that day—because the play takes place at this very moment on the Old City Square. It
was Sunday. Then, on the square, instead of the black and plump monument to Jan Hus,
there is no monument, no square everything is conjured away, neither can you see the
Starometsky Orlo, the clock on which yesterday the sun and the moon still turned, nor the
palaces, nor the houses, the centre of the universe is covered this Sunday with a flood of
feet in sneakers. It was the marathon that had attacked the city introducing the virus of
the Sneaker. The City had fallen? Sneaker, Praguean horse, so with your Synecdoche you
have vanquished the impregnable city!? Around the tank to Jan Hus topped with
hundreds of sneakers the air was fluorescent blue. Venus of the whole country, the
victorious sneakers rolled thousands of cans with the effigy of Coca-cola under the chaos
of their hooves. Suddenly exhausted, the macabre carnival collapsed, loosing its masks. A
universal tee-shirt enveloped the remains of the disembowelled City. From the shroud
emerged only the two untamable horns of the Tyn church.
But the next day the Castle began again.
There has never been a more pricked-up city.
A City? An army. There is none more combative more erect, more provocative. A
City? A heroine, called Prague. At dawn barely is one rising, she is already up, her lances
standing, her helmets pricked. From the heights of her hills she apostrophes you: Try to
take me! She stamps her foot, she envelops herself in her stone coat. Wherever one is,
raising one’s head, she is there—brandished phallic modest, omnipresent and
inaccessible. There is none more impregnable. Certain cities remain intact, the crowds
believe they trample them—the regiments of tourists banderilla it with foreign flags,
course through the roads, occupy the arcades, no attack will ever force the City to
surrender.
Over the centuries suitors had presented themselves, had conquered it, tamed it they
thought; they hurried to build their palaces, during the construction anxiety aged them,
knowing that the walls would outlive them made their flesh sweat. But one after another,
they constructed, it was the City that wanted it. It was fate to build until you’re done in;
then there was a gust of wind, the lords fell successively: into ashes and into bloods and
the palaces were there, calm under the snow.
No, this is not a City.
A reserve of centuries of alleys of tombs.
Centuries: alleys: tombs: it is all interchangeable.
I do not know why, why Prague, Prague, why so many centuries flow in your alleys?
Full of powder of generations, flasks of constructions.
Stratigraphy of the layers of the Praguean bark. Columns of dates, piles of styles.
10th century—1050, ca. 1050—ca. 1260, ca. 1260–1310, 1310–1419, ca. 1450–1526,
1538–1580, ca. 1580–1620, 1611–1690, 1690–1745, 1745–1780, 1780–1830, 1895–
1914, 1918–1939: spreading Gothic high Baroque neo-Renaissance, neo-Baroque
Functionalism and Constructivism Late Renaissance (Mannerism) pre-Romanesque
architecture (Prague Castle, Vysehrad, Brevnov) primitive Gothic Rococo (late Baroque)
Art Nouveau (Secession) high Renaissance Romanesque architecture Romantic
Historicism: neo-Romanesque style, neo-Gothic primitive Baroque late Gothic
(flamboyant, of Vladislav).
Everything started with the Castle, Vysehrad in 1050 Otto architecture, and the Castle
gave to the site the tables of the law: and you shall build on the Red Sea, and you shall
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