THE BEAT IS STILL ALIVE

An interview with Josef Rauvolf, the man who brought Beat literature and underground culture in the Czech Republic

by Antonio Baroni

Between the pristine white walls of DOX gallery, people are waiting for the lecture while monotonous noise comes out of a player. Already a hint of warholian style, I guess (the lecture is indeed part of the exhibition Ghosts of Bohemia, about Andy Warhol and other members of his Factory).

Finally Josef Rauvolf starts to talk and the noise gradually transforms in a Velvet Undeground song. Rauvolf, writer, translator, filmmaker and journalist, best known in the Czech Republic for his translations of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Hubert Selby, William Gibson, and Jack Kerouac, leads us on a musical journey which starts with White Light White Heat, passes through the Beatles, the Ramones, the Clash, Patti Smith, the Sonic Youth and ends with Talking Heads' synths, trumpets and distorted voices. Some days later, I had the chance to meet Josef Rauvolf and interview him about his life on the other side of the Iron Curtain and above all, about Beat literature, the dissemination of which he contributed to massively in the Czech Republic.

Provokátor: First of all, I know that lived under the Communist regime, and at the same time you had the chance to approach Western culture, and in particular, Beat literature. Was it hard?

Josef Rauvolf: Actually, it was nothing special. In the 50s, 60s some texts were already published, for example, The Howl [of Allen Ginsberg] was published in '59, not the whole poem, of course, just an excerpt, but anybody who was able to get magazines could read it.

P: Wasn't there any censorship?

JR: Of course there was, especially about sexual content. But many journalists knew how to bypass that. For example, during the 50s, which were really hard times, they wrote articles about abstract paintings and they would say “here's a typical example of decadent, capitalistic art”. They could talk about Western art and literature as critics of the capitalistic regime. Anyway, in the 80s, anything that was written in the West, it was here. And also the music, the style, the books, etc. You just had to know the right people and you could have access to Western culture. But you had to deserve it, you had to strive for it.

P: After graduating from Charles University, you chose to be a janitor. What do you remember of those years and why did you choose that career?

JR: I chose it because I didn't want to join the machine. If I had chosen to carry on with the academic career, I would have had to join the Communist party. Moreover, there were several advantages: first of all, I had very little work to do. I didn't have to be at my job every day. Our constitution said it was our right to work, but actually, you didn't have a choice. Those who didn't work were sent to jail for a year. They were considered parasites. You had a stamp in your ID to say that you were working, the type of job you had and for how long. And police could ask you for the ID to see if you were working or not. If you didn´t have the valid stamp you could be in trouble. So, I had a job and at the same time, I was free and I could travel, of course, only in Eastern Europe. I could go for three days to Moravia or Slovakia without problems. Furthermore, I had a flat. It was really difficult to get an apartment because all the flats were owned by the State; to have a flat, you had to apply and wait, but in Prague, for example, people could wait for 20-25 years. So I got this flat for free, in Prague, in the center, without having anything to do with the Communist Party or any bribery. They just gave me this flat because they assumed that I needed it for my job. Some friends of mine were professors and they had less freedom than me, because they were always controlled by the Communist party.

P: And it wasn't a suspicious job, I mean, nobody would expect anything from a janitor, you could basically do what you wanted, reading, studying... what attracted you in particular in the Beat generation culture?

JR: I started reading Beat literature in high school, when I was 15-16... And you know, at that age you are very sensitive to these kind of themes... freedom, drugs, sex... It was quite normal to be attracted to them for me, because I was a teenager.

P: But this passion lasted up to now, so there must have been something more.

JR: Of course, I think it would have affected me even if I had been 30 or more. I was really into the concept of freedom, the opportunity to be free and to stay outside society. Even during the Communist regime, when people could easily be put in jail, be blackmailed, etc. even in those times, people could be free.

P: Nowadays, you can still hear a lot of people talking about the Beat generation but if I ask people of my age [24] what they know about it, they probably would answer something like “drugs, promiscuous sex, dissolute lifestyle, etc.”. Of course, these elements have been part of the Beat movement, but it can't just be summarized in this way. So, removed the shallow aspects, what do you consider to be the main core of the movement?

JR: Freedom. Be free. Be kinder. Be open. Say what you think. Try to diminish the pain in the world.

P: In fact, Beat writers express a lot of pain in their works. Is it like a sort of universal empathy, the expression of the pain as an attempt to share it and, consequently, to diminish it?

JR: Yes, for sure. And then, another important point of the movement is the fight for sexual freedom, especially for the rights of homosexual people.

P: For the 50s, it was very impressive.

JR: Yes, in the US they could go almost to jail. I think they did a lot for gay rights.

P: Were gays persecuted in the Czech Republic as well?

JR: Homosexuality was legal here, you just had to be over 18. Of course, people were homophobic, but it was legal to be gay.

P: Maybe because the Czech Republic has never been too catholic.

JR: It's possible, but consider that when the Czech Republic was part of Czechoslovakia, even if Slovakia had always been very catholic, homosexuality wasn't illegal there either.

P: In this respect, Czechoslovakia was more advanced than the US at that time. By the way, I have read that after the many years in which Ginsberg was trying hard to make Borroughs become accepted by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, he finally made it. Ferlinghetti commented that it was the sign that Marcuse's statement that

capitalistic society had a great ability to incorporate its one-time outsiders [Morgan, Ted. Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S.Burroughs. New York: Avon, 1988. p.577]

was right. Given that, do you think that Beat literature can still be considered as disturbing and shocking in some ways or by this time is it part of the mainstream Western culture?

JR: Of course it's part of the culture but in a good sense. I don't think that it has been transformed into some kind of product, that the capitalistic system has exploited it, because the main ideas, the main concepts of the whole movement, were against the business. Of course, there's a publishing business, but it's O.K. as long as Beat works are published. I know that Ginsberg did some advertisement for some furniture and people were angry, they commented “Ginsberg sold out!" and things like that, but these stupid guys didn't know that the money he earned, he gave to charity. Ginsberg was an expert in using media, he knew the “how to”. So I would say that he was using the media, not viceversa. The message must be spread, even passing through capitalistic Western culture. So, if the message of Beat literature has been incorporated, it's O.K., because some very important concepts of the movement, e.g., ecology, weren't considered at all before.

P: In Clellon Holmes' article [This Is The Beat Generation, John Clellon Holmes, The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 1952, online here] about the Beats he suggests they weren't interested in changing society but evading it?

JR: They wanted to change society, but first of all they wanted to be as free as possible. Ginsberg, of course, he wanted to change society, he was kind of messianic. Burroughs, he knew society, I think he knew that you can't change it. He wrote some kind of manuals about how to change society, but he was very pessimistic about the possibility of change because he knew the nature of the human soul. Kerouac, he wanted to enjoy life... he wanted to drink... But he was very critical about society.

P: Do you think that people's attitudes change as they get older?

JR: Yes, when Kerouac got older he was more conservative... and alcoholic as well. The other guys, Burroughs, and Ginsberg, stayed the same as they were when they were 20, which is good. They just improved, but they didn't change. If you keep on writing, you improve.
P: I know that you had the chance to meet Burroughs in person. Was he like you expected him to be?

JR: He was great, very friendly. I was translating one of his books and I needed some advice, so I wrote to him “ I don't understand this, this, this... can you please tell me...” and he replied to my questions. It was before 1989. Later, when I considered visiting US for the first time in 1991 I called him and he invited me, “Come here and see me” so we spent two days together. He showed me his guns, I have a nice picture of him pointing a gun at me. A kind of antique gun. He was really into guns, he had this closet where people generally keep their tools or their medicines, but it was full of guns. Then, he showed me his paintings, he also gave me two of them and we smoked joints together. He was extremely nice. At that time, he was 77.

William Burroughs pointing his gun at Josef Rauvolf.

Photo: Josef Rauvolf.

P: And he was still smart...

JR: Yes, he was the smartest, you know... painting and drinking vodka all day long... And it's very rare to have the chance to see him, even for an American.

P: Not everybody has the chance to meet the people who inspired them... And Burroughs has been a source of inspiration for you.

JR: Of course, but not only for me. Burroughs was in contact with Paul McCartney and with the Beatles, not everybody knows but he appears in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover. His works have been an impetus for Lou Reed to start making music and he has influenced, to different extents, artists such as Laurie Anderson, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Kurt Cobain.. He had this particular way of creating... He liked to cut pages of writing by different authors and put them together, like a collage, for example a page would be one quarter of Joseph Conrad, one quarter Joyce, one quarter of Kafka and then some of his writings... Like dada style. He thought that, as soon as you learn a language, associations are imprinted in your brain but if you cut these associations away, you free yourself from culture, institutions, genetics, etc. Rearranging language using these juxtapositions to break traditional lines of meaning was one way of doing this. He did the same with tape-record samplings and other artists followed this method, for example, David Bowie, in his album Diamond Dogs in 1974 and again in 1995 in 1.Outside.

P: Recently, you made a documentary about Czech underground culture during the 70s and the 80s... Did you find any similarities between the two movements?

JR: Well, there were some people in the Czech Republic who were actually beatniks, there were a lot of Ginsberg clones, Kerouac clones...

P: Is it possible to identify some elements that belonged only to the Czech movement, elements that it didn't share with the Beat generation? Czech Republic in the 70s-80s and US in the 50s-60s were two very different situations... What they may have had in common is the will to react to social repression...

JR: If you take the 50s in the US, at that time, because of the economical situation, life was easier compared to Czechoslovakia, but on the other hand there was also a kind of repression, you know... McCarthy, Nationalism... but this feeling of living in a crazy society, feeling like a stranger, a foreigner, it could be similar. One could feel in the same way also in China, you know, these feelings cross borders, time, cultures. But, as for the Czech underground heroes, I don't think that they were influenced directly by the Beats, they were just inspired by them. They shared the same concept of freedom and the desire to stay outside of society.

P: Both the Beat movement and Czech underground culture have been really disturbing and innovative and contributed to the social and sexual revolution. Nowadays, do you think that there is a movement or cultural phenomena that are playing the same role?

JR: Nothing. I think that people are now too egotistical. They just don't care. In the 50s in the US people were naive, for sure, but then think what happened: Reagan, yuppies, emphasis on making money, luxury, and it went on like that... in the 90s it was pretty similar... Bush came, with all the Bush family. On the other hand I know that, in the 70s for example, it was impossible to buy some of the works of Kerouac. You could buy On the Road, you could buy Dharma Bums, but the other books were out of print, because nobody would buy them. But then, in the late 80s, early 90s, suddenly publishers started to print several manuscripts of Kerouac that had never been published before and all these books are now in print. Printers don't print if they know they're going to lose money, so that means that somebody wants to buy those books, that means, for me, that there's still interest in these authors. Beat writers were back after 20 years of silence and there was a whole new, young generation of people interested in Beat culture.

P: Because there's nothing like that now, so people have to look to the past.

JR: In 1991 I was in New York and Allen [Ginsberg] told me that there was a kind of reading, if I wanted to go and have a look, and I said “yes”, and there I found a lot of young people who wanted to hear this old guy reading his poems, they needed it.

P: People are still touched by that.

JR: Definitely.

P: Maybe in the 70s-80s they had more models to follow...

JR: They weren't following any model, they just wanted to enjoy life, listen to disco, do cocaine...

P: The Beat movement is characterised by a high degree of hedonism, and so is the 80s yuppy lifestyle, but they seem totally different.

JR: In the 80s people were into drugs as well, but they just wanted to fuck anytime, especially if they were high on coke. Beat writers took mescaline or other drugs just to improve their writing, to write better, not to fuck the whole night through.

P: By the way, are you working at something new right now?

JR: I'm finishing the translation of Kerouac's book, Visions of Cody, which was published three years after he died, and it's his best book, it's like James Joyce's novel Finnegan's Wake. Cody is the pseudonym of Neal Cassady [American writer, member of the Beat culture, he had already inspired the character of Dean Moriarty, protagonist of On the Road], it's a big tribute to this friend, and in a way, guru. There are stories that he already published in On the Road but On the Road, compared to Visions of Cody is a book for small kids, it's a good book but it's just the air-conditioned version of Visions of Cody. There's no censorship in this book, no sexual censorship, anything, and no writer censorship, nothing is manipulated. It's tough shit to translate! Many pages were written when he was smoking marijuana, totally stoned, so you can imagine how hard it is. The thing about this book is that it's very sad and dramatic. In his other books, there are some sad parts, but this one is very, very sad. And poetical. Some sentences could be taken out and they would stand alone as poetry. It's very good. I'm almost finished.

http://www.books.rack111.com/jkbooks/voc.html

http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/