goll (1891-1950) and his wife Claire (1891-1977), a novelist and poet, maintained contacts with European avant-garde groups, Dev&sil among them. Paris-based, Goll was a correspondent for the Croatian avant-garde magazine Zenit and wrote in German, French, and English. Zenit printed Seifert's poems and there were also personal contacts (Drews 249). In his early poetry Ivan Goll was an expressionist and later became a surrealist. In Switzerland he associated with the dadaists. He counted James Joyce, Stefan Zweig and Hans Arp among his friends. [14, line 4] M Slnik and Elbe: Melnik is a picturesque town in central Bohemia located on a 700-feet-elevation overlooking the confluence of the rivers Labe [Elbe] and Vltava [Moldau]. Prague is situated on the Moldau river. [15, line 8] fiftie th parallel line: Prague's geographical location [16, line 14] Great Wheel: aferriswheel [16, line 16] Trocadero: The Chaillot Hill overlooking the Seine river was named Trocadero in 1827 in commemoration of the French capture in Spain of a small fortress by the same name. For the World Exhibition of 1878 the Palais du Trocadero, a fanciful, bizarre edifice, was built but subsequently razed to make room in 1937 for the Palais Chaillot. [16, line 19] Eiffel: The Eiffel Tower R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 476 [16, line 24] P&re-Lachaise: A famous cemetery in the North of Paris; Thuja: arbor vitae [20, line 3] sordine: From the Italian word sordino (pi. sordini), a damper on a violin. [24, line 2] Hugo Stinnes: German industrialist (1870-1924), a symbol of immense wealth, comparable in connotation to the Rothschild or Rockefeller families. [24, line 13; 30, line 9] Stromovka: A large reserve and game park in the North of Prague, formerly royal gardens, established by John of Luxemburg (1296-1346), father of Charles IV. [24, line 15] summer-seat a small castle from the 15th century overlooking the Strom ovka park. It served as a hunting lodge during the reign (1576-1611) of Rudolph II (1552-1612) and subsequently, until 1918, it was the summcr-seat of the Czech vice regent. The (artificial) pond mentioned in the same line goes back to John of Luxemburg, who designed the extensive gardens. [25, line 2] Celetna: A posh street in the center of Prague leading to Starom&stske nam Ssti [Old Town Square]. [25, line 15] Wenceslas Square: See also note for 29, line 2; a busy location in the center of Prague where people in Seifert7 s time would often simply promenade to see and be seen. [27, line 1] Giant M ountains [KrkonoSe or Riesengebirge]: mountain range in northern Bohemia, highest part of the Sudetic mountains, located in the northern part of today's Czech Republic. [27, line 14] aeroplane: Throughout I follow Seifert's usage of the archaic spelling of airplane. [28, "A Song About Girls"] The piece is the first section of the long poem "A Girl" (see Appendix A) which Seifert added to the second edition of City in Tears in 1923. [29, line 9] socio-patriot [socialpatriot]: Pejorative term, used by communists, for social democrats. [29, line 19] Third International: The Communist International or Komintem, founded in Moscow in March 1919, was conceived as a world party with separate factions and organized in a strict centralist fashion. It was led by an Executive Committee in Moscow and its goal was the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the rule of Soviets. At two congresses in 1921 and 1922 the Komintem under Lenin and Trotsky steered a moderate policy to create a unified front along with other leftist parties. After Lenin's death in 1924, however, Stalin abandoned the internationalist policy and pressed for the "leading role" of the Soviet Union which served him as a justification of expansionist policies. [29, line 2; 31, line 13] M ay 1: Traditional European Labor Day holiday commemorated by leftist parties in marches and demonstrations. [29, line 2] Wenceslas Square [Vaclaoske nam€sti\: Long, narrow square in the center of Prague where traditionally demonstrations or celebrations have taken place, most R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 477 memorably in the recent past when thousands gathered there during the "Velvet Revolution," led by V&clav Havel, in 1989 to topple the communist government. [30, line 7] ducats: old European gold or silver coins. [31, line 15] carnation: A red carnation or a red rose are traditional social democratic (and communist) symbols. [32, "Verses in Remembrance of the Revolution"] The poem refers to the Russian October Revolution of 1917. [34, lines 2-4] A reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet that mocks indecision as evidenced in the protagonist's torturous musings (Hamlet HI. i). [37, line 1] The trip on which the amorous protagonist embarks "for sheer love" is autobiographical. Seifert's future wife came from J iS n and so the poet knew the town and surrounding country well. In his memoir, Seifert describes his first trip there with his fiancee and admits that during the second visit he "fell in love" with the town which was not striking but had a simple charm: "Nothing extraordinarily great or pathetic, but all was somehow close to the heart" (ABW 355). [37, line 5] JiGm A small town in eastern Bohemia of approx. 17,000 inhabitants (in 1991). It boasts a historical center with a town square and a castle dating back to Albrecht von Wallenstein [also Waldstein] (1583-1634). [37, line 9; 41, lines 21-24] statue o f Mary: One of several references in this long poem to the statue of the Virgin on Jicin's town square. In many European towns such statues or columns can be found on town squares; often they are of medieval origin, erected in gratitude for the deliverance from the plague. [38, line 15,19] Linden tree avenue [Lipova alej]: A long avenue of linden trees leads from the town to Libosad. It consists of four rows of trees at a length of more than a mile, planted in 1630 by Wallenstein and in Seifert's time it was a favorite of strolling couples. The tourist guide books of Seifert's time capitalized Linden tree avenue although it was not an "official" street. Seifert followed the practice, and so did I. [38, line 15] Libosad: Remnant of Wallenstein's game reserve, a large park with old trees. [40, line 2] Jan Tmka: Seifert here uses a broadside ballad he heard in his childhood detailing the melodramatic story of the tailor Tmka, who killed his wife for another woman. He was executed by hanging for his crime. Elis lover, distraught because she was not given custody of his five children, committed suicide by jumping down from the town's tower, right in front of the entrance to St. Jacob's Church (A B W 354). [42, line 3; 46, line 12] thirteen tinny stars: Seifert, who admits to counting with his fiancee the stars on the gilded halo over the head of this statue of the Virgin Mary, humorously recalls a reader who once wrote to him to correct his count, claiming that R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 478 there were fourteen stars (AB W 362). The description of the statue changes with the tailor's state of mind. [42, line 18; 48, line 3] Zebim Cone-shaped, ca. 1,200-foot elevation, not far from the Linden tree avenue, with a small chapel of St. Mary Magdalena on top, surrounded by a cherry orchard that may have been in full bloom, hence "Zebin is flowering pink." [62] Afterword: Again signed anonymously "Dev&sil," this time written by Karel Teige, Dev&sil's chief theoretician, this much-criticized commentary to Seifert's book is to appear once more as an expression of group aesthetics. In reality, a rift is beginning to develop between adherents of proletarian art and followers of Teige's evolving new aesthetic conception of poetism. [62, line 29] Kladno: A town in central Bohemia of approx. 72,000 inhabitants; concentration of heavy industry such as coal mines and steel mills. For Jidin see note to 37, line 5. C. On the W aves o f TSF [Na vlnach TSF] Pagination: I again follow the numbering of the original, where the page numbers are printed bold and in a large font for apparent emphasis. To distinguish these page numbers from the pagination of the dissertation in the right upper comer, they are enclosed in brackets and located in the center at the bottom of the page. Bracketed page numbers in the dissertation text refer to this original pagination. Dedication: The book is dedicated to three innovators; to graphic artist and Dev&sil theoretician Karel Teige (1900-1954), to the universally gifted fellow poet Vitezslav Nezval (1900-1958), and to founder and director of the avant-garde theater Osvobozene divadlo [Liberated Theater], Jindfich Honzl (1894-1953). M otto "Light grief on the face Deep laughter in the heart": Provocative, anti traditionalist inversion of famous lines from Czech romantic Karel Hynek Macha's well-known long poem Mdj (May), which read "Light smile on die face / deep grief in the heart." Typography: Conspicuous modernist feature in the tradition of Marinetti's futurist experiments and Apollinaire's Calligrammes, introduced to Seifert's book by Karel Teige, who was an unconventional typographer and layout designer of many books and magazines in the 1920s. Teige laid down the principles of his designs in several critical articles, "Modemi typo" [Modem Typography] (1927) foremost among them: "The first concern of modem typography is the review of type on hand and the selection of fonts that are suitable and correctly designed. A selection of typefaces according to the nature of the typeset text in such a way that a correspondence betiveen the characteristics of the font and the text is established, so that the printed form becomes the result of the text's function and content" (225; emphasis Teige's). It is clear that Teige sees the printed letter as an important component of expression in its own right that significantly R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 479 complements the text. In connection with advertising typography of the time, with which Teige's layouts have a lot in common, he emphasizes that typography is not a mere auxiliary mediator between content and the reader or a reproduction, but becomes "a self-contained construction" that optically arranges the text and "realizes on its basis an optical composition" ("Modemi typo" 226). [7] Guillaume Apollinaire: French modernist poet, bom Wilhelm Apolinaris de Kostrowitski (1880-1918), much admired by the Czech avant-garde for his introduction of simultaneous, polythematic poetry (primarily in his influential long poem Zone) and his innovative typography in Calligranimes. On the Waves of TSF is suffused with Apollinaire's aesthetic of I'esprit nouveau, manifest, among other things, in the nearly complete elimination of punctuation. Apollinaire sustained a head wound in World War I (hence "Your head in white bandages" in line 24) and died of influenza shortly after the Armistice. [7, lines 3,6,12,20,23,24] Capitalization o f personal pronoun, 2nd person singular. I emulate in English, though it may be unusual, a standard polite practice in correspondence (both in Czech and German). The capitalization is a sign of respect, even reverence and seems appropriate for Apollinaire. [7, line 8] fto ile: Word play referring to the famous square in Paris, Place de I'ttoile, and to the French word for "star" evoking the image of the star of Bethlehem. [7, line 17] Trocadero: See note for Sheer Love 16, line 16 earlier. [7, line 19] sphinx a t the Louvre entrance: A reference apparently to two effigies of the hybrid figure and mythological creature (half woman-half lion) framing the main entrance to the famous Paris museum. [7, line 21] golden-yellow firecracker. In her book about Apollinaire, Katia Samaltanos quotes the poet Philippe Soupault, who said that Apollinaire was not a leader of a school but what he himself called une fusee signal [signal rocket] or catalyst, in other words, as Samaltanos believes. [7, line 27] Eiffel: The Eiffel Tower [8, line 18] Blaise Cendrars: Pseudonym of Frederic Sauser, Swiss-born French poet and novelist (1887-1961), known for innovative verse forms and lyrical prose. The American exoticism of his poetry collected in Kodak (excerpts of which Karel Capek included in his famous translation from French poetry, published in 1920) may have inspired lines 1-2. The layout of the poem and the use of foreign names are also reminiscent of Cendrars' poetry. Cendrars is also the author of the adventure novel L'Or [Sutter's Gold] (1925). In the context of "fiery fruit" it may be of interest that the pseudonym Blaise Cendrars is a telling name, roughly meaning "blazing embers." As Katia Samaltanos points out, Cendrars chose light and fire as the symbols of art (109). [8, line 23; 9, line 6] Carthage: Ancient city and state which became a dominant colonial and trading power among Phoenician cities in North Africa. It was burned to the ground by the Romans in the Third Punic War (149-146 B. C.). [9, line 4] Muguet. A telling name; it is the French word for lily-of-the-valley or May lily— a flower which recurs throughout On the Waves o f TSF. Perhaps more importantly, muguet can also mean "dandy" and mugueter signifies "to flirt." Czech readers in the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 480 1920s were francophiles and would have been familiar with the word. Seifert used M. Muguet as his pseudonym (Pesat, Seifert 237). [9, line 7] star. Apparently the Red Star, symbol of the communist revolution often found on top of Soviet buildings. [9, line 12] Bastille: A famous state prison in Paris which was seized and sacked by the mob in the French Revolution, July 14,1789, a date that has become Bastille Day, a national holiday celebrated much like the Fourth of July. [9, line 13] Vladimir Vladimirovich M ayakovsky: Iconoclastic poet (1893-1930) of the Russian revolution. [13, lines 4,12,21] Wagons lits: Seifert uses the French expression for a Pullman car; the use of mundane, banal everyday objects in his poetry is in tune with the poet's youthful intent to break up poetic conventions. [13, lines 12,13,21] Wagons restaurants: French for railroad dining car. [14, line 19] shawm: See note for City in Tears 15, line 4 earlier. [15, line 13] isle o f If. The protagonist Edmond Dantes in Dumas' novel Count of Monte Cristo is confined within the dungeon of the Chateau d'lf, located on this island. [15, line 16] Count o f M onte Cristo: Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1844); a romance by the prolific French novelist and dramatist Alexandre Dumas, pere (1802-1870). The protagonist is wrongfully imprisoned for life in the dungeon of the Chateau d 'lf but manages to escape and to avenge himself. The spelling Christo in Seifert's original could be the result of a typographical error. It reappears in the facsimile edition of On the Waves of TSF of 1992. [15, line 22] Belsunce: The Cours Belsunce is one of the main streets of Marseille; today it is still a center of entertainment and night life. [19, line 24-25] S a ils/a n d m int candy: An association close enough in Czech, where the word for "mint candy" literally means "wind candy" [vetrovS bonbdny]. [21, "My Italy"] Almost certainly a playful reference, particularly in line 6 ("Italian grammar's four irregular verbs see modem poetry") to Emilio Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) and his radical experiments, particularly the breaking up of syntax and his "liberated words," parole in libertd. The forms fa and vo do not correspond to modem Italian usage (Jaccio and vado, respectively, would correctly be used) and the spelling of stano,fano, dano, and vano should read stanno, fanno, danno and vanno, but Seifert is less concerned with linguistic precision than with the acoustic and visual quality that these verbs have in the Czech. [21, line 5] Forum Romanum: A famous site in Rome which served as a center of commerce and political life in antiquity. [21, line 9] Frappk Seifert capitalizes the word that bears an Italian accent but comes from the French frappe, a drink poured over shaved ice or partly frozen beverages, fruit juices, etc. [21, line 11] garden Boboli: Boboli Gardens, grounds of the Pitti Palace at Florence, planned in 1550 under the patronage of Eleanora of Toledo and the direction of the R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 481 sculptor II Tribolo (Niccola Pericoli). They contain many fine statues and the Isoletto fountain, designed by Jean de Bologne (Encyclopedia Americana 1957,30. vols.). [22, "Nightlights"] Ollagum: Seifert uses the plural Ollagumy [Ollagums], a brand of condoms in his youth; including it in his poem was definitely a provocation. [23, line 18] D aily Mail: British daily newspaper (circulation almost 2 million in 1980). Seifert erroneously hyphenates the name. [27, line 1-5] Princess Salome: Reference to Oscar Wilde's play Salome, that Seifert may have seen on stage or read in a 1905 translation bv Otakar Theer. See also the poem "King Herod" [35], [29, line 8] Crown: Czech currency [32, line 4,11,15] Omaki Vani: Perhaps an imaginary Japanese woman or a now- forgotten circus or variete artiste, whom Seifert encountered on his 1923 trip to France. [32, line 14] Horror shaking the earth and Yokohama in ruins: Reference to a devastating earthquake on Sept. 1,1923. In the subsequent fire storm 95% of the property in Yokohama (65% in Tokyo) were lost. One of the major catastrophes of modem time (Encyclopedia Americana 1957,30 vols.). [33, line 2,5,16] M iss Gada-Nigi: Apparently a trapeze artiste and circus dancer, whom Seifert may have seen on his 1923 visit to Paris. [35, "King Herod"] This poem relies on the similarity in Czech between "grape" (hrozen vina) that Herod is about to eat and implied guilt or sin (vino) of the female companion addressed by the lyrical "I". It is also a reference to Wilde's play Salome (see note for 27, line 1-5 earlier). [39, "beauty"] manikin: The Czech word panna in the original offers greater ambiguity because it has more meanings than the specific expression "manikin": it also connotes the meaning of "virgin." [41, "Discoveries"] The map shown is crucial for the understanding of the poem; it shows Cuba at its center and Seifert emphasizes the fact that he himself does not smoke cigars but cigarettes, so to the irreverent poet it is not important that Columbus discovered the place famous for its cigars. The preoccupation with smoking is typical for Seifert's time. See the note for "Cigarette smoke" [61]. [45, "Abacus"] apples from Australia: Seifert recalls in his memoir the expensive, beautifully wrapped colorful apples that he used to admire in the delicatessen store windows of his youth (ABW279). This poem is one of several that are printed in the landscape format. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 482 [47, line 1] M aiden o f Orleans: French national heroine Jeanne d'Arc [St. Joan of Arc] (1410 or 1412-1431) who donned men's clothes and took up arms to lead the French army against the English forces in the Hundred Years' War and liberated Orleans, that had been under British siege. She was subsequently captured and burned at the stake. [48, line 1] Gambier pipe: The Pipe Gambier is a clay pipe named after its French inventor and first manufacturer (Larousse du XXe Si'ecle 1930,6. vols.). [49, line 3] M a yfly: dayfly [52, line 13] Menton: Resort on the French Cote d'Azur near Cap Martin and last stop before the Italian border of the railway line Marseille-Genoa; Seifert may have passed through on his 1923 trip to Italy and France with Karel Teige. [53, line 8] number two-hundred-forty-eight Due to the different length and amount of words, Seifert's original ends with the number one-hundred-ninety-one which rhymes with line 6 (krve/-prve and bloodstained/-eight). [54, line 16] magasin Printemps: A beautiful old department store adjacent to the department store complex Galeries Lafayette near the Paris Opera; it boasts a gold-green mosaic fagade and a large colorful stain-glass dome above its restaurant. [55, line 2] . . . mix pleasures like cards and cocktails: In Czech the word for mixing a drink (michat) and shuffling cards is identical. [55, line 3] Fratellini: Three brothers, Albert, Paul, and Frangois Fratellini, well-known circus clowns in Seifert's time. One of them made up his face to look like pierrot. [55, line 4] boston: A dance in the 1920s (also a game of cards). [56, "The thief and the clock"] The entire poem relies heavily on homonymy and polysemy; here in particular Seifert employs the various meanings of lead in the sense of guiding but also seducing and in its physical sense in electricity of a wire carrying power in a circuit. [56, line 10] Is your piano well-tuned? The word play here relies on the polysemy of the Czech verb naladit which can denote a well-tuned piano and a person in a good mood. [58, "Concert cafe"] The poem was entitled "Europe" in its magazine version. [58, line 1] dreadnought Seifert employed the English word "dreadnought" (battleship) in his Czech original; this is in keeping with his use of foreign place names and words throughout this volume to evoke an aura of exoticism and longing for distant lands. In his memoirs Seifert mentions observing such a ship before the coast in Marseille {ABW 162). [60, "Lawn-tennis"] Seifert employed the English words in the poem's title, again to create an impression of exoticism R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 483 [61, "Cigarette smoke"] Originally entitled "Kour v okne" [Smoke in the Window], this poem reveals an apparent preoccupation with smoking. See, for example, "Discoveries" [41], "Napoleon" [48], or "Wisdom" [37]. Seifert7 s friend, the poet Frantisek Halas, wrote a short entertaining prose piece "M4m d^mku" [I have a Pipe], which extols the pleasures of smoking, the "siesta of the mind" [Pdsmo 2(6-7) 1925-26: 78]. [62, line 2] M ontblanc Highest peak in the Alps and highest elevation in Europe. Also spelled Mont Blanc. [63, "Fever"] In its magazine version, this poem was dedicated to Seifert's peer from Dev&tsil's era of proletarian poetry, the poet Jin Wolker, who died only 24 years old of tuberculosis in 1924. [64, line 4] Longchamp: Remnants of a former convent of Clare nuns on the westside of Paris near the Bois du Bologne; the convent was secularized and became the tryst of the aristocracy; destroyed during the revolution in 1792. In 1861 a hippodrome for horse races and military parades was built nearby. [64, line 6] Your: The pronoun is capitalized in the original to indicate respect or adoration in this context. See also the note for 7, lines 3,6,12,20,23,24 earlier. Seifert's capitalization is at times erratic. Often it indicates a new thought after a pause which are indicated by white spaces. [65] Rue de la Paix: A well-known street in Paris connecting Place de VOpera and Place Vendome, the architectural center of the posh district Faubourg St-Honore. [68, lines 14-17] The Czech original thrives on the homonymy of rymy which in the first line of the last stanza means the plural of rhyme and in the third line the plural of cold or flu. D. The N ightingale Sings P oorly [Slavik zplva Spatne] Pagination: As in the preceding three collections, the page numbers in brackets at the bottom of the page correspond with Seifert's original. Dedication: Jos0f Sfma (1891-1971), Czsch. psintsr, illustrator and, lilcs Ssifsrt, msmb^r of Dev&sil. Sima lived in Paris since 1921 but his connection to the Czech avant-garde was close. He translated Seifert's and Nezval's poems into French (Smejkal). Sima provided several illustrations for Seifert's The Nightingale Sings Poorly. The book's cover was created by two other DevStsil painters who were based in Paris: Toyen, alias Marie Cerminova (1902-1980) and Jindfich Styrsky (1899-1942), the creators of "artificialism," which was the equivalent in painting to literary poetism— a style of imaginative painting based on association and evocation. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 484 [14, lines 18-19] Word play is an important stylistic means in this collection. This word play in the original relies on the homonymy of kosa (scythe) and kos (blackbird, merle or thrush). [15, lines 2,4] Word play involving zdvitnice [spring] and zavistnice [a female who is envious or aspiring]. [16, line 7] Archipelago: A reference to Jules Verne's 1884 novel L'Archipel en feu [The Archipelago on Fire]. The associative chain is readily apparent in the Czech: the word for pollen (on the butterfly's wings) is pel (archipel). Verne was much read in Seifert's time. [16, line 10] The astonishing adventure: Probably a reference to Jules Verne's posthumously published L'Etonnante aventure de la Mission Barsac [The Astonishing Adventure of the Barsac Mission]. [16, lines 18,20] Word play utilizing near homonymy and homophony between profound "wisdom" (moudrost) and deep "blueness" (modrost). I tried to substitute "deep-seated . . . wisdom" and "deep-sea blueness" to suggest the correspondence that exists in the oricdnal. [18, line 1] Mirabeau: Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791); French orator and revolutionary leader with early notoriety as a pleasure-seeker, yet his unusual gift for oratory won him respect. One of the most important figures in the first two years of the French Revolution. [18, line 3] Jardin des Plantes: Probably an unwitting mistake in the original, both in the magazine version and the printed volume {Jardin de Plantes). Seifert's knowledge of French was limited. [18, line 5] July fourteenth: French national holiday, Bastille Day. See also note for On the Waves of TSF 9, line 12. [18, line 15] The associative leap from "bars" to "colors" is playfully obvious in the Czech original: bary to baroy. [18, line 16] cap o f liberty: Seifert in his text uses "Phrygian cap," that is, the bonnet rouge worn by French revolutionaries, who in turn adopted the liberty cap that designated freed Roman slaves. [18, line 17] calembour. The French word means pun, wordplay; it has entered the Czech language (kalanbur). [20, line 3] Gis&le and Emma: Probably a reference to Gustave Flaubert's (1821-1880) protagonist Emma Bovary and to the ballet Gisele. [20, line 15] Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) who visited Prague in 1925 on a lecture tour. His book To the North Pole by Plane, documenting his 1925 journey, was publicized in the Czech press. Several poets wrote pieces commemorating Amundsen's expeditions. [22, "Paravent"] French for folding screen; the word entered the Czech language in phonetic spelling: paravdn. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 485 [22, line 12] lemon eyes: perhaps suggestive of a yellow European butterfly like the brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) which is called Zitronenfalter in German (lemon butterfly). [25, line 16] In Czech the word for summit or crest is identical with comb (kfeben). [26, "Giant Mountains"] Mountain range in northern Bohemia, highest part of the Sudetic Mountains, located in the northern part of today's Czech Republic. [26, line 17] KrakonoS: Mythic figure of Bohemian folldore and stuff of many popular legends, comparable to Paul Bunyan; believed to have super-human powers and to roam the Giant Mountains, part of the Sudetic Mountains. [29, line 11] co m et Seifert here apparently alludes to the cone-shape and probable origin of the dicebox: the musical instrument comet or hom. It was customary for soldiers to play games of chance on overturned drams. [32, line 7] danseuse: The French word does not appear in the original but seems appropriate to denote a female dancer (tanetnice in Czech). [34, "A Ballad from the Champagne"] It is likely that this poem is a reference to Guillaume Apollinaire's poem "Vigneron champenois" from Calligrammes for its linkage of vineyard and war theater. Epigraph: Probably a headline taken from the French magazine (Le) Temps. The Czech magazine Republika quotes a lower number citing French sources: 400 French men of letters killed in World War I [Republika 1(3) 26 Feb. 1919:23]. [34, line 3] Josephine: While the association with Napoleon's wife comes readily to mind, it is more likely that Seifert was looking for a "generic" or typical French female name. [41, "Three Bitter Seeds"] Dedication: Konstantin Biebl (1898-1951); Seifert's poet friend and fellow member since 1926 of the artistic circle DevStsil, when Biebl likewise embraced poetism, and the longing for exotic faraway places, particularly Asia (where he actually traveled), increasingly informed his poetry. [47-57] Section III, the last part of this volume, is a cycle of poems Seifert wrote following his visit in 1925 of Moscow and Leningrad. [47, line 13] diadem: an adornment similar to a crown worn by nobility [47, line 14] collier. French word for necklace, usually made of precious stones or pearls [47, line 17] orb: The Czech word for "orb" is "apple"; therefore, it is more readily apparent why this emblem of authority is worm-eaten and rotten. [50] Our Lady o f Iberia: A chapel, dasovnja Iverskoj Bozej M ateri, built in 1669 adjacent to the Iberian Gates, Iverskie vorota, which opened onto the Red Square in Moscow. The magazine version of this poem reveals in a note that the chapel served as R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 486 a memento in post-revolutionary Russia, bearing Marx's motto "Religion— the opiate of the people." Nearby, there was a lively-bazaar (see Chapter 3). Both the chapel and the gates were destroyed in the late 1920s. The chapel held the icon of the Iberian Virgin, much venerated by Muscovites (Moskva zlatoglavaja, Les Eglises de Moscou, Paris: YMCA- Press, 1980:18). In ancient geography Iberia was a country between the Greater Caucasus and Armenia, roughly equivalent to modem Eastern Georgia (Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World 1952). [54, "Lenin"] The poem commemorates the recent death, on 21 Jan. 1924, of Russian statesman and communist leader Vladimir Rich Lenin. [55, line 10] Montblanc: Highest peak of the Alps; highest mountain in Europe. See also the notes for City in Tears [50, line 9] and for Sheer Love [62, line 2]. Afterword: Written by communist critic and journalist Julius Fucik (1903-1943), long a detractor of poetism, who briefly "converted" to this aesthetic in 1926. The sentence, He undertook a journey around the world and was n ot belated, the benighted one, in the last section entitled "Moscow," involves a word play in Czech: nezpozdil and zpozdily in the original for "belated" and "benighted," likely refers to Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days, as Fuak's afterword does on more than one occasion; Veme has been a much admired and widely read writer in Czechoslovakia. At the same time, Fucik gently mocks Seifert's unworldly innocence ("benighted"). The reference towards the end to consolidation, "that gray fog of preparations and agonies" is directed against the mainstream parties' and the young Czechoslovak state's stabilization, hold on power and strengthened position in the second half of the 1920s, a development disliked by communists who sought to destabilize the "bourgeois" democratic system. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 487 Bibliography Texts I used for my translations: Seifert, Jaroslav. M£sto v slzach: prom verSe. Praha: R. Rejman, 1921. . Santa Idska. Praha: Vecemice/V. Vortel, R. Rejman, 1923. . Na vlndch TSF. Praha: Vdclav Petr, 1925. . Slavik zpivd $patn$. Praha: Odeon, 1926. Bassnett-McGuire, Susan. Translation Studies. London, New York: Methuen, 1980. Bellos, David. "What Really Happens in the Language Labyrinth." Elan, The European 19-25 Nov. 1993:12-13. Benjamin, Walter. "The Task of the Translator." Schulte and Biguenet, Theories of Translation 71-82. Biguenet, John and Rainer Schulte, eds. The Craft of Translation. Chicago and London: U of Chicago Press, 1989. Blajer, Zdenek. "Vyvojove stupne v poezii Jaroslava Seiferta." Bulletin vysoke Scaly ruskeho jazyka a literatury. Praha: Stcitni pedagogick£ nakladatelstvi, 1959. 277-88. Blahynka, Milan. Foreword. "Zlate easy avantgardy." Vlasin 7-38. Brabec, Jin. "Jaroslav Seifert." Novy zivot 9(3) 1957:251-66. Brousek, Marketa. Der Poetismus. Miinchen: Carl Hauser Verlag, 1975. Capek, Karel. "Proletarske umeni" 173-79. Cemy, Vdclav. Pam&i. 3 vols. Brno: Atlantis, 1992-94. DAV, "Poetizm." Avantgarda 1(2) 1925: 6-9. Dedinovd, Sidonia. "B&snik mluvi anglicky." Seifert, Knizka polibku 119-120. Drews, Peter. Die slawische Avantgarde und der Wes ten. Miinchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1983. DuVal, John. "Norman Shapiro: Translating a Poet— Translating a Genre." Translation Review 44/45 (1994): 36-40. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 488 Effenberger, Vratislav. "Nov6umeru." Afterword. SvSt stavby abasn& Studie z dvacatych let. By Karel Teige. Praha: Ceskoslovensty spisovatel, 1966. 575-619. Eisner, Pavel. "O vecech neprelozitelnych." Levy, deske theorie pfekladu 670-82. Fraenkel, Pavel. Rev. of Slavik zpivd 5patn§, by Jaroslav Seifert. Rozpravy Aventina 2(13) 17 Mar. 1927:155. . Rev. of PoStovni holub, by Jaroslav Seifert. Rozpravy Aventina 5(17) 22 Jan. 1930: 203. French, Alfred. The Poets of Prague: Czech Poetry Between the Wars. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Fucik, Julius. "Verse svetske i sovetske." Pravda 4(82) 21 July 1923:2; Pravda 4(83) 24 July 1923:2. Rpt. in Fucik, Stati o literature 70-75. . "Likvidace Wolkerova kultu." Avantgarda 1(3) 1925: 4-7. Rpt. in Fucik Stati o literature 81-87. . Stati o literature. Praha: Svoboda, 1951. Friedman, Alan Warren, Charles Rossman, and Dina Sherzer. Beckett Translating/ Translating Beckett. University Park; London: Pennsylvania State UP, 1987. Gaddis Rose, Marilyn. "The Hermeneutic Turn." Frontiers. Proc. of the 33rd Annual Conference of the American Translators Association. Ed. Edith F. Losa. 4-8 Nov. 1992. Medford, NJ: Learned Information, 1992. Gibian, George, ed. Introduction. The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert. Trans. Ewald Osers. London: Andre Deutsch, 1986. 1-18. Gotz, Frantisek. "K filosofii a estetice noveho umeni." Host 2(1) 1922-23: 22-31. . "O manifestu literami skupiny." Host 2(3) 1922-23:94-96. . " Prole tarsky b^snik." Host 2(10) 1922-23:310-12. . "Vyvoj Jaroslava Seiferta." Host 4(6) 1924-25:161-65. . "Seifertova cesta za cistym lyrismem." Ndrodni osvobozeni 2(45) 15 Feb. 1925: 6. . Jasmd se horizont: priihledy a podobizny. Praha: Vdclav Petr, 1926. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. . "Probl6my modem! kritiky." Host 6 1926-27:181-85. . Basnicky dneSek: vyvojove perspektivy nove deske poesie. Praha: Vaclav Petr, 1931. Goll, Ivan. "Nov^ Orfeus." Trans. Artus Cermk. Kmen 3(47-49) 29 July 1920:320-23. Harkins, William E. Preface. The Plague Monument. By Jaroslav Seifert. Trans. Lyn Coffin. N. p.: SVU Press, 1980. v-x. Hannan, Mark. "A Conversation with John E. Woods." Translation Review 44/45 (1994): 4-7. Havel, Vaclav. "Dopis Jaroslavu Seifertovi." Seifert, Knizka polibku 104. Hejl, Vilem. "Prilohy k nevydanemu zatykaci." Seifert, Knizka polibku 100-102. Heneka et al., eds. A Besieged Culture: Czeclwslovakia Ten Years after Helsinki. Stockholm, Vienna: The Charta 77 Foundation, 1985. Heyduk, Josef. Rev. PoStovni holub, by Jaroslav Seifert. Cesta 12(5) 1930:80-82. Hora, Josef. Rev. of M&to v slzdch, by Jaroslav Seifert. D&nickd besidka, Rude pravo 2(296) 18 Dec. 1921:3-4. . "Kolem nov6 poesie." D&nickd besidka, Rude pravo 3(93) 22 Apr. 1923:2-3. . "Nove basne Jaroslava Seiferta." D&nicka besidka, Rude pravo 7(292) 12 Dec. 1926:3. . "Co s poetismem?" Tvorba 2(6) June 1927:186-90. . "Mezi b&snickymi knizkami." Panorama 9 (1931) 162-65. House, Juliane. A Model for Translation Quality Assessment. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1981. Jakobson, Roman. "Konec b&snickeho umprumactvi a zivnostnictvi." Pasmo 1(13-14) 1925:1-2. . "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation." Schulte and Biguenet, Theories of Translation 144-51. "Jaroslav Seifert v Pr&vu lidu o moskevskych procesech 1936/37." Pravo lidu 1 (1986): 6. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. "Kdo je krvav^ pes?" Rude pravo 1(69) 11 Dec. 1920:1-2. Keeley, Edmund. "Collaboration, Revision, and Other Less Forgivable Sins in Translation." Biguenet and Schulte, The Craft of Translation 54-69. Kenner, Hugh. Introduction. The Translations o f Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions, n. d. Knap, Josef. "Dvahlasy." Cesta 4(32) 1922:514-15. . "Dilo generace." Cesta 5(32-33) 1923:450-51. . "Prosim, vyberte s i..." Cesta 7(14) 1925:224-25. . "Okolo Seiferta." Cesta 7(40) 1925: 635-36. Komunisticke ve fiery: Sbirka redtari. Praha: Proletkult K.S.C., 1922. "Konfiskace prve Seifertovy knihy versu Mfisto v slzach." Ndrodni osvobozem 2(237) 30 Aug. 1925:5. Krecar. Jaromir. Rev. of Mfisto v slzach, by Jaroslav Seifert. Modemi revue 37 (1922): 180-82. Kundera, Milan. "Bylo jich pet." Seifert, Knizka polibku 52-53. Lefevere, Andre. Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint. 1975. Leighton, Lauren G. Two Worlds, One Art: Literary Translation in Russia and America. Dekalb, 1 1 1 . : Northern Illinois UP, 1991. Levy, Jin. Ceske theorie pfeldadu. Praha: St&tru nakladatelstvi krasn£ literatury, hudby a umeni, 1957. . Bude literamivfida exaktnivfidou? Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1971. . Umfini pfekladu. Praha: Panorama, 1983. Mathesius, Bohumil. "Poetistick§ hrany." Tvorba 2(3) March 1927:89-93. Mest’ an, Antonin. Geskd literatura 1785-1985. Toronto: Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1985. . Letter to the author. 28 July 1994. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. Neumann, Stanislav Kostka. "Devetsil." Kmen 4(46) 10 Feb. 1921: 550-51. Repr. (incompl.) in Neumann, Staff. . "Pro tiidniho cloveka." Ddnickd besidka, Rude pravo 7 Aug. 1921:4. . (Josef Votocek) "K ot&zce umeni tiidniho a prolet&rskeho." Proletkult 2(8) 1923: 121-23; Proletkult 2(9) 1923:138-40; Proletkult 2(10) 1923:156-59; Proletkult 2(11) 1923:168-70; Proletkult 2(12) 1923:185-87; Proletkult 2(13) 1923:199-202; Proletkult 2(14) 1923:220-21; Proletkult 2(15) 1923:236-38. . Staff o um&ii a politice. Edice Ceske mysleni 9. Praha: Melantrich, 1979. . "O prolet&fske poesii." Neumann, Staff 85-88. . "Dopis z Prahy." Neumann, Staff 90-92. Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation. Oxford etc.: Pergamon, 1981. Nims, John Frederick. Sappho to Valery: Poems in Translation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1971. Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation. Berkeley, Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1992. Nov&k, Arne. "Lyricka zen." Lidove noviny 35(195) 17 Apr. 1927:9. Novotny, J. O. "Falesni proroci." Cesta 7(11) 1925:176-78; Cesta 7(12) 1925:193-95. Olivovci, Vera, (jeskoslovenske d&jiny 1914-1939. Vol. 1. Praha: Univerzita Karlova, 1993. Ortega y Gasset, Jose. Man and People. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Norton, 1957. Osers, Ewald. "Two Poems by Jaroslav Seifert: An Examination of Original and Translation." Translation Perspectives IV: Selected Papers, 1986-87. Ed. Marilyn Gaddis Rose. Binghampton, NY: SUNY Binghampton, 1988. 89-98. Perloff, Marjorie. The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. Peroutka, Ferdinand. Budovdni statu. 3 vols. New York: Universum Sokol Publishers, 1974-81. Pesat, Zdenek. Dialogy s poezii. Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1985. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. . Jaroslav Seifert. Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1991. Pisa, A. M. "K orientaci nejmladsich tvurach snah." derven 4(21) 29 Sept. 1921:287- 90; <5erven 4(22) 13 O ct 1921:304-306; tieroen 4(23) 27 Oct. 1921:320-22. . "Nov^ basmk." Proletkult 1(2) 18 Jan. 1922: 20-22. . "Z mlade lyriky." Socialista 1(6) 7 May 1923:4. . "Krise v mlade tvorbe?" Pramen 5(1) 1924-25:9-12. Rpt. in Pisa, SmSry a die: Kriticke listy z let 1924-1926. Praha: Svoboda & Solar, 1927. 55-61. . "Kudy?" Pramen 5(8) 1924-25:305-308. . "Slavik nezpiv& spatne." Host 6 1926-27:113-16. . "Karlu Teigovi." Host 6(9-10) July 1927. Rpt. in Vlasin 280-81. . "Jaroslav Seifert." <5n 2(2) 6 Nov. 1930: 29-34. . Stopamy poezie: Studie a podobizny. Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1962. Plattner, Eva H. Afterword. Aufden Wellen von TSF. By Jaroslav Seifert. Wien: Hora- Verlag, 1985. 73-94. 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Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1991. Rutte, Miroslav. "Nove knihy lyriky." Cesta 3(39) 1921:598-601. Saida, F. X. "O poetismu." Tvorba 2(6) June 1927:163-68. Rpt. in Saida, 0 nejmladsi poesii ceske 99-105. . O nejmladsi poesii deske. Praha: O. Girgai, 1928. Samaltanos, Katia. Apollimire: Catalyst for Primitivism, Picabia, and Duchamp. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1984. Sayers Peden, Margaret. "Building a Translation, The Reconstruction Business: Poem 145 of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz." Biguenet and Schulte, The Craft of Translation 13-27. Schogt, Henry G. Linguistics, Literary Amlysis, and Literary Translation. Toronto etc.: U of Toronto Press, 1988. Schulte, Rainer and John Biguenet. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Chicago and London: U of Chicago Press, 1992. Schulz, Karel. "Pozdr." D&nickd besidka, Rude pravo 2(130) 5 June 1921:1. Sedlak, Jan V. "Bdsne Jaroslava Seiferta." Tribuna 4(1) 1 Jan. 1922:12. Seifert, Jaroslav. "Velkd scena." Proletkult 1(1) 4 Jan. 1922:8-10. . "Burzoasie a umeni." Rude Pravo 2(69) 23 Mar. 1921:2-3. . Rev. of Dnem i nod and Nesrozumitelny svaty, by A. M. Pisa. Proletkult 1(9) 8 Mar. 1922:139-41. . "Neviditelny jezdec: Prolog indi&nske povidky." Proletkult 1(17) 3 May 1922: 261-63. . "Jaroslav Seifert o sobe." Rozpravy Aventim 2(4) 4 Nov. 1926:37-38. . "Kam jde ceska poesie?" Literdmi noviny 1 Mar. 1928: 2. . "Guillaume Apollinaire." Tvorba 3(4) 25 Nov. 1928: 69. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 494 . "O potfebe poesie v lidskem zivote." Pravo lidu 40(3) 3 Jan. 1931:3. . "Apollinaire v Cech4ch." Rozhledy 4(22-23) 12 Sept. 1935:177-78. . 61 Letters to Bohumil Polan: 1936-1970. Pozustalost Bohumila Polana. Archiv mesta Plzne. . JeSttijednou jaro. Eds. Frantisek Hrubin and Jin Brabec. Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1961. . Morovy sloup. The Plague Monument. Trans. Lyn Coffin. N. p.: SVU Press, 1980. Dual language. . Morovy sloup. 1968-1970. Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1981. . VSecky krdsy svdta: Pnb&iy a vzpominky. Koln, W. Germany: Index, 1981. [Abbreviated ABW] . Im Spiegel hat er das Dunkel. Trans. Oily Komenda-Soentgerath. Waldbrunn, W. Germany: Horst Heiderhoff Verlag, 1982. . The Casting o f Bells. Transl. Paul Jagasich and Tom O'Grady. Iowa City: The Spirit That Moves Us Press, 1983. . Der Regenschirm vom Piccadilly. Die Pestsaule. Zurich: Coron Verlag, 1984. . Knizka polibku. Ed. Dagmar Eisnerov4. Zurich: Konfrontace, 1984. . Alle Schdnheit dieser Welt: Geschichten und Erinnerungen. Trans. Hans Gartner. Miinchen: Knaus, 1985. Miinchen: Goldmann, 1987. . Aufden Wellen von TSF. Trans. Friedrich Achleitner, H. C. Artmann et al. Wien: Hora Verlag, 1985. . Der Halleysche Komet. Trans. Franz Peter Kiinzel. Munchen: Schneekluth, 1985. . Mozart in Prague: Thirteen Rondels. Transl. Paul Jagasich and Tom O'Grady. Iowa City: The Spirit That Moves Us Press, 1985. . Was einmal Liebe war. Trans. Oily Komenda-Soentgerath. Hanau, Main: Dausien, 1985. . Der Halleysche Komet. Der Regenschirm vom Piccadilly. Trans. Franz Peter Kiinzel. Miinchen: Piper, 1988. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 495 . A Wreath o f Sonnets. V&iec sonetii. Trans. J. K. Klement and Eva Stucke. Toronto: Larkwood Books/Sixty-Eight Publishers, 1987. Dual language. . Dressed in Light. Transl. Paul Jagasich and Tom O'Grady. New York/Baltimore: Dolphin-Moon Press, 1990. . Over the Waves ofTSF. Transl. Paul A. Jagasich. Hampden-Sydney, 1992. The Selected Poetry o f Jaroslav Seijert. Transl. Ewald Osers. Ed. George Gibian. London: Andr6 Deutsch, 1986. Smejkal, Frantisek. tieskd vytvama avantgarda dvacdtych let. Exhibition Catalogue. Praha: Galerie hi. mesta Prahy, IJstav teorie a dejin umeni CSAV, Umeleckopnimyslov6 museum; Bmo: Dum umeni, [1986?], n. pag. SSSR: Uvahy, kritiky, poznamky. Ed. Bohumil Mathesius. Praha: Cin, 1926. Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. London etc.: Oxford UP, 1975. Teige, Karel. "Guillaume Apollinaire." Kmen 3(7) 19 June 1919:51-53; Kmen 3(8) 26 June 1919: 61-62. . "Obrazy a predobrazy." Musaion 2 Spring 1921:52-58. Rpt. in Teige, Sv&t stavby a basn&. . "S novou generaci." derven 4(7) 20 May 1921:106-108; derven 4(8) 26 May 1921:124-26; derven 4(9) 2 June 1921:139-41. . "Novjhn smerem." Kmen 4(48) 24 Feb. 1921:569-71. . "Neue proletarische Kunst." Trans. Paul Kruntorad. Teige, Liquidierung der 'Kunst' 7-43; "Nove umeni prolet&rske." Revolucni sbomik Devetsil. . "Umeni dnes a zitra." Teige Sv£t stavby a bdsnS 5-23. . "Umeni pritomnosti." Zivot 2:119-24. . "Estetika filmu a kinografie." Host 3(6-7) 1923-24:143-52. . "Dada." Host 6 1926-27:37-44. . "Manifest Jiriho Wolkera o proletArsk^m umeni." Host 6(9-10) July 1927. Rpt. inVlasin 375-79. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 496 . "Moderrri typo." Typografia 34(7-9) 1927:189-98. Rpt. in Teige Svdt stavby a bdsnS 220-34. . "Je poetismus mrtev?" ReD 1(3) Dec. 1927. Rpt. in Vlasin 505-506. . "Manifest poetismu." ReD 1(9) June 1928:317-36. Rpt. in Teige Svdt stavby a bdsnd 323-59. . Svdt stavby a bdsn& Studie z dvacdtych let. Vol. 1. Praha: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1966. . Liquidierung der 'Kunst': Analysen, Manifeste. Trans. Paul Kruntorad. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968. "Umeni mest'ack£ ci tridni, prolet&rske a komunistick£?" Cesta 4(47) 1922: 740-44; Cesta 4 (50) 1922: 790-92; Cesta 5(1) 1923:19-20. Vaclavek, Bedrich. "O nove umeni." Var 1(10) 15 April 1922:309-12. . "Auf den Wellen der T.S.F." Pdsmo 1(10) 1924-25:6. . "Prvni okruh." Rude pravo 10(3) Jan. 1929. Rpt. in Vlasin 639-42. Venuti, Lawrence, ed. Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London, New York: Routledge, 1992. Viskovci, Jarmila. Editor's Afterword. MSsto v slzach, Sama Idska, Svatebni cesta, Slavik zpiva 5patn$, PoStovni holub. By Jaroslav Seifert. Ceskoslovensky spisovatel: Praha, 1989. 243-53. Vlasin, Stepan et al., eds. Avantgarda znamd a nezndmd. Vol. 2. Praha: Svoboda, 1972. 3 vols. 1970-72. Vlcek, Bartos. Rev. of Sama Idska, by Jaroslav Seifert. Cesta 6(10-11) 1924:169. Volkman, Alois. "P3tky s Jaroslavem Seifertem." Pritomnost 1(1991): 29. Weaver, William. "The Process of Translation." Biguenet and Schulte, The Craft of Translation 117-24. Wolker, Jiri. "Dve nove knihy blsni." Var 1(6) 15 Feb. 1922:191-95. Zivot. Ed. J. Krecar. Vol. 2. Praha: Umeiecka beseda, 1922. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 497 Appendix A A GIRL I. A long stream runs through the town's center, across it seven bridges reach, on the embankment stroll a thousand lovely girls, and different is each. From heart to heart you wander to warm your hands amidst rays of love warm and magnificent on the embankment stroll a thousand lovely girls, and none of them is different. n. Perhaps every pretty girl goes by the name of Marie, and Marie Nov£kov£ was the one, whom I am remembering. It is understood of course that she studied trade school and then she got into the department of public works with a monthly pay of four hundred forty crowns. Ah, she had such lovely pale-blue eyes, and whoever would gaze inside, would visualize, visualize and visualize, visualize her for nights and days. She had already had a few lovers, but none was right yet, each only came, took from her what he could and left, first with his eyes and then with fingers he undid her blouse and lied that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Yet she had no doubt that the main thing in her life was still to come, some ravishing deed, some great romance, stunning her, her heart and everyone around and she, — an insignificant girl Marie Nov£kov£, would be at the center of a grand occurrence. "A Girl." By Jaroslav Seifert Originally published in Proletkult 1(8) 1 March 1922:115-17. Seifert included this poem in the second edition of C ity in Tears (1923) but left it out again in later editions. Only the first two stanzas of Part I survived as "A Song About Girls" in Sheer Love. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. And Marie Nov&kovd was not mistaken. 498 Things and people surrounded her, things and people spoke to her, a festive crowd streaming through the street swept her along, a speaker stretched his arms to the skies on the large town square, and words flowed from his mouth like a fiery and beautiful song, that permeated her body and eddied from the head to the heart, from the heart to the hands, into her fingertips, which were shaking. She spread her arms as if to embrace a lover, and the whole world before her opened up like a painting under one's gaze. She saw wrongs and injustices, she saw banks and palaces, she saw the poor and the pitiful she saw the wealthy and the powerful; in her eyes she had the entire world and she felt like crying for all that. And falling asleep at night, she heard lovers beneath her window, she, though, did not wish to call to mind those fleeting moments, the remembrance of which weighs upon the heart like a lover's palm and dreaming, she dreamt of a grand day of great retribution, when the whole world with terror will tremble, and a hundredfold as dearly with his blood for his pride will pay he who is ruling the world with his contempt today; she dreamt of how the world into our hands suddenly will tumble, in the streets the song of victory will reverberate, and the mournful dead their bodies, soaked with blood, on the pavement will shed. She dreamt of how she would walk city streets then, guarding against pools of blood and happy with relief; dreams fulfilled with the angles of fact will grow before her into dizzying heights. Will it for all time have to be the only lot of women worn with kisses, in pain to bear weeping children, to make morning coffee with cream for their men, at noon to prepare lunch and at night their white flesh, to beat the nigs and clean windows on Saturdays? R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 499 No! And Marie Novdkovd busily read revolutionary tracts about the state, dictatorship, capital and the soviets, about social order, free love, surplus value and revolution and when her head would sink with the weight of the wisdom of the world, on a red banner she embroidered a star, inside the star a sickle and a hammer. Believe she did that once humans free themselves of slavery, high above the world a bloody banner will fly, and all will cleanse their hands in blood to prove their innocence. III. And December of last year came around; a thousand chests swelled with ire, a thousand strides shook the ground and the girl marched in front full of euphoria; Oh, sad moment, a salvo erupted, turmoil, tears and blood, a dead man collapsed on the pavement. It was a great instant, it was a sacred instant, the girl knelt on the ground amidst the tears and pain, as if she wanted from that mud in that lane elevate to the stars the one who was slain. Bullets fly, trained are the bayonets, but she offered her dove's breast and a woman's weak hands; pure with endless suffering she raised the dead man to her heart like Mary from Nazareth upon Christ's descent from the cross; the whole world had set out her to abase, but abase it did not, for she could bear in her hands the whole world's suffering. And as she leaned over the dead one, wishing him to upraise, from her blouse fell to the ground a red carnation, a frayed tender flower, a flower smelling of fierceness and daze, red carnation, symbol of the revolution. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 500 IV. The tolling of knells had barely faded away, tears had not dried, wounds had not healed when Yuletide came again. Christmas stollen smells sweetly, mother is making haste, cleaning fish, baking sweets, but stricken the girl is wandering, joy is not for her, joy is not for her. That little heart of hers filled with love is trembling bitterly with fury and grief, that tiny, little head of hers with tidy hair is brimming with grim questions. She roams the streets clenching her fists, in the suburbs there is only sorrow and suffering, and down there in the city of affluence the day has reared up high and is foaming with opulence. At home though the table is already set for the meal, apples, coconuts, dates and figs smell sweet, already they are all waiting to eat and searching for her. So she sat down at the table in their midst, she wished to but could not resist the sacred dream, for a while she forgot, thinking: I hope it's not a sin? No, a sin it is not. V. Then came spring, the spring, the spring! On the path lovers blossomed like two graceful flowers overnight and walked and walked and walked. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 501 The girl passed them at dusk, gazing after them for a long while, then she walked and walked and walked, as if some yearning to meet. And soon some black eyes were pursuing her, behind her someone was tying her hands, and that his force she could not curb, that is easy to understand. After all each spring belongs to lovers, because each spring is lovely. VI. It was night, a summer day's eve, the girl sat in a grassy grove. She saw how a star fell from the skies, into a crown she wove withered flowers, her heart befell a strange agony, she closed her eyes, singing a melody. It was night, a summer day's eve, trees were like torches aflame, but they cast only a long black shade; the girl sat in a grassy grove, someone else was sitting with her. As all was silent and as it was twilight, as the moon was blind and the trees had long lost their speech, the two eyes or hers turned into two pairs, and to mortal sin testify four hands. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 502 VII. Then autumn came; the grass yellowed, the flower faded, the leaf fell, gray fogs sank into the streets of the town, September, October, then November, after a sad day another still sadder, and winter has arrived. VIII. Another long year has drifted by, to the gates of death one more step we are nigh, what was yesterday, no longer is today, everything is changing, everything is changing. Oh, sad moment, this hour a year ago dead he collapsed on the pavement. What was yesterday, no longer is today, everything is changing, everything is changing. A year ago, — a flicker of fervor in a gleaming eye, on a red banner the girl was embroidering the soviet star, a sickle and hammer inside the star. Everything is changing, everything is changing, what was yesterday, no longer is today. A year ago the girl stood in the first row and frantically flung herself at the bayonets, today she is sitting with her mother sighing, the whitest patch of linen she holds and stitches, bridal chemises she is sewing... IX. Dear comrades, forgive this girl, I am anxious that no one harm her with one word; for a word is like a sword so sharp. She is not to blame that fate crossed her life's path, and she is so gentle, she is so kind, nevermore would she kill anyone. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 503 Appendix B I don't recall ever hearing my mother sing. Not even while she worked, nor to make us children fall asleep. I can't remember my first years, of course, but I had a sister who was a few years younger. Instead, in my mind I hear quite distinctly how the clock that used to hang above my bed in the kitchen would make me fall asleep with its voice. It was a cheap kitchen clock with two weights. It had to be wound up twice a day. In the morning and at night. And on its dial in an oval there was a picture which used to be popular then: a stag in rut with a hind in the deep forest. The clock had run for fifty years. Then it stopped and after mother's death I brought it into my home. And for a long time it was gathering dust somewhere behind a beam in the attic; no clock maker wanted to repair it anymore. The primitive mechanism was presumably so worn-out that the clock could not be made to run again. It simply did not seem worth the trouble to them. After many, many years, thanks to the kindness of a dear acquaintance, the clock now hangs in my room and works. And strangely enough, it is accurate. In accordance with the radio. So after a long time I am again listening to its calm voice, its occasional rattling and ticking. It has grown hoarse a little like an old pipe smoker. So have I. So has my verse. But it works and strikes the hour. Somewhat raspingly too, but exacdy. The well-known tic-tock, however, is the last thing I hear coming from its old entrails. It speaks to me in an entirely different way. To its familiar, but always rhythmical voice— if I listen to it and become aware of its ticking— I imagine, or rather, I hear very many words. Actually, this is also somewhat my trade. In the middle of summer there was a beautiful afternoon. I was getting ready for a walk in the sun in a nearby park. The street was brighdy warm and it would have "The Kitchen Clock," from A ll the Beauties o f the World: Stories and Memories, by Jaroslav Seifert. Koln, Germany: Index: 1981:269-71. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. 504 been a sin to sit at home. I glanced at the clock. It was around three when I heard the clock say: Take-a-rain-coat! Take-a-rain-coat! I heard it quite distinctly. Nonsense, I told the clock, the sky is blue and not a single cloud in sight. An hour later I returned drenched to the skin in a severe summer thunderstorm. And the clock told me calmly: See-there-you-go! See-there-you-go! Sometimes I could not but remember how the clock used to purr to me: Sleep-my-boy-sleep! Sleep-my-boy-sleep! Usually it did not have to tell me for long. The minute I pulled the covers over me, I was asleep. In the past few years people have taken to dying more comfortably in the hospital. If it is granted to me to bid the world good-bye at home, in my own bed, I have no doubt that the clock will cajole me: Go-now-fare-well! Go-now -fare-well! And since, as my mother told me, che clock's ticking had welcomed me into this world, it will be entirely in order this way. Then it will cease on its journey. More and more often my family will forget to wind it up. For some time it will still hang on the wall (dad used to like it), but then they will again put it behind a beam in the attic. For-ev-er-more! For-ev-er-more! For-ev-er-more! R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.

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Creator Loewy, Dana (author)

Core Title The early poetry of Jaroslav Seifert: Translation theory and practice

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag comparative literature,Language, Modern,Literature, Slavic and East European,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-463936

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