Ah başkalarının benden istediklerini veremiyorum sana Nice geceler boyu aradığım kadın gelip kapıyı çalsana Odamda kara bir bayrak dalgalanıyor mağrur Yüzlerce yeni gökkuşağı ve yeni renkler solsun Sen gel baştan çıkarıcı kadın Sen benim maça kızım Ey benim güzel kadınım Ey Maria Dinle piyanomun sesini senin içindir çaldığı arya Fiyongada yalnız bir tek kara kurdela kaldı bir bez parçası işte Sen de gittin ötekiler gibi tıpkı Gittiler hepsi de

Vítezslav NEZVAL

from Woman in the Plural by Vítezslav Nezval cover image and collages by Karel Teige Translated from Czech by Stephan Delbos & Tereza Novická

A Chemise

Strange nameless beings enthrall me Their history plain as Gibraltar They are the bastards of reality and wind that wandered Africa The Angelus chimes

One of those sweltering nights at the end of June 1935 I walked past the Luxembourg Gardens The clock was striking twelve And the streets were empty As delivery vans and desolate as Ash Wednesday I thought of nothing And desired nothing I desired nothing was in no hurry nothing weighing on me I walked like a man without memory A shell of a person I walked like an old man who no longer needs sleep

I don’t know what suddenly captured my attention I recall my sigh The trees in the Luxembourg Gardens were full of white gauze I gazed at those paper bandages Through the iron fence And maybe I was even singing

That is all And Paris sold into slavery Writhed in a frenzy

O Paris shackled by your bridges Prague Paris Leningrad and all the other cities I have wandered I see that herd of fettered women Drowned still ablaze under open sky Just like their manacles trampled by crowds O archway of bridges I see a single city Through which flow the Seine Neva and Vltava And a brook where countrywomen do the laundry The brook I live beside

Windows Through one a statue from Place du Panthéon enters my room A second faces Charles Bridge From a third I look onto Nevsky Prospekt But there are even more windows

I always loved the paper cones of street vendors Whose secrets I have yet to discover They remind me of an empty laundry room And a pile of chemises A chute the common grave of nameless women I know of a forest where wide burdock leaves conceal a girl’s bosom A tin cross with her white arms A sofa whose stuffing reeks of disinfectant

Who are you I always see as a sewing machine This evening I speak of Boulevard du Montparnasse resembled you I was sitting in front of Café du Dôme Looking at the ornamentation on a building’s sixth floor It felt like it was snowing In my mind I was celebrating the last New Year’s Eve of the nineteenth century A landau parked beneath a tree full of song I tried in vain to find the house with the sewing machine from whose shuttle I would have liked a thread Then I walked toward the Luxembourg Gardens

It is beautiful how the gardeners protect the fruit on trees with little pouches Like you cover your naked breasts in a chemise Beautiful as a pail of water tipped over in a funeral home Beautiful as a needle in birch bark with a carved date Beautiful as a poppyhead touched by a bell Beautiful as a slipper floating in floodwaters by a window with an oil lamp Beautiful as a woodpile where a butterfly sits Beautiful as a roasted apple in snow Beautiful as a bed frame struck by a fireball Beautiful as a wet rag in flames Beautiful as a loaf of bread on the sidewalk at midnight Beautiful as a button on a monastery wall Beautiful as a treasure in a flowerpot Beautiful as a spiritist’s table scribbling on a gate Beautiful as a wreath in a shooting range Beautiful as scissors snipping a candlewick Beautiful as a tear in the eye Beautiful as the capillary tissue of a watch in a horse’s ear Beautiful as a diamond in a condottiere’s musket Beautiful as tooth prints in an apple Beautiful as the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens wrapped in starchy linen

Why I Am a Surrealist An Irrational Definition

I am a surrealist For the shrieks of dreams For the shrieks of dreams to open the torture chamber door to human mystery For the shrieks of dreams for the key to childhood For the keyhole of night For my hatred of the mirror For my head busted against a headboard For ghosts in a sack For the flour chest and engravings in dime novels For the closed book on a high shelf For the price lists of orthopedic products For the mystery of the holes in a rattan chair For the rustle in the chimney For the indigestion from the Eucharist For the confessor’s bad breath For the joy of targeting a cop’s nose For Thursday on Sunday For the sauerkraut of barrack walls For the hatred of romantic gibberish For the tedium of lies For the ridiculousness of egoism For indifference to death For the futility of travel For the clairvoyance of friendship For the sun with its crown of night that is André Breton For the morning star that is Paul Éluard For the telescope and microscope of his poetry For the burning resinous wreaths of Benjamin Péret’s imagery For the Columbian eggs of Max Ernst’s collages For Man Ray’s seismograph For the otherworldly plant messages in the paintings of Yves Tanguy For the topsy-turvy Inquisition that is Salvador Dalí For the support in the eyes of all other Surrealists For the long nights of my Prague friends For a classless society For the beauty that “will be convulsive or will not be at all”

All rights reserved.

Manon Lescaut, drama by Vítězslav Nezval, who translated, rhymed and dramatized the work of Abbé Prévost.

tím hůř mé naděje nic vám už nezbude 

Chcem-li se setkati nelučme se radš tedy

sbohem a šáteček Vyplň se osude!

Nos vies sont consolantes comme un rire

J'étais à mon bureau et j'essayais de lire

Soudain je vis dans l'encre noir des colonnes

La neige et une grande photo d'Edison

C'était passé minuit à la fin février

Je me parlais à moi-même comme un homme an train de prier

Avais-je bu qui sait une liqueur saoulante

Ainsi j'ai dialoguais avec mon ombre absente

...

…

Strage traveler who breaks his journey without knowing where and why

Strange traveler who never has money to spare

And who, so it seems, time does not terrify at all

Who came from nowhere and suddenly leaves with the rain