Galerie Hollar & Vladimir Suchanek.

I am embarrassed to say that until this year I had never visited Galerie Hollar in Prague and yet it is so up my street. As regular readers will know I am a fan of Czech graphics and Galerie Hollar is the gallery of the Association of Czech Graphic Artists. The Association celebrated its centenary last year. 

The gallery is to be found just along the embankment from Cafe Slavia and the National Theatre. It is not particularly well signposted so it is possible to walk straight past the entrance of what looks like a large town house. Inside there is a small gallery with changing exhibitions and a shop. The size of gallery is just perfect for me. I don't like feeling overwhelmed by displays and visitors jostling to look at the artworks. 

The exhibition we visited was by the Czech artist, Vladimir Suchanek, whose work includes exlibris and larger prints. I have only one of his works in my collection (below) and would love some more. The ones for sale in the Hollar eshop are too expensive for me, no matter how much I covert them. Suchanek has a fascinating style. His preferred technique is coloured lithography, which he explores constantly.

Suchanek is partly responsible for the existence of the gallery and the Association of Czech Graphic Artists. In the 1970's the Association was repressed by the hardline Communist authorities, but in the 1990's Suchanek helped resurrect the Association, becoming president in 1995.

Suchanek's other love is music. With fellow members of the Association, Jiri Anderle and Jiri Sliva, he founded a band called Grafieanka!

The gallery is usually open Tuesday - Sunday 10-12 am and 1-6 pm. 

Bottle stoppers and puppets.

As a former arts manager I have always got a buzz with helping my creative friends, especially if I can do so by introducing them to each other. So when my friend Kristina, who runs my favourite hotel in Prague, was asking me about identifying Czech crafts to sell to her customers, I immediately suggested the work of my neighbour.

I have talked before about  Jitka, and the easter eggs she paints and the puppets she carves.  Both the eggs and the smaller puppets would make excellent gifts for Kristina to sell. I am very much aware of how little space there is in the luggage  of those of us who travel on budget airlines. Stuffing a bulging bag full of treasures into an overhead locker can be alarming. Small non-breakable souvenirs are what is needed. Jitka has come up with  solution - hand-carved bottle stoppers. They are just wonderful - you will find more examples here on Jitka's website. I gave a load to my family and friends one last Christmas and they went down a storm.

Prague - The Other City

I have just finished reading The Other City by Michal Ajvaz.

In this strange and lovely hymn to Prague, Michal Ajvaz repopulates the city of Kafka with ghosts, eccentrics, talking animals, and impossible statues, all lurking on the peripheries of a town so familiar to tourists. The Other City is a guidebook to this invisible, "other Prague," overlapping the workaday world: a place where libraries can turn into jungles, secret passages yawn beneath our feet, and waves lap at our bedspreads. Heir to the tradition and obsessions of Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the long and  distinguished line of Czech  fantasists, Ajvaz's Other City—his first novel to be translated into English—is the emblem of all the worlds we are blind to, being caught in our own ways of seeing.

It is one of several books I have read which portray an alternative Prague existing alongside the "real" Prague. I have reviewed some of them on my Magic Realism Books blog: including A Kingdom of Souls  by Daniela Hodrova,  Keeping Bedlam at Bay in The Prague Cafe by M Henderson Ellis, Gustav Meyrink's works including of course The Golem and of course Kafka's The Metamorphosis.  And there are more such books on my to-be-read list.

I am not surprised that Prague has almost spawned a sub-genre of place-based magic realism. During my first visit to the city, only a few months after the Velvet Revolution, I was acutely aware of the magical or spiritual energy that seemed to flow out of Prague's ancient stones, rippling across the Vltava and climbing the steps to the castle and Emperor Rudolf's alchemical workshops. That magical echo is less audible now beneath the footsteps of eager tourists and the kerching of cash registers, but it is still there.

The Other City is set in a Czech winter, a time of year when I have always felt the Prague magic most acutely. Maybe it is because of the way the snow deadens sound and redraws the familier outlines of buildings, smudging the boundaries between water, land and sky.  Ajvaz's Other City also emerges at night, something that is hard to imagine in the real city busy 24/7.

The alternative Prague that Ajvaz creates is too fantastical for my liking, closer to surrealism than magic realism. The author obviously had great fun inventing an amazing alternative world and mixing it in with the real Prague - "Customers at Cafe Slavia are seldom assaulted by sharks". I particularly loved the idea of the bases of the statues on Charles Bridge being used as stalls for tiny elks, but at times the weirdness just went on too long. I am perhaps too Anglo Saxon to appreciate this very Czech absurdism. By the way there are some great jokes about the Czech language in the book; "Case endings were originally invocations of demons." For this failed student of Czech, they still are!

It is hard at times, as the novel's central character pursues the Other City and is at times pursued by it's inhabitants, to see where the novel is going. But there is a resolution - a philosophical one, which comes to the central character in the last chapter.  Ajvaz is a researcher at the Prague Centre for Theoretical Studies and has published not only a book on Borges but also one called Jungle of Light: Meditations on Seeing and in many ways this book is also a meditation on seeing. I will say no more for fear of spoiling the book for you.

Prague Transport Buses

As a visitor to Prague you probably won't need to use many buses, as they mostly operate in the outskirts of the city. But if you do, they operate much as the trams do. You validate your ticket, which you have already bought, as soon as you get on the bus (if you haven't validated it earlier in your trip). You don't buy the ticket from the driver with one exception.

The main buslines tourists will use are:

Number 100 which runs from the end of the B (yellow) metro line at Zličín to the airport. Exit the Metro Station and you will find yourself in a bus station, turn right and follow the path round to a series of bus stops. The Number 100 runs from one halfway up the rank.You have to buy a special ticket for 16 Czk for luggage over 25x45x70cm (ie hold luggage not hand luggage). A one-day or three-day season ticket includes one item of hold luggage.

Number 119 which runs from the Nasrazi Veleslavin Metro Station  to the airport. Follow the signs to the airport bus from the metro concourse. The extra charge for large luggage applies.

The AE (Airport Express) bus is the exception to the rule about not buying the ticket from the driver. The ticket costs 60 Czk, but luggage is free. It runs from the Main Train Station (Hlavní nádraží) to the airport. Follow signs to the bus station which is upstairs from the platforms. It runs every 30 minutes.

Number 112 runs from Nádraží Holešovice Metro station (line C) to the Zoo and Troja Palace.

You can see some lovely old Prague buses at the Prague Public Transport Museum in Prague-Střešovice.

The Obecni Dum - Prague's Munipical House

 Prague's Obecni Dum (Municipal House) is often overlooked by visitors planning their stay. I have to confess that the same was true of me and my family, even though we visited Prague regularly. I suspect that the reason for this is that the building is not advertised as well as it might be. Anyway this time last year my husband and I rectified the omission.

And it was a serious omission. This building is amazing. Architecturally it is a jewel of the Art Nouveau, historically it is an amazing statement of the rise of Czech nationalism (the Declaration of Independence was signed here) and its decoration is by some of the best Czech artists of the early twentieth century.

 
You have to take a guided tour of the interiors to really get a real feel for the building. It is well worth the money, you get to see the amazing Mayor's Hall decorated by Alfons Mucha, the Riegr Room with frescoes by Max Svabinsky, the Palacky Hall with paintings by Preisler, and many other rooms and works by other artists of the day. Our guide was excellent who told us the story the building in such a way that it became a story of the Czech nation too.

After the tour we went upstairs to visit an exhibition of European and Czech Art Nouveau 1900, which finished our visit off perfectly. The exhibition, which is drawn from the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts (the museum is currently being refurbished), features furniture, ceramics, costumes, posters and graphics and is on until the end of July 2016.

Prior to taking our tour we enjoyed a coffee and cake in the building's amazing Art Nouveau Francouzska Restaurant. The cake was lovely and not too expensive and the decorations surrounding us were divine. My husband disappeared for a while to photograph the decor, leaving me to smile at the waiter. Phil was in seventh heaven - the whole building is covered with architectural details of the highest quality from the staircase to the cloakrooms. We got a voucher for a reduced price drink in the American Bar in the buildings basement, with our tickets. But we were still so replete with cakes that we only wandered in to look at the decoration. As with every part of the building the bar is amazing - black ceramic tiles influenced by the American style of the 1910s contrasting with coloured drawings of folk scenes (originally these were by Czech artist Mikolas Ales).

If you really can't afford the 290 Korun for the tour, the restaurants and bars are open to the public without a ticket. Another way of seeing some of the building is to attend one of the many concerts which take place in the stunning Smetana hall.

The Czech Few

This week a number of ceremonies are taking place to celebrate the contribution of the 2500 Czechs who flew with the RAF against the Nazis. A fifth of these men made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of Europe and their homeland. Those who came back were first greeted as heroes, but then as enemies when the Communists took control. Independently-minded defenders of freedom had no place in the Communist future.  Some fled the country once more. The former pilots that remained were imprisoned. After prison their lives continued to be ruined by their spell in the RAF - they remained under suspicion and supervision and they and their families were persecuted, denied access to good jobs and education.

Last year this memorial to their bravery and sacrifice was erected on a small park opposite the Malostranska Metro Station. The statue was funded by contributions from the British community in the Czech and Slovak Republics. A formal memorial was unveiled this week at Prague's castle. Sadly only one former Czech RAF pilot survived long enough to attend the event.

Pickpockets

I was talking to a British tourist the other day, who told me how the family of a friend of hers had been unlucky enough to have experienced the dubious attention of Prague's pickpockets not once but three times! And it reminded me that I had drafted but never posted this, partly because I like to be positive about this country.

Prague is a relatively safe city to visit, but there is a problem with pickpockets. They tend to target tourists and so it is a good idea not to look like one. If you're visiting the city,  I'd advise you to leave most of your money in the hotel safe and bury what you do take into your bags. Choose a bag that allows you to make it impossible for a thief to get things in one go. Keep your hand on top of your handbag if you are a woman and don't leave your wallet in your back pocket if you are a man. Or vice versa.

I  have had someone attempt to steal from me three times. The first time I was on the metro to the airport and someone managed to open the pockets on the outside of my bag. But I don't put valuables in the exterior pockets, instead burying them in my bag, so all they would have got was a pair of dirty knickers! The second time I was trying to get some leaflets from a rack in the Anděl Transport Information Centre. There was a couple supposedly embracing in the middle of the room, and I was forced to to squeeze past them. This time they tried to get into my handbag, but again anything of value was well hidden.

The third time (actually chronologically it was the first time but that would rather spoil the build-up) they succeeded. It was my first visit to Prague in 1990 and I was very naive. Not only were westerners flooding into the newly opened city, but so were crooks from all over the former Soviet bloc. I was buying some coffees and turned with the cups in both hands to find my way barred by a group of Romanian gypsies who had appeared out of nowhere. I fought my way back to the table, managing to not spill any coffee but losing my purse in the process.

I was furious with myself. As a Londoner I was no stranger to the wiles of pickpockets and had broken my normal security rules. I was staying in the house of a lovely couple, old collegues of my friend, and they were mortified by what had happened to me.  Of course the sum of money I lost seemed relatively modest to me and enormous to them. They would not accept my assurances that it was okay. It was a matter of national honour. They fussed over me and presented me that evening with a supper of cold meats, which my friend told me were the product of the former family pig and a great honour. I felt fully recompensed and resolved to learn from the experience.

I hope by sharing this post with you, you can learn from my experience too.

The Legend of the Golem

 

Ales print of Rabbi Loew

Previously I talked in general about golems. In this post I want to tell you the legend of the Golem of Prague. Whether I do or not is another matter: it is so easy to get side-tracked when talking about the Golem.

There are several versions of the story but all place at the story's heart the historical figure of Rabbi Loew, who lived at the time of Rudolph II. Under Rudolph Prague enjoyed an esoteric heyday: alchemists were drawn to his court, astronomers and other thinkers thronged the city. In some ways the brilliant Rabbi Loew was part of that world. But like all Jews he was also apart. Belief in the blood libel, that Jews murdered Christian children before Passover, would regularly flare into murderous attacks on the Jewish communities, and it was the threat of such an attack that spurred the good rabbi into creating the Prague Golem.

In 1580 a particularly nasty priest was whipping up anti-Semitic feeling in the city and the rabbi sought an answer from heaven, asking in a dream for a way to defend his people from the coming pogrom. The answer he got back was “Make a Golem of clay and you will destroy the entire Jew-baiting company”. Now this was and is a major deal. In order to do this the Rabi was required the use of the true name of God, which if done without the Lord's blessing or due care would have resulted in the Rabi's destruction. But blessed with divine approval Loew went one night to the banks of the River Vltava together with two chosen companions and there formed a giant figure in the clay. One companion walked seven times around the figure reciting holy words and the Golem glowed fiery red in the dark night. The other walked seven times round the figure in the opposite direction and water replaced the fire. Last of all the Rabbi walked once round the body and placed a piece of paper on which was written the true name of God into the mouth of the Golem. Then he bowed to all points of the compass and the three men recited the words from Genesis: “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” With those words the Golem opened his eyes.

In the Footsteps of Franz Kafka

This post is a contribution towards the Magic Realism Bloghop 2015 I am organizing on Magic Realism Book Blog. About twenty blogs are taking part and you can find a list of these at the bottom of this post. 

Last weekend I was travelling back from my home in South Bohemia to my other home in England, when I stopped in Prague overnight. Prague - the city of Kafka's birth and life - is very different now from the one he knew, loved and hated. And yet it is possible to retrace his steps in the city and perhaps get a feel for what made the young Kafka one of the world's greatest magic realist writers. 

My first stop was the Franz Kafka Museum in Mala Strana on the west bank of the Vltava. The place was very busy and it was hard at times to concentrate on the exhibits. I suggest you go on a weekday. To be honest there is not much of Kafka to see there, except his writings, photographs of Kafka, his family and sweethearts, and photographs and videos of Prague at the time. The exhibition text and images are reprinted in the short book The City of K: Franz Kafka and Prague which you can buy in the museum shop. But the book and the exhibition set the scene well and helped inform my subsequent explorations. 

Kafka's childhood was restricted to a small area in the Old Town of Prague across the river from Mala Strana. He was born at what is now Namesti Franze Kafky 3, on the edge of the old Jewish ghetto. Only the doorway remains of the original house. The majority of his childhood years were spent at Dum U Minuty, a late Gothic house with Renaissance frescoes on the Old Town Square. He recounts the dread he felt in his journey from his home across the square, through Tynska Street to Masna Street and the German elementary school there. The little boy would cling to shop doorways and pillars on the way, with the family's Czech cook threatening him and abusing him. In 1893 a ten-year old Franz Kafka graduated to the Grammar School which was located in the Kinsky Palace on the Old Town Square - it is now part of the National Gallery. 

Other buildings in the Old Town Square featured in Kafka's life. His father had a haberdashery shop there. At number 16 Kafka had one of his first jobs, whilst next door was home of the Fanta family, which hosted intellectual gatherings that Kafka attended. Then there are a number of sites in the vicinity of the Square: on Ovocny trh Kafka studied law from 1901 to 1906 and he stayed for nine years in an apartment in Celetna 3 (U Tri Kealu) - it was there that he first experimented with writing. 

Kafka's Prague had three distinct ethnic groups - the Czechs, the Germans and the Jews. Kafka was a German-speaking Jew. The old ghetto may have been torn down and replaced with new impressive Art Nouveau buildings, but as Kafka said, "In us all it [the old Jewish ghetto] still lives - the dark corners, the secret alleys, shuttered windows, squalid courtyards, rowdy pubs, and sinister inns... The unhealthy old Jewish town within us is far more real than the new hygienic town around us. With our eyes open we walk through a dream: ourselves only a ghost of a vanished age." (Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch). For a while Kafka lived in the area at Parizska 26, sadly now demolished, and it was there that he wrote The Metamorphosis. Close by on the junction of Dusni and Vezenska Streets, you will find the 2003 sculpture (shown above) by Jaroslav Rona.The small Kafka on the shoulders of a headless giant is an image from the story Description of a Struggle but the giant is walking on a cobble mosaic depicting a beetle or cockroach. Also on Vezenska (no. 11) you will find the former Cafe Savoy, where Kafka attended the performances of Yiddish theatre that were very influentual on his writing, most notably on The Metamorphosis. 

For other influences you can walk to 19 Wenceslas Square (the offices of Assicurazioni Generali) or Na Porici 7 (Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia) in Mala Strana to see the buildings where Kafka worked as a bureaucrat and lawyer. He wrote in a letter: "Writing and the office cannot be reconciled" and yet he could not escape the den of bureaucrats. His work at Workers' Accident took a particular toll but fed into his writings - he saw at first hand the consequences of dehumanizing mechanization and bureaucracy in the terrible industrial accidents that proliferated at this time.

The final spot on any Kafka trail is in the suburb of Zizkov. It is his grave in the New Jewish Cemetery. He died on June 3 1924. The cemetery is a strange spot much removed from the bustle of central Prague where Kafka lived. The cemetery has a poignant air. As you walk to the grave, which is signposted from the entrance, you pass plaques on the wall to  those who died in the concentration camps. Among the Nazis' victims were Kafka's sisters and many of his friends. Had Kafka not died of TB he would probably have been another name on the list of writers killed in the camps on the wall a few metres from his grave. Kafka's Prague only survived him by fifteen years.

Prague Transport - Trams

As I said in a previous post trams are my preferred form of public transport in Prague. The metro is very limited and doesn't have the advantage of taking you past the city's sights. You can also get a much better idea of the layout of the city from a tram seat. There are a lot of tramlines, but there are four that are particularly useful for visitors to Prague.  These are:

Number 9 - runs along the castle side of the river from Anděl until it crosses the river at Újezd, going past the National Theatre and Národní třída, across Wenceslas Square, and on to the Main Train station and beyond, thus offering a direct route between the Na Knicezi bus station at Andel (and the buses from Cesky Krumlov) to the Train Station
Number 17 - runs from Vyšehrad, along the eastern bank past Charles Bridge, and through the Old Town before crossing the river
Number 22 - runs through the hotel area around Náměstí Míru, past the National Theatre and then over the river and up to Malostranské náměstí; then it winds its way up to the castle and on to Bílá Hora; it is the best way to get to the castle without climbing
Number 23- runs past Karlovo náměstí, over Wenceslas Square, stopping at Náměstí Republiky for the Old Town and the Obecní dům, over the river past the steps up to Letna Park and into Holešovice, stopping outside the Veletržní palác and its modern art gallery, and on to the Exhibition Areas and Stromovka Park.

Brand new trams are being introduced on some lines. But if you want to get a feel for the past why not try the Number 91 tram. This vintage tram runs around central Prague from April to mid-November on Saturdays and Sundays. The trams start at the Public Transport Museum at  Vozovna Střešovice, then runs past  Pražský hrad,  Malostranská, Malostranské náměsti, the National Theatre, Národní třída, Wenceslas Square, Náměstí republiky, Veletržní, terminating at the Exhibition Halls (Výstaviště Holešovice) and back again.  Prague has had trams since 1875, when they were horse-drawn. Take a trip on the 91 to the Museum to find out more.

Getting Around Prague - The Metro

Prague has three metro lines - A (green), B (yellow) and C (red). The lines cross at only three stations (Můstek, Muzeum and Florenc), all of which are in the centre of the city and are actually not that far from each other. In other words if you want to change lines you have to go into the centre and then come out again, so you may find it easier to hop on a tram instead. It is also worth noting that some of the central stations are very close together and that it may be easier to walk to your destination. Metro stations, especially the interchange ones, are often large and will have several exits. It is a good idea to study a map carefully and note the roads to which the stations exit. Only a limited number of stations have lifts.

Line A goes from Depo Hostivař in the west of the city to in the Nemocnice Motel east. Some of the key stations on the line are

• Náměstí Míru - an important interchange for trams and an area where you will find many hotels 
• Muzeum - located at the top of Wenceslas Square next to the National Museum
• Můstek - also located on Wenceslas Square (halfway up and at the bottom): Můstek is also useful for visiting the Old Town Square
• Staroměstská - also for the Old Town plus the Jewish quarter
• Malostranská - the area below the castle known as the Lesser Town or Malá Strana
• Hradčanská - for the castle (saves the climb up from Malostranská)
• Nadrazi Veleslavin Metro Station - for the 119 bus to the airport.

Line B goes from Černý Most in the west to Zličín in the east. Some of the key stations on the line are:

• Černý Most, a major bus station with buses departing for Český Ráj and other areas in the north
• Florenc, the main bus station with buses departing for Brno, and many other Czech and international destinations
• Náměstí Republiky, for the Municipal House (Obecní dům) and the Old Town
• Můstek, for Wenceslas Square and the Old Town
• Národní třída, on the edge of the New Town, useful for the National Theatre and as a tram stop (the very useful number 9 tram stops there)
• Karlovo náměstí - for tram connections and the New Town
• Andel - bus station with buses departing for Cesky Krumlov and South and West Bohemia
• Zličín - for the number 100 airport bus and buses to Plzen and West Bohemia

Line C goes from Letňany in the north to Haje in the south west. Some of the key stations on the line are:

• Nádraží Holešovice - for the train station of the same name and the bus to the Zoo and Troja Palace
• Vltavská - for the Veletrzni Palac Modern Art Museum and Holešovice
• Florenc - the main bus station with buses departing for Brno, and many other Czech and international destinations  
• Hlavní nádraží - the Main Train Station, also convenient for the National Museum
• I. P. Pavlova - for the New Town and an area where you will find many hotels
• Vyšehrad - for Vyšehrad castle and cemetery

Trains on the metro are frequent and generally of a high standard. Crowding is not as bad as on the London Tube, but it is a good idea to avoid the rush hour (3pm - 5pm). Trains do not run after midnight.

Getting Around Prague

I've been asked to write some posts about practical issues, such as how do I get around, when the only car I can use at the moment is a hire one. The answer is the excellent public transport system here, Let's start with Prague.

The first thing to say is that it makes no sense to have a car in Prague, unless possibly if you live in the outskirts. The public transport system is really good and cheap.

First there is the metro system - the equivalent if London's tube but with only three colour-coded lines - red, yellow and green. Then there are the trams - there are more of these and they have the added advantage of taking you past a load of interesting sights. I am, as you will have gathered, a fan of Prague's trams. And finally there are buses, which you tend to see in Prague suburbs. If you are a visitor to the city you may only use a bus going to the airport or Prague Zoo.

I plan to talk about each of these modes of transport in dedicated blog posts, so for this post let us focus on getting around generally on the Prague Public Transport System. The first thing to say is the system is integrated - you buy one ticket for all forms of transport. The  basic ticket currently costs 32kc and allows you up to 90 minutes travel, during which you can jump on and off trams, metro trains and buses and combinations thereof. If you only want to make a short (max 30 minute) journey you can opt for a 24kc ticket.

The key thing to note is that the timer starts when you validate your ticket at the beginning of the journey. You will find yellow validation machines as you enter the metro station or train. On one end of the ticket you will find a blank space with arrows, slide this end into the machine face up until you hear the machine stamp the ticket. You must do this or face being fined. There are plenty of ticket inspectors working Prague's public transport and they don't care that you aren't a local, quite the opposite.

So where do you buy tickets? You will find ticket vending machines in metro stations and at the main tram stops (but not all of the latter). You need coins for the machines. To buy more than one ticket press the button as many times as you want tickets. You can also buy tickets in some newsagents and at various information centres, including the one in the arrivals lounge at the airport. It is a good idea to buy multiple tickets from these centres, as you will not make yourself popular with Prague commuters if you spend ages fumbling coins into the automatic machines.

If you don't see your fellow passengers validating tickets, it is because they very sensibly have bought a season ticket. There are tourist tickets available for 24 hrs and 72 hrs (110kc and 310kc). The next ticket up is the monthly season, but at 550kc if you are staying for a week it is still worth getting.

The Prague Transport System has an excellent website - the English version is here: http://www.dpp.cz/en/

The website offers maps and other information, up-to-date news of any works and diversions and an online journey planner.
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Inside the Jan Hus Monument in Prague

Two weeks ago I met with Petr Husek, the organizer of the Festival which will commemorate the 600th anniversary of Jan Hus' death in July. We arranged to meet in the Cubist cafe in the House of the Black Madonna. I arrived slightly late, but he was not there. He arrived shortly after, breathless and brushing dust off his coat.

"I have been meeting a reporter inside the statue on the Old Town Square," he said.

As excuses go, that was an original one. The statue is a colosal one, which is a major feature in Prague's historical old town. It turns out that the memorial is being restored and Mr Husek was being interviewed about it and the Festival (he features at the end of the video above). The statue was erected in 1915 for the 500th anniversary. It was funded entirely by private donations. On July 6th, Jan Hus Day, it will be the centre of Prague's celebrations.

We talked about our mutual admiration for Hus's philosophy. It is interesting the way Hus has been adopted as a symbol by very different philosophies. When the statue was erected, it was a statement of national pride and suffering. This was only three years before the birth of the first Czechoslovakian Republic. Under the Communists the act of sitting under the statue was a quiet way of expressing opposition to the Communist government, but at the same time the Communists presented Hus and the Hussites as a proto socialists. Now Mr Husek and his friends want to use the festival to reclaim Hus as a spiritual (but not just a religious) inspiration for the Czech nation, offering the Czechs an alternative, more moral, way of living in contrast to the self-centred philosophy that followed the arrival of capitalism. I wish them every success. It seems to me that they are closer to the real man than their predecessors.

Alfons Mucha and the Slav Epic

When I was young there was quite a fad about the graphics of Alfons Mucha. It was the 1970s and his posters were blu-tacked to the bedroom walls of teenage girls all over the UK. I was no exception, but while my friends preferred his pensive and languid portrayals of women I went for his dynamic theatre poster of Sarah Bernhardt as Jeanne D'Arc. Had you asked me then about his nationality I would have confidently told you that Mucha was French. He wasn't - he was Czech and proud of it.

Born in Ivančice, a small town south of Brno, Mucha studied in Brno and Munich, before going to Paris. Despite his success in Paris most of Mucha's life was spent in his homeland. If you only know Mucha from his French graphics, you will be surprised by his work in the Czech Republic. You soon realize that Mucha was an artist with a much greater scope than you had imagined, interested in portraying complex subjects in a very original way.

Mucha considered his greatest work to be the Slav Epic. The piece is made up of twenty enormous panels, depicting key scenes in the history of the Czechs and other Slavic peoples. Mucha hoped that it would inspire his fellow countrymen, but not in a militarist way - there a strong strand of pacifism in the later paintings. Instead the paintings have a very spiritual aspect to them, celebrating the soul of the Slav peoples.

It took Mucha eighteen years to complete the sequence of paintings and when he had completed them he gave the paintings to the city of Prague. The Epic was very much a labour of love. Sadly the time it took Mucha to take the Epic from conception to completion meant that the work was out-dated almost as soon as the completed works went on display. When it was begun there was no independent state for the Czechs, by the time it was completed Czechoslovakia was already ten years old. Only ten years later the Nazis arrived in Prague and the Epic was hidden to avoid its destruction. Unfortunately the same was not true of its artist. Mucha was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo and, although eventually released, his health was broken. The artist died in July 1939 and was buried in Vyšehrad cemetery.

You can see the Slav Epic in its own room at the Czech National Gallery's Veletržní Palace in Holešovice. When I visited people were walking around in awe-filled silence. Nothing that I knew about Mucha's work could have prepared me for the paintings, not even photographs of them. They are altogether larger, darker (both literally and in terms of subject matter) and more complex than the works of other painters of his generation. If you are interested in art, then this exhibition is a must.

The Alchemists' Laboratory

Unlike the rest of Prague's Jewish quarter number 1 Hastalska survived the demolition and the redevelopment of the 19th century. Prior to that it survived the great fire of 1689. The house at number 1 might be said to have a charmed life. And there are plenty of legends to support that assertion. A chariot pulled by fiery goats was said to exit the house. Smoke, strange sounds and foul smells rose from the ground. There was talk that tunnels ran from the house to The Old Town Hall, under the river to the Castle, and to the Barracks.

An investigation in the historical records reveals that the possible cause of these legends - the building had been a centre of alchemical activity. Here in the 16th century, supported by the Emperor Alchemist Rudolf II, alchemists from across Europe gathered in their efforts to turn base metal into gold, to find the philosopher's stone and the elixir of eternal life. The alchemists went their ways and the house was used for more mundane affairs.

In 2002 the house survived another natural disaster - the flooding of the River Vltava. But when the waters subsidized, a hole had appeared in the basement where a wall had collapsed. Once the rubble was cleared a maze of tunnels was revealed together with a series of workshops with some of the alchemical equipment still in place. Every part of the alchemical process took place there - from drying the herbs, to distillation, to even creating the glass vials in which the elixir was stored. Spiralling stoves allowed alembics to heat to different temperatures. Vents and chimneys carried the smoke, steam and fumes up to the surface where they alarmed passersby.

The owner set about restoring the workshops to the state they would have been in at the time when John Dee and his fellow alchemists were working in the house. It is now open as a museum and is well worth a visit. You can even buy some elixir in the shop. One is a potion for lovers, even though it was made by monks. 

Metamorphosis

I always have a wry smile to myself when I walk past Hotel Metamorphosis on my way through Prague's Old Town. 

Why? I have this image of guests waking up to discover that, like Kafka's hero Gregor Samsa, they have "turned into a monstrous bug".  I can see the breakfast room with large bugs sitting at dining tables in front of plates piled high with refuse and glasses filled with curdling milk, waving their antennae at each other, and making hissing noises. 

If you don't have any idea what I am talking about, then I suggest you read Kafka's magic realist masterpiece. 

The Golem

Everywhere I look in Prague I see cutesy golems – on mugs, tea-towels, cards. It's as if the golem has been adopted as the mascot for a Prague Olympic bid. Do you remember those horrid blobs we trolled out for London 2012, meant to be something every six year old girl wanted to cuddle? Think more cultured and you have the Prague 2013 golem.

Now don't get me wrong, the Czechs have a lovely line in taking something threatening (like devils) and producing something less threatening for children. One of the things I have always loved about them is their strength in graphic design. But somehow, for me at least, it doesn't quite work for the Golem. You will note the shift from lower case to upper there.

The Golem is something deeply rooted in Prague, born of the mud of the Vltava River in fact. What is it/he? And what does he mean? Golems (with a lower case), and there were more than one in Jewish folklore and legend, are beings which are brought life to by magical incantation from inanimate matter, often from mud , as is the case of the Prague Golem. Only the most holy of men can create a golem, the means can be found in the close study of the holy scripts.

A golem has no mind of his own; he exists to obey his creator and master. One might say he is a pre-Industrial Revolution robot (and “robot” of course is a creation of a Czech writer). Most importantly he is dumb. He does not have that most human of attributes the skill to use language. He is in some ways a puppet, another quintessentially Czech creation. You see where I'm going here?

This is turning into a long post, so I will explore the Golem further (including telling the tale of the Golem in Prague) in another post. But let me just leave you with one last thought. The first golem, the first creation from mud, was Adam. We are therefore all golems.

New Book

I am planning a new novel, set in Prague, and drawing on my experience as an ex-pat. It will be a psychological paranormal mystery, so totally appropriate for Prague, that home of the esoteric, the Golem, alchemy and Jungian theory.

I am very excited by it. Having published five ebooks now, I reckon I can do something unexpected with the medium. This blog will play an important part in that, I hope.

The Alchemy of Prague

Alchemy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have just discovered that Prague has not one but two museums of alchemy. There used to be an alchemy museum in Kutna Hora run by an acquaintance of my friend Hannah, but that is now closed and I believe been replaced by a less erudite interpretation of  the alchemical arts. Hannah's dream of an alchemy museum in the Alchemist's house in Cesky Krumlov came to naught. I am not sure whether to visit the Prague museums or not, because they will inevitably not live up to the vision Hannah had. Maybe alchemy cannot be confined in a museum.

To my mind Prague is a place of alchemy. By which I mean it is a place where the soul is drawn away from the base and corruptible towards the spiritual. I cannot put my finger upon it, but my first impressions of the city remain true that one can sense angels weeping and rejoicing in this city. I admit it is harder with each visit to escape the intrusions into one's senses of the noise, smell and sights of Mammon: international fast-food chains, the glaring come-buy-me shop windows, the over-the-top advertising boards, and yet if I go down an old street at night, when the shutters are down, walk in the woods of Petrin or enter the stillness of a church and the alchemy begins to work.

Kafka's Prague

English: 3:4 Portrait crop of Franz Kafka (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The author Franz Kafka was born in Stare Mesto (The Old Town) in Prague, was educated there, lived and worked there. His grave, together with those of his parents, is in the New Jewish Cemetery. His world was almost entirely limited to a few square miles of the city.

Kafka wrote of his native city "this loving mother has claws; he who would liberate himself, would have to set her on fire at both Vysehrad", so the author had at best a love/hate relationship with town. Maybe one might say that it was precisely this sense of entrapment and alienation that informs his books. As a Jew in 19th century Prague he would not have felt accepted by the Germans, whose language he spoke and wrote in, nor by the Czechs, who were experiencing a resurgence sense of Slavic nationalism. Nevertheless when I read Metamorphosis for my magic realism blog   I was struck by how Czech Kafka's surreal dark humour seemed. 

Franz Kafka monument (Photo credit: John McNickname)

If you are visiting Prague and are interested in Kafka I suggest you visit the Franz Kafka Bookshop, near the Old Town Square, and buy yourself The Guide to Franz Kafka's Prague (only 20 kc), and take a walk through the old town to discover Kafka's Prague for yourself. Forty nine sites are identified, including Kafka's homes, schools and workplaces.