We are please that Vitezslav Nezval’s Farewell and a Handkerchief was reviewed in Sage Cigarettes Magazine. We thank Nicole Yurcaba for a wonderful review:
Oh Those Streets, Cemeteries, and Aquariums!" A review of Vitezslav Nezval's "Farewell and a Handkerchief
by Nicole Yurcaba
In 1933, Czech poet, writer, and translator Vitezslav Nezval traveled to Vienna, Paris, Southern France, and Italy. Nezval’s travels allowed him to form friendships with surrealist poets Andre Breton and Paul Elard, and Nezval eventually returned to his native country and established the foundations of Czech realism. As one of the most prolific Czech surrealists, Nezval left a long legacy of groundbreaking writings, including Farewell and a Handkerchief: Poems from the Road.
Described as a “proving ground for Nezval’s own shift from poetism to surrealism,” Farewell and a Handkerchief: Poems from the Road displays Nezval’s mastery of observation, and dream-like hallucinations receive the same attention as an Italian landscape’s beauty. In this collection, cities, people, objects, the rich, and the poor stand on the brink of a Europe approaching Nazism and massive social upheaval. The poems, like polaroids in a scrapbook or photo album, stand as individual snapshots of the beauty, the roughness, the despair, and the quiet.