Autumn/E&T 2006
Edition 69
Vitezslav Nezval & Jindrich Styrsky
Twisted Spoon Press,
Prague
Hardcover 134 pp. $16.50
Edition 69 from Twisted Spoon Press constitutes an interesting
contribution to the historical record as it pertains to the Surrealist
movement in Europe. Launched in 1931 by Jindrich Styrsky, whose lurid
illustrations adorn the present offering, the original Edition 69
consisted of six volumes of erotic literature and illustration that
followed the path marked out by Louis Aragon's Irene's Cunt and
Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye. The present volume offers
English translations of the two most important shorts from the
original Czech--one by Nezval and one by Styrsky himself. Both were
members of an avant garde group of artists known as Devetsil (Nine
Forces) and were also founders of the Surrealist movement in
Czechoslovakia. The short by Nezval, a friend of Breton and Eluard,
owes a bit more to Bataille's Eye than some of the other more free-wheeling
Surrealist fare. While the language is mildly surrealistic at times,
it is marked more by its assault on the bourgeois sensibility of the
time. Nezval's young narrator focuses on that which is considered
unspeakable and indecent, especially in the realm of language,
becoming fascinated by words like fuck and bordello, and the effect
that such words have depending on who's saying them and the circumstances
under which they're spoken. The plot of Nezval's story, "Sexual
Nocturne," deals with common curiosity of an adolescent male, going
through the typical schoolyard antics through his visit to a bordello.
In contemporary literature, we're quite familiar with these coming
of age passes, but it is prudent to remember just how earth-shattering
this kind of material was in its day. To simply include the word
fuck in a story was an illegal act at the time, thus it seems only fit
to hail and revere these bold and often crazy artists as the
revolutionary forefathers of every modern writer who takes a bit of
expletive-slinging for granted. Nezval's character notes the
literary expectations of the time by opining that "A writer is
expected to make a fool of himself by employing periphrastic
expressions while the word "fuck" is nonpareil in conveying sexual
intercourse.... FUCK is diamond hard, translucent, a classic." Fuck
yeah.
Styrsky's short, “Emilie Come to Me in a Dream,” is much juicier than
Nezval's, containing more the turgidity of image and language that
might be expected from a true Surrealist. Jerky and occasionally
disjointed, it reads like an artist's dream much more reminiscent of
Breton and Artaud in it's appeal to labyrinthine verbiage and
expansions of the real. Plot is minimal, and the reader is necessarily
afflicted (if such delight can be called an affliction) by Styrsky's
weaving of non-sequitur, Morphean excess, casual incest, abstract
maxim, and sexual iconography into a breathtaking collage of hanging
cloth. Styrsky seems a literary voice worth extensive modern study.
His obscene illustrative art suffers a bit by slight resemblance to
that of Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame (a mistaken
comparison since Styrsky predates Python by many decades) yet also
summons comparison to sensual works by Beardsley, Dali, and even R.
Crumb. It is sufficient to say the sexual Surrealist illustrations fit
the text and thus are not fit for young children or the concrete-pantied marchers of the Christian
Coalition—but then, what important
art, literary or visual, ever is? This volume if important both as history and
living art. Highly recommended.
Editon 69 also contains an essay by Bohuslav Brouk, another founding
member of the Czech Surrealists, dealing with the revolutionary
character of pornophilia—that is to say that the free artistic
consumption of the pornographic in a prudish society is in itself an
act of prime rebellion, since porn's appeal to the animalistic is
always at odds with society and society's general desire to suppress that
which issues from the genitourinary arena. In elevating the purely
cerebral and/or spiritual, the social body is weakened, ignoring as
it does the strength of animality and the inevitable drive of the sexual
being. Brouk's arguments have echoes of Bataille's Erotism in them, in
both execution and substance, and they serve as a delightful capper to
this amazing piece of literature. Twisted Spoon Press strikes
again. Successfully.
