The navel of Europe

“The center of the world is about half-way to Bukovina. South of Galicia, east of Máramaros, northwest of Moldova, along the river Tisza, there is a point. A straight way leads there. If we approach it through the valleys and glens of Subcarpathia, it is not far from the salt mines of Aknaszlatina/Solotvyno. We follow the way leading from Beregszász/Beregovo directly to Czernowitz. It can be done by train in seventeen, but by car or bus in five-six hours. You should not choose the train also because it meanders just like history did in this region, dividing the world into fortunate and unfortunate societies; the binaries run sometimes on the Romanian and sometimes on the Ukrainian side; the border guards stop us several times, and when it is flooding, the wagons do not move, but even the buses and cars remain standing. In Máramarossziget/Sighetul Marmației, at least this is how it seems from the train, there are no fortunate societies any more.”

On full screen

“Between 1873 and 1913 the Military Geographical Institute of Vienna carried out the first leveling survey in the whole territory of the Hapsburg Empire, setting up a nationwide height reference point network. Here, along the Upper Tisza, facing the Barnabás mountain ridge, we find the center of Europe, or at least – according to some descriptions – that of Central Europe. True, simple mathematical calculations do not support the idea of the existence of any center here; nevertheless, at that time, at the turn of the century they quickly erected an obelisk with the following inscription: Permanent base point, established with an extremely precise Austro-Hungarian leveler, according to the European grades of longitude and latitude.



“Of course I did not tell the truth; the road is not straight, but curved. Whoever sets out for the center of the world, wonders how beautiful the world is. The Apsas (Lower Apsa, Middle Apsa, Upper Apsa, Little Apsa) have wooden churches on their hilltops, lined with soft carpets, and as the traveler goes past them, he suddenly arrives to small cemeteries at the side of the churches. He proceeds among collapsed huts, looks at rebuilt bridges over the Tisza, and waddles among the bunkers of the former Árpád line. The center of the world is exactly between the Barnabás and Terebesfejérpatak/Delove. If we go on, and leave behind Rahó/Rahov as well as Kőrösmező/Yasinya, we arrive to the source of the Black-Tisza. Here ends the Tisza and its valley. And over the 2000-meter high ridge of Charnahora already begin the hills of Bukovina, the land of the Hutsuls and Hasids, the rivers Suceava and Siret, and behind them former arable fields, now weeds and some cultivated land: here lived in five villages the Székelys of Bukovina.”



“But let us turn back to the mountains! The forest Hasids of the Cheremosh know something. Someone once wrote that they are the real pessimists of the regions, because if they predict a disaster, they will be right. Let us therefore not run down from the mountains, because there is still something that we do not see, although it is there in the forest. If we look towards the Charnahora, to the east we see the snow-capped peaks of Pop Ivan. Let us look up on the mystical mountain of the intuitive peoples! The pious inhabitants of the deep black gorges of the 2028-meter high Pop Ivan were once Greeks, Romans, Jews and Rusyns. And over the past centuries from here started the rafts of wood, carrying timber to Kuty, to the Danube, and even as far as to Szeged. Whatever the mountains are telling is known here to everyone, and will remain a secret only to us for a while.”

Kiss Noémi: Bukó, detail. Lettre Internationale 58/2005

“Kőrösmező/Yasinya. Rafters’ prayer at the coming of the dam water”. Rafting timbers along the Tisza, not far above the center of Europe. Below the same, from a Hungarian newsreel of 1943.

A dozen of places compete for the glory of Europe’s geographical center, from Germany through the Hungarian Tállya in the region of Tokaj to Lithuania, and, in addition, each with a good reason, depending on how we draw the outlines of the continent and how we interpret the middle. These points are visited one by one by the Polish director Stanisław Mucha in his hilarious and thought-provoking film Die Mitte (2006).


The obelisk standing at Terebesfejérpatak/Delove reflects this complexity. This was the earliest defined midpoint of Europe, unless credit is given to the legend of the inn Mittelpunkt Europas in Hitler’s birthplace, Braunau am Inn, according to which it had been recognized as the center of the continent already by Napoleon. This obelisk was erected by the Military Geographical Institute of Vienna in 1877, during the first nationwide leveling survey of 1873-1913, when precisely this village became one of the seven main base points of the Hapsburg Empire. However, the midpoint defined by them is not exactly here, but some forty kilometers to north-west between the mountains, under Ökörmező/Mizhgire, where Ivan Olbracht wrote in the thirties his ironic and heart-wrenching stories about Rusyns and Hasids. The column served only to raise awareness of it along the main road leading from Vienna to Little Vienna, as Czernowitz was called at the time. And as the primitive elaboration and the incorrectly copied Latin text warns about it, this column is not that column any more. The original monument of the Monarchy may have been changed for the present one in 1986, when the Soviet plaque in Russian was attached to the wall behind it. This was followed by the rocket-like steel symbol, and after 1990 by the memorial wall with the tryzub in Ukrainian. And the symbolic space formed by the official memorial columns is readily filled by the neighboring population with their landmarks: roadside crosses, open air market, the inn furnished as a folk museum.

A further folk landmark on the nearby Tatar Pass, in the folk sculpture park at the former Hungarian-Bukovinian border

Paper soldiers

This is a touching video of his last concert in Toronto, 1994, but this recording from his young years was more forceful:

Bulat Okudzhava: Песенка о бумажном солдате (Little song about the paper soldier). From the CD А как первая любовь… (And as the first love…) (2002)

Один солдат на свете жил, Красивый и отважный, Но он игрушкой детской был: Ведь был солдат бумажный. Он переделать мир хотел, Чтоб был счастливым каждый, А сам на ниточке висел: Ведь был солдат бумажный. Он был бы рад – в огонь и дым За вас погибнуть дважды, Но потешались вы над ним: Ведь был солдат бумажный. Не доверяли вы ему Своих секретов важных. А почему? А потому Что был солдат бумажный. А он, судьбу свою кляня, Не тихой жизни жаждал И все просил: «Огня! Огня!» – Забыв, что он бумажный. В огонь? Ну что ж, иди! – Идешь? И он шагнул однажды. И там сгорел он ни за грош: Ведь был солдат бумажный.

A soldier lived on the world he was handsome and brave but he was a children’s toy for he was a paper soldier. He wanted to change the world so everyone be happy while he himself hung on a thread for he was a paper soldier. He would have happily died for you in the fire and smoke but you only laughed at him for he was a paper soldier. You have never trusted to him your important secrets and why not? Only because he was a paper soldier. But he, cursing his destiny did not long for a calm life: “Fire! Fire!” he demanded, forgetting that he was of paper. “To fire? Why not, go! Don’t you?” And he marched alone and burned up there for nothing for he was a paper soldier.

“Приходилось играть в солдатики, которых я сам и мастерил. Уже второй год мама выписывала для меня детский журнал "Задушевное слово", и каждую пятницу почтальон приносил мне вместе с тоненькой тетрадкой журнала солидный пакет "бесплатных приложений". В этом году я получил, среди прочего, очень много листов для вырезывания. На этих еще слегка липких, еще пахнущих литографской краской листах были изображены солдаты и офицеры всех родов войск: пехота, артиллерия, казаки, уланы, самокатчики, мотоциклетисты... На отдельных листах были отпечатаны зеленовато-серые пушки, полковые кухни, санитарные повозки, а также разрывы снарядов, похожие на букеты завядших цветов или, еще больше, на черные, в красных пятнах веники. Все это, будучи вырезанным и склеенным, можно было расставлять на полу или на столе, можно было устраивать целые сражения. Тем более что в бесплатных приложениях были представлены не только русские, но и наши противники - немцы и австрийцы. Правда, эти противники главным образом убегали, показывая спины с зелеными ранцами, или сдавались в плен, поднимая раскинутые в стороны руки.”

“I played with soldiers prepared by myself. After the second year Mum subscribed for me to the children’s magazine Sincere Word, and every Friday the postman delivered together with the thin fascicle of the magazine a solid package of «free supplement» as well. In that year I received, among other things, a lot of sheets for cutting. These slightly sticky sheets with a smell of litographic paint represented soldiers and officers from every branch: infantry, artillery, cossacks, lancers, cyclists, motorcyclists… Separate sheets were printed with greenish gray guns, regimental kitchens, ambulances and even explosions resembling bunches of wilted flowers or rather black brooms spotted in red. All this being cut and glued and arranged on the floor or on the table served for modeling entire battles. Especially because the free supplements included not only Russian soldiers but also our enemies: Germans and Austrians. True, the enemies mostly fled, showing to us their green knapsacks, or surrendered, raising their arms outspread.”

L. Panteleev (1908-1987):  Маленький офицер (The little officer, 1975)

The stock for cutting also included the fortress of Przemyśl in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
This sheet was probably made before the outbreak of WWI, as it bears the then official
name Пржемышль instead of its Russian name Перемышль.

Map of the fortresses of Przemyśl. Appendix of The Story of the Great War, New York 1916

Siege of Przemyśl. Hand to hand combat between Austro-Hungarian defenders and Russian attackers. Illustrirte Zeitung, 12 November 1914

The Austro-Hungarian defenders of Przemyśl burying the fallen Russian soldiers.
Das Intressante Blatt, September 1914

Bernard Plossu: On Sudek

Introduction of the catalog of the exhibition Una ventana en Praga (A window on Prague), Madrid 2009.

Few things are needed to make a great photo… And nevertheless it is not easy, for in fact there is a great difficulty behind its apparent simplicity. The ship of Manuel Álvarez Bravo, the water drop on Shoji Ueda’s umbrella, the New England farm house of Paul Strand, the snow-covered crossroad of Izis, the New York subway escalator of Duane Michals, or the cluttered studio of Josef Sudek from 1951.

None of these photos are spectacular, there’s no virtuosity, only a kind of, how should I say, magic evidence! close to the exactitude of Balzac or Mizoguchi, as if it were a product of nature.

All the works of Sudek are like this. He observes himself, his surroundings, his city. He lives through the stations, he breathes while watching. He comprehends the mystery of things and moments.

When a young student asks me “What is photography?”, I reply: “Look at Sudek or at Diane Arbus, there is everything there!” Or nowadays Luis Baylón or Eric Dessert…

One feels tempted to say: Sudek is THE photography! Streets, gardens, windows, objects, wide landscapes, his city, his house. That’s all. It is not about beauty. It is not about modernity.

And not about pleasure, either. I think of Corot’s saying: “It’s not about searching but about waiting.” I also think of Morandi. And the last landscapes of Braque in Varengeville. I do not know the Czech Republic, neither Prague. But with the photos of Sudek I have impressed in my mind the memory of a place where I have never been.

The same thing passes to me with Ueda and Japan. Would it bee too bold to say “it is not worth to go any more”?

Back to photography: to see is an evidence, but the language which translates the vision can be very simple… or full of traps. (For example when the clichés turn into “clichés”, and sorry for the tautology.)

The tramways on a street of Prague: we can hear all the noise surrounding them in this photo of Sudek from 1924. His steamed-up window onto the street expires humidity.

If I already dare to write on a master, I want to say what I think. But I think that every photographer will agree with me: Josef Sudek is THE photography.

And we admire him with mouth wide open, don’t we?

Bernard Plossu: Sobre Sudek

Introducción del catálogo de la muestra Una ventana en Praga, Madrid 2009.

Hacen falta pocas cosas para hacer una gran fotografía… Y sin embargo, no es fácil, pues, en efecto, hay una gran dificultad tras su aparente simplicidad. La barca de Manuel Álvarez Bravo, la gota de agua en el paraguas de Shoji Ueda, la granja de Nueva Inglaterra de Paul Strand, el cruce de camino bajo la nieve de Izis, la salida del metro de Nueva York de Duane Michals o el desordenado estudio de Josef Sudek en 1951.

Ninguna de estas fotografías es espectacular, no son ninguna proeza, simplemente una especie de, cómo decirlo, ¡evidencia mágica! cercana a la exactitud de los sentimientos en Balzac o en Mizoguchi, como si fuera un hecho natural.

Toda la obra de Sudek es así: se observe a sí mismo, mire a su alrededor o a su ciudad. Vive las estaciones, respira viendo. Ahí está, sintiendo el misterio de las cosas y los momentos.

Cuando un estudiante joven me pregunta: «¿Qué es la fotografía?», respondo: «Ved a Sudek y a Diane Arbus, ¡ahí lo tenéis todo!» O, en la actualidad, a Luis Baylón o a Eric Dessert…

Uno siente la tentación de decir: ¡Sudek es LA fotografía! Calles, jardines, ventanas, objetos, paisajes panorámicos, su ciudad, su casa. Es así. No se trata de belleza. No se trata de ser moderno.

Ni de gustar. Pienso en Corot cuando decía: «No se trata de buscar sino de esperar». Pienso también en Morandi. Y en los últimos paisajes de Braque en Varengeville. No conozco la República Checa, ni tampoco Praga. Pero con las fotografías de Sudek tengo impreso en la mente el recuerdo de un lugar al que nunca he ido.

Lo mismo me pasa con Ueda y Japón. Pienso, ¿sería tan osado como para decir «ya no merece la pena ir»?

Retornemos a la fotografía: ver es una evidencia, pero el lenguaje que lleva a traducir la visión puede ser muy simple… y llenarse de trampas. (Por ejemplo, cuando los clichés se vuelven «clichés», y perdón por la reiteración.)

Los tranvías de una calle de Praga: podemos oír todo el ruido que les circunda en esa fotografía de Sudek de 1924. Su húmeda ventana, que da a la calle, respira su humedad.

Al atreverme a escribir este texto sobre un maestro, intento decir lo que pienso. Sin embargo, creo que todos los fotógrafos estarán de acuerdo: Josef Sudek es la fotografía.

Y a nosotros la admiración nos deja boquiabiertos, ¿verdad?

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.