Transparent Body and Other Texts - Max Blecher

Transparent Body and Other Texts by Max Blecher, translated by Gabi Reigh / 174-page paperback published in 2024 by Twisted Spoon / ISBN 9788088628033

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Transparent Body & Other Texts brings together Blecher's entire output of poetry and short prose, from the earliest texts published during his lifetime to those appearing for the first time only recently. They range from stories in the vein of his fantastical, hallucinatory longer work to aphorisms, reportage, and notebook fragments. The volume also includes a selection of his correspondence with such major figures of Romanian interwar modernism as Geo Bogza, Ilarie Voronca, and Saşa Pană to give a fuller picture of Blecher's engagement with the avant-garde and literary life even as his health was progressively deteriorating over the course of the 1930s.

'Blecher has often been compared to Kafka (and not without reason), but the strongest connection, however, is with Salvador Dali. Like Dali’s ‘soft clocks,’ everything here is about to melt. It is as though Blecher’s world is always on the verge of ontological collapse; from behind the veil of things, nothingness stares out at him.' –The Times Literary Supplement

Max Blecher (1909-38) was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Botoşani, Romania. Diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis at the age of 19, he spent six years in various sanatoria, before returning to his hometown and beginning to publish in modernist magazines and journals. Often described as “hallucinatory” and “nightmarish,” Blecher’s writing is a kindred spirit to Surrealism and a major contribution to the 20th-century European avant-garde.