Svatava Antošová

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Svatava Antošová is a Czech writer, poet, and journalist. She was born in the Northern Bohemian town of Teplice on June 3rd, 1957. Dubbed the “Czech Sappho”.^[1], Antošová is considered to be the first prominent lesbian writer of Czechoslovakia, later the Czech Republic. Her work was subject to many stylistic changes over the course of her career, with her earlier poetry inspired by rock and beatnik poetics as well as Alfred Jarry’s ‘Pataphysics. Her later prose uses morbid and carnal themes, particularly murder and eroticism, as a narrative tool to question sexual and gender conformity. Her works criticize the societal tendency to define the boundaries of acceptable sexual behaviours and gender expressions. Antošová has never hidden her sexuality in neither her work nor her private life, allowing her to liberally explore these themes as an openly lesbian author.

Life[edit]

Svatava Antošová was born in the Czechoslovakian town of Teplice on June 3rd, 1957. She grew up in a working-class family. She attended primary school in nearby Dubí and secondary school in her hometown, graduating in 1976. She graduated from the School of Librarian Studies in Prague in 1978 ^[2].

After her studies she pursued work in many industries. She first started as a librarian at the District Library in Teplice for four years before moving to Southern Bohemia to work at the Sfinx enamel factory in České Budějovice for another four years.

Her move from Northern to Southern Bohemia was mostly motivated by the poor air quality of the former, where residents received an allowance from the regime of two thousand Czech crowns per year due to their lower life expectancy ^[3]. She had initially negotiated a position at the local regional library in České Budějovice thanks to a former classmate. However, due to her membership at the Pataphysical College of Teplice (PKT), an offshoot of Paris’ Collège de ‘Pataphysique, the library was not allowed to accept her.

Svatava Antošová was a founding member of the Pataphysical College of Teplice (PKT) alongside Petr Kuranda, Václav Lukášek, Eduard Vack, and Miroslav Wanek. The group formed out of their common interest in Alfred Jarry’s ‘Pataphysics. Intended as a parody of science, this branch of philosophy deals with an imaginary realm additional to metaphysics and can be described as the science of imaginary solutions. The PKT built upon Jarry’s work to include contemporary political equivalents. The college and its accompanying journal, PAKO or Pataphyscial Collegium, was broken up in 1986 by the secret state security, StB. However, the work done at the college and its journal left its on mark on the communist country’s underground philosophy scene.

Antošová describes her experience at the enamel factory as a “significant” period in her life where she learnt how those at the “bottom of society” lived. She found the factory to be a “last resort” for those who nowhere else to go and no schooling or vocational training to fall back on, where they had “nothing” but the brutal cycle of work and the pub. Despite the propaganda from the communist regime which advocated for a proletariat with power, she noted that “the workers in the enamel factory were no masters”. Moreover, she found the experience helped her get rid of her “racist prejudices given by [her] upbringing and growing in a monochromatic environment” as the factory workers came from countries with socialist influence such as Chile, Cuba, Angola, Afghanistan, and primarily Vietnam ^[4].

Once she moved back to Teplice in 1987, she became a grinder for the company Somet until 1993. She lists the reasons for her moving back as a lack of attachment for Southern Bohemia, where locals regarded her as “a piece of debris”, as well as a “simple longing – for the Nordic roughness, for the uprooted people who had no idiosyncrasies like those in the south, for familiar places that [she] had deeply attached to [her], for home” ^[5] . Afterwards, she worked as an editor for Czech Radio in the Ústí nad Labem region for four years. She continued her career as an editor at the Hearst-Stratosféra publishing house in Prague until 2001. The following year, she worked for the Teplice Regional Library for two years. Returning to work in 2009 after a four-year break, she became an editor for the literary magazine Tvar (Shape).

Literary Work[edit]

Svatava Antošová’s career in writing has seen a multitude of stylistic changes over the years.

She first started publishing her poetry in the later years of communism, with her works exemplifying the moral unrest of her generation. Her first works were contributions to the main underground samizdat magazine, Vokno (Window), published by František Stárek intermittently between 1979 and 1989 ^[6]. Her initial style is inspired by both Beat poetry and surrealism, whilst following the underground rock poetry of the decade. Her poems express her anxiety surrounding the dehumanization of the world and its lack of love in all forms: self-love, romantic love, and sex.

In the eighties, she was an active member of the literary Group XXVI with Roman Szpuk, Pavel Kukal, Robert Janda, Karl J. Beneš and Zbyňek Ludvík Gordon . She participated in meetings as well as pilgrimages around Czech castles to emulate author Karel Hynek Mácha, who was famously influenced by his Krkonose pilgrimage.

The subtitle for this novel denotes its sexual content: "Grotesque Porn from the Terrorism Era". Both of these novels flip the script on the sad stereotypical queer plot lines of the times, rather depicting graphic violent and sexual scenes with a note of humour and absurdity. Antošová gains inspiration from her time at the enamel factory to write about the grimy environment of industrial Northern Bohemia: illustrating the poverty and the endless cycle between work and the pub.

Her final batch of poetry releases includes Ještě mě nezabíjej! (Don’t Kill Me Yet!) and Vlčí slina (Wolf Saliva). The latter is an anthology of her works from 1996 to 2006, and was published in 2008. Her last published novel was released in 2012 and titled Skoby punkt memory (Hooks/Punkt Memory), and her last poetry collection was published in 2014, titled Dvojakost (Duality) with accompanying photographs by Petra Kurandy.

Work[edit]

· Dream of the Great Escape (samizdat, 1977) - poems

· Underwood (samizdat, 1980) - poems

· Encephalic Awakening (samizdat, 1980) - poems

· They call me poetry (Mladá fronta, Prague 1987) - poems

· The woman must be drunk (Czechoslovak writer, Prague 1990) - poems

· Twice for friends - (Association of Czech Bibliophiles, 1991) - poems

· Tórana (Mladá fronta, Prague 1994) – poems

· ... without her head (Krásné nakladatelství, Prague 1994) – poetic composition

· Calendar of the sixth sense (Clinamen, Prague 1996) – poems

· Lady and Jump (Votobia, Olomouc 2004) – prose

· I have never licked a Nordic blonde (Condordia, Prague 2005) - prose

· Don't kill me yet! (Protis, 2005) – poems

· Wolf saliva (Protis, Prague 2008) – poetic composition

· Skoby/Punkt Memory (Hodek Milan, Prague 2012) – experimental prose

· Duality (Milan Hodek, 2014) – poems on photographs by Petr Kuranda

References[edit]

External links[edit]

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