The author who has captured most aptly young
people’s experience of life in foreign countries
nowadays is Zuska Kepplová. In her prose debut Buchty
švabachom/Sweet Buns with Gothic Script (2011) she
articulated the fictive nature of the conflict between
home and the world: “(...) none of us left. We did not
pack our cases in the middle of the night; we did not
swim across the Danube and climb over barbed wire.
We simply did what everyone was talking about: Today
you can travel, go to good schools, get to know people
and speak to them in foreign languages... We wanted to
join in, take part in the world. Scoop it up with a large
spoon. Break our teeth on it. We did not leave anyone or
anything. And if so, only symbolically.” First Death in the family and Morava River in Australia
Pilgrim, remember these words, whenever you wade into
water.
(Inscription in the sands.)
Water is the strongest.
How many have waded into water before you?
Ask the days, when you return.
Follow the flight of heaven’s birds and the heavenly
bodies, the counter-currents, the shine and the
dulled fury of the surface that hungers.
Share your food with water, with the fishy smell and
the ducks.
Don’t disturb them while feeding.
You step barefoot into water and you carry your life in
your hands.
The cormorants’ shriek is more intelligible to water
than human words.
The shrilling of the kingfishers, whose nest the
fishermen knocked over, will forever be repeated by
the reeds as their most cryptic song.
Murmur accompanies every movement, but there are
more silent surfaces too.
Water journeys onwards.
Traverses the bodies of pilgrims.
Splashes over them.
Have you praised that language?
Have you heard that tongue?
Where were you, if you were not by water?
Carry water in vessels, whenever the opportunity
arises.
Give water to flowers and the slender arboreal kinds.
Water is the strongest.
Speech that is uttered by water will remain in the land,
and above the surface it shall be borne afar. The riverbank, fortified by the alders’ roots, is
a rendezvous of the land’s defensive powers.
The secret of the soil’s fertility is guarded by the trees,
to which the rivers tune their flow.
The sough of the willow leaves is an echo of the mother
tongue.
Whether you have a brother or none, along the
waterline you are blood brother of the savage who understands all important things, even though he understands no others.
(Inscription in the sands.)
Water is the strongest.
How many have waded into water before you?
Ask the days, when you return.
Follow the flight of heaven’s birds and the heavenly
bodies, the counter-currents, the shine and the
dulled fury of the surface that hungers.
Share your food with water, with the fishy smell and
the ducks.
Don’t disturb them while feeding.
You step barefoot into water and you carry your life in
your hands.
The cormorants’ shriek is more intelligible to water
than human words.
The shrilling of the kingfishers, whose nest the
fishermen knocked over, will forever be repeated by
the reeds as their most cryptic song.
Murmur accompanies every movement, but there are
more silent surfaces too.
Water journeys onwards.
Traverses the bodies of pilgrims.
Splashes over them.
Have you praised that language?
Have you heard that tongue?
Where were you, if you were not by water?
Carry water in vessels, whenever the opportunity
arises.
Give water to flowers and the slender arboreal kinds.
Water is the strongest.
Speech that is uttered by water will remain in the land,
and above the surface it shall be borne afar. The riverbank, fortified by the alders’ roots, is
a rendezvous of the land’s defensive powers.
The secret of the soil’s fertility is guarded by the trees,
to which the rivers tune their flow.
The sough of the willow leaves is an echo of the mother
tongue.
Whether you have a brother or none, along the
waterline you are blood brother of the savage who understands all important things, even though he understands no others.
