Copyright by Deborah Helen Garfinkle 2003 The Dissertation Committee for Deborah Helen Garfinkle Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Bridging East and West: Czech Surrealism’s Interwar Experiment Committee: _____________________________________ Hana Pichova, Supervisor _____________________________________ Seth Wolitz _____________________________________ Keith Livers _____________________________________ Christopher Long _____________________________________ Richard Shiff _____________________________________ Maria Banerjee Bridging East and West: Czech Surrealism’s Interwar Experiment by Deborah Helen Garfinkle, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2003 For my parents whose dialectical union made this work possible ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express heartfelt thanks to my advisor Hana Pichova from the University of Texas at Austin for her invaluable advice and support during the course of my writing process. I am also indebted to Jiří Brabec from Charles University in Prague whose vast knowledge of Czech Surrealism and extensive personal library provided me with the framework for this study and the materials to accomplish the task. I would also like to thank my generous benefactors: The Texas Chair in Czech Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, The Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin, The Fulbright Commission and the American Council of Learned Societies without whom I would not have had the financial wherewithal to see this project to its conclusion. And, finally, I am indebted most of all to Maria Němcová Banerjee of Smith College whose intelligence, insight, generosity as a reader and unflagging faith in my ability made my effort much more than an exercise in scholarship; Maria, working with you was a true joy. To my family and dear friends Daniela Pastina, Karen Enegess, and Marita Schneider; for their unconditional love I owe them more than I can say. And to the memory of those I hold forever in spirit: Marion and Milton Spatz and my grandmother, Esther Gliber. v Bridging East and West: Czech Surrealism’s Interwar Experiment Publication No. _________ Deborah Helen Garfinkle, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2003 Supervisor: Hana Pichova Bridging East and West: Czech Surrealism’s Interwar Experiment is a cultural and intellectual history of the Czech Surrealist movement from 1934- 1938. This work traces the movement’s development from its avant-garde beginnings in the 1920’s represented by Devětsil, an aesthetic program that united Soviet constructivism and the Czech poetism, to the point in 1934, when poet Vitezslav Nezval announced the formation of the Prague Surrealist group. The study goes on to examine Czech Surrealism in relation to France and the Soviet Union. Although they looked to Paris and Moscow for direction, not being from the center afforded the Czechs the freedom to integrate ideas from a variety of sources without having to answer to a higher authority. As citizens of a small nation, the members of the Czech group were able to bridge the divide between politics and poetry that kept the Surrealists from attaining the sought after united vi front to combat fascism. Because of their special cultural position off-center and geographic location at the heart of Europe, they became the bridge linking East and West, a center in their own right. The study focuses on the Czech movement’s key figures, Vítězslav Nezval and Karel Teige. Teige’s and Nezval’s dialectical union of criticism and lyric functioned as the dynamic force that made Czech Surrealism one of the most highly original and vital expressions of the interwar avant-garde. But as external events exerted pressure on the group, its center could not hold. As Teige turned away from Moscow because of the Communist Party’s assault on free expression and Nezval turned away from Paris to embrace Stalin and socialist realism, the first wave of the Czech Surrealism came to its end. Their bitter polemic on art and politics doomed the movement from the start, reflecting in microcosm the contradictions inherent to the avant-garde as a whole. However, the end proved to be a beginning; Czech Surrealism in its next manifestation managed to survive war and communism. Despite the preeminence of France in the history of Surrealism, it is off-center, in Prague, where the experiment still lives on as testament to the genius of its founding members. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................v ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE – Invisible Moscow.............................................................28 CHAPTER TWO – The Street Called “The Resting Place of the Heart” (Paris) .........................................................................................................................134 CHAPTER THREE – The Prague Passerby .................................................228 EPILOGUE .....................................................................................................332 WORKS CITED..............................................................................................339 VITA ...............................................................................................................353 viii INTRODUCTION Surrealism, noun, masc. Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations. Encycl. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life. To André Breton: At the international Congress in Kharkov, Devětsil, the avant-garde group of Prague poets and intellectual practitioners, had the opportunity to demonstrate their accord with the surrealists in the matters of Marxist-Leninism and dialectical materialism… Our movement, which has endured since 1921 and has, during the course of its respective dialectical development has come ever closer to the development of the Surrealists; it is in the same position with regard to the official leadership of the Communist Party and the Left Front as it is to the Surrealist movement… 1 In solidarity with the revolutionary activities of the Surrealists whose basic concept we share, by means of this communication, we initiate the first step towards our concrete collaboration. Vítězslav Nezval for Devětsil Beautiful…like the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table! Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont In his meditation on the new millennium, Czech writer Jíří Kratochvil characterized the twentieth century as “the Surrealist century.”1 Kratochvil attributed Surrealism’s importance to its imagination, symbolized by a “burning heart” (hořicí srdce) that embraced the greatest contradictions of the time such as Freud and Marx.2 That Kratochvil summed up an entire century with the adjective “Surrealist” attests to his contention that no other avant-garde movement had a greater impact on the social history of the age. And yet, as we continue into the second millennium, it is still difficult to assess the lasting contribution of a specific philosophical approach to representation formulated by a marginalized 1 “On the Burning Heart (O hořícím sdrci)” Lidové noviny (The People’s News). 9 February 2000, 1. 2 …to byl především surrealismus, který se pokusil spojit vůli po absolutní svobodě s orwellovským světem...Freuda s Marxem a mýtus věčného mládí surrealismu s mýtem permanentní revoluce…Ibid. 2 group of intellectuals and artists that has been assimilated into the jargon of pop culture. Surrealism in its adjectival afterlife lives as a spirit in the unsettling dépaysment of the Twilight Zone and in the strange close encounters that mark our own perception of what is real to transform the way we view our culture and ourselves. As in the case of Chinese telephone, Surrealism’s original message about integrating dream and reality to revolutionize has been hopelessly distorted upon its transmission to the mainstream. This contradiction has allowed Surrealism to endure not as canon practiced by its disciples, but as a spirit, the pervasive struggle for human consciousness to transcend its limited grasp of the external and internal world. For the purposes of this study, Surrealism does not signify the generalized sense of the bizarre, contradictory or uncanny that it has come to mean over the years. Instead, my definition of Surrealism is restricted to a specific theoretical concept of representation and social change associated with the movement founded by André Breton in 1924 (the movement’s name is a neologism borrowed from the late Guillaume Apollinaire) whose tenets were set forth in the Manifeste du surréalisme (The Surrealist Manifesto) and later revised in the