The Absolute Gravedigger

The Absolute Gravedigger, published in 1937, is generally considered the greatest poetic achievement of Vit zslav Nezval, the most prolific of interwar Czech avant-garde writers. Nezval s imagination here is completely free-wheeling, untethered to any specific location. Along with his previous collection, Prague with Fingers of Rain, this is one of the most important volumes of interwar Surrealist poetry. Nezval displays here his facility in a variety of forms, from long-limbed imaginative free verse narratives to short, formally rhymed meditations in quatrains, to prose and even visual art (the volume includes six of his decalcomania images). His wild yet restrained combination of absolute freedom and formal perfection lend his poetry musicality and stunning imagery, while the line breaks in the shorter lyric poems slice the language into fragments that float in the mind with open-ended meaning and a multiplicity of readings. The content of the poems goes in directions that are at first unimaginable but continue to evolve unexpectedly until they resolve or dissolve. Like electron clouds, these poems have a form within which seemingly chaotic energy reigns.The chaos is only an illusion Nezval s language is under absolute control, allowing him to reach into the colorful clouds of surrealist uncertainty and to form shapes we recognize, though never expected to see, to meld images and concepts into a constantly developing and dazzling kaleidoscope.