Most of the City
To Czechoslovakia we have gone and now we read the haunting and touching vignettes of Pavel Brycz's I, City. Brycz's city is Most, Czechoslovakia, the city that narrates this homage itself, to what it is and once was. There is a definite history that frames the context of this novel in fragments; the history of the Northern Czech Bohemian city of Most is a city destroyed and the success of its rebirth is inconclusive. Containing a type of coal. the landscape of Most was eviscerated to mine the coal buried beneath the city. Only two buildings remain for the 1500's and even they were carefully moved to another part of the city in the 1960s. What's left is a pastiche of cheap buildings and medieval architecture that can barely survive in this depressed facade of a metropolis.
Brycz gives us brief stories of Most's inhabitants as if he floats above the city holding a pair of binoculars and focuses on whatever catches his eye from below. Most is a narrator that is beautiful, contemporary, intelligent, almost omniscient. The device of using a city as narrator feels to the reader as if reading third person, but it's written in first person. Most becomes a wistful elder, giving us tiny sketches of times and people we never knew, will never know. And like many older people, Most relies on the the ebb and flow of storytelling and how the use of humor and drama reinforce each other. We see Brycz's soft touch in the following passage an appearance, linguistic:
Most is also Prague, Paris, Babylon, but linguistically speaking. As people came to metropolises from all over the place, a tangle of languages arose. It's not any different in Most.As part philosopher, part poet, and part parent, Most is a valiant character in a story of urban abuse and ravage. There are stories of runaways, drug addicts, love, death, remorse and innocence. We see the lives of people through the eyes of the city that protects them and has been harmed by them. These vignettes are not linear--they are more like prose poems crafted from observation and reflection as in the this excerpt about the life a sporting hall and how much happens there:
After all, nearly all Mosters have their ways here from other places, and by now their language has become an industrial conglomerate. Form the older residents you can still hear the influence of hard Sudeten German. And so the Czech of my citizens doesn't sing like the speech of Hradecers, Budejovicers, Brnoers or Breclavers.
Hearing the talk of a Moster, you can most often mistake him for a Praguer.
Yet it is possible to sing even in the Czech of Most. It is, however, a song of a burnt tongue, of a burnt land, and so all the more convincing.
Everyone who care for it has a soul, though short of breath from the everlasting smog and distressed by the great expanses of concrete apartment blocks--yet a soul. And only a soul gives words meaning and joy to speech.
Believe me, though, I am only a city, I don't want my heart's people to be mute.
I want to be their lost child on the boulevard of the Champs Elysees, who they take under their wing and lead home.
Who wouldn't be enchanted by this strange world from the other side? When coming through the artists' entrance and you sense the crowd as a rhythmic quiver, the entire expanse of the sporting hall is for you at that moment rhythm materialized, thrusting into you like a small tattooing needle. You mustn't move fitfully, you mustn't violate the rhythm; you have to be in synch with it to keep the pained tears from your cheeks. And if you succeed? It's like an orgasm touching eternity. Though it lasts only a short while, it can reproduce you to the infinitude of being.Although it may seem that because this is not a novel presented in traditional terms, the story of the city itself is told through the characters. Czechoslovakia is known for Prague, so rich in musical and architectural history. But there is a history that is not as glamorous, not as giving. There are the gypsies and the coal mines, the Soviet Occupation and the housing projects filled with the unemployed and alcoholism. All these histories have what most histories have--tragedy and triumph. Regardless of the state of Most, Brycz gives us the sorrowful moments in life and the moments of sweetness that everyone knows. All it takes is for the city to shine it's light on you to realize that there is always a story to tell.
By the way, Twisted Spoon Press is a mighty impressive publisher and deserve high regard for choosing this book along with getting a fluid translation.
I, City
By Pavel Brycz
Translated by Joshua Cohen and Marketa Hofmeisterova
Twisted Spoon Press
Paperback
153 Pages
ISBN: 9788086264271
$14.50
Posted by Monica at 6/29/2009 7:57 PM 
Categories: Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe
Tags: Czechoslovakia Pavel Brycz i city czech fiction
Categories: Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe
Tags: Czechoslovakia Pavel Brycz i city czech fiction
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