Tag Archives: Surrealism
The Haunted Modernism of Jindřich Štyrský’s “Dreamverse,” Translated from Czech by Jed Slast
By Sean Lambert Reading Jindřich Štyrský’s dream journal highlights what an understudied genre of literature the dream journal is. Perhaps if there were a larger body of famous examples (Jack Kerouac’s Book of Dreams and William Burroughs’ My Education are desperate for company), it would be clearer how uniquely compelling, evocative and revealing is Štyrský’s […]
Magic Formula: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Albina and the Dog-Men, Translated by Alfred MacAdam
Reviewed by Jenny Buckland Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest novel Albina and the Dog-Men is a sensual, surreal romp through the magical landscapes of Peru and the author’s native Chile. Employing a motley cast of absurd, technicolor and often overtly symbolic characters, Jodorowsky administers an exuberant dose of allegorical organized chaos in order to reveal truths about […]
Bleak Fairy Tales: Gisèle Prassinos’s Surrealist Texts, Translated by Ellen Nations
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor Born in 1920 and discovered at just fourteen by André Breton, Gisèle Prassinos became the darling of the surrealists. Regarded as a sort of living incarnation of the surrealist ideal of the child-woman, a pure, uncorrupted talent, she had been writing ecstatic literature from her unconscious with no knowledge of the […]
Rhapsody in Red: Boris Vian’s Red Grass, Translated by Paul Knobloch
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien Though the French film adaptation of Boris Vian’s novel L’Écume des jours has yet to be scheduled for release in the US, it seems already to have generated a buzz capable of reviving American interest in this regrettably overlooked, but wildly inventive, author. Fortunately, TamTam Books has just released another novel […]
Translating Music: Foam of the Daze by Boris Vian, Translated by Brian Harper
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor In the Harvard Crimson’s 1969 review of Mood Indigo, John Sturrock’s translation of Boris Vian’s L’Écume des jours, the author provides this disheartening forecast: “It is unlikely that Vian’s novels will become particularly popular in this country: they’re very French, and they suffer in translation. But Mood Indigo has a […]
Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of José María Hinojosa, translated by Mark Statman
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor Continuing on the theme of my last post, it is my pleasure to introduce a major literary recuperation via translation of another poet lost to the Spanish Civil War: José María Hinojosa. A contemporary of Federico García Lorca and other poets of the famed Generation of ’27, Hinojosa aligned himself […]