“František Dryje draws primarily from the rich and, in many respects, sovereign tradition of critical surrealist self-reflection, actualization, and analysis, and yet, in addition, his writing somehow preserves, rescues, and safeguards something essential for the future. It is as if he senses that if he does not do it precisely now, something that is self-evident today will spontaneously vanish tomorrow, and there will be no one left to make it present – as he does today – truly from within.” In 1980, an internal discussion about surrealist poetry took place within the surrealist group. Vratislav Effenberger contributed to it with a gloss titled "Surrealism eternal, ingrained, or Beating a dead horse." In this note, the distinction between the Bretonian and Effenbergerian models of surrealism is expressed somewhat simplistically but clearly. It was known that Effenberger rejected and condemned Schuster's concept of "eternal," ahistorical surrealism – which, however, denied Breton's fundamental, albeit fluctuating, i.e., contaminated by utopian and metaphysical considerations, conception of creative and historical dialectics. But what did the author mean by the designation (surrealism) "ingrained"? Was this neologism just an expressive synonym for the adjective "historical," or did it encompass other meanings? When we asked Effenberger about the meaning and significance of this phrase, he replied roughly as follows (I paraphrase): "Well, it seemed to me that Žitná Street was quite unfairly forgotten compared to Ječná Street... So I wanted to rectify that."
The book is in Czech.
