Revolver Revolution

The “Revolver Revue” was first published illegally in “samizdat” (self-print) in Czechoslovakia in 1985. This magazine for literature and art that appears four times yearly has managed to survive to the present day. We talked to Michael Špirit, for many years a member of the editorial staff and co-founder of the “Critical Supplement to the Revolver Revue” and known for his precise and critical reviews, about censorship, the shock caused by the political changes in Eastern Europe and the situation of literary criticism in the Czech Republic today.

Antje Mayer: the first issue of the “Revolver Revue” was published in an edition of fifty copies. Can you describe for us something of the atmosphere in which this initially small underground project developed?

Michael Špirit:  The founders, Ivan Lamper, Jáchym Topol and Viktor Karlík, all of whom were around twenty years old, called the first four issues of what was later to be known as the “Revolver Revue” “Jednou nohou” (“With One Leg”). This was a reference to the fact that through this project they stood with practically one leg in prison. At the time Ivan Jirous, one of the most important figures of the Czech underground and the manager of the rock group “Plastic People of the Universe”, was already in prison. The first issue was dedicated to him. His poems were smuggled out of prison and published in the magazine. Today, incidentally, Terezie Pokorná is editor-in-chief of “Revolver Revue” and one of the founders, Viktor Karlík, still belongs to the core team, along with Marek Vajchr.

Was there not a danger that the young editors could, at any moment, suffer a similar fate to Jirous?

They moved along a very thin line between legality and illegality. Smuggling Jirous’ poems out of prison was naturally a punishable offence, but publishing them was not. The advantage was that these young people from the  “Revolver Revue” were as yet unknown. The authorities had no list of names. Even in Czechoslovakia it was not possible to silence a journalist without any reason. The people who produced “Revolver Revue” were most adept at avoiding censorship by carefully avoiding making political appearances. They communicated their themes by means of artistic works, often in a highly humorous way, primarily using contemporary literature but also through graphic art, photography and visual art. It should not be forgotten that at that time, the mid-1980s, the political situation gradually began to relax. From 1987 onwards it was easier to travel to the West.

Had the group formulated a programme for the “Revolver Revue”?

Not expressly. The aim was not to be a dissident journal, to consciously distinguish themselves from the '68 generation, without of course “excluding” their heroes, quite the contrary in fact. But above all the aim was to publish good, new literature and art – also from abroad – and thus to help to put an end to Czechoslovakia’s cultural isolation. The “Revolver Revue” team approached (and still approaches) the selection of works that they presented and reviewed from a remarkably ethical standpoint.

How was the magazine produced and distributed?

The “Revolver Revue” appeared three to four times yearly. The first issue contained 66 pages, the last one to be produced in the “samizdat” era had 362 pages! We started, as has already been said, with an edition of fifty copies; in 1989 it was ten times as many; 500 copies. In order not to be caught the editors had to produce the magazine at a different location each time. The magazine deliberately attempted not to convey the usual “samizdat” aesthetic, i.e. just typed on a typewriter and illustrated (if at all) with potato prints and little glued pictures. In terms of printing technology the “Revolver Revue”, or “Jednou nohou” was more ambitious. Gradually a copier known as a “Zyklostyl” (a kind of reproduction machine) was used. Issue no. 12 was produced (illegally) in a printer's. Distribution was simple: the magazine was given to friends who gave it to their friends and so forth.

How was it possible to get literature from the West?

Literature from the West often came to Czechoslovakia by very odd ways indeed, for example the covers of books were replaced by harmless titles, but it also arrived in completely normal ways such as by post or through friends.

How did the magazine experience and survive the political changes of 1989?

One the one hand we were incredibly happy to finally be able to read and write whatever we liked, on the other hand many people were thrown into a kind of infinite space without any coordinates where they first of all had to orient themselves.

When the so-called “Velvet Revolution” started the thirteenth edition of the “Revolver Revue” had just been produced. The next issue, no. 14, only appeared an entire year later, the longest gap during the history of the magazine. At the time the magazine found itself in a real crisis, as, given the current political upheavals, many journalists did not think it appropriate to write about art.  Those people founded the weekly political journal “Respekt” (www.respekt.cz). At the time I was 25 years old, an average student but it was clear to me that there was another kind of literature apart from state literature. I had heard something somewhere about the “Revolver Revue” but I didn’t move in those circles. But then I became acquainted with the people from the “Revolver Revue” and in 1994 I started to write for them.

But didn't you and your colleagues grow increasingly dissatisfied?

We wanted more space for criticism, which was given no room at all in the media at the time, not even in the “Revolver Revue”. Incidentally, the situation on the media market in the Czech Republic has not changed much up to the present. Where it is found at all, cultural criticism is mostly restricted to commentaries on Hollywood films, musicals and pop music. Magazines such as the “Revolver Revue” can survive only through culture foundations and with the help of public funds.

But let's go back to the year 1995 when we founded the “Critical Supplement to the Revolver Revue” (“Kritická Příloha RR”). It functioned as a physically independent medium, which, however, operated under the label of the “Revolver Revue”, as the same journalists produced it. Up until 2004 it appeared three times yearly and included almost 200 pages. Today the “Kritická Příloha” has again been integrated in the “Revolver Revue”. Of the total of 250 pages around 50 form the supplement, for which I continue to write.

Why is there not a “culture of cultural criticism” in the Czech Republic?

Indeed one can observe this lack in many of the former Socialist countries.

The speed with which journalism is produced in the Czech Republic is enormous and in my opinion considerably exceeds that in Austria, Germany and France.

The kind of culture or tradition of journalism such as exists in Great Britain, for example, is not to found here. The new media are produced here by twenty to thirty- year-olds that have only a vague notion of what “Charta 77” was, for example.

What is the status of literature in the Czech Republic?

During the Communist era literature enjoyed great respect among people here, above all for political reasons. It addressed the themes of life in the totality that we shared with each other. Today there is complete chaos on the Czech book market. There is no kind of hierarchy in terms of quality because the kind of popular literary criticism found in Germany doesn’t exist here.

Last question: Do younger people read the books of the older generation of authors?

The publishing companies are hungry for new young authors and forget that a fifty or sixty-year-old author can write just as well and deserves just as much to be translated into a foreign language. The “Collected Works” of Jaroslav Seifert, who is, after all, our only Nobel prize-winner for literature and whose poems were once published in editions of 10,000 books during the Communist era, are published today for the first time in an edition of only 500 copies and the publisher cannot sell even this amount! Just imagine! For me there is something wrong with this situation. 

You can also read an article about the “Revolver Revue” in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

http://www.nzz.ch/2006/06/01/fe/articleDJ9V4.html

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