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Published: July 30th 2009
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Prague is probably too beautiful for its own good. Every corner seems to provide a more picturesque vista than the last, a veritable architectural history from Gothic to Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau and…Cubist? And this sweep obviously includes more contemporary design (e.g. the Dancing Building). The city’s beauty draws a heavy crush of tourists, one that almost overwhelmed me when I first arrived and tried to cross the famous Charles Bridge.
But I’ve learned a couple of secrets about Prague in my few days here. If you get up early, you have the city nearly to yourself. The streets are almost devoid of tourists (even Czechs ) before 9am. I had a blissful morning in the castle grounds, even getting about fifteen minutes of undisturbed silence under the high Gothic arches of St. Vitus Cathedral (the centerpiece of the castle complex) before the organized tours descended. Similarly, I wandered the Jewish cemetery this morning - not a single soul in sight (more on this below).
The other trick is simply to get off the few main tourist drags. It’s amazing how just a street or two away
from a mad crush the city suddenly becomes a lived-in place, not just a museum full of tschoky souvenir shops and tourist trap restaurants. Actually, this is not such a new trick. Whenever I start to get annoyed with the tourist crowds, I just remember that I also live in a tourist trap city (Washington, DC!) yet I rarely notice this - because I’m not, in general, hanging out with the tourists. And, yes, here I’m a tourist. I can’t avoid that!
***
Before beginning my studies of 1989, Prague was a relative mystery to me. It was on my travel radar as a “most see” city, but beyond it being an aesthetically pleasing place I knew little. But being here, exploring several distinct but complementary “themes” - the communist era and the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the Jewish presence in the city, and its literary/artistic scene - has piqued my interest to learn more and more.
I’ve already written about my 1989 sightseeing and Havel hunting, so I will stick to my other agenda items here:
1. Jewish Prague
I wasn’t surprised that Prague had had a Jewish community. But I was surprised to discover
just how large and vibrant that community had been prior to Nazi occupation; apparently at one point, sometime in the 16th century, it possessed the most populous Jewish quarter of any European city. But when the Czech lands came under Nazi control, the Czech Jews, like other Jewish communities throughout Europe, were decimated. From a population of over 118,000 prior to the war, there is now only a handful of Jews remaining in the Czech Republic.
Visiting Josefov, the original Jewish neighborhood, makes you feel the absence of the community all the more acutely. A number of synagogues and other Jewish institutions that are clustered in the area have been, collectively, turned into a museum and memorial. As I already said, I got to the cemetery early, in order to experience it without the tourist crowds. The jagged heaps of tilting stones, engraved with Hebrew, huddle under the protection of shady trees; the stones mark layers of generations, the centuries of Jewish history in Prague. Indeed, it is apparently the oldest surviving Jewish graveyard in Europe, having been founded in the 15th century. Next to the cemetery is the Pinkas Synagogue, now a memorial to all those Czech Jews
who died during the Holocaust - 77,297 names crowd the walls of the now empty synagogue. 77,297 out of 118,000. I had to sit down.
On the other side of the cemetery is the intriguingly named Old-New Synagogue, the only working synagogue in Prague (and, again, the oldest working synagogue in Europe…I started noticing this trend!). A little bit further away (but nothing is very far in this compact city) is the gorgeous Spanish Synagogue, a Moorish fantasy that is now a museum detailing the story of Czech Jews from the 19th century to the present. Another synagogue-cum-museum was the Maisel, which shows the earlier history of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia. (I was fascinated to learn that Czech Jewish scholars had written Czech commentary on the Torah in Hebrew characters - in some cases before certain Czech words had been written in Latin script!)
All this density of Jewish culture and history, and yet essentially all that is left is a museum….
2. From Kafka to Černý
The adjective “Kafkaesque” is one I’ve always loved, even before I actually had read anything by the man whose name gave us the word: Franz Kafka. It implies
that something is surreal, inscrutable, irrational. Kafka, a Jew from Prague who wrote in German, would not have written what he wrote - The Castle, The Trial - had he not been in Prague. I know get how much of his work is tied up into his experiences of being a depressed, petty bureaucrat in the late Habsburg days of the city. Although he wrote in German, not in Czech, he is much touted (Kafka mugs and T-shirts are everywhere) as one of, if not the, most famous writers to come out of Prague. There’s even an entire, rather trippy museum devoted to his life and work, one that tries to recreate the, um, Kafkaesque universe of Kafka’s imagination with odd sound and video effects (besides the more traditional displays).
I also have been reading a couple Milan Kundera novels, such as The Joke, but I probably shouldn’t mention that here…. Seems the Czechs don’t want to like him (since he emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the 70s).
Havel, I’ve mentioned.
***
David Černý is one funny man. Though I’ve never met him.
I have been tracking down this Czech artist’s weirdly wonderful sculptures that dot the
Prague landscape. The first I saw was “Kun” (Horse), a hanging sculpture that literally upends the sculpture of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square. Then there was “Proudy” (Streams) outside the Kafka Museum - two men peeing into a pool shaped liked the Czech Republic, “writing” quotations of Czech literature with their, um, streams. Yesterday, I glimpsed the one that connects to my 1989 theme, “Quo Vadis” (Where Are You Going). Finding it, though, requires a little fore-knowledge, since it is in the back gardens of the German embassy. You have to peek through the iron fence to see it - a Trabant on four legs, in memorial to the East Germans who camped out in the then West German embassy’s gardens while seeking asylum. Today, I racked up two more: “Hanging Out”, which is literally hanging above the street (is that supposed be Sigmund Freud?), and “Babies”, the creepiest of the lot (gigantic babies with slots for faces). Food for thought!
Could one describe his work as Kafkaesque? Or should it be Černýesque? Hmm…
3. Language
Those who know me well, know my love of languages. So I can’t but help to end with a short comment on
Czech (it’s appropriate following a section on Czech writers, no?).
The main thing is that Czech intimidates me. When a language is described as being much more difficult than Russian (seven cases! three registers!), you know you are in for a ride. And then there is the paucity of vowels. Take a look at these Czech tongue-twisters (borrowed from my Lonely Planet guide):
Strč prst skrz krk. (“Put your finger through your throat.”)
Třistatřicettři stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes třistatřicettři stříbrných střech. (“333 silver sprinklers were spraying over 333 roofs.”)
Still, I would love to be able to read Havel in the original and to delve into the older Czech literature, one of the oldest in a Slavic language. But for now I am still struggling with děkuji (“thank you”)!
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Černý
If you're still around and can stand going back to Holešovice, one of Černý's best works (imo) is the Entropy.EU installment at the DOX gallery there. The rest of the exhibitions are also rather interesting, definitely worth a visit. Really enjoyed reading your blogs!