Narrative
Hrad smrti
Not translated into English
Jakub Deml · 1912
Synopsis
One May evening, after the first storm of spring, the narrator says he found the manuscript of a stranger, and he publishes it. The stranger there retraces an autumn road through a hopeless countryside, which he had travelled in his youth with his elder brother; then come a brother and a sister, and the arrival at a castle that one enters as in a dream, where the images follow one another, funereal and precise, without causal link, in an anguish that is never quite put into words.
Context
The text came into being in 1909 from the transcription of a dream. Its author submitted it to Otokar Březina, who advised him to add a preface and notes; he then reworked it, presenting himself as the mere editor of a found text, and Březina recognised something of Edgar Poe in it. The volume appeared in 1912 at the author's expense, adorned with colour woodcuts by Josef Váchal. It follows closely on several bereavements, including that of his closest friend, the priest Josef Polák, who died in 1907.
Who it is for
A visionary prose work without a plot, preceded by a preface that is itself a fiction. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the best-known works of its author, it is regarded today as a forerunner of Czech surrealism.