Jindrich Chalupecky - Tumblr Posts

Zpropadeně Meluzíno Ty ještě nemáš večeři a já mám schůzku s kukuřičným polem Dalo mi klíček od komůrky Uvař rychle nějakou hvězdu Poklidím lípám

Damn you, Melusine Dinner’s not ready yet and I have a meeting with the corn field It gave me a key to its chamber Quickly, cook up a star I will clean up after the linden trees

From Jiří Kolář’s debut Křestný list.

Jindřich Chalupecký wrote about it:

But what immediately surprised me was the peculiar character of Kolář’s idiom. It was neither literary, nor colloquial. It used the ordinary speech of ordinary people, which is not fixed and defined by literary norms, but while this language is usually used in literature to create contrast, in Kolář’s debut, it was the starting point of the poem. The vernacular interested Kolář because it eludes the function of a mere instrument of conveying information: it is also the subject of constant linguistic play, which by disrupting the outer form of language revives its structures and keeps it plastic to bring it back to reality and life.

The translation of the poem really is merely illustrative. There is no way to translate the beautiful zpropadeně and to keep the reminiscence of folk songs in dalo mi klíček od komůrky, and the familiarity and domesticity of ty ještě nemáš večeři... Great poetry really is untranslateable.