Authors

When placed within the context of contemporary Czech poetry, Jaroslav Pížl’s poetry seems somewhat extravagant. This is mainly because the author is not so concerned with semantic exposition, but rather with the sound quality of the text, a kind of “music of words” or “oral literature”. Pížl, who incidentally when reciting his poetry often adds the “finishing touches” with sounds and gestures, returns the listener to the acoustic source of speech, to the awareness that a word was originally a sound. In his first work, Manévry (Manoeuvres 1992), the author had already chosen a distinctive style. Although the text is often concerned with studies and poetic exercises, it is clear here that the poem’s driving force derives from onomatopoeia with an emphasis on the rhythm and melody of a sentence. In his poetic games the author often borrows from a literary diction which is slightly archaic, while in the spirit of postmodernism, he “revels” in various poetics. The critic Pavel Janáček wrote that, “The basic structure of Pížl’s lyricism is a distinctive organisation of text around sound, which sits on the border between free verse and poetic prose, and which is distinguished by a number of allusions to the style and motifs of the poetry of the end of the 19th century (notably symbolism and impressionism)”. In other collections, Pížl uses his unique poetic gift in the service of a poetic phenomenology, of a quiet and sensitive vision of reality, which in places touches upon Eastern philosophy: “the terrace/the cat/A jug/in which water for plants warms up/Time stands still/At this moment, this is all mine.” (Nyní) [At This Moment]. The world of Pížl is also a world viewed artistically: the author’s artistic sound games and a certain pathos are imposed onto a landscape full of romantic images: “Space is an abyss in which the darkness pulsates: alone, just below the horizon, a fire goes out like a narrowing purple ribbon.” “The moon and the rocks: as though the beams of moonlight opened up chasms in space: space cracks from the cutting of shadows, which like knives, plunge into the landscape…” etc. When Pížl’s literary acrobatics do not overstep the mark, they fascinate and impress. Where he does get lost in extravagance and self-reflection, there is a danger of becoming overly mannered, and using effect for effect’s sake. As a counterpoint in this poetic game to the “serious” side of the poetry is a humour and irony that echoes Voskovec and Werich, Ivan Vyskočil (with whom the poet studied drama) and the Sklep theatre. There is also a sarcastic element in the process of writing, which is sometimes a deliberate transition to a primitive diction or a parody of poetic cliches (“Behind the gate the little puppy doesn’t howl at the moon/because it hasn’t come out yet”, “…sitting in my armchair, I let out the occasional quiet groan: the room in which I find myself is an octahedron…” etc). Pížl’s manipulation of the language displays a poet’s mistrust of the seriousness of words and at the same time a joy in the re-codifying and upsetting of conventional forms of literary speech. After completing five collections of poetry Pížl has also attempted prose writing. The novella Sběratelé knih (The Book Collectors) combines adventure with elements of fantasy and centres on thieves and middlemen who trade in valuable books. The action revolves around mysterious books which contain important secrets, and it is because of these that the main character becomes an outlaw in a bizarre band of criminals. This refined prose work, in which can be heard melancholic echoes of boys’ adventure stories (a childhood nostalgia is also evident in the author’s poetry), remained in the shadow of similar magical-realist works by Michal Ajvaz.

(jn)

The profile was last updated on 1. 8. 2005

Deutsch Jaroslav PÍŽL, Deutsch.doc

En français Jaroslav PÍŽL, En français.doc

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