Poetry
Neskutočné mesto
Not translated into English
Vladimír Reisel · 1943
Synopsis
A lyrical poem written according to the nadrealist method, in short free verse without punctuation, centred on a love lived in Prague, city of poets and pigeons. Nostalgia, sadness and dread dominate it, and the motifs of departure, autumn, the train and farewell to the mother recur constantly. Dream and reality, irony and melancholy intersect in it, against a background of erotic motifs inherited from symbolism.
Context
The poem appeared in 1943, during the author's nadrealist period, between Vidím všetky dni a noci, published in 1939 in the Aligátor series, and Zrkadlo a za zrkadlom, in 1946. It is counted among the peaks of a movement whose high point coincides with the last years of the war, and the author makes creative use in it of the example of Vítězslav Nezval. Regarded with Rudolf Fabry as one of the two canonical figures of nadrealism, he turned after 1945 to a realist and militant poetry.
Who it is for
A long poem with a fast, breathless rhythm, to be read in one sitting, like crossing a waking dream.
Prizes and reception
Counted among the major works that nadrealism, the Slovak variant of surrealism, produced during the war.
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