Vitezslav Nezval translator: Short, David
overview
Written in 1935 at the height of Czech Surrealism, this parable of menstruation is a bizarre erotic fantasy of a young girl's maturation into womanhood. Drawing on de Sade's Justine, and Nosferatu and the language of pulp serials, this a lyrical, menacing dream of sexual awakening involves a vampire with a taste for chicken blood, changelings, lecherous priests, with an androgynous merging of brother and sister. An exploration of the grotesque, a meditation on youth and age, sexuality and death.