Dreamverse

by Jindřich Štyrský, Karel Teige (Introduction), Jed Slast (Translator)

It would be futile to look for any concessions to what’s in vogue or to outside pressures in Štyrský’s work. The occupation and war have not diverted him from his path, which is at one with the path of revolution.
— Benjamin Péret

Published posthumously in 1970 as Dreams, Štyrský’s dream journal spanning the interwar years comprises prose, sketches, collages, and paintings. The present volume includes the complete series of texts and full-color and halftone images based on Štyrský's layout for its publication in the 1940s, his sole volume of poetry (also published posthumously), as well as a selection of his most important essays, articles, manifestos, and assorted other texts. This edition presents in English for the first time the broad range of Štyrský's contribution to the interwar avant-garde and Surrealism.

Genres: Art

237 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are three sections to this book:

First, Dreams and art. Štyrský relates his dreams and provides sketches of things he saw in them, and sometimes more finished works that grew out of those sketches. Also so photos and illustrations that he later realized influenced the dream images (eg, Victor Hugo drawing from a book he read, photo of his parents wedding, etc). Recurring themes: omnipresent eyes, tiny alabaster hands, women embedded in ice or walls.

Second, Poetry. Unsurprisingly, it is also imagistic and non-narrative.
I'm not a huge fan, but obviously this is a matter of taste.

"Only Harps Now Love Silence"

A toad sleeping on a clock
A clock showing toad time

Everything happens under turbid water
Where maidens sit reading
Under green water
Luckily
Coats of their own skin
Made whenever we wish

Expensive skin

But when the eye of God looks on us toads
I’ll take delight
In we toads clad in the fur of divine mice
Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven

Third, Prose.
There are some discussions of Artificialism.
Artificialism has an inverse perspective. Leaving reality alone, it strives for a maximum of imagination. By not manipulating reality it can continue to delight in it...
Artificialism identifies the painter with the poet. It repudiates painting merely as a play of form and eye candy (nonfigurative art). It repudiates figurative historicism in painting (Surrealism). Artificialism has an abstract awareness of reality...
Then there is a bunch of opinions on other artists and art approaches, which I would characterize as deliberately provocative, if not outright shit-stirring.

Kind of ironically, there is an admiring introduction by the Czech avant garde artist Karel Teige, who is one of the peers Štyrský talks shit about extensively. Maybe they were friends and it was an in-joke?

I really enjoyed the first section, the others not so much, but this is the sort of collection where I generally feel glad it exists and appreciative of the effort of the editor and translator, and he quality production by Twisted Spoon Press.

painting is the poetry of sight.

[Tonymess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never really contemplated the thought that another’s dreams could pervade my own. Literature is overloaded with dream references, thinly veiled references to an unconscious mind, or a sub-plot or even prophecy. However, Jindřich Štyrský’s ‘Dreamverse’, a collection of poems, prose, sketches, collages and paintings does not use the “dream” as a literary device, it is the core subject matter.

The original ‘Dreams’, published posthumously in 1970, was a dream journal spanning the interwar period, and this new release from Twisted Spoon Press, includes Jindřich Štyrský’s 1940’s original layout of full colour and half tone images, and texts, and also includes his sole volume of published poetry and twenty-three essays, articles, speeches and manifestos. It is the dream journal and the poems that insert themselves into your own mind, only to come resurfacing as you attempt to sleep. The essays and articles giving further context to his practice and production and stirring a pot or two along the way.

As always with Twisted Spoon Press publications, this is a beautifully presented book, the images reproduced alongside the dream prose is more akin to an art book than a literary work.

The dreams so vividly recalled that they pervaded my own sleep, and I can assure you that these are not idyllic dreams of stunning landscapes or love, there are images of decapitations, deformities, haunted houses, tattooed infants, tiny hands;

Dream of the Deserted House
(SUMMER 1940)

I am standing in front of an old derelict house built of rough stone, unplastered.
The windows and door are boarded up. I walk around it to see if there might be a way in. When I’ve walked around three sides, I notice on the eastern side, where the house abuts a garden, female legs protruding from the wall. As if a woman has been immured here. A stocking and a show cover one leg, and the other has been picked clean to the bone. I want to get into the house. Bears. I rip one of the boards from a window and break into the house. Then I barricade the window and am satisfied I’m safe. I lie down on a bed and sleep. – – A particular noise jolts me from the dream – – – maybe it was my regular breathing. Light enters the room, and in a corner above me, above the bed, are giant cobwebs, dense, as if hundreds of years old, but instead of spiders there are two copulating frogs – – –breathing deeply – – –

(p107)

The poems are complex, haunting and disturbing, reflecting the surrealist, cubist, and/or artificialist views of Jindřich Štyrský, the collection presenting twenty-four poems, again the paradoxes continue, maidens wearing coats made from their own skin, swine, elephants, tombs and cemeteries;

For my full review go to https://messybooker.wordpress.com/201...

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is why I'll read anything that Twisted Spoon publishes. You can see the care they took in this collection of fragments to attach one to the other, and reconstruct the thread of thought in dream, sketch, image, journaling, poetry, and manifesto -- to gather and lovingly present the contributions of a beloved avant garde Czech artist.

I was not at all familiar with Styrsky's works or the thinking of the artificialist strain of modern art when I picked up this book. But the experience and process of artistic inspiration and investigation this text collects is so well integrated, I read it cover to cover, and will probably return to it, if for no other reason than to gather inspiration in the private practice of creation.