Wolker and Nezval

Wolker and Nezval ALFRED FRENCH The year 1918, which marked the end of a political epoch in the Czech lands, was felt by the Czech writers themselves to be both an end and a beginning. If they expressed one common motif at the time, it was the conviction that this was, above all, the moment of tremendous change. To those who had personally been exposed to the hazards of war, or who had actively campaigned for the new state, the new era of peace and independence seemed like the promised and long-awaited exodus from the wilderness. A generation schooled to revere its past as the source of its strength linked the future with a tradition stretching back to the Hussites, for the new start was expected not only to denote the end of foreign domination, but also to introduce a new order of social justice, conceived in the image of medieval Tabor. At this historic turning-point, it was the continuity of past and future that was symbolised in the great fanfares which ceremoniously inaugurated the new state. The sense of crisis was present in the work of all the youngest writers, but the fanfares were singularly absent. To the elder generation, perhaps, the postwar settlement marked a revolution satisfactorily accomplished; to the younger generation, the revolution had hardly begun. Certainly, if the old guard expected to receive from their juniors respectful admira- tion or gratitude for a great work done, they were sadly disappointed. Disclaiming all responsibility for a past which they regarded as strange and repugnant, the younger writers drew a sharp line between the generations and swept into limbo some of the most cherished traditions of their elders. To the young, writers like V. Dyk and J. S. Machar were no longer the standard-bearers of literature, but merely curious survivals from a vanished past. Not continuity, but discontinuity was the keynote of the youngest writers' work. The angry young men of the early twenties were more interested in Moscow than in Tabor. It is always hard to bridge the gulf between those who have known war and those who have not. In the early twenties, a coolness seems to 984 Alfred French have sprung up between the generations, in many cases because of the long absence of fathers from homes to which they returned almost as strangers. In matters of art, the rift was all but complete. But it was not only the war which was to blame. Those who were young in the pre- ceding century had seen religious dogma assailed by science, and a rigid social hierarchy weakened by industrial development; but their faith in man and progress had remained as firm as ever. To the narrow circle of the initiated, Freud had exposed the ugliness of man in his individual aspect, and Marx had shattered the illusion of harmonious social progress; yet scepticism was slow to gather force, and it was war, illustrating the theoretical assaults of the sceptics, which caused the final avalanche. After the war, the older generation could salvage their beliefs, seeking to build a new world in the image of the past, but the new generation, unencumbered with the beliefs of the old, sought a new creed and a new world. Those who still believed in reason and logic saw in scientific materialism a way to bring order out of chaos: im- pressed with the triumph of the Bolsheviks, they embraced Marxism; having lost faith in organised religion, they groped towards what they conceived as the mystical solidarity of the proletariat. Outstanding among the writers of this generation were the two young poets, Wolker and Nezval, who, between 1918 and 1924, wrote in the same atmosphere, shared the same beliefs, and moved in the same society. Their social aims were similar, but their paths were different: the times had made them both revolutionaries, yet, as artists, they were in many respects at opposite poles, and their very divergence reveals how broad was the revolutionary platform of their time. It was the critic Bedrich Vaclavek who said that Wolker personified the entry of ethical persuasion into modern Czech literature; by this he meant that Wolker abandoned the autonomous position of art, and aimed at a literary form whose chief purpose was to change the social environment. This view of Wolker is supported by the majority of his poems, by his three plays, and by his theoretical essays. While he did not, of course, regard persuasion as the sole purpose of his writings, he evidently did regard them as a suitable weapon in the social struggle. Since he considered his political programme to be the ending of man's exploitation of man, and the liberation of the proletariat, the term applied to his school, that is, Proletarian Literature, was fitting. This type of literature, however, suffers from a disadvantage which can easily be fatal to its interest. It is ipso facto didactic, and a didactic work of art can succeed only if it is lit by a quality which transforms its aim in Wolker and Nezval 985 such a way as to catch the reader's imagination. In general, social verse becomes poetry when it can make a direct appeal to men's inner beliefs or instincts; when it can call to its aid cherished traditions, putting the present issue in the context of the past, and clothing it with poetic mystery. Like many successful tendentious writers, Wolker, in his poems, seems more the evangelist than the agitator. A realist in his view of the world, he, like Nezval and the young Hora, exploited mysticism in his art. The world of Wolker's poems is permeated by a harmony which is not of this earth. In that world, all nature, material things, men, the saints, and the angels, all operate in a close and mysterious correspond- ence: their common element is humanity; all is anthropomorphised. The stars come visiting the poet; the moon settles comfortably on his chair; at his request they go out to seek his sweetheart (Vzddlena mild). God will come to supper (Haj), as once before He came in the likeness of a beggar (Zebraci). The Virgin, whose picture hangs in his room, is the object of an erotic daydream: when he comes home from the hunt she will step down to comfort him (Hojl). On Saturday night, the drunks on their way home run into God: because they see everything threefold, they see Him in His triple function as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; in each form He meets them with a cheerful greeting (Ze soboty na nedeli). By a form of pictorial composition, objects are brought into relationship, not only with the poet, but also with each other. His window becomes a glass ship, anchored to the shore of his room; it will sail the seven seas, until at last the venturer returns rejoicing to his home (Okno). Death fits easily into the world, which is only a resting place on the way (Smrt): the world itself is only a road to heaven, and the poet is the star of Bethlehem (Poutnici). There are no dead in the cemetery; they live on in the trees that soar to heaven (Hrbitov and Kazani na hore). In the long poem, Svaty Kopecek, Wolker describes the village where he spent his holidays. The whole scene portrays a mystical harmony in which all is homely and familiar; its busy life reflects the continuity of the generations and the life-giving rhythm of the seasons. Here the dead and the living link hands; a common feeling unites all the members of this idyllic community. The poet is the tongue of a bell that calls all humanity to carry together the burden of a happiness too heavy for the few. In Wolker's second book of verse (Tezka hodina), the leitmotif is the problem of human suffering. This is the flaw in his world, and since that world is totally interconnected, there can be no harmony until the flaw has been eradicated. In the Balada o nenarozenem diteti, poverty 986 Alfred French destroyes a human relationship. A child, begotten in the warmth of affection, dies in the cold atmosphere of the surgery, for the lovers are too poor to give it the chance to live; but in killing the unborn child, the girl destroys part of herself, and cuts herself off from her kind. The doctor's hands were pure carbolic his voice as cold as ice ... He stripped away her blouse and with his fingers drummed upon her breast a funeral march. Woman, do you hear, do you catch that voice, that burning at your breast? Now it cried a final cry. Now it died. Meantime the lover stood closely by the door, the threshold of the room. And yet his eyes betrayed his mind, and would not stay behind, but trailed convulsively behind her agony, behind the funeral train: on grating wheels the train goes by, amid the autumn wind . .. In the poem, Tvár za sklent, the hungry face pressed to the café window penetrates the glass and transforms the revellers within to corpses; Wolker is now the accuser. Since his world is interdependent, the happiness of one member is achieved only at the expense of another. The eyes of his lover encompass all the world; he sees a workman fall to his death from scaffolding, and accuses her of responsibility for allowing it to happen (Basen milostná). He sits in a café and sees in the face of a prostitute the image of his mistress, whose drowned face looks up to his from below the surface of a pool; she had killed herself for the happiness of himself and his lover (Setkání).

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