 by Paul Leppin
translated from German by Cynthia A. Klima
Afterword by Dierk O. Hoffmann
PUBLISHED BY TWISTED SPOON PRESS
€ paperback original, 189 pp.
€ price: 290, CZK
€ available in bookshops
Blaugast is the story of ruin. A bored clerk, Klaudius Blaugast, pursues his desires down a path spiraling into complete degradation. Homeless and destitute, having lost everything to the evil prostitute Wanda, he seeks redemption in a Prague that has become sybaritic and uncaring. Flashbacks to incidents in his past, hallucinatory revelations of the meaning of events long forgotten, point to the seeds of his eventual downfall.
Unpublished during Leppin¹s lifetime, Blaugast ranks with his earlier novel
Severin¹s Journey into the Dark for its portrayal of an eroticized Prague
with a sinister underbelly. A throwback to the Decadent movement of the
early 20th century, of which Leppin was a prominent figure, it is as well an
indictment of the despotic and vulgar, an exploration of the sadistic
tendencies found among the ³moral² and ³respectable.²
³Leppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague .
. . a poet of eternal disillusionment, at once a servant of the Devil and an
adorer of the Madonna.²
‹Max Brod
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paul Leppin was born in Prague on November 27, 1878. After completing
secondary school, he began a career as a civil servant at the Postal and
Telegraphic Office. His first novel, The Doors of Life was published in
1902. At this time Leppin was already an important figure in Prague literary
circles, and was a spokesman of a younger generation of Prague German
writers. Leppin, whose decadent lifestyle reflected his horror of bourgeois
existence, was described as ³the German-Bohemian Baudelaire.² A scandal
followed the publication of his novel Daniel Jesus (1905), which was
considered blasphemous and obscene. By the first decade of the 20th century
many of the writers Leppin was associated with, such as R.M. Rilke and
Victor Hadwiger, had left Prague. Leppin stayed and his relationship to the
city was expressed in several works, most famously his 1914 novel Severin¹s
Journey into the Dark. In the 1930s, Leppin received various recognitions
for his life¹s work (e.g., the Schiller Memorial Prize in 1934). In 1937 his
only son died, and in 1939 he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo
after the Germans had occupied the city. Upon his release, he suffered a
stroke that left him paralyzed. He died on April 10, 1945 and is buried in
the Vinohrady Cemetery.
Other books by Paul Leppin published by Twisted Spoon Press:
Others' Paradise
Severin's Journey into the Dark
For more information please go to www.twistedspoon.com/blaugast
--
Twisted Spoon Press
P.O. Box 21
Preslova 12
150 21 Prague 5
Czech Republic
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