SWD 44
The Dictator’s sea monster, a small devil fish, and memorial portrait of Czech historian, theater and literature critic Zavis Kalandra (1902-1950)
Art: 2021
Media: Pencil, colored pencil, gouache, black India ink, color inks, stitched heavy thread
Framed: 20 in. H x 27.5 W
Using pencil, I began the drawing on February 3, 2021. I completed the drawing on February 14. The drawing depicts, at left: A large nasty allegorical sea monster (of my imagination), and, at right, a traditional-style portrait of the Czech writer, historian, theater critic, Zavis Kalandra. On February 12th I drew a small Devil-fish, seen at lower right. Both sea monsters include depictions of (the Communist symbol-image of a) hammer and sickle. I completed the artwork on February 14, 2021.
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Kalandra was born in 1902. He studied at Charles University in Prague and later in Berlin. When he was in his 20’s he affiliated with the Communists. He grew disenchanted with Communism during years of repression under Stalinism and became a critic of the Communist Party. During the Second World War Kalandra was arrested in 1939 by the Nazis and imprisoned at Nazi concentration-death camps of Flossenburg and Ravensbruck. ~ While he was imprisoned at Ravensbruck he reportedly knew another Czech. prisoner, Milena Jesenska [see UTW 67: Milena Jesenska]. She perished at that camp in 1944.
~ In an article in The Washington Post, Kalandra is mentioned as having been a surrealist; I assume this means Kalandra was a surrealist writer: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1992/05/31/magic-realism/2d22d7df-d28b-48fd-a4e8-169f40e66cf4/
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Kalandra and three other political dissidents were hung on June 27, 1950.
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In one website I glanced at while working on the drawing I was dismayed to read that the French surrealist poet, Paul Eluard (born 1895; died of a heart attack, 1952), who is considered an important founder of the European art and literary surrealist movement, had declined to condemn the then forthcoming execution of Kalandra. See https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/Paul_%C3%89luard
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Regarding the WWII years, according to the website http://www.digital-guide.cz/en/ealie/writers/zavis-kalandra-1/ “….Kalandra later became strongly involved fighting Nazism and founded an alternative wing of the Communist Party. Because of all this and due to his past he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939. Nobody then knew about his main illegal activity, which was actually smuggling people on foot through the border to Poland, mainly Jews.” ~ The following quote is about Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, Paul Celan and Kalandra, and is excerpted from an online article in The Financial Review. Background to Breton and Celan: Paul Celan was a well-known poet, born 1920; died 1970. His family was Jewish; during WWII his parents were murdered. Celan was a forced laborer in a slave labor camp run by the Rumanian government, which was allied with Nazi Germany’s Third Reich. ~ Andre Breton was a French writer and poet, born 1996; died 1966. The Vichy government in France, allied with the Nazi government of Germany-Austria, banned his writings. In 1941 he was able to escape France; he went first to the Caribbean and then the U.S.
https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/the-one-and-only-circle-20010209-k0wij
“About the Paul Eluard elegy, it helps to know that in 1950 a Czech Stalinist tribunal had condemned Zavis Kalandra, a surrealist poet and survivor of Hitler's camps. Andre Breton urged Eluard to intercede, Eluard declined, Kalandra was hanged. Thus Celan, though no longer steeped in surrealism, responded vehemently to the death of a fellow poet who'd once defended liberty and "the power of words". Pencilled into an edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins in Celan's library I found an angry draft, using words such as "gallows" and "guilt" that he later removed from the more tempered final version.
~ The USHMM website has a brief page on Kalandra: https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=7065152 states Date of Entry: 6 Apr 1940; Date of departure: 8 Jul 1942
Arrival at Floßenbürg (Flossenbürg) concentration camp [arrival date not shown]; Transfer to: Ravensbrück (departure, arrival dates not shown)
~ According to the website peoplepill (dot) com, Zalandra studied philosophy at Charles University in Prague, and at unspecified sites in Berlin. The website article states Kalandra joined the Communist Party of Czechsolovakia in 1923; and he was expelled (date not specified) due to his criticism of Stalinism. His co-defendants, all sentenced to death in 1950, on charges of treason were Milada Horáková, Jan Buchal and Oldřich Pecl. Kalandra was hung on June 27, 1950.
~ art © A K Segan / website: www.humanrights-holocaust-art.org
~ TAGS:
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