Magic Prague - Photobook

The title of this photography book is inspired by Angelo Maria Ripellino's Magical Prague. Published in 1973, Rivellino's work presents itself as an essay—or, more accurately, as an erudite and visionary breviary—dedicated to the historical and symbolic identity of the city of Prague. Magical Prague sits at the crossroads of historical-literary essay, philological investigation, and poetic writing, offering a broad canvas intertwining political events, esoteric traditions, artistic movements, and emblematic figures of Central European culture. Ripellino thus constructs a breviary of Prague's memory, in which the city emerges as a mythical and metaphorical space, marked by a constant tension between rationality and irrationality, modernity and archaism, and portrayed in its most restless and fascinating dimension.

"The fascination, the life of Prague, will never end. The persecutors, the gravediggers, will vanish into an abyss. And perhaps I will return. Of course I will return." In a dive bar in Malà Strana, shadows of my youth, open a bottle of Mělník. I will go to Prague, to the Viola cabaret, to recite my verses. I will bring you my grandchildren, my children, the women I loved, my friends, my resurrected parents, all my dead. Prague, we will not give up. Be strong, resist. We have nothing left but to walk together the very long, Chaplinesque path of hope.

from Magic Prague by Angelo Maria Ripellino, Einaudi, 1973