Surrealism

Violet Malice has been sweating like an Alsatian in a chip pan fire, so that you can find ruddy bloody good reads. She has been loitering between patches of shade and licking way too many Feasts (the ice cream variety). Dedicated to finding a bedtime read that kicks like a sawn off and hoses down the steaming nag after it throws its shoes off during the final furlong. Violet’s weekly adult book review attempts to answer that hairy question: can a good book ever be as delicate as a good fuck?

Book title: Edition 69
Authors: Jindřich Štyrský, Vítězslav Nezval, František Halas
First published: 1931
Translator: Jed Slast

THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict

Quick synopsis: A collection of English translations of three Czech masters of erotic literature (and members of the surrealist movement). The stories and poems were originally published in the 1930s in a six volume imprint called Edition 69 (the print run was only 69 copies and 69 is the best number yeah) launched by Jindřich Štyrský. The series was of very limited run and never available for sale. Copies were distributed only to friends and collectors due to the extreme nature of the content! Think seXXXually explicit photomontage with images sourced from German and French pornography plus some of the best fucking poetry ever written.

This edition, published by Twisted Spoon Press in 2020, features a selection of erotic writing by Štyrský, Nezval, and Halas, as well as Štyrský’s artwork and an essay by psychoanalyst Bohuslav Brouk, which ends beautifully: As each person comes into the world at the end of an umbilical cord only inevitably to become dust, let us find pleasure in everything our abilities allow us. 

–

Sexual Nocturne by Vítězslav Nezval: A short story about a man recalling his early sexual experiences, particularly masturbating in public and his first taste of penetrative sex with a woman in a brothel.

Highlights from the text of Sexual Nocturne:

I was fifteen years old, that is, at the age a woman’s face is what a boy notices most. We want to be loved, and the eyes play the greatest role in this. Head after head insinuate themselves into our fantasies. 

I was unable to form a clear picture of what a pussy looked like. I just supposed it was a very big hole, large enough to take the willy of a fifth former. 

I said FUCK to myself over and over as I shambled along the footpaths with an unflagging erection. 

During school vacation my grandfather came for a visit and gave me a one-crown piece. I used it at the stationer’s to buy a porcelain doll with a rubber hat. It could be filled with water, and when the hat was pressed down it peed. I sent it to the object of my adoration. 

The word FUCK is diamond-hard, translucent, a classic. 

Saying the word SYPHILIS made me delirious. It was a newly illuminated word: WOMAN. 

Her hand removed my pants. I plunged into her cunt which was so unexpected and so singularly proportional. I dared not move. This was entirely different to the practiced hand under the cloak opposite the promenade. Her vagina engulfed me in a hot nonexistence. I was fucking. I was fucking and I spurted into her cunt, which itself was somehow moving like a slug.

One of Štyrský’s illustrations for Sexual Nocturne:

–

Thyrsos by František Halas: The book contains eleven erotic poems by Halas. Looking at the state of his metaphors, one can only assume that Mr Halas knew how to pleasure a woman. Two poems that poked me in the eye:

The Taste of Love 

To have all vulvas spread open wide
and to kiss that warm alley they harbor
to taste a thousandfold yet never plunge inside
that familiar rose splayed to your ardour

Incomparable beauty of the mons
that ancient routine has you disdainfully vexed
it isn’t love when on her breasts you lie prone
and grind her lovely flowering sex

The extended clit gently massage
take a long swig of that vaginal wine
drink until drunk on that rare vintage
more pungent in taste than any aged vine

We’re gifted a tongue not only for speech
its key unlocks delight elsewise hidden
when lubricious spasms convulse a breach
adeptly slip your fingers all the way in

Pucker your lips in the shade of her pubis
let the mucous dew her petals of rose
the touch of your lips driving her delirious
until her rapturous skin blissfully glows

To have all vulvas spread open wide
then to stay there and sleep
to taste a thousandfold yet never plunge inside
only to suckle tenderly and deep

Sound Advice

In a pussy’s sweet folds
be sure to keep in mind
next door is another hole
for your finger to find

Gently push it in good
lightly massage the breasts
and at once your waning wood
will become stiff as a mast

–

Emilie Comes To Me In A Dream by Jindřich Štyrský: The original colophon reads that the book “should be kept in a secure location and out of the reach of minors”. This is a story of recollection, which centres on the narrator’s obsessive memories of Emilie. Explicit memories that melt into other women in a surreal dreamscape. 

Highlights from the text of Emilie Comes To Me In A Dream:

The heavens sleep, and somewhere behind the hedge a woman sculpted from raw meat awaits you. Will you feed her ice? 

You will feel an intense fear lest they come crashing down onto the pavement, a fear similar to the pleasure you felt in childhood at your first convulsive erection and the terror you felt when your sister taught you to masturbate with her tiny alabaster hand. 

Any man who has enjoyed the salty taste of Cecil’s twat would sell his rings, friends, morals, everything to sate that monster hidden under the little pink skirt. 

I saw her sex swell and spill out from her womb, increasing in size until it overflowed the bed and extended over the floor like lava filling up my room. I quickly got up and ran from the house like a madman. I stopped in the middle of a deserted town square. When I looked back, Marta’s vulva, resembling a giant, monumental tear of unnatural colour, was surging out my window. 

Later I placed an aquarium in the window. In it I cultivated a golden-haired vulva and a magnificent penis specimen with a blue eye and delicate veins on its temples.

Two of Štyrský’s photomontages for Emilie Comes To Me In A Dream:

Sign-up to Violet’s mailing list here. Buy Violet’s chapbook here.

–

Overall sexual content: If there is one thing in the world that I love, it is obviously… without doubt… surrealist Czechoslovakian literature! They knew how to shag up a sentence. Grab syntax and decency by the gonads and ride them roughshod all the way home.  So I already have the hook in my mouth on this one. Štyrský was the artistic partner of the phenomenal Toyen, just so you know! What ruddy bloody sort of special magic was happening in that tiny part of the world at that moment in time.

Lots of the text in this book focuses on the act of giving female pleasure. All books should obsess over this. There are a few slides into huge monstrous vulvas that want to consume everything in their path, but I suppose female sexuality can be frightening, maybe. The endless orgasms that stretch and strain into infinity. Oh the pressure.

The illustrations and art are fabulous, funny and explicit all at the same time. And as highlighted previously, were cut out with scissors from some rather racy porno mags. Glue all over the place. Up the back of the TV.

Overall conclusion: 8 out of 10.

Titillation station: Hot as hell. The pink rabbit’s nose was twitching.

Food for thought: And finally. To finish you off. The Czech word for fuck is mrdat, which originally meant to move back and forth, or wag.

Sign-up to Violet’s mailing list to receive a free limited edition postcard: https://eepurl.com/hTKdsr