I Caught Sight of My Face

I Caught Sight of My Face

Petr Hruška is widely considered one of the most important Czech poets writing today, renowned for his acute powers of observation. In I Caught Sight of My Face, translated from the Czech by Joshua Mensch, Hruška exchanges the lyricism of his previous collections for an epic voice that contemplates the contemporary world through the lens of the distant past. And not just any past: his poetic cycle draws on The First Voyage around the World, written five centuries ago by Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few to survive Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of discovery (1519–22). However, this is no glorious saga of heroic endeavour. Hruška adopts the perspective of the Venetian adventurer to show how little human behaviour has changed in half a millennium. Then as now, mankind is anxious, insecure, sometimes cowardly, xenophobic and violent. The poem’s deceptively simple, accessible style conveys a profound and complex reflection on our capacity for evil.
The illustrations by acclaimed contemporary Czech visual artist Jakub Špaňhel are an integral part of this story, establishing an absorbing dialogue with the text.