iburkard.worklog

I started reading a book about Jiri Trnka last night - published in 1963. It was written by Jariskav Bocek, and is difficult to find.

The act of typing as I read is not so difficult, so I'm going to post the first chapter, and maybe a few more, but I am concerned that people will see this as a copyright violation, rather than an attempt to share a hard to find document with fellow artists.

CHAPTER I

In a sense, it was density which led Trnka to puppet film. The story of his work, as with any artist, had begun long before he came on to the scene. He was the son of Rudolf Trnka, a plumber, and was born on February 24th, 1912, in a suburb of Plzen (Pilsen), in Bohemia. In his own home circle and outside it, work in puppetry had developed to a stage where it was to exert a decisive influence on a highly impressionable child.

Doll-making was a familiar occupation in the household, and he must have met his first puppet at a very early age. His grandmother was a dressmaker, and she made Jiri's first toys from bits of rag. It was not long before the small child was imitating them both and improving upon his own toys, or making new ones.

He was soon to see puppets in action: at the afternoon performance for children at the Holiday camp Theatre. This theatre had a fine tradition in puppetry, and presented a varied repertory, including opera and light opera, drama, variety shows and revues. It put on works by Offenbach, Mozart and Gluck, Pushkin and Moliere as well as the Czech classics.

The Holiday Camp Theatre was run by Josef Skupa, who took it over in 1916, when Trnka was four years old. Seven years later, when Jiri was 11, he went to the secondary school where Josef Skupa was working as a young art teacher. Skupa soon noticed the boy’s talent and interest in puppetry, and it was not long before Trnka found himself on the other side of the curtain at the Holiday Camp Theater. To Begin with Skupa allowed Trnka and the other boys to help with odd jobs. Later he gave them more important work. They helped to paint backcloths, repair broken puppets, even to make simple stage props. Trnka's years of apprenticeship as a puppeteer had begun.

The Holiday Theatre Camp introduced him to both the classic and contemporary work. When Josef Skupa took over in 1916 he began a satirical feature know as Kaspar's Cabaret. Kaspar, played and spoken by Skupa himself, gave a commentary on political life, in the form of jokes, criticism and ridicule. He attacked the monarchy, oppression and war. As early as September 2nd, 1918, over a month before the final even, he performed the burial rites of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on his stage.

Thus Trnka encountered both traditional and new influences. From the older traditions of folk puppeteers Trnka learned that the puppet was something other than a mere imitation of a living actor. It was a medium of artistic expression in its own right, with its own special technical and stylistic requirements.

From Josef Skupa Trnka learned that tradition should not be allowed to make an art-form static, and that many of the older traditions of puppetry were out of date, and needed developing and infusing with new life by means of different techniques, a different style of puppet drama, new poetry. He learned that art should go forward, and that there was great scope for originality.

But these influences were absorbed unconsciously. At the time, the boy was merely happy to be taking part in the work of grown-up people, and he was greatly thrilled when the first puppet he designed was used at the theatre by Josef Skupa.

Inevitably, Jiri was playing more attention to the little theater than to his school work, and in a sense puppetry was unlucky for him at this time. His school reports were not very good, and this influenced the family, who were at a time of crisis, in their decision to take Jiri and his younger bother away from school and set them to earning a living.

The family's circumstances had become serious. Then Jiri was in the fourth form at school his father's plumbing business went bankrupt. Rudolf Trnka had been unsettled by several years in the trenches during the First World War, and he had managed only by a great effort to keep his head above water. Now the family, who had already been living very modestly, were in dire need. Jiri was apprenticed to a pastry-cook. Geometry, arithmetic, art and technical drawing had to give way to pastry and cream cakes. But within two months Jiri had change his job. His white overalls were replaced with blue dungarees, and for a short while he learned the trade of locksmith in the Plsen Skoda Works. But then Josef Skupa intervened to find him more congenial work, in the arts and crafts shop.

Jiri had not, of course, given up the little theatre. It was inevitable that, at a time when his days were occupied by work that did not interest him, he should have turned more and more towards puppetry. He spent his evening in concentrated work for the theatre, painting backcloths, designing stage props, carving, and clothing the puppets themselves. Sporadically at first, his name began to appear on publicity material. As time passed, the last item on the programme would often read: Puppets: Gustav Nosek and Jiri Trnka.

The puppets Trnka made for Skupa's theatre were the usual characters of variety shows: there were puppets with elongated necks, grotesque groups of identical little figures, ballet dancers, and circus folk. But these were not the only puppets he was making at the time. He produced others for himself: as a hobby, and as a means of self-expression. These were not meant for the theatre: they were decorative little creatures, almost masks. Trnka ha no particular purpose in mind, but these puppets interpreted the impressions made on him by the books he has read and the characters in them: Don Quixote, Hamlet, Mercutio. He made them simply because he had the urge to do so.

Trnka's two years earning his own living were not wasted: they were years in the school of life, and they taught him that nothing was to be had without working for it. Talent, he realized, meant very little by itself, unless given its fullest expression through work, carried out with determination and will-power. Nevertheless, the two years confirmed him in his resolve to devote his life to art.

Josef Skupa, who had helped him so far, felt a great responsibility toward his gifted pupil, and was concerned for his future. He felt that the life Jiri was leading did not give him enough opportunity to develop his talent. Skupa was convinced that, in the filed of puppetry, a talented person could no loner make his was without a specialty training. He therefore tried to persuade Jiri's family to send him to the School of Applied Arts in Prague. The family hesitated because of the difficulties in providing for the boy, but Skupa put forward a concrete proposal, and then his arguments bore fruit.

In September, Jiri now sixteen years old, set out for Prague knowing that his needs would be provided for. He stayed at his brother's flat which did not involve the family in the extra expense of lodgings. His midday meal was provided free by the Bohemian Heart, a charity organization, which catered for poor students. But while he studied, he still had to earn money to provide for his other needs: his breakfast, supper, clothes and equipment for the school.

He was able to earn from two sources. One was Skupa's theatre, for which Trnka continued to work as a stage and puppet designer. The other was a children's newspaper called Night Time. The editor was one of Skupa's collaborators, and gave Jiri work as an illustrator.

The school of Applied Arts came first, of course. It was an art school fo the traditional type, where stress was placed heavily on craftsmanship and the complete mastery of technique. Trnka found hits especially so in Professor Benda's class in graphic design, which he attended. He became an outstanding student. A design he made in his third year, a carving illustrating Goethe's poem, The Dance of Death, was chosen to represent Czech graphic art at the Goethe Exhibition in Liepzip, in 1931.