FAREWELL AND A HANDKERCHIEF

In this new translation of a Czech classic, English speakers get a taste of one of Europe’s most underappreciated verse writers. Nezval was born in Moravia in 1900 and matriculated as a philosophy student, but his early experience with the Prague literary scene converted him to poetry and launched a remarkably prolific career. As Karen von Kunes writes in the foreword, one of the central hopes of Nezval’s school was the creation of a new “art of everyday life” that was “accessible” to the “simple man.” Kostovski’s translation preserves the clarity and simplicity of Nezval’s verse. The poet’s brief “Place du Tertre” is a good example: “My love, perhaps we both shall meet / When finally the world succeeds / To sit together chair to chair / On that one Parisian square.” Yet this seemingly straightforward quatrain yields more nuance the longer readers look. Best of all is the gnomic second line, which could logically attach either to the first—in which case the lovers will meet when the world “succeeds”—or the third, whereby the world prevails in sitting “together chair to chair.” That the meaning of this second rendering is mysterious is in keeping with another of Nezval’s influences: French surrealism. The poet knew luminaries like Breton and Eluard, and some of their enigmatic qualities seep into Nezval’s verse. Breton and Eluard, of course, are both from France, another of their Czech contemporary’s loves. Though this collection ostensibly describes a trip across Europe, the lion’s share is given to Paris. Nezval writes of his arrival there: “You were Medusa when I dreamed about you / Now here I stand, a vagrant in prime / And the smallest bit that you’re able to give / Lulls me to sleep like a drinking man’s wine.” Yet if the City of Light is this intoxicating, so is Nezval’s verse, and readers will hope to get more in English soon. It’s a shame he’s been hidden for so long.

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