Authors

Děžinský began his literary career as a poet considerably influenced by Expressionism, molding it in his own way to such extent that his last collection shows virtually no traces of it. His unmelodic, indecipherable verse has often been criticized for being cold and uninviting. With the passing of time, however, this looks less an ethical flaw than a creative decision the poet has taken from his very first collection. Though his debut volume Černá hodinka (The Black Hour) is not highly regarded, it occupies an important place in the literary context of the time. Written during the hectic mid-1990s, the collection drew attention for its absolute rigidity, lack of any sort of action, and distance. “Here place determines action,” he writes in one of his miniatures. One is reminded of a still life behind whose immobility we sense (perhaps?) the unfolding of a secret drama: “Still calm bleeds a vein. / Solitude – a soggy belly / of heavy kettles, steel / the gloom. / Leg over leg: to the thigh / the smoke stings fleshy mothers. / Something will happen.” Not exactly Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, though Děžinský’s refusal to engage the world conceals his attempt to read the world from the aura of things. It is an attempt to place human objects and places against the mad rush of life, to adapt to them, to enter their “interior” so as to tease out something about the inner human condition. In this collection the poet began to emphasize the sonic. Děžinský’s second volume, Kašel mé milenky (My Lover’s Cough), is probably the least approachable for a reader, yet it has secured a special place for itself among contemporary Czech poetry. Although the verse is noticeably more populated than before and the poet exits his interior for the open landscape, an oppressive still remains atmosphere as the poet has a predilection for conjuring up solitude, a kind of grimace of expressionist inspiration. It’s a view of the world through an enlarger where the grotesquely bulging detail (often it’s an eye, or a fish skeleton, or an insect) masks almost the entire picture. Carnality and immortality are the magnifying glass through which he observes the world. He perceives outer reality as a live, proliferating organism (the “guts of the field,” the “bladder of the old bridge”), while people resemble phantoms from an atlas of anatomy, skinless figures composed of bones and innards. It is so difficult to work out the meaning of some of Děžinský’s poems that it’s like trying to solve a differential equation. Meaning is so piled up and is often so contradictory that it defies interpretation. This does not mean, however, that he is incapable of producing suggestive images: “Autumn whistles a finger in the glass, / bloody apples under the arm / of trees shaven smooth. Děžinský’s most recent collection, Slovnik noci (Dictionary of Night), is somewhat less artistic and “atmospheric.” Again he examines the extremes of language and whether poetry is capable of imaginatively expressing the philosophical in paradoxes – “Evening is usually short / when you understand” – though he is well aware that “knowledge leads to conceit.” Here Thanatos has found a worthy adversary in Eros. Love, amorous desire, or just a woman’s presence makes transparent and crystalline Děžinský’s poetic rebuses even in the thick haze in which they indulge: “Tongue in closed mouths / banging the walls as if locked / in a cellar. Timidity is a cat’s spine. // From a flat / a strand of light thin / like a girl’s hair. / Silver. She showers, / letting herself be drawn on / a chill moon and gluttony.” Though the poet’s phantoms and human puppets gradually exit the stage, the author does not abandon even in this euphoria of love his existential dread: “Sitting at the edge of the bed / legs dangling / into the abyss.” As the poet has commented about this collection: “The body is your only companion in solitude and solitude is central to poetry, as is night, death, and love.”

(jn)