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CHAPTER FIVE The Bed in the Background: The Erotics of Chance in the Discourses of Czech Surrealism The Czech branch of surrealism, and the surrealist movement as a whole for that matter, may be said to be preoccupied with the erotic and the thanatic within the condition of life. In point of fact, there are those who have (over)determined surrealism within the parameters of eroticism only and seen the core of the movement, as dependent as it was on Freud, as tilting vertiginously on the nexus provided by the volatile relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis: the class pathologies of society and the sexual pathologies of the same. Breton's surmise of surrealism in 1959 alludes to the central power of eros: "If, nowadays, nature (in reference to the outside world) in art has ceased to be accepted in its own right, and indeed has been finally repudiated by some, a privileged place still survives , namely a theatre of incitements and prohibitions in which the most fundamental matters of life are played out. This area in which surrealism from its origins to this day has never failed to invade is eroticism.. .."1 It is what is seen as eroticism's liberating potential derived from its authenticity , chthonic real, and untameability that is most valued by the avantgarde in the 1930s. Breton continues, making fully evident that eroticism stands apart from all other provocations precisely because it is elemental, essential, and, ultimately, it participates in an absolute beyond rational constraints: "The fact is that it is in eroticism-and doubtless eroticism alone-that the organic bond, increasingly lacking in art today, has to be established between showman and spectator by means of perturbation."l The erotic charge, cathexis, jouissance, whatever it may be called at any given moment, takes up the challenge of arbitrary social norms and psycho-sexual restrictions. The journal edited by JindRch Styrsky, Eroticlai revue (193G-33), gathered erotica from all over the globe and throughout human history and showcased alongside these the erotica produced by the Czech surrealists themselves. Bohuslav Brouk wrote extensively on Freud's theories of sexuality and his work was read widely. The bestsellers of the day included a Czech translation of the Marquis de Sade's Justine (Prague, 1932) accompanied by Toyen's "shocking" illustrations and translations of D. H. Lawrence's novels of sensual hopelessness. Toyen illustrated many editions that could be considered erotic, lending 1 Breton, Dictionary of Surrealism, 67-68. 1 Ibid., 68. 136 THE WILL TO CHANCE her hand to a translation of the Song of Songs (Pisen pisnf), a translation into Czech of the titillating "confessional" Die Lebensgeschichte einer wienerischen Dirne von ihr selbst erziihIt (The Life Story of a Viennese Prostitute as Told by Herself, 1930) by one Josephine Mutzenbacher (alias of Felix Salten), and of Goethe's shockingly candid Tagebuch.3 We oughtn't forget that literary erotica was well represented also by the Czech avant-garde. Nezval's poetry in the 19305 evinced frank discussions of sensuality and sexuality, sometimes even producing precious verse such as these lines from the poem "Torzo," translated by Srp: "What about this prick / this silly appendage with a face like a general."4 Teige's and Styrskys views on marriage were magisterial, calling it "that canonized form of prostitution."S But all this production of the erotic belies a partnership between the values of the bourgeoisie so publicly detested by the avant-garde and the bourgeoisie itself. The fact that the shocking work of Toyen, StyrskY, and others could be consumed and then simultaneously censured by the very class whose values they proposed to undermine makes for one of the more robust problems in the study of the avant-garde and its ideologies. This intimate connection between the "bourgeoisie" and the "radicalleft" may have prompted Walter Benjamin to compose the elusive and beautiful essay "Traumkitsch: Gloss on Surrealism" where we find the banner for our inquiry. Benjamin grasps the very core of the illusion of surrealism and yet can still revel in its (profane) beauty. The Surrealists ... are less on the trail of the psyche than on the track of things. They seek the totemic tree of objects within the thicket of primal history. The very last, the topmost face on the totem pole, is that of kitsch. It is the last mask of the banal, the one with which we adorn ourselves, in dream and conversation, so as to take in the energies of an outlived world of...

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