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Czech writing
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from Hidden History
by Otokar Brezina
translated from the Czech by Carleton Bulkin
from "The Sole Work"
In artistic work, the elevated places of doubt are a land of hunger and cold. Even the creator, when he loses his
orientation, becomes lost here in dark moments of weariness, in the soul's moments of loneliness and dryness; he
knows the feverish illusion of freedom which deceives the one who ascends in these places; but here he is mute. He
creates, not as an indifferent observer of the cosmic drama, but only as a participant, a player, sacrificing himself.
He blossoms, not as a severed branch, but only in his connection with the family of life. Only in the effect of the
stream which lights all suns and develops all countries, which creates history, raises and leads crowds, builds and
shatters empires, works in the invisible with dazzling splendor and which makes the whole species awaken in a single
being, do the creator's eyes become illuminated and his tongue untangled. Man creates only in a state of grace, in
the fervid burgeoning of faith.
But who will grasp the wealth of this faith by words alone? Like bark in a surge of growth, words chap, break off,
and fall away, and new ones are formed underneath, in accordance with one law, under one sun. Its dogmata are abysses,
definitions have a thousand meanings; where all words have fallen silent, terror and love, pain and passion still
speak. Mystery is alive here, miracle the sole reality; at every step, hopes fly upward like frightened birds. Here,
obedience is freedom, immortality a certainty, rebirth a path, death an illusion. The black, fiery wine of every
inspiration has ripened on these mysterious vineyards. Does something change in its radiance if we know not whose
hand bestows it upon us from the invisible world? Was it not faith which set the courage of our teachers afire, that
they wrenched themselves from the trifling, flattering pleasures of the earth, from the toils of their ironic,
deceptive smiles and their frightened, ever-cautioning reason, and that they walked, in heroic humility, along a
narrow footpath between open chasms of madness, to places where no one had set foot before them? And lo, to the
blessing of our kind they found happiness where no one had ventured to search for it, the spirits of the tempest
arose in the place where they stood; that which they touched ripened sweetly in their hands, and they subdued even
reason, so that, made merry, it shone on their paths which they had feared before.
The nations divide the earth between them in their blood; the princes of the marketplaces rule over their work,
seizers of power, metals, waters, fire; the suffering brotherhoods join in unity; empires, embracing the whole globe,
are created in the subconscious of the millions; gigantic metropolises are raised beyond the horizon; one after
another, the hidden forces of the earth fall into man's hands like reins: and beyond everything that seethes here, in
a magical effervescence of regenerations, in the depths, by the spiritual hearths, labors the creator, the artist,
the scientist, the thinker, the loving one, the saint, the visionary, insensible to the mortifying glare in the
madness of their faith, sinking with happiness and humble anguish over their bounty, confused by the mesmerization
of unfriendly spirits, which must be constantly dispelled by an abundance of love if work is to be possible; given
to vertigo at every glance downwards and back, stirred by the nearness of the ages which await their work. Unknown
to all and also to themselves, without any possible rewards for the very highest they bring, they pile thought upon
thought, intuition alongside intuition, dream upon dream. But do not mourn them in their madness, the madness of
seekers. Do not judge them if they delude themselves and go scorned among the brethren. Nothing is lost in the
spiritual world; even a rejected stone will find its place in the builder's hands and a burning house will save the
life of one who has strayed. Every clearly expressed thought makes the dream of all people on earth easier. And the
hidden work, at which both the artist and the genius of science, both the thinker and the saint labor alike, changes
the entire life of the earth; creates new links between beings, new glowing foci in the battle of the spirits;
prepares new effulgences of passion, remakes sensations, forms, shatters and also heals bodies, revives their
magical capacities, proclaims new events of history from afar, organizes Man, reaches beyond the visible world.
Every manifestation of creative work is a means of communication which allows one spirit to recognize another.
Everything is language; even our body is language and speaks prodigiously through its every limb, through every
gesture, by both silence and passion, both illness and death; everything has a spiritual meaning, and the hidden
history that is both ours and of our dead, even if time has made it impenetrable, is constantly revealed in the
features of our faces, by the lines of our mournful hands, by the confession of our eyes. The life of the earth,
of both animals and plants, is an unbroken series of signs on our path. But we understand barely the first sentences
of this language; and although its sole purpose is to draw us closer to itself, it has sparked discord among us
until now. All the languages spoken by the nations on earth matured under the mesmerization of this secret language
of things. They originated in the fire of artistic vision and perish if they are not animated by courageous spirits:
by creative vanquishers, by those who love greatly, by powerful observers of visible things, by visionaries of things
that are invisible, endowed with mercy. The language of waters, forests, storms, winds, the creation; the
extraordinary messages which every place on earth has for man; the organization of the human body, which is always
in connection with the soil it grows in, the hidden history of the species over thousands of years, determine the
type of each language, its vocabulary, composition, music, and rhythm. Although every language is imperfect for the
service of higher spiritual life and we babble like children when struck by the light, there is deeper wisdom in the
organism of a language than in most of what we say with it.
Every scientific discovery refines our mutual understanding by some new insight; it uncovers new places of spiritual
contact; every one is accompanied by an upsurge of love reaching far into the distance. It makes our language deeper
and so heightens our power over things. Everything on this star is waiting to serve us, if we can command each
element in its own language. Yet all science would be in vain if it were not meant to teach us how to master and
manage life, how to regenerate our kind and create a higher, more fiery, more benevolent life on earth.
But the invisible world pervades the visible world. Through the freedom of dreams, art influences the interpretation
of things. Through a more delicate and sensitive ear, it inclines toward the universal pounding of blood in veins.
The light which it pours over things is purer and more enigmatic than the light of our sun; it is the second,
spiritual aspect of this light. Painting, sculpture, verse, music, dreams, are all signs which spirit gives to
spirit, in the enchantment of phenomenal life. Therefore they have more than one interpretation; their language is
of a higher order than any human language, and one word expresses a whole family of relationships. What terrible and
paradisaic places they are created in, accessible only with difficulty and yet nearer to everyone than the beating
of his own heart! What utterances, impossible to profess other than by the excited movement of a gesture, a silence
between two shouts, the fieriness of rhythm, the whisper of lights, the madness of a color, by the divine ambiguity
of music! The clouds, flames, winds, the whole orchestra of nature from which the language of your fathers was
created in ancient times, you allow to speak anew, that things may say for you why you are dying! What visitations
from the higher world before conception! A blessed childhood lives here, a childhood not growing old through the
ages, among nations, nearer to the mysterious threshold we pass out of in birth; a childhood which is forever
beginning anew with the naming and the depicting of things, as if they had never been depicted and named before.
For in their mystery they had not previously been named and depicted. They had been glimpsed only in fragments, and
everything still awaits and will await the creator's hands. Thence the eternal injustice of youth and the sadness
of the artist's autumn, which reproaches summer that it did not give what it promised. And yet it is only from the
consecrated places of this childhood that the invisible rivers flow which irrigate everything on earth that grows
for the sake of eternity. A weak, pitiful person, if he enters this land of roaring springs, acquires an energy at
which he himself shudders. It seems that the order of things has changed here; gravity has disappeared, every flight
appears possible, the most inaccessible appears reachable, madness appears as wisdom; here the enslaved heart, which
has been forced by the earth to conceal itself, beats freely; one dares to confess to the most dizzying hopes, as
well as to horrors which have no name; the cries of the overpowered and the humiliated resound here into eternity;
the obedient rule, princes serve; to rule here means to give, to see means to have; only one who has already found,
seeks; the worth of a gift is determined by the worth of the one receiving it, everything is a curative and everything
is a poison in accordance with the highest justice. Magnificence envelops everything greening and blossoming, woman,
child, heroism, justice, and death — the sower of life. Our mysterious body and springs of thought shine through
here in their brilliance. As if in the hands of the clairvoyant, every thing discloses its secret past, evokes a
vision of distant places and dramas to which it was a witness. Poisoned mists in places dangerous for the species
become a frightening vision. Those who do harm to one another in the too-difficult dream of their day would shudder,
so close are they to each other when they have grasped one truth, when they have interpreted one symbol the same way;
waves of admiration throw them into each other's embrace, as if they had died; after their rebirth, will they live
as they had lived before? The basic dissonances in the conception of one work of beauty hurl light as far as the
roots of beings; they reveal their different stage of development in eternity. Happy are they who can grasp the
mystery of the struggle and whose love does not die at the same time! "Where you are going, we have also gone,
and where we are going, you will also go," is written on all the milestones along the path of the spirit.
To project oneself as far as the most hidden, painful mysteries of the heart and body, to defend what one has seen,
even at the cost of one's life, in this is all the striving, the heroic madness, and the sublime humility of the
creator. By what disorder of the eye could this highest humility be seen as pride? Is pride even possible, in these
places where the earth opens before our every step, and everything we and our fathers have accumulated may go up in
flames at any minute? On the structure we are all working on in our blood, the most dangerous and highest work is
entrusted to the most obedient. But to reach as far as the last casting off of the veils which our weakness hastily
devises around us, and to stand in trembling nakedness before the highest will — does this not exceed life's
powers? Are we not already in death, here? Will life bear this last rending of deception? Is this not rending a
bandage from a wound which is bleeding to death? And yet we believe that some of our kind have come even here, but
glory fell on their body like a cloak of light in unearthly mercy and covered their nakedness by its brilliance, too
terrible for mortal eyes.
Everything that stands capable of life here, healthy under the sun, has been preserved for us by the creators'
loving hands, the enemies of deception, self-tormenting, scourging and curative. Struck until black by the
thunderbolts which pursued from every cloud, they show us a new earth. They lay themselves benevolently on our
forehead and heal our dreams. For there are dreams which should no longer be dreamt by man today, and others which
should never have been dreamt at all.
© Twisted Spoon Press
Translation © Carleton Bulkin
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ISBN 978 80 902171 2 6
152 pp.
135 x 190mm
1 b/w illustration
hardcover
essays / literature
€18.50
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