Madrid - Prague

We have found this beautiful text by Antonio Muñoz Molina in the last edition of Babelia only some hours after we have illustrated with a quotation from his Sefarad the importance of the celebrations of the Holy Week in Úbeda. The text, which perhaps intentionally imitates the “long sentences” of Bohumil Hrabal, speaks about Josef Sudek, whose photos have been recently exhibited for the first time after half century in Madrid. The life and figure of Sudek are just as enigmatic as the city he kept photographing in all his life, and his images have directly or indirectly determined the way we look at Prague.


Josef Sudek is a man roaming the streets of Prague, bent under the weight of a cumbersome and archaic camera and of a tripod of an itinerant photographer, a photographer left here from a previous epoch who takes his pictures hidden under the large black veil and slowly pressing the rubber ball of the releasing mechanism. In a Zen koan they ask how the clap of one hand sounds. The art of Josef Sudek has something of the fabulous resonance of this hand which cannot clap with the other, as he had lost his right arm on the Italian front during the First World War, and although sometimes an assistant helps him to stand up the camera, during his taciturn roamings over Prague he is always seen alone, the clumsy Kodak of 1894 and the tripod already became a part of his profile, just like the beret and the black coat and the left shoulder sinking always lower in lack of the counterweight of the right arm, already a phantasm and still painful, amputated in the field hospital. In 1926, when Josef Sudek had been a war invalid for almost ten years, he once again returned to Italy accompanying his friends from the Prague Philharmonics. Music was his other great love. In the middle of a concert he rose from his seat, left the theater like a somnambulant, and through deserted and dark streets he reached the outskirts of the town, wandering all through the night, this time free from the weight of the camera, lost in unknown landscapes. And in the gray fog of the dawn in a plain field he saw a farmhouse, and with the inappellable certainty of the dreams he knew that this was the farmhouse where he had been taken when he was wounded, when his arm was cut off. “But I have not found my arm,” he related later, although he did not tell where he had been after, while his friends from the orchestra were looking in vain for him before continuing the tour without him.


He returned from this journey and did not leave Prague any more. He rented a small studio looking onto a shady garden and there he worked and lived during the fifty years that were left to him. The war and the loss of the right arm swept his youth off. The obstacles on my way became my way, writes Nietzsche. It is possible that the real vocation is a way which opens by chance after all the other ones which looked more evident are closed. If they did not have to amputate his right arm at the height of the shulder because of a necrotized wound, Josef Sudek would have become a bookbinder. And without the small disability pension he received after the war he could have not devoted himself to photography, body and soul. He began by taking pictures of the veterans he met by chance in the hospitals, of those mutilated and spiritually distorted figures populating all Europe after the slaughter, but it took him years to find his own style. At the age of twenty he had to learn how to live with one arm less, how to manage the camera and the process of image development. But it was even more difficult to learn how to see those things that nobody paid attention to, although they were there before the eyes of everyone. To do so, he had to center himself, to choose or find a fix position in the chaos and multiplicity of the world, like sharpening the focus of a lens. In order to see Prague, Josef Sudek had to leave Prague for a while. He traveled to the south, and in that Italian dawn – with the fertile plains and hazy distances only interrupted by some houses or trees – he saw the same place again where his previous life had been broken by the machine-gun, and although he could not find his missing arm any more, but nevertheless he found his other, invisible arm and hand with which he could give form to the mystery of his poetic invention.


He did not need to leave any more. The farthest terra incognita he rambled to were the fields over the tramway terminuses. He strolled about the streets with the large camera on his shoulder, in a hurry to arrive to a certain constellation of the lights, or remaining still for several minutes waiting for the right moment under the black veil. He used to say that photographing is a strange art, as it cannot show the things openly, only through allusions, revealing only the necessary minimum in order the complete image be born in the look and in the imagination of the onlooker. The panoramic format of 30×10 permitted by his camera embraced the horizontality of a square or of a field in which the human silhouettes appear isolated in the distance, but are not lost in it, for sometimes they seem to be absorbed in contemplation like the background figures of a painting by Friedrich, and sometimes we see them walking with a determined purpose, men and women crossing a street in the downtown, or moving off towards a housing block after having got off from the tramway at the last station, which is already not in the city and not yet in the fields but somewhere on the outskirts from where the roofs and towers of Prague seem just slightly more than a jagged profile on the horizon.

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In the photos of Sudek Prague seems to be suspended in time, offuscated in the ambiguous lights of the sunsets and dawns, depopulated and silent in the humid winter nights ligthed by the phosphorescence of the fog or of the snow and traversed by tramways like by submarines with reflectors on their prow. This is that assaulted and tormented city where the refugees of half Europe sought shelter from the advancement of Nazism, the one retaining its breath when in the infamous pact of Munich of November 1938 the British and French permitted to Hitler to amputate half of the country, the one occupied in 1939 by the German army and by the efficient executioners of the Gestapo, the one which, only a few years after the end of the Nazi occupation, succumbed to the puppet regime of the Communists manipulated by the Soviets. Prague, which used to be in the heart of Europe, retired far behind the hermetism of the Iron Curtain: this is how we see her in these photos of Sudek from the fifties that are now exhibited in Madrid, in a silent room of the Círculo de Bellas Artes. A city of squares without traffic and of deserted nights in which the shudder of the military tattoo is still resounding, of statues full of pathos on the façades of the buildings, of windows covered with moisture, of shady gardens beaten up by the weeds that exhale the deep odour of humid earth and wet leaves. In the silence some steps resound on the cobblestones, the rumor of panting breath. The man of the sloping shoulder is sleeplessly roaming the city, in search of that light of the dawn which he only saw twice in his life, on the day when his arm was amputated, and on the day when, many years later, by wandering as in a dream, he found it.

Madrid - Praga

Hallamos este hermoso escrito de Antonio Muñoz Molina en la última edición de Babelia sólo unas horas después de que ilustráramos con una cita de su Sefarad la importancia de las celebraciones de la Semana Santa en Úbeda. El texto, que quizá intencionadamente imita las «sentencias largas» de Bohumil Hrabal, habla sobre Josef Sudek, cuyas fotos se han expuesto en Madrid por primera vez después de medio siglo. La historia y figura de Sudek son tan enigmáticas como la ciudad que él fotografió durante toda su vida y sus imágenes, directa o indirectamente, han determinado hasta hoy nuestra manera de ver Praga.


Josef Sudek es un hombre que camina por las calles de Praga encorvado por el peso de una cámara voluminosa y arcaica y de un trípode de fotógrafo ambulante, de fotógrafo siempre como de otra época que se oculta bajo la joroba de la cortinilla negra para tomar sus retratos, apretando despacio la pera de goma del disparador. En un acertijo Zen la pregunta es cómo sonará la palmada de una sola mano. El arte de Josef Sudek tiene algo de la resonancia quimérica de esa mano que no puede chocar con otra, porque había perdido el brazo derecho en el frente italiano durante la Primera Guerra Mundial, y aunque a veces un asistente le ayudaba a preparar la cámara, en sus caminatas callejeras solía vérsele por Praga cargando con ella a solas, el armatoste Kodak de 1894 y el trípode convertidos ya en una parte de su perfil, como la boina y la capa negra y el hombro izquierdo cada vez más inclinado, a falta del contrapeso del otro brazo ya fantasma, dolorido todavía, amputado en un hospital de la retaguardia. En 1926, cuando Josef Sudek llevaba casi diez años siendo un mutilado de guerra, volvió a Italia acompañando a sus amigos de la Filarmónica de Praga. La música era su otro gran amor. En medio de un concierto se levantó de su asiento y salió como sonámbulo del teatro, y por calles vacías y a oscuras llegó al extrarradio y estuvo caminando toda la noche, esta vez más ligero sin el peso de la cámara, perdido en paisajes que no conocía. En la niebla gris del amanecer, en un campo llano, vio una granja, con la sensación de reconocimiento inapelable de los sueños. Era la granja a la que lo habían llevado cuando fue herido, cuando le cortaron el brazo. «Pero mi brazo no lo encontré», contaba luego, aunque no dijo dónde estuvo después, cuando sus amigos de la orquesta lo buscaron en vano antes de continuar sin él la gira.


Volvió de ese viaje y ya nunca más salió de Praga. Alquiló un pequeño taller que daba a un jardín umbrío y en él trabajó y vivió los cincuenta años que le quedaban de vida. La guerra y la pérdida del brazo habían trastornado su juventud. Los obstáculos en mi camino se convirtieron en mi camino, escribe Nietzsche. La verdadera vocación puede ser un camino que sólo se abre por azar cuando se han cerrado otros que parecían más evidentes. Si no hubieran tenido que amputarle el brazo derecho a la altura del hombro por culpa de una herida de guerra infectada Josef Sudek habría sido encuadernador. Y sin la pequeña pensión de invalidez que le quedó después de la guerra no habría podido dedicarse en cuerpo y alma a la fotografía. Empezó haciendo retratos de los veteranos con los que coincidía en los hospitales, figuras de aquella población de espectros mutilados o enloquecidos que quedó en Europa después de la carnicería, pero iba a tardar algunos años en encontrar su estilo. Con veintitantos años tenía que aprender a vivir con un brazo de menos, a manejar la cámara y los procesos del revelado. Pero más difícil era aprender a mirar aquellas cosas en las que nadie reparaba aunque estuvieran a la vista de todos. Para hacer algo era preciso centrarse: elegir o encontrar una posición fija en el aturdimiento y la variedad del mundo; como ajustar el foco de una lente. Para mirar Praga, Josef Sudek tuvo que irse brevemente de Praga. Viajó hacia el sur y en aquel amanecer italiano —las llanuras fértiles, las distancias brumosas, interrumpidas por casas o árboles— vio de nuevo el lugar en el que su primera vida había sido destrozada por la metralla, y al no encontrar el brazo que le faltaba lo que descubrió fue el otro brazo y la otra mano invisibles gracias a los cuales iba a resonar el misterio de su invención poética.


Ya no necesitaría salir nunca más. La tierra incógnita más alejada en la que iba a aventurarse eran los descampados al final de las líneas de los tranvías. Trotaba por los callejones con la gran joroba de la cámara al hombro, dándose prisa para llegar a un cierto instante de luz, o se quedaba inmóvil durante muchos minutos, esperando el momento exacto, cobijado por la cortinilla negra. Decía que fotografiar era un arte raro, porque no se podían mostrar las cosas abiertamente, sino dando pistas, desvelando sólo lo justo, para que la imagen completa estuviera en la mirada y en la imaginación del espectador. Los formatos panorámicos de 30×10 que permitía su cámara abarcaban la horizontalidad de una plaza o de una llanura en las que las siluetas humanas están aisladas en la lejanía, pero no perdidas en ella, porque unas veces tienen el aire de contemplación de las figuras de espaldas en los cuadros de Friedrich y otras se las ve caminar con un propósito ensimismado, hombres y mujeres que cruzan una calle céntrica o que se alejan hacia un bloque de viviendas después de bajarse del tranvía en la última parada, la que ya no está en la ciudad pero tampoco es el campo, el extrarradio desde el que los tejados y las torres de Praga son poco más que un perfil recortado contra el horizonte.

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En las fotos de Sudek Praga parece suspendida en el tiempo, desdibujada en las luces ambiguas de los atardeceres y los amaneceres, deshabitada y silenciosa en noches húmedas de invierno, en noches con la fosforescencia de la niebla o la nieve atravesadas por tranvías como submarinos con un faro encendido en la proa. Pero ésa es la ciudad asediada y convulsa a la que acuden refugiados de media Europa según avanza el nazismo, la que contiene el aliento cuando en noviembre de 1938, en el pacto infame de Múnich, los británicos y franceses aceptan que la mitad del país sea amputada para entregársela a Hitler, la que en 1939 es ocupada por el ejército alemán y por los eficaces carniceros de la Gestapo, la que sólo unos pocos años después del final de la ocupación nazi sucumbe a la mascarada de un régimen comunista mangoneado por los soviéticos. La Praga que estuvo en el corazón de Europa se volvía remota tras el hermetismo del Telón de Acero: así la vemos en estas fotos de Sudek de los años cincuenta que se muestran ahora en Madrid, en una sala recóndita del Círculo de Bellas Artes. Una ciudad de plazas sin tráfico y noches deshabitadas en las que todavía perdura el escalofrío del toque de queda, de estatuas enfáticas en las cornisas de los edificios, de cristales de ventanas empañados por la condensación, de jardines en sombras comidos por la maleza que exhalan un olor profundo a tierra húmeda y hojas empapadas. En el silencio unos pasos suenan sobre los adoquines, una respiración jadeante. El hombre insomne de la espalda torcida camina por la ciudad en busca de aquella luz de amanecer que vio sólo dos veces en su vida, el día en que le amputaron el brazo, el día en que lo buscó varios años después como extraviado en un sueño.

Twenty-four

the foundations flew up on high
the altitudes dove down in the deep
Libeň, November-December 1916
Ladislav Klíma, in: Bohumil Hrabal: In House Weddings

The house I was looking for had a generally pleasant impression, a gas street lamp stood in front of the gate, the sidewalk paved with cobblestones must have been rolled up long ago, and the ditch was recently covered again. The gas lamp was already burning, I could see that the number was the correct one, twenty-four. I entered. The hallway smelled of spilt wine and coldness. The plaster was crumbling from the damp walls like flaky pastry. As I entered the courtyard, I could barely leap aside. A blonde woman in a bra and purple pants was pouring water by the pailsful up to the window-boards, then she pushed it with a broom into the small sewer. I waded through a long puddle to the stairs, I went up six steps, and I arrived in a second, smaller courtyard. Upstairs, an external corridor decorated with cast iron railings appeared along the first floor, and above it towered the wall of the neighboring building, nothing but a two-story high bare wall with crumbling plaster, a gigantic wall without windows, and so long that it weighed down the house with the external corridor and with the lit up window. To the left there stood a frame on which carpets are beaten, and behind it, the open door of the laundry yawned and exhaled the smell of washing-powder and sewage. And I went forward, seduced by that light on the ground floor, the cold light of the lamp that could be pulled up and down. In contrast to the pleasant atmosphere of the small courtyard, that window on the ground floor sent forth such a coldness that I was shivering. Two woodbines grew in front of the wall, running along the wires stretched across the little courtyard, their trailers and tendrils hanging down and then turning back and growing upwards again, easily touching my shoulders, and I screwed up my courage and stepped to the window.

I was given accommodations in Libeň, v Domě Vědeckých Pracovniků, in the House of Scientific Workers, at least at that time this is how they called the ten-story concrete tower rising as a solitary obelisk in the outskirts of Prague on a hilltop, in the middle of an improbably empty field, above the vineyards, meadows, small cottages and the highway running in the distance. Vysočanská street continued from Sokolovská meandering, soon the “Beware of the dog” and “No admittance” signs were left behind, the dirt road went on in the open field, I had to turn back twice to ask whether I was correctly informed. But before that and before everything else I wanted to make my pilgrimage to the house which at that time meant for me Libeň and Prague, all the good and creative power, by way of which one could prevail over the sea of evil in that period.

I followed a relatively new map, the best you could buy in Budapest, but at that time, one year after the revolution, it was already transcended by reality; Prague was stretching its cramped members as if just awaken from a dazed sleep after a messy and drunken party, the fabric of the streets was cracking, the foundations flew up on high, the altitudes dove down in the deep, I was looking for Na Hrázi, the Street of the Dam, the Dam of Eternity, as Hrabal, Vladimír and Egon Bondy called it, at the gate of Libeň, near the backwater of the Vltava, where Tekla, the Hungarian countess, the wife of Vladimír

bathed naked at noon, the fishermen cast their nets astray, a cyclist flew through the riverbank weeds and voluntarily jumped into the water, what a body she had, eh, tell me, what a body,

but I could not continue on Zemklová, because it was a one-way from the opposite direction, only for trams, I parked the Trabant at the small bus terminus behind the recently built Palmovka metro station, where I found some free place between the clumsily placed new curbs and the piles of building rubble, and as I was getting out of the car, I immediately knew that I was in the right place, because the large five-story brown building with its emptily gaping windows and closed ground-floor shops and with the art deco globe and inscription SVĚT formed of rusty iron on top, that building was

the fast food, palace, restaurant and cinema bearing the name ‘World’, where we went to every screening. In that neighborhood called Židý there was an estate whose owner was called World. After long ruminations he found that it was by no chance that he was called World. So he sold everything he had, he even contracted a loan, and he built the palace World. At the premiere of the cinema, an American film, The Flood, was screened. While on screen it was pouring down rain and the Ark of Noah was floating on in the tempest, the subsoil water of the Vltava broke into the basement of the cinema, the audience was sitting in water, but the film had to be screened to the end. This is how mister World wasted one million crowns on the World cinema. He blew his brains out. Now you can hear the pumps working beneath every screening, and the building is adorned with an iron globe and the inscription ‘World’,

but the little street had no name, so I went forward along Na Žertvách, after the synagogue I turned right, and then to the right again along U Synagogy, to the left onto Ludmilina, and then I was right there on Na Hrázi, the numbering of the houses grew on the right side, eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, and then I arrived at the little bus terminus behind the recently built Palmovka metro station, where at the place of number twenty-four, among the piles of building rubble, just as far from the clumsily placed new curbs as the entrance of a building, there stood the Trabant like a benevolent and patient old horse which every night carried the drunken coachman Hausmann exactly to the gate of his house in Běrkovice. And then I understood that I was late, that the flood of time splashed over the Dam of Eternity, the altitudes dove down in the deep, in the cavity of the Palmovka metro station, and the foundations already forever

hover above us like the clouds of the ideal buildings on a Baroque painting.


[The quotations are from Bohumil Hrabal’s autobiographic works that are mostly set in Libeň: the In House Weddings trilogy and the Tender barbar, his novel I have liked the most.]