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Turning iron into gold

Former dissident loves discreet charm of samizdat and alchemy

By Victor Velek
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
March 26th, 2008 issue

Zadrobílek now publishes books of short stories and poetry, under his own name and two pseudonyms. enlarge

The Zadrobílek File

Born: 1932 in Stodůlky (now part of Prague)
Who: Publisher, writer, poet, alchemy devotee, musician, former underground activist
What: In the 1970s and 1980s clandestinely put out about 40 samizdat titles (averaging about 80 copies for each edition)
Owns: Trigon, a small publishing house specializing in alchemy, hermeticism and mysticism
Founding member: Underground band Žabí hlen

Alchemy involves the art of turning common metal into gold.

It’s also a metaphor for the life and work of Vladislav Zadrobílek, a 75-year-old former dissident who is known for publishing samizdat during communist times — underground manuscripts on fringe topics like alchemy and banned subjects, which were passed from person to person in Czechoslovakia.

Alchemy strives to penetrate subtle, mysterious mechanisms governing metamorphoses of matter. Alchemy is a spiritual chemistry that allows a glimpse of “the divine” behind the veil of matter.

So says Fulcanelli, an enigmatic author of two books on the secret art of alchemy published more than 80 years ago. The uncanny Frenchman, whose identity remains a puzzle to this day, is considered by enthusiasts as the greatest adept of modern-day alchemy.

“Fulcanelli, whoever he was, has plowed a promising furrow that, if followed, could bear extraordinary fruit,” Zadrobílek says.

The same could be said for Zadrobílek’s own life. The writer, poet, musician and, last but not least, alchemy devotee, managed to follow his passions without getting caught under the former communist regime.

Fulcanelli’s esoteric meditations were some of the most successful titles of his covert samizdat enterprise.

“There were as many as three re-issues of Fulcanelli’s The Mystery of the Cathedrals,” he says, “but basically every title put out disappeared quickly as there was hunger for virtually every kind of [unofficial] book.”

Sitting in his book-packed apartment in Holešovice, Zadrobílek, a bearded man with the countenance of a sage, talks about how his life in the anti-communist underground led to his current publishing activities.

It wasn’t easy, he says.

On his zigzagging path toward bookmaking, Zadrobílek changed jobs many times. He was a gardener, a steelworker, a clerk and an advertising man, before he eventually found himself jobless in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

When Soviet troops came to “free” the country from a counter-revolutionary danger, Zadrobílek took part in a protest meeting of the company he worked for.

“I made a speech calling for people to stand up not only against the invaders but also against the [local politicians] who invited them.”

Zadrobílek was fired from his job soon after.

The alchemy of samizdat

Despite living in a country where there was officially no unemployment, where work was granted to all citizens and avoiding this privilege was punishable with up to three years’ imprisonment, Zadrobílek managed to stay out of the labor market.

For a short time after he lost his job, Zadrobílek continued as an official freelancer. But, in the early 1970s, he stood aloof from the ranks of working people.

“I said to myself, ‘Stay home and endure this period, since it can’t last long,’ ” he recalls.

But he was scared. With long hair, a trait of nonconformism, he was a prime police target.

Although Zadrobílek was exposed to harassment such as home searches and interrogations, somehow he was never suspected of not working and “sponging off socialist society.”

“Big Brother” got confused by frequent visits he paid to an antiquarian bookstore on Dlážděná street in Prague’s New Town.

“They saw me visiting the place regularly. In fact, I was there almost every day, so they didn’t check my job status anymore.”

The bookstore was one of the hubs of an underground counter-culture, a meeting point of dissidents and nonconformist artists.

Figures connected with the free-thought forum included, among others, poet and painter Jiří Kolář, author and singer-songwriter Vlastimil Třešňák and sculptor Aleš Veselý.

“Although I was idle, I was busy all the time,” Zadrobílek says.

Together with Karol Sidon, who is now the chief rabbi in the Czech Republic, and other people interested in Judaism, Zadrobílek studied Hebrew, Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. He visited libraries to study and translate old alchemical treatises. He indulged in playing in an underground band called Žabí hlen (The Frog Phlegm). And, most notably, he started publishing samizdat works.

Over the years, Zadrobílek put out about 40 titles, mostly books on alchemy, but also his own writings and works by other maverick Czechs such as Ladislav Klíma, Josef Váchal and Vladimír Boudník.

Although Zadrobílek’s production was small compared with the country’s overall samizdat output of more than 12,500 titles, he was unrivaled in his specialty, says Jiří Gruntorád, director of Libri Prohibiti, a Prague library of banned books, samizdat and exile literature. “His books are an honor to the Czech samizdat,” Gruntorád says.

Thanks to helpful contacts in the printing community, Zadrobílek was able to access state-owned printing presses. He even managed to use a printer in the very bosom of the Czechoslovak communist establishment, at the office of the government.

“I made three books there,” Zadrobílek says, smiling as he recalls the collaboration with a supportive pressman at the government printer. He then moved on to the Czechoslovak News Agency, the journalistic mouthpiece of the communist regime’s ideology, where he secretly printed some 15 books on alchemy.

Of course, the principal spot for Zadrobílek’s clandestine publishing was his apartment and the building’s basement. This was the center where dealers and friends came to get some fresh samizdat copies.

Besides the income from old book restoration and other petty jobs, cash from book resellers was an important source of livelihood for Zadrobílek’s family. But, as he notes, samizdat dealers were also a source of worries.

For example, one of Zadrobílek’s most loyal customers, underground musician František Horáček (also known as Jim Čert), chose to sell the books publicly.

“He sold samizdat literature at the Sparta soccer stadium where there used to be a flea market,” Zadrobílek says. “Well, he wanted to earn money to buy a new accordion.”

Moreover, adds Zadrobílek, it later turned out that Čert had collaborated with the secret police. But Čert didn’t disclose anything about Zadrobílek’s samizdat activities.

“If he had, he would have lost his profit from selling the books and perhaps could have never bought the accordion.”

Flirting with disaster

Apart from samizdat, Zadrobílek also flirted with disaster by playing music. The Žabí hlen band grouped together people around the bookstore on Dlážděná to satisfy a thirst for creative spontaneity.

“It was a spontaneous group of individuals with critical ideas who decided to withdraw from the dim totalitarian reality and create a world of their own in which there were no shackles,” says Petr “Hraboš” Hrabalík, a musician and writer on the history of Czech popular and underground music.

Žabí hlen’s music is a curious mix of sounds, sometimes blending into something close to the world music genre. The band was based on improvisation, experimentation and the combination of traditional and unconventional instruments and sounds.

“We didn’t rehearse, we simply appeared onstage and started to play,” Zadrobílek says, “and from that moment on strange sounds started to fill the air.”

“Concerts of Žabí hlen were some sort of Dada happenings,” Hrabalík says, referring to the international art movement.

During the show, some members of the band were trashing plates or used various kitchen utensils to produce sound, while others explored the limits of traditional musical instruments, Zadrobílek recalls. Žabí hlen was simply a pure joie de vivre.

Farewell to underground

But Zadrobílek didn’t know just how popular he was until communism fell, when he started receiving letters from around the country asking about whether his samizdat titles would still be published.

First he set up the Trigon publishing house in 1990. The first books with the Trigon label were new editions of successful samizdat pieces. No longer hindered by stealth and technical difficulties, the volume of Zadrobílek’s production has expanded. Trigon has become a haven for lovers of alchemy, mysticism, magic, astrology, poetry and bibliophile editions.

“Thanks to Zadrobílek, there are Czech translations of various alchemical texts now available,” says Vladimír Karpenko, a chemist and historian of alchemy at Charles University.

With freedom of publication and enterprise, Zadrobílek also has been able to earn himself recognition as an author. Under his own name, or the pseudonyms D. Ž. Bor and Vladimír Kuncitr, he has published essays, short stories and poems. In 2005, his book of poetry Klonování času (Cloning Time) won him a nomination for the prestigious state award for literature.

In 1997, Zadrobílek co-authored an exhibition on alchemy called Opus Magnum, which met with enormous success. On the other hand, his exhibition on the Baroque eccentric aristocrat Franz Anton Sporck was a total failure that cost him a lot of money.

“Because of the loss, I had to stop publishing for some time,” he says, admitting that he is not always a good business person because he does what he likes.

In practical terms, that means some titles have been on his small bookstore’s shelves for 10 years or longer. But, as he points out, the only thing that really matters to him is that he can stand by every single book he has written and translated.

Currently, the alchemy aficionado is writing a book on Josef Váchal, a fellow printer and painter, and simultaneously working on a book dealing with cataclysms in ancient times. According to Zadrobílek’s belief, the biblical flood has been only one of a series of global apocalypses that has hit humankind.

“Alchemy is a vehicle of divine wisdom, one of the ancient secret arts that has survived eons and all global catastrophes,” Zadrobílek says.

Victor Velek can be reached at vvelek@praguepost.com

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