Authors

The focus of Filip Topol’s literary works lies in the song lyrics written for the band Psí vojáci. Topol’s lyrics, which can not only be found in booklets accompanying the music but have also been brought out as independent publications, can be seen as poetry in their own right. And this is despite the fact that a further dimension is added to them by the music and the concert performance – particularly Topol’s emotional delivery. If we were to look for who has inspired the author, we could name, for example, the poet Sylvia Plath, whose words Topol set to music at the beginning of his career, and from whom he adopted the fragmentary form of “sharply cut” non-spoken verse. From his older brother Jáchym he learned “brutal lyricism” or “aggressive poetry”, which artistically combines standard and colloquial speech, the highbrow with the lowbrow (eg in the song Poseru se štěstím [I shit myself with happiness]). The whole atmosphere of Topol’s rock songs is reminiscent of the “brutal school” of the American musical and literary underground. Filip Topol is an urban poet par excellence. The city, and consequently the world, is seen as a very dramatic, dangerous and dark place („Choulí se choulí / neštěstí samota / na město padá déšť / déšť a temnota“, „Nechoď sama do tmy / Bude tě to stát / Ve městě sou lidi / temný akorát…“) [“Cowering/unhappy alone/the rain falls on the city/the rain and the darkness”, “Don’t go out alone into the dark/It will cost you/In the city are people/Shadowy figures…”] The words dark and darkness are key to the early development of Topol’s works. Within the spirit of his brutal romanticism the author does not only show the reverse side of the world, but especially that of the soul: he is interested in the fear and evil within people. Topol’s narrative persona is of course heavily (even if suggestively) stylized. As a central protagonist he was engaged in the modern inner conflicts of a man or “lad” filled with melancholy, unrest and stormy feelings, who had not found himself and who was still searching for his narrative. “From my soul blooms/ a large black flower/as big as/this world,” laments the author’s stylized alter ego, who can demonically materialise as the character of “the gentle and dark bastard” Kilián Nedory, from the poem of the same name. The world of Topol’s songs is inhabited by lowlifes of all kinds: drunks, drug addicts, thugs, madmen, criminals and people with suicidal tendencies. Some of the subjects border on “stories from the underworld” in the style of Pulp Fiction. This can be seen in the violent poetics: “The blood spurts from my gums/ my lover dreams of me…” Topol transforms Nezval’s Sbohem a šáteček (Farewell and Headscarf) into the expressive Sbohem a řetěz (Farewell and Chains). The writer’s creative arsenal is stridently militant – it includes razor blades, switchblades, broken glass etc – but they are not an end in themselves. As has already been mentioned, the aggressive rhetoric serves principally to express the inner state of consciousness (“feelings like razor blades”). And there’s more: under the rough mask often lies a longing for authenticity (“…do you no longer even realise that you are lying to yourself?”) and fear of a wasted life. Equally harrowing, torturous and hurtful is when the author explores the theme of relationships. The search for a “femme fatale” takes on a more conciliatory tone only in the later period (for example in the project Sakramiláčku [Christdarling] ). The world of Topol’s songs, which stands in direct contrast to the respectability of middle-class life (and is therefore more attractive for a younger audience), is not, however, only serious and dark. The author is also able to lighten it through black humour and self-irony (“My girlfriend is far away/ I can never catch up…”) Filip Topol entered the field of prose with two heavily autobiographical novellas. As is evidenced by the title, the winsome text Mně 13 (13 to Me) was written in 1979 when the author was 13. Written in non-standard Czech, the diary is a mirror of bohemian life in Prague as seen through the eyes of a prematurely advanced novice of art. The text characteristically documents from the outside the grey era of normalization, which inwardly stirred up a cultural activity that sought to hide itself from the eyes of the police regime. The juvenile Topol has the wit, naturalness and magic of the spontaneous. As opposed to this, the author’s second work of prose, entitled Karla Klenotníka cesta na Korsiku (Karel Klenotník’s Journey to Corsica), which was written twenty years later, is rich in poetry but is also harrowing, which in no way detracts from the author’s poetry or his songwriting. The tone of the text, which tells of a journey as an act of cleansing, is one of soul-searching. “I hoped that this journey, this change, would help to cleanse my soul of all the dirt and filth I had stirred up.” Having recovered from a serious illness and overcome alcoholism, the narrator sets out on a journey south to try to put his emotional life back together. However, along the way he is pursued by his inner demons, the memories of the time spent in hospital bringing about thoughts of death and a reminder of his suffering. This painful meditation on the meaning of life ends with the promise of hope. The book was awarded the best prose work of 1999 by the Czech Literary Foundation.

(jn)

This profile was last updated on May 1st 2006

Agency (foreign rights)

Pluh, www.pluh.org