Jensen a lilie / Modrá slečna / Kráska – Kocourek Josef (2021)

The comprehensive edition of three novels by Josef Kocourek (1909–1933) from the years 1926 and 1927, which were available only in the form of bibliophilia or were published only in magazines, more or less concludes the long-term research and publication of Kocourek's work. All three texts fall into the author's creation 'before' his more well-known – and let us add, already published – novels and stories (including Srdce, Žena, Zapadlí vlastenci 1932), thus complementing Kocourek's diary entries and short stories from the second half of the 1920s. Here we find characteristics typical of the author and obsessions with elements that are often still boyishly naive. However, it is essential to always remember that at the time of the creation of all three prose pieces, Kocourek was only seventeen years old. The immensely talented writer, who died of tuberculosis at the 'Wolkerian' age of 24, quickly absorbed avant-garde poetics and literally churned out a series of texts that went hand in hand with the most modern art of the time. The influences of expressionism and poetism are evident, such as fascination with the city, often bizarre eroticism, remarkable exoticism, but also significant social motifs and the associated, at times strangely distorted brutality and eccentricity of individuals. Kocourek's misfortune and curse was long-term neglect and regionalism, so his work was known only...