Portret Magazine – The New Embodiment
There won’t be any suspense this time: I’m not going to start off with a pleasant introductory anecdote nor otherwise allude to the themes recently discussed in cultural journals. Let me just get to the point: the latest (16-17/2004) issue of the Portret magazine is devoted to the body. Some of the readers might perhaps wonder what the editors chose to put on the cover, then. Initially it seems that representing the body is not that difficult... but how to satisfy all varying tastes, how to avoid banally obvious choices, allow some enjoyment and diverse interpretations, last, but not least – provide an intriguing choice? Impatient readers can take a look at the appropriate section of the catalogue. It turns out that the cover does not include “a body” - at least on the pictorial level; instead, there are words.
The computer screen does not do justice to the magazine’s cover – the contrast between the bright red letters and the black background, the lines forming an intersecting pattern composed of letters forming anatomical terms. The image on the screen does not reveal another thing, reserved for those who will hold the magazine in their hands: the magazine forms a triptych. It is cut in two-thirds, creating wings opening outwards. The third part of the booklet forms the Inside Gallery by Małgorzata Malwina Niespodziewana, and, just like a real gallery, it contains photographs, ready to be framed.
The unconventional layout of the magazine underlines the division of the issue into texts grouped around the “bodily” theme and those devoted, as it seems, to a wider spectrum of issues, including poetry, translations of young Czech literature and critical sketches. The physical division of the booklet is surely visually attractive, but is it functional? I wish I could say that the narrow section could be comfortably read. This is perhaps not a problem if the narrow pages contain poetry – somehow it feels that verse can cope with confined space, but in other cases the proportions were perhaps set too optimistically. All this, however, should not discourage us from reading both the “bodily” section and the narrow section which contains, for example, translations of young Czech prose. If we admire Czech cinema so much, with its originality and accuracy of character portrayal, it seems a logical step to take a closer look at contemporary Czech literature. Its power also lies within the characters, with whom one easily associates. Reading the translations might be a chance to meet someone we think we know very well.
At the same time, the magazine gives us an opportunity to verify the Czech stereotypes. As Zbigniew Stala says in Katechizm czeskiego ciała (The Catechism of a Czech Body), the stereotypical image of our southern neighbours has been formed by readings such as The Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk. Stala reconstructs the stereotype of a Czech: “Do Czechs have a body? Yes, and only the body. What’s this body like? Unwieldy, lazy, fattish (not »fat«, but precisely »fattish«). What food does the Czech body absorb? Beer and dumplings. Does the Czech body contain a soul? A soul is too much to say. A hint of it, rather. The body dominates. What about the size and proportions of a Czech body? Rather small and round. What about the sounds they make? Babble, laughter and folk songs”. No comment is necessary, allow me, then, to use the The Catechism of a Czech Body as a link between the narrower and the wider section of the magazine.
To say that the body is an inexhaustible theme, which can be approached in various ways, would be a truism, but in relation to the latest Portret it is difficult to resist saying it. The wider section of the magazine contains reviews, such as that of Eve Elsner’s The Vagina Monologues by Tamara Bołdak-Janowska (The Flower With a Clitoris); or Bernadetta Darska’s remarks on Maria Janion’s The Vampire. A symbolic biography.
In this part of the magazine the articles present the body as a symbol of the human physique or as a problem – for example, a subject of oppression and negative experiences, which determine our future. Monika Mostowik’s story Birthday tells of an orphaned girl raped by her “guardian”, who kills the lover of her new tutor after having heard her cry during the act of love. The cry of sexual fulfillment finds its place in the heroin’s body as a cry of despair. Mostowik develops the theme in the sketch The foreign language of the body, which deals with diverse dimensions of sexuality.
Zenon Fajfer offers us the text Po czym odróżnić liberaturę od literatury How to Differentiate Literature and Liberature). Fajfer examines books, in which words form an autonomous entity, as if refusing to be mere bearers of the content. Instead, they resemble the structure of a body, taking on various shapes and being perceived by all senses. Works of “liberature” can, according to him, be “read using your eyesight, touch and hearing”. Just like – at least to a certain extent - the new issue of Portret.
Agnieszka Kozłowska
Translated by Marta Malina Moraczewska
Discussed journals: Portret