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Czech writing
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from EDITON 69
by Vitezslav Nezval / Jindrich Styrsky
translated from the Czech by Jed Slast
extract of "Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream"
Emilie quietly recedes from my days, evenings, and dreams. Even her white dress has dimmed in my memory. I no
longer blush when thinking of the mysterious teeth marks I discovered one night on her underbelly. Those last
pretenses impeding ready-made emotions have vanished. And lost forever is that entire chorus of girls with vague,
nonchalant smiles when remembering their hearts burst open by passion and a humility half-perfidious. I have
finally rid myself of this face I had sculpted in the snow as a child — the face of a woman consumed by the
compliance of her cunt.
I see Emilie cast in bronze. Those made of marble also are not bothered by fleas. The tiny heart of her upper
lip recalls an old-world coronation, while the lower lip, accustomed to being licked, brings to mind the foliage
of a brothel. I walked slowly beneath her, my head in the hem of her skirt; I saw up close the tiny hairs of her
calves crumpled in irregular patterns under her fishnet stockings and wondered what sort of comb would be needed
to straighten them out. I came to love the fragrance of her pussy: a mix of laundry room and mouse hole, a
pincushion forgotten in a bed of lilies of the valley.
I was prone to seeing in dissolve: whenever I looked at Klára, it was always Emilie's features, with her slight
quiff, I saw. When Emilie was in the mood to sin her sex gave off the smell of a hayloft and spices. Klára's
fragrance was that of a herbarium. My hand wanders under her skirt, touching the edge of her stockings, the snaps
of her garters, stroking her inner thighs — hot, moist, delectable. Emilie brings me a cup of tea; she is
wearing blue slippers. I will never again be completely happy. I am tormented by the sighs of women, by eyes
contorted in convulsions of orgasm.
Emilie never tried to enter the world of my poetry. She viewed my garden from over the fence, so that such ordinary
and natural fruit appeared to her as the terrible fruit of prehistoric paradises. Meanwhile I numbly shuffled up and
down the footpaths like an idiot, like a wayward dog sniffing the grass for death and fleeing its destiny. I was
madly seeking a recurrence of that moment when shadows settle on a particular town square somewhere in the south.
Leaning on the fence, Emilie rushes through life. I see her clearly: each morning she rises with her hair
disheveled, goes to the toilet to pee, sometimes she takes a shit, then she washes with tar soap. With her perfumed
sex she hurries off to mix with the living so that her sensation of being split will leave her.
Emilie's laugh was a marvel to behold! Her mouth seemed a desiccated hollow; but when you brought your head closer
to that upper cavern of delight, you heard something inside her quiver, and when she parted her lips to meet yours,
a piece of ruby-red flesh darted out from between her teeth. Old age likes to coddle time. Morality sleeps soundly
only in pleasure's embrace. And her eyes, which never closed at the heights of pleasure, expressed an otherworldly
rapture, appearing to be ashamed at the conduct of her lips.
In those places where I search for my youth I find curly golden hair meticulously preserved. Life is an incessant
killing of time. Death daily gnaws away at what we call life, and life ceaselessly devours our desire for
annihilation. The image of the kiss dies before the lips draw near, and each portrait fades before we even look at
it. In the end even this woman's heart will have a worm crawling through it and laughing in its depths. Who then
will be able to claim that you actually existed? I saw you in the company of a naked young girl, beautiful and
startlingly white; the girl raised her hands to reveal palms black with soot. She imprinted one hand between your
breasts while covering my eyes with the other in such a way that I saw you as if through torn lace. You were nude,
shrouded only in an unbuttoned cloak, and at that second, I witnessed the whole of your life: you had the likeness
of a swollen, rapidly germinating plant. Two stalks growing from the ground seamlessly merged at the very place
you began to wilt and fade, but your body had already developed a navel, breasts, and head sprouting two lovely
pink buds. Yet at this moment the lower part of your body shriveled and collapsed. And I, writhing in front of you,
fingering the hem of your cloak, grunted with a love I had never known. I don't know whose shadow it was; I called
it Emilie. We are securely bound to one another, inseparably, though we are joined back to back.
. . .
© Twisted Spoon Press
Translation © Jed Slast
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ISBN 978 80 86264 09 7
136 pp.
13.5 x 19.5 cm
20+ b/w illustrations
hardcover
art : literature : surrealism
Price of €14.00 includes airmail worldwide
or order from:
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