Authors
Petr MOTÝL
The prose writer and poet Petr Motýl was born on August 26th 1964 in Klatovy. He studied Czech and history at the College of Education in Ostrava (1988). He did not follow a teaching career and instead worked as a postman, caretaker, boilerman, book seller and pump attendant at a water works, and he now works as a night-watchman. He publishes several semi-samizdat literary magazines (Modrý květ, Sojky v hlavě and most recently Čmelák a svět).
He has worked with a range of literary magazines (Host, Tvar, Weles, Proglas, Kontexty, etc). He has been awarded the František Langer Prize on several occasions, in 2006 he won the Ostrava – City in Motion Prize (for the collection of texts Od harendy k hypermarketu), and in 2008 he took part in the final of the Dresden Poetry Prize. He lives in Prague.
Petr Motýl is a writer and poet who is strongly linked to specific regions and areas (to begin with Ostrava and now mainly the Prague periphery). He is an essential empiricist, observer and distinctive documentarist of his time and country. Motýl’s world is a world seen “from below”. Amongst the author’s central loci are the pub, the railway station, the factory, the flat and the peripheral city quarter populated by miners, workers, waiters, pub regulars, members of national minorities, criminals – in short, outsiders of all kinds. (However, his latest poetic opus from the genre of natural lyricism shows that the author has expanded his radius outside the city). Motýl the poet does not create according to a specific concept; he allows a “soiling” of reality. He belongs among those authors who do not attempt to generalize: he writes about himself and what he sees around him. His writing is unaffected, without grand gestures, often “only” about an author’s lyrical diary, no matter what its character. That is because Motýl is among the great experimenters in genres (poetry, poetry in prose, the novel, drama) as well as poetics (transversing naturalist and imaginative aspects). The work of Petr Motýl is relatively extensive. Several of his works are still in manuscript form, whilst many have already been published. If we overlook the author’s early work, containing several poem-incantations with a mysterious atmosphere and Morgenstern-like playness, then we discover the first great poetic era linked with the region of Ostrava. This is formed by three collections - Šílený Fridrich, Jazykem haldy and Černá pěna Ostravice. They were linked by an emphasis on a particular area, a rawness of vision and strong disillusionment. The poet was able to capture the atmosphere of Ostrava at the turn of the 1990s, the atmosphere of a region where time had stood still. The ecological-moral crisis during the socialist era was replaced during the new regime with economic stagnation: the collapse of industry, mine closures, the demolition of old housing estates – accompanied by unemployment, crime, alcoholism, etc. This region “brought to its knees” outrages Motýl due to its hopelessness, but at the same time it fascinates him: the elemental force of industry, the beauty of dilapidation, the emotional upheaval, as though capitalism had chosen to take time out here. In one interview the poet further remarked that, “At one time Ostrava had an incredibly powerful atmosphere. It was as though the natural elements and forces came up from the ground and could be seen up close. The second thing is that few people are capable of living there. I also fled from it.” Motýl’s empirical “superficiality” works very well in capturing this atmosphere. What is more, at the time the author managed to co-ordinate his own feelings with the oscillations of the region („ani vysokou pec tak snadno neodstavíš / jako vlastní svědomí“) [You won’t shut down a blast furnace as easily as your own conscience]. In the collection Šílený Fridrich he constructs a prototype of the “strange” people of his region, of mythical heroes from the Bezruč lineage. And from Bezruč leads the way to Motýl’s inspiration, for example Kolář and Hrabal and even the American “industrial” poets. The collections Jazykem haldy and Černá pěna Ostravice are even more closely tied to their place of birth – and here he freely speaks the language of the proletariat: „ve Frýdku se na secesi sere / stejně jako na baroko nebo gotiku / po šestnáctce ve válcovnách / po sobotě na Stařícu / po noční v Paskově / s jazykem na bradě s kamením v nohách / a nevíš kdy koho zasype / vejdeš na pivo / na secesi sereš“ [“In Frýdek they say fuck Art Nouveau / And that goes for Baroque and Gothic too / Working in the mills from 16 / On Saturdays in Staříč / After the night shift in Paskov / Dog tired with stones in your shoes / And you don’t know when someone will be buried / You go for a beer / You say fuck Art Nouveau”]. In one poem Motýl enumerates with fascination the train stops between Ostrava and Frýdek-Místek, as though these local names were unique poetry to him. This programmed non-literariness has an unusually suggestive effect on the reader. There is a lyricism which has been filtered through the “industrial”. We can sense the disgust, the futility, but also a kind of holiness in these places. The author returned to a similar rawness of expression once more in his collection Lahve z ubytovny. This album of portraits of workers from one hostel where Motýl once worked as a janitor is no longer connected by a single location. The men come from all corners of the globe and bring with them their own stories; “small dramas only if viewed from an express train”. The author is evidently impressed by their unsettled lives, which he captures in a sometimes documentary-like way. The coarse content of the book’s stories is reflected both in the lexis and in the expression. Motýl is definitely an author with several strings to his bow. Along with this violent poetic evolves a second, more subtle aspect. This is heard most predominantly in the collection Perleťový dům, which is free from any particular time or place and drifts impressionistically as though outside of space and time. In fact, people almost slip away from the poet’s viewpoint of time as the author is so preoccupied by observing the objective world and natural reflections. There is no longer any sign of the previous battling and desperation. In their place is (at least the appearance of) reconciliation with the world and – surprisingly – an incredible fragility of expression. Sometimes there are just lyrical photographs, dreamlike and yet precisely sketched, as though we were looking at images by someone such as Emila Medková: „to se mi jen tak snívalo // ploutve kaprů celé od krve / a chundelaté vlasy borovic pod mlýny mraků // snívalo se zdálo // srnčí kopýtka v mechu / a bíle natřený rám okna opřený o cihlovou zeď“ [“And so I dreamed // carp fins covered in blood / and the bushy hair of the pines under the mills of clouds // dreamed it seemed // of deer’s hooves in moss / and a white-painted window frame propped up against a brick wall”]. A similarly gentle technique is used in the next collection, Hálec, where the author, always with just a few strokes, outlines a poetic image and then passes it over to the reader to apply the finishing touches. As for Motýl’s experiments with various genres, we must mention the extensive novel Spratek a krásná Danuše, which is a parody of detective stories, entangled with the grotesque and a political subtext, as well as a bizarre postmodern game with allusions. The theatrical play Poklad na blatech is an attempt at a collision between dramatic romanticism and realism, interlaced with many appropriated effects. The volume Petrolej na odvrácené straně Měsíce brings together poetry and prose. It contains short texts, remembrances of childhood, portraits of the inhabitants of Zličín (another important place in the author’s autobiographical topography), and lightly rendered images and moments. An ever greater significance is given to nature and the absurd aspect of a resurgent everydayness. His last poetry collection to date, Maják na konci světa, attempts to be a synthesis of both the author’s main preoccupations. He captures the time of everydayness and vertigo, the present and history, lyrical and life “prose”, spoken Czech as well as literary expressions. On the one hand it is a traditional pub poetic and on the other a gentle poetry, translucent and light as a shadow, reminiscent of Eastern poetry (sometimes on the border of sentimentality) or the reverberation of poetism (rhymed poetry). Petr Motýl appears to be at his strongest where his poetics collide, somewhere in the middle between the imprint of raw reality and imaginative meditation.
