Mani nella salsa

View of Istanbul from the window of Orhan Pamuk (El País)

In this year Turkey is the special guest of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and on this occasion Babelia, the literary supplement of El País has asked Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk to present his own Turkish library.

Con poco más de veinte años no compraba los libros como un coleccionista, sino como alguien inquieto que quisiera comprender lo antes posible, leyéndolo todo, el sentido del mundo: el motivo de la casa en los cuentos populares de Gümüshane; la trastienda de la rebelión de Ethem el circasiano contra Atatürk; un listado de asesinatos políticos en la época constitucional; la historia de la cacatúa de Abdülhamit, comprada por el embajador en Londres por encargo del sultán y enviada desde Inglaterra a Turquía; ejemplos de cartas de amor para tímidos; la historia de la introducción de las tejas de Marsella en Turquía; las memorías políticas del médico que fundó el primer hospital para tuberculosos; una Historia del Arte Occidental de ciento cincuenta páginas escrita en los años treinta; los apuntes de clase del comisario que enseñaba a los estudiantes de la escuela de policía las maneras de combatir a los pequeños delincuentes callejeros como carteristas, timadores y descuideros; los seis tomos de memorias de un antiguo presidente de la república, llenos de documentos; la influencia en la pequeña empresa moderna de la ética de los gremios otomanos; la historia, los secretos y la genealogía de los jeques de la cofradía de los cerrahi; las memorias del París de los años treinta de un pintor olvidado por todos; las intrigas de los comerciantes para elevar el preciod de las avellanas; las quinientas páginas de duras críticas de un movimiento marxista turco prosoviético a otro movimiento prochino y proalbanés; el cambio de la ciudad de Eregli tras la apertura de las fábricas de hierro y acero; el libro para niños titulado Cien turcos famosos, la historia del incendio de Aksaray; una selección de columnas de entreguerras de un periodista totalmente olvidado hacía treinta años; la historia bimilenaria comprimida en doscientas páginas de una pequeña ciudad de la Anatolia Central que no era capaz de localizar en el mapa de un primer vistazo; la afirmación de un maestro jubilado que pretendía, a pesar de no saber inglés, haber resuelto el misterio de quién era el asesino de Kennedy sólo leyendo la prensa turca.

Pamuk offers an unexpected explication for this eclectic interest. Although he was born in an upper middle class family, and both his father and grandfather had a considerable library – about which he writes with great affection in his Istanbul –, but this library, as he says, was rather a “museum” to him. In fact, in 1928 the Arabic alphabet was officially replaced with the Latin one, and for the generations educated after this date the complete previous literary production has become unaccessible. Even if the texts of the earlier authors were being gradually published in Romanized version, but in the lack of continuity the elevated and sophisticated language of the Ottoman literature had also become obsolete, so much that – at least in the case of more ancient authors – even a modern Turkish “translation” had to be added to the Romanized transcription of the original Osmanli text. The established canon has thus lost its validity, and Pamuk, just like his contemporaries, had to create a new one for himself out of whatever he found. Hence the impatience, the neglect of the hierarchies of genres, the joy of discovery and the liberty of heterogenity.

It is not accidental that the personal canon of Pamuk includes several authors from Istanbul who around and after the turn of the century produced a similarly “gathering” oeuvre, from Reşat Ekrem Koçu, the author of the Istanbul Encyclopedia which was published in monthly instalments and remained unfinished, to the late 19th-century journalist Ahmet Rasim, who in his “letters”

a lo largo de medio siglo, escribió sin parar sobre todo lo que se refiriera a Estambul: de los diversos tipos de borrachos a los vendedores ambulantes de los suburbios; de los dueños de los colmados a los malabaristas callejeros; de los músicos a los pordioseros; de la belleza de los barrios del Bósforo a las tabernas; de las noticias cotidianas a las de la Bolas; de los parques, plazas y lugares de diversión a los mercados semanales; de las bellezas individuales de cada estación del año a las muchedumbres; de los juegos con bolas de nieve y trineos a la historia de la prensa; de los cotilleos a los menús de los restaurantes. (Orhan Pamuk: Estambul)

Sébah and Joaillier, photographers of the sultan: Café in Istanbul, end of the 19th century

Something similar to this is reported by Arthur Rimbaud in The alchemy of the word about the canon losing its force and about the elevation of the appreciation of the genres hitherto confined to the lowest levels of hierarchy:

I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable. What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the nave rhythms of country rimes. (Translation by Paul Schmidt)

And something similar comes to my memory as well if I recall how in my teenager age the various canons of the books at home, of the school readings and of the official book publishing of the last years of Communism became empty for me – that is, how I gradually lost my interest in what “one must read” –, and how I began to track down second-hand book shops, flea markets, book sellouts, Transylvanian, Slovakian and foreign language bookshops and then ancient libraries, in order to fish out of the debris and disorder, or at least of orders unknown to me, works that were important only to me, that I discovered for myself.

All that is over. Today, I know how to celebrate beauty. – finishes Rimbaud his relation. But he is only half right. Of course one gradually composes his own canon and also understands the values or at least the points of view of the other canons as well. But the joy and freedom of treasure-hunting, of exploring the obscurity, of discovering and personalizing the small and the forgotten will never be over if one has once felt it.

Orhan Pamuk: Estambul, cover photo of the Spanish edition

The past has begun

The borders of our world are not in the distance, on the horizon or in the depths: they glimmer at the immedite vicinity, at the obscure edges of our intimate spaces. Somebody on a morning finds a wriggling sea star on the damp carpet of the living room, or a statuette of a god with an obstinate look in the eye, bird- and turtle-shaped mechanisms that sometimes hum and a red lamp is gleaming on the place of their eyes, or a book printed with unknown letters that include irised illustrations representing jungle temples and tigers. These things arrived to our shores only by mistakes, and then we enwrap them with some kind of substitutive meanings originating in our own experiences, on the basis of false similarities. We are guarded by the protective arm of the careful and perfidious god of the grammar that conceals from us the face of the monsters. (Michal Ajvaz: Druhé město (The other town), Brno 2005)

As the objects of the obscure, irrational and surreal “other town” hiding behind the usual and everyday Prague which sometimes penetrate by chance into our world and thus open the eyes of Michal Ajvaz to the existence of that one, are not what they appear to be, the sand container in Petřín is in the reality the lighting-window of the dome of an underground pagan cathedral, and the last door of the basement toilet of the Slavia café opens on an immense jungle cut across by a powerful river, in which the members of a tiger-adoring sect are massacring their own heretics; so the Hungarian crown standing in front of the railway station of Dunakeszi and slowly dribbling on the four Stonehenge dolmens supporting it like the clocks of Dalí, thus dissolving and invalidating the time, is not identical with the Hungarian crown that we have seen in the previous two posts, although it bears a striking resemblance to it. For the one we have seen in Iran and Austria, is the insignia of the Hungarian kings since the 12th century which, with its components coming from different countries, with the beautiful enamel images from 11th-century Limoges and 12th-century Byzantium, with the portrait of the Byzantine emperor Michael Dukas inserted on the place of a former icon of the Virgin Mary, with the cross standing obliquely but proudly on its top, and with its history full of vicissitudes is a true portrait of the thousand years old Hungarian statehood. The crown modeled in Dunakeszi, however, is a several thousand or ten thousands year old jewel of Hun or Sumerian origin – anyway, the both are the same –, a magic model of the cosmos, an energy center, sum of an infinite knowledge coming from outside the Earth or from the collective unconscious of mankind, the tabernacle of the religion of the highest order that has ever existed or that can be conceived. At least this is what the members of this esoteric Hungarian sect, unfortunately growing in number, preach of it.


The priests and believers of this religion are among us, like the night high priest of the faith of Dargúz in Ajvaz’s novel who in the daytime is the waiter of the restaurant of Pohořelec. They are stubborn Calvinists holding in contempt all kind of Popist idolatry, but uttering with the utmost respect the name of the Holy Crown. Catholics taking Communion every day, but propagating the Gospel of the Holy Crown every week in the Tuesday prayer meeting with the devote support of the parish priest. Department leaders of the Hungarian National Library who open the halls of the library to the mission of this cult. Architects – a most important order of knighthood of this religion – of whom you hope statically reliable houses and you receive the pattern design of the lines of force of the Holy Crown embracing the universe. Goldsmiths, sculptors and applied artists who on the one hand guarantee with their name for the authenticity of the myth of origin of this cult object, and on the other hand fill with works of art inspired by the myth the cultural centers, public squares, institutions and publications. Their presence is more perceptible in the countryside where I live than in the city where – as Ajvaz puts – the arm of the careful and perfidious god of the grammar conceals from us their network and their communities, on whose regular gatherings the wandering prophets of this faith József Molnár V., Gábor Papp, Lajos Szántai and their disciples steadily provide with spiritual food the believers of this mistery religion.


The crown in Dunakeszi refers to this still hiding world not only with its typical stylistic marks – its stiff, idol-like elaboration, its rustic dolmens and the burial hill heaped up under them –, but also with the fact that it visualizes an important article of faith of this cult: that the angle of inclination of the cross on the top of the crown is exactly identical with the angle of obliquity of the axis of the Earth. The sculptor, in order to emphasize this dogma, slipped the crown on the dolmens so that now everything is oblique on it, except for the only really oblique element, the cross, which thus stands erect perfectly vertically towards the sky, parallel with the axis of the Earth, looking exactly on the North Star like a small magic antenna.

.....

In order to make realistic the implausible hunch on your back, you must simply bend the back of the world on the model of your hunch. Tamás Cseh - Géza Bereményi: Song about the Wily William Shakespeare

Still hiding world, I say. Because if the book of Michal Ajvaz mapped how an “other world” imperceptibly fills in the cavities of the usual everyday reality, another Czech author, Karel Čapek has described in his War with the salamanders what happens when the situation becomes unstable, and that other, dark and surreal world breaks with a great force into ours.


May God save us of such eventuality.

Tale to size

write you the tale about the bear and the crown. let there be also the padishah of Madjaristan.

comment by Anna to the previous post (in the Hungarian version of the blog)

Once upon a time there was a bear living in the middle of a big round forest. The crowns of the high trees of the forest leaned against each other like the vault of a church. Under them there was an eternal, pleasant half-light reigning, no rain poured and no wind raged ever. The bear loved the forest very much, he loved to go around in it and to have talks with the other animals about the things of the forest. And he thought it would be like this in all his life.

Illustrations of Gennadiy Pavlishin to the Tales of the river Amur

On a day, however, the bear somehow got to the edge of the forest, of which he had known only from hearsay before. He came out from between the trees, and caught sight of the blue sky with the sun shining on it brilliantly. Unknown flowers were blooming on the meadow and deers were grazing on it, whom the bear had never seen before – their huge antlers were too large for the thick forest. “My God, how beautiful is the world outside the forest!” – the bear thought in astonishment. From that time on he went day by day to the edge of the forest to have a look at that wonderful view, until on a day he said: “I go and see what else is there in the world over the meadow.” And he left the forest without looking back any more.

Olga Belskaya: The bear who wanted to fly

Photis Ionatos: Ithaca, poem by Kavafis. From the CD “Ithaque”

Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης: Ιθάκη Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη, να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι, τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις, αν μεν' η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις, αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου, αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου. Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος. Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωϊά να είναι που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους, να σταματήσεις σ' εμπορεία Φοινικικά, και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν' αποκτήσεις, σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ' έβενους, και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής, όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά, σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας, να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ' τους σπουδασμένους. Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη. Το φθάσιμον εκεί ειν' ο προορισμός σου. Αλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξείδι διόλου. Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει και γέρος πια ν' αράξεις στο νησί, πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στο δρόμο, μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη. Η Ιθάκη σ'έδωσε τ' ωραίο ταξείδι. Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο. Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια. Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δε σε γέλασε. Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα, ήδη θα το κατάλαβες οι Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.

....

Konstantinos P. Kavafis: Ithaca As you set out for Ithaca hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them: you' ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind - as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaca always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaca to make you rich. Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

During his long journey he met many strange creatures,





saw and heard a lot of strange things,


learned a lot,


made acquaintance with the forgotten streets and backyards of the cities,


some times he got in trouble, but he always managed to fight out of it.


Finally on a day he happened to get to the land of the padishah of Madjaristan.


The padishah of Madjaristan, the terrible tyrant was just struggling with problems of succession out of his own fault.


He thus announced that his beautiful daughter came to an age to marry and was waiting for suitors. And the suitors started to arrive from the direction of the four winds, all kinds of princes and counts and selected Gypsy lads. The princess, however, did not want any of them, because long time before she had seen in a dream that none else but a flying bear would be her choice, arriving to her from a faraway land.

Cheburashka from the modern lubok series by Andrej Kuznetsov

She was sitting day and night on the highest point of the castle and watching whether there is a bear nearing who looks like a small black cloud.



Savina Yannatou and the Primavera en Salonico: Ya salió de la mar la galana (The lady has already come out of the sea), a Sephardic song from Thessaloniki, from the CD “Primavera en Salonico” (Spring in Saloniki)

Muchachicha está en el baño vestida de colorado. Échate a la mar. Échate a la mar y alcanza – échate a la mar. A la mar yo bien me echava, si la suegra licencia me dava. Échate a la mar. Échate a la mar y alcanza – échate a la mar. Ya salió de la mar la galana con un vestido al y blanco – ya salió de la mar. Entre la mar y el río mos creció un árbol de bembrillo – ya salió de la mar. La novia ya salió del baño, el novio ya la está esperando – ya salió de la mar. Entre la mar y la arena mos creció un árbol de almendra – ya salió de la mar.

................

The girl is in the bath vested in red. Swim into the sea. Swim into the sea and come back – swim into the sea. I would happily swim into the sea if my mother-in-law gave permission. Swim into the sea. Swim into the sea and come back – swim into the sea. The lady has already come out of the sea in a red and white vest – she has come out of the sea. Between the sea and the river a tree of quince has grown – she has come out of the sea. The bride has already come out of the bath, the bridegroom is waiting for her – she has come out of the sea. Between the sea and the sand an almond tree has grown – she has come out of the sea.

As soon as she caught sight of him, she immediately recognized him: no doubt, this was the bear she had seen in her dream. She has immediately led him to her father who gave them his blessing together with his crown and half of his kingdom.


And they threw a big wedding party, made merry, the dishes and drinks covered all place from Hencida to as far as Bonchida, and it would have spread even further, but the road over the mountain from Bonchida to Szék was not yet made and even the musicians from Szék had to come to the wedding over Szamosújvár. I was also there, dancing till morning, eating and drinking, seeing and hearing everything, just like I have told it now to you.

Let them live happily until they die and a thousand times more.

The Bear King

However, the Hungarian crown is known not only to Iranians since their childhood, but also to the inhabitants of such far away, exotic and improbable countries like Austria.

I have seen this book cover in the shopwindow of my favorite bookshop in Vienna, the Morawa in the Wollzeile street, and although I would have entered anyway, now I was immediately looking for this book, an anthology of 101 folk tales by the Grimm brothers with 150 exquisite illustrations by Nikolaus Heidelbach.


Strangely, in the book itself I have not found this bear from the cover with the Hungarian crown in its mouth. And what is more, not even a folk tale to which it could have belonged.

After a serious consideration I came to the conclusion that this picture on the cover is a tale in itself, a charming and absurd extra tale, free from any moral lesson, for adults.

Treasures

I bought this book in Tabriz, just one corner from that church at the bazaar which was already described by Marco Polo. We were accompanied to the church by an unknown old-fashioned Azeri gentleman with little laughing wrinkles in the corner of his eye, whom we approached for directions on the street. The church was closed so that we could not enter, but a very kind elder Azeri woman offered us exquisite Tabriz chocolate in the courtyard. Tabriz is the capital of chocolate as we experienced it in the neighboring confectionery where, while we were having a chat with the pastry-cook, two beautiful local girls praised me for my beard. I don’t know whether they did so because I wore beard like good Muslims, or, on the contrary, because I had cut it short unlike they.

Treasures in the bazaar of Tabriz

And as if so many treasures found were not enough for a morning, in the bookshop – where we had a long conversation with the extremely intelligent young shopkeeper – I found just this volume entitled Gench-hâ, that is “Treasures” of the series Bâstân-shenâsi (Science of antiquity), introducing with several pictures and well-written concise texts to schoolboys the most remarkable treasures of the world, from those of the Pharaons, of the Scythians and of Troy through those of the pirates, of the Great Armada and of the Titanic to the Aztec golden statues and the treasures robbed by the German army. But Tabriz, with the characteristic generosity of Iranian hosts, managed to add in this volume even to all the treasures of the world two extra treasures that only a Hungarian guest can properly appreciate.

The first one is the title of the book itself. If we omit the -hâ sign of the plural, we get the word gench, which is identical in meaning and similar in sound to Hungarian kincs (pronounced kinch), and even more to its Medieval form kench.

kincs 1213/1550: ? „Iudice Paulo curiali cõite de Bichor, pristaldo Boncy, Cunsudu portato ferro cum solui deberet”, sz. szn. (VárReg. 153.); 1291-4: ? Kuncheý sz. hn. (MNy. 22: 222); 1301: Kynchus sz. hn. (Györfy 1: 731); 1358-9: Kenches sz. hn. (MNy. 16: 38); 1372 u./1448 k.: „kyt en aloytok nagÿ kencznek holot semmÿ” (JókK. 130). J: 1. 1213/1550: ? ’(felhalmozott) anyagi érték, ingó vagyontárgy, értékes, becses valami vagy valaki; Schatz’ (l. fent), 1372 u./1448 k.: ’ua.’ (l. fent); 2. 1416 u./1466: ’kincstár; Schatzkammer’ (MünchK. 40). – Sz: ~es 1301: hn. (l. fent); 1495 e. kinLos hazaba (GuaryK. 111) | ~ez 1416 u./1450 k.: kenLeznèc gr. ’kincset gyűjt, szerez’ (BécsiK. 219). —— Ismeretlen eredetű. 2. jelentésében a lat. thesaurus ’kincs; kincstár’ tükörszava. – Iráni és török származtatása nem fogadható el, a kéj ~ kény szóval való egybekapcsolása is téves. —— CzF.; Vámbéry: NyK. 8: 188; Munkácsi: NyK. 17: 97, 28: 267, 29: 20, AkÉrt. 5: 133, KSz. 1: 242, ÁKE. 412; Miklosich: TENachtr. 1: 74; Asbóth: NyK. 34: 106; Tagányi: MNy. 20: 138; Sköld: UngJb. 5: 435; Melich: AkNyÉrt. 25/4: 35; Fokos: Balassa-Eml. 56; Rásonyi Nagy: UngJb. 15: 551; Horger: MNy. 33: 247, 36: 322; SzófSz.; Kardos: MNyTK. 82. sz. 55. – Vö. köz~.

When checking the roots of the Hungarian word in the A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára (Historical-etymological dictionary of the Hungarian language, 1977), there we read: Of unknown origin, and somewhat later: Its Iranian and Turkish etymology is unacceptable. But this affirmation itself seems to be unacceptable, as almost all the great names in the following bibliography stand up for the Iranian and/or Turkish etymology of the word. The names of the Western Hungarian village Gencsapáti and the Eastern Hungarian village Gencs (this latter now in Romania) are both officially said to come from the Iranian/Old Turkish word ‘genj’ = ‘treasure’, and the authoritative Ókori lexikon (Lexicon of Ancient Scholarship) also writes about the name of the Iranian city of Gaza, where the treasure of the Persian kings used to be conserved: “it comes from Sanskrit gandsha, that is treasure, like New Persian gendsh, which gave origin to Old Hungarian gench, treasure.” (This Iranian word is also the root of the Hebrew genizah, of the attic of the synagogue where the manuscripts including the name of God are being accumulated in the course of the centuries, and Dávid Kaufmann could say a lot about what a great treasure this is.) Such bias is a sad, but characteristic feature of this great dictionary of Hungarian etymology, compiled by “hardcore” Finno-Ugrist academicians who will do anything but recognize the Turkish or Iranian roots of “a word of unknown origin”. This has been eloquently and bitterly set forth by Hasan Eren, head of the department of Hungarology at the University of Ankara, honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and redactor of the great Turkish dictionary of etymology, in his recension written about the Hungarian dictionary.

But another, much bigger surprise is the other extra treasure to which the book dedicates a special place on the two pages written about the treasures dragged off by the Nazis from the occupied countries.


“The crown of Hungary (Tâdj-e Madjâristân). Among the treasures found in the repository of Merkers, there was also the ancient crown of one of the Hungarian kings, Saint Stephen (Santestefan pâdishâh-e Madjâristân) who died in 1031. Before it got to the hands of the Nazis (nâzi-hâ), several kings of Hungary wore it on their heads.”

True, Saint Stephen died in 1038, but let the first stone be cast on the author by him who can tell the year of the death of King Dareios or Shah Great Abbas with the accuracy of at least one century. This little illustrated description appeared in a popular series, published in a high number of copies in Iran, where everyone we met could tell what the capital of Hungary was. Raise your hand if you have already heard about the Peacock Throne which is of the same importance for Persians, or if you know that the diamond called in Persian Koh-i-Nur, ‘the Mountain of Light’ – the largest one in the world at its times – adorned the crown of Persian rulers before it fell in 1877 into the hands of another occupying army, and from there into that “repository” of London where it has been preserved till our days, the Buckingham Palace.

Two poems by Miroslav Holub

Composition by Aleš Veselý (1935-) in the Egon Schiele Art Center of Český Krumlov

Napoleon Děti, kdy se narodil Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Před tisíci lety, říkají děti. Před sto lety, říkají děti. Loni, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. Děti, co udělal Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Vyhrál válku, říkají děti. Prohrál válku, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. U nás měl řezník psa, říká František, jmenoval se Napoleon. Řezník ho bil a pes umřel hlady před rokem. A všem dětem je ted líto Napoleona.	Napoleon Children, when was Napoleon Bonaparte born, asks the teacher. Thousand years ago, the children say. Hundred years ago, the children say. Last year, the children say. Nobody knows. Children, what did Napoleon Bonaparte do, asks the teacher. He won a battle, the children say. He lost a battle, the children say. Nobody knows. At us the butcher had a dog František says, he was called Napoleon. The butcher used to beat him, and the dog died of hunger last year. And now all the children feel sorry for Napoleon.
(1960)
Jdi a otevři dveře Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba je tam venku Strom nebo les, Nebo zahrada, Nebo magické město. Jdi a otevři dveře. I kdyby tam byla jen tikající tma, i kdyby tam bylo jen duté vanutí i kdyby tam nic nebylo, jdi a otevři dveře. Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba tam pes zaškrabe. Třeba je tam tvář, Nebo oko, Nebo obraz obrazu. Jdi a otevři dveře, Když je tam mlha, Spadne. Aspoň Průvan Bude.	Go and open the door Go and open the door. Perhaps outside there is a tree or a forest or a garden or an enchanted city. Go and open the door. If there was only the ticking darkness if there was only the empty wind or if there was absolutely nothing, go and open the door. Go and open the door. Perhaps a dog is scraping there. Perhaps a face is there, or an eye, or the image of an image. Go and open the door. If there is mist there it will clear away. If nothing else, a draught of air there will be.
(1962)

It is already ten years that Miroslav Holub has died. He was born in 1923, almost at the same time as my father. “By profession an immunologist, by vocation a poet”, as Kapuściński would say. From 1956 a founding member of the avantgarde circle and review Květen (May). I first met his enchanting poems at the beginning of the 90s in the little book and tea shop near to the Hussite Bethlehem Chapel of Prague, where they sold avantgarde publications in printed, stenciled and handwritten brochures as well as cheap Indian silk scarves and also a living parrot. Holub would have remained satisfied if he saw it. Perhaps he saw it indeed. In any case, he lived to see that his admirers in the observatory of České Budějovice officially gave his name to the asteroid no. 7496. discovered in 1997.

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.]

Dos poemas de Miroslav Holub

Composición de Aleš Veselý (1935-) en el Centro de Arte Egon Schiele de Český Krumlov

Napoleon Děti, kdy se narodil Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Před tisíci lety, říkají děti. Před sto lety, říkají děti. Loni, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. Děti, co udělal Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Vyhrál válku, říkají děti. Prohrál válku, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. U nás měl řezník psa, říká František, jmenoval se Napoleon. Řezník ho bil a pes umřel hlady před rokem. A všem dětem je ted líto Napoleona.	Napoleon Chicos, cuándo nació Napoleón Bonaparte, pregunta el maestro. Hace mil años, dicen los chicos. Hace cien años, dicen los chicos. El año pasado, dicen los chicos. Nadie lo sabe. Chicos, qué hizo Napoleón Bonaparte, pregunta el maestro. Ganó una batalla, dicen los chicos. Perdió una batalla, dicen los chicos. Nadie lo sabe. El carnicero tenía un perro dice František, se llamaba Napoleón. El carnicero le pegaba y el perro murió de hambre el año pasado. Y ahora todos los chicos sienten lástima por Napoleón.
(1960)
Jdi a otevři dveře Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba je tam venku Strom nebo les, Nebo zahrada, Nebo magické město. Jdi a otevři dveře. I kdyby tam byla jen tikající tma, i kdyby tam bylo jen duté vanutí i kdyby tam nic nebylo, jdi a otevři dveře. Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba tam pes zaškrabe. Třeba je tam tvář, Nebo oko, Nebo obraz obrazu. Jdi a otevři dveře, Když je tam mlha, Spadne. Aspoň Průvan Bude.	Go and open the door Ve y abre la puerta. Quizá afuera haya un árbol o un bosque o un jardín o una ciudad encantada. Ve y abre la puerta. Si solo hubiera el tic-tac de la oscuridad si solo hubiera el viento vacío o si no hubiera absolutamente nada, ve y abre la puerta. Ve y abre la puerta. Quizá un perro esté rascando. Quizá haya un rostro, o un ojo, o la imagen de una imagen. Ve y abre la puerta. Si hubiera niebla, ya escampará. Al menos habrá un proyecto.
(1962)

Hace diez años que murió Miroslav Holub. Nació en 1923, casi a la vez que mi padre. «De profesión inmunólogo, de vocación poeta», diría de él Kapuściński. Desde 1956, miembro fundador del círculo de vanguardia y la revista Květen (Mayo). Me encontré por primera vez con sus delicados poemas a principios de los 90 en la pequeña librería y casa de té próxima a la Capilla Husita de Belén, en Praga, donde se mezclaban textos vanguardistas impresos, ciclostilados y manuscritos, con pañuelos baratos de seda india y un loro chillón. Holub se habría alegrado mucho de ver algo así. De hecho, quizá lo vio. Sí que vio, en todo caso, cómo sus lectores del observatorio de České Budějovice daban oficialmente su nombre al asteroide nº 7496 descubierto en 1997.