“Book Descriptions: In the summer of 1935, Vítězslav Nezval, already one of the most celebrated Czech poets of his generation, embarked on a period of manic creativity that would result in three volumes of poetry written and published in a two-year span (1935-37), mirrored by three volumes of memoir-like poetic prose. These collections would not only reshape Czech poetry, blending approaches developed by the French Surrealists with national cultural sensibilities and political concerns, taken together they are among the highest achievements of the interwar avant-garde. Each of the three volumes adopted a different principle of Surrealism as its general modus operandi. For Woman in the Plural (1936), the first volume in this loose trilogy, it was objective chance (while the third and final volume, The Absolute Gravedigger (1937), adopted the paranoiac-critical method).
As the title suggests, Woman in the Plural is an extended poetic meditation on the female form, the images of which Nezval spins zoetrope-like to produce hallucinatory and novel representations of idealized, mythic, and creative feminine power. Part and parcel of the interwar era’s internationalized avant-garde, the collection addresses the social and political instability of the 1930s while also displaying Nezval’s prodigious talents in a variety of forms, styles, and genres. Alongside the madcap, profound free-verse poetry in couplets, litanies, and stanzas of varying lengths, the volume also includes pages from Nezval’s dream journal, an exuberant set of Surrealist exercises, and a full-length play of chance encounters with “a woman like any other.” Never before translated into English, Woman in the Plural is a vibrant, volatile collection, a true tour de force from one of the greatest European artists of the 20th century.” DRIVE
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