Vlci

Illustrations by Eva Švankmajerová

František Dryje's (1951) sixth collection of poems is loosely inspired by one of Eva Švankmajerová's (1940 – 2005) last cycles of pastel drawings, entitled "Wolves Have Been Reintroduced into the Czech Forests" (2004), which is undoubtedly one of the most prominent works in her oeuvre – it can be understood, among other things, as a painful existential reflection on the awareness of death and mortality. The poems and pastels share the same thematic and value-based starting points, which are common or close to both authors: both are significant representatives of that creative (expressive, imaginative) line whose roots extend into the history of Czech surrealism (Nezval, Havlíček, Effenberger et al.).

Dryje himself says: "... I try to grasp and process an external, however 'high' or 'low' impulse in my own unique way ... to devour it and spit it out embodied in my flesh and clothed in my skin – I try to view the world primarily through the prism of subjectivity, which refracts a light beam of impulse coming from somewhere, thus illuminating the path to the only valid, imaginative communication."

The book is in Czech.