Time's Magpie - Myla Goldberg [26]
Vyšehrad is one of Prague’s treasures. It was originally established at the end of the nineteenth century as the final destination for Prague’s cultural elite, the Czech equivalent of Paris’s Montmartre or Père Lachaise, with the key difference that Vyšehrad’s farthest-flung graves are still within reach of the elongated shadow of its church at sunset. Such smallness breeds intimacy; unlike the famous sprawling cemeteries of Paris, it is possible to spend an hour here and feel acquainted with the place. Vyšehrad’ s population is a veritable Who’s Who of Czech cultural heroes. Among the writers, actors, artists, athletes, scientists, and musicians buried here are Antonín Dvoák, Jan Neruda,Alfhons Mucha, and Karel apek.Women are generally subsidiary residents. Though several actresses claim their own headstones along with a few female writers, artists, and musicians, Vyšehrad is largely a society of dead men. A roster outside the cemetery gate lists the notable names and their grave numbers; the unlisted are those who shone less brightly but paid for the privilege of rubbing decaying shoulders with Prague’s dead luminaries. As a result almost every headstone reads like a resumé, each inhabitant anxious to prove their worthiness among such lofty company.
Buried among the sculptors, actors, and composers are master builders and professors of otolaryngology, engineers and Czech postal officials. The gravestone of Frank Tetauer asserts his rightful membership by proclaiming him a Ph.D., a writer, a playwright, a critic, and a translator. Below the aforementioned curriculum vitae are four lines of Frank’s original poetry on the topic of death and below this—in a single line barely visible—are three words: HIS WIFE ANNA. Though Frank may have gone a little heavier on the resumé and the poetry than most, his gravestone is by no means unique; the determined careerists interred in Vyšehrad seldom chose to include the word “father” or “husband” on their headstones, and the names of their wives are generally squeezed into whatever space is left over.
Vyšehrad greatly benefits from the fact that many of its tenants died during the first quarter of the twentieth century, when the cemetery was young and Czechoslovakia was a country newly created from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a period of national revival that had the aesthetic good fortune of coinciding with the ascendancy of Art Nouveau. The lettering on these markers alone is worth the metro trip: the gravestones are graced with fanciful alphabets ripe with luscious curves and angled serifs.
Because few of Vyšehrad’s great artists and great egos were content to settle for a standard gray marble slab upon their demise, Vyšehrad doubles as an outdoor sculpture garden. One grave features a life-sized wraithlike sculpture rising from the ground on tiptoe. Another grave features a sculptural trompe l’oeil of startlingly realistic white marble doves, one of which lies draped over the edge of the headstone, its neck broken. Less representational headstones include an abstract metal sculpture suggesting the form of a headless female angel and an enigmatic organic marble gravestone split by a curved channel. One particularly fanciful grave marker appears to be part wind vane and part cuckoo clock. More conventional tenants opted for busts, generally life-sized, perched atop dark marble columns so that their eyes return the gazes of passersby. Walking between rows of gravestones feels like proceeding down the receiving line of a strangely silent garden party.
Vyšehrad sits on a massive outcropping of rock that towers over the city, and the air in the cemetery