Edition 69
(2005)
The consideration of pornography as a serious cutting-edge art form has been making a comeback in recent years across all fields of expression. In film, the homo-punk sleaze antics of Bruce la Bruce have become increasingly trendy with the release of his latest movie, The Raspberry Reich; artist Alex McQuilken’s video Fucked, which features the artist being screwed from behind while her partner simultaneously applies make-up to her face, was instantly snapped up by investment banking art collector Glenn Fuhrman; and the work of “transgressive” writer Kathy Acker kept readers and critics alike in a suspended state of bafflement and arousal until her death in 1997.
This conflation of cutting-edge aesthetics with pornography is nothing new. A cursory glance at the history of the avant-garde reveals numerous examples of art and porn entwined in an unholy union – one that has yielded some of the greatest works of the 20th century.
Here in Prague, from 1931 to 1933, Jindrich Styrsky, a founding member of the Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia, privately published six volumes of experimental porn (or “erotica”) under the rubric Edition 69. The first and final of these editions were recently published together in one volume, translated into English for the first time, by Prague’s maverick publisher of vanguard Central European literature, Twisted Spoon Press. Volume One, Vitezslav Nezval’s Sexual Nocturne, traces its narrator’s sexual development through adolescence, concluding with a surreal encounter with a prostitute, who comes to assume a vivid role in his adult life. Volume Two, a story by Styrsky, explores the author’s erotic fixation on his sister, calling to mind Georges Bataille’s similar fascination with his mother, and is followed by a “collage novel” in which pornographic photographs are juxtaposed with other, seemingly random images, evoking bizarre dream narratives of death, sex, voyeurism, and apocalyptic doom. These two seminal works are followed by an intriguing compendium of postscripts, including an early essay by Bohuslav Brouk on “pornophilia,” excerpts from Styrsky’s dream journal, and a useful note by translator Jed Slast summarizing the activities and controversies surrounding the origins of Edition 69.
The publication of Edition 69 in Slast’s graceful translation is a landmark event in itself, in that it effectively brings together all of the various movements (Poetism, Surrealism, Constructivism) occupying the Czech interwar avant-garde into one accessible, not to mention beautiful, volume. More importantly, it should succeed in finally bringing the work of Nezval and Styrsky to a larger audience, affirming their place in the canon that begins with the Marquise de Sade and extends into the present day.
Originally published in the Prague city magazine Think Again. Edition 69 can be ordered here.