RR 131/2023/LÉTO

This summer's RR contains two large blocks, whose protagonists are connected in many ways, even though they have probably never met. Both Cédric Demangeot and his older peer Filip Topol were personalities of considerable creative and human distinction and many talents, which they did not dilute in shallowness and the pursuit of acclaim, they were not afraid of edges and extremes, their lives and works coalesced into one, neither of them lived to the age of fifty. Both had a strong relationship with the culture from which the other came.

This collection of text and image pages on the musician and poet Filip Topol was produced to mark the ten-year anniversary of his death in June. Over six dozen respondents of various professions and ages answered the RR poll asking what they see as the main significance of his work today. Among other things, there are voices from a generation that no longer experienced Filip Topol's performances live, or a repeated emphasis on his distinctive opinion and ethical stance, whose inspiration did not end with the fall of communist totalitarianism in Bohemia. Edita Onuferová has also prepared an interview with Lubomír Schmidtmajer, who also organised a number of public performances of the Dog Soldiers at the Junior Club Na Chmelnici in the 1980s. Viktor Karlík's contribution is a collage of diary entries and other texts connected with the death of Filip Topol and also with their last joint work, which resulted in the book Like a Dog, published in the RR edition a few days before Topol's departure from this world.

"The consistency with which Demangeot pursued his interests and priorities was also unique in that he was prepared to sacrifice much for them. At a time when so many people comment on all sorts of things without drawing any significant conclusions for themselves, this aspect of personal responsibility is all the more important," writes Jean-Gaspard Páleníček of this poet, translator and publisher. The author's own work, considered "one of the most poetic voices of his generation", is represented by a poetry cycle and excerpts from the text in unpublished translations by Petr Zavadil. Demangeot's second major area of interest was translation and publishing, in which he increasingly focused on Czech poetry. He eventually devoted the hook edition of the fissile publishing house exclusively to it - Xavier Galmiche discusses this unique project and the broader context of publishing not only Czech poetry in France. Demangeot's deepening relationship with Czech culture and his extraordinary feeling for certain qualities of Czech culture, which he considered to be particularly exceptional in poetry, are also evidenced by a selection of his correspondence. Demangeot avoided publicity; the interview he gave to Jérôme Thélot is one of the exceptions. The block concludes with a selected bibliography.

In the summer issue, Radovan Kodera introduces the photographic series Fabrika 2020-2022. He was interviewed by Jaromír Typlt, who also introduces another of the authors of contemporary art brut, Vojtěch Proska. The permanent series continues: seven works and artefacts with which she is immediately familiar are selected and commented on by Veronika Richterová. Tomáš Mitura presents his Ateliers. This time the series on contemporary Czech small publishers is dedicated to Take Take Take.

A previously unpublished essay by Jiří Němec, Idea, is accompanied by a commentary by Robert Krumphanzl. The issue closes with a critical Couleur.

Czech edition