Poetry

The book is composed of reflections from Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval’s 1933 travels to Vienna, Paris, southern France, and Italy, during which he formed friendships with surrealist poets André Breton and Paul Éluard. Their influence and inspiration helped Nezval form the foundations of Czech surrealism, the only official artistic movement of its kind outside the borders of France. With its roots in the earlier avant-garde movement of poetism, the Czech group Devětsil (Nine Forces), of which Nezval was also a leading member, included such luminaries as Toyen, Karel Teige, Jindřich Štýrský, and Nobel laureate Jaroslav Seifert. Farewell and a Handkerchief was the proving ground of Nezval’s own shift from poetism to surrealism, and remains a powerful and enduring book by one of the most prolific poets of the twentieth century.