Poetry
Nový Ikaros
Not translated into English
Konstantin Biebl · 1929
Synopsis
A single poem in four cantos, in which, with no narrative thread, childhood in a Bohemian small town, war lived at the front, sea voyages to Java, Ceylon and Sumatra, the women loved and the machines of the present day all intermingle. The images call to one another by association, and the speaker, a new Icarus, dreams of living without limit while looking at his life as a glance cast into the dark and the void.
Context
The poem was sent in anonymously to the competition that the Aventinum publishing house had opened for its tenth anniversary; it won first prize and appeared the same day in two editions of the same format, a deluxe one limited to one hundred signed copies and an ordinary one, both laid out by František Muzika, then the house's art director. It continues the collection that the journeys of 1926 and 1927 had inspired in its author.
Who it is for
A single poem in four cantos, about sixty pages, written by association of images. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize before it was even published; the high point of its author's interwar work, on the borderline between Poetism and Surrealism.