Naratologický rozbor publicistického textu publikovaného ke stému výročí narození Bohumila Hrabal... more Naratologický rozbor publicistického textu publikovaného ke stému výročí narození Bohumila Hrabala v časopisu Respekt. Zároveň jako kazuistika k užívání narativních prostředků v publicistice.
Acta fabula : Revue des parutions pour les études littéraires, 2022
À propos de la signification des œuvres de jeunesse de Milan Kundera à l'exemple d'un poème, L'am... more À propos de la signification des œuvres de jeunesse de Milan Kundera à l'exemple d'un poème, L'amour et la vie, également une réponse tardive à une biographie de Milan Kundera.
URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document14376.php, page consultée le 27 avril 2022.
The study is devoted to the early fundamental starting points of Milan Kundera’s work from the 19... more The study is devoted to the early fundamental starting points of Milan Kundera’s work from the 1950s to the 1960s. According to the later authorial stylisation, the novelist is born from the ruins of his lyrical world. This assertion creates an impression of a direct, linear authorial development, in which somewhere at the beginning is Kundera’s poetry, which the author later abandons in favour of the novel upon reaching an age of artistic maturity. However, if we follow the actual course of Kundera’s poetics, we find that this conception does not correspond with the dynamics of the author’s development. This it not only because in the creative phase in which the author wrote poetry, he also wrote his first prose texts, but also because his work as a novelist is dependent upon lyrical devices (metaphors, the evocation of inner experiences etc.). For this reason, in this study I shall focus on defining three creative principles – lyrical, dramatic and novel writing. These poetic principles are not exclusively bound to the corresponding genres. The resulting form of the literary work is determined by their mutual relationship, proportions and configuration (whether this concerns poetry, drama or the novel).
Recenze románu Milana Kundery Nevědění se zřetelem ke kontextu díla, k historické tematice a s oh... more Recenze románu Milana Kundery Nevědění se zřetelem ke kontextu díla, k historické tematice a s ohledem na metonymickou motivaci Josefovy vdovecké piety.
Promlouvat o dílu Milana Kundery a oslavovat jeho autora není vůbec snadné. Jak totiž oslavovat n... more Promlouvat o dílu Milana Kundery a oslavovat jeho autora není vůbec snadné. Jak totiž oslavovat něco, co se oslavuje samo? Stačilo by zmínit rozsah a rozmanitost díla: od první básnické sbírky Člověk zahrada širá k poslednímu románu Slavnost bezvýznamnosti uběhne šedesát let. Jistě známe díla objemnější, ovšem to, co vzbuzuje úžas, je také jeho dosah. Stačí si uvědomit, že první básnická sbírka vyjde roku 1953 pouze jednou v nákladu 2 000 kusů, zatímco pozdější románové a esejistické dílo vychází v desítkách jazyků v opakovaných edicích (celkově bylo k minulému roku 2 739 různých vydání). U nejúspěšnějšího románu Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí se dopočítáme 44 jazyků v celkovém počtu 426 vydání. Jímá nás závrať již jen při pohledu na takto zmnožené literární dílo, které zní v nejrůznějších jazycích a dále se rozeznívá bližším i vzdáleným echem v rozmanitých kulturních okruzích. Přitom nelze zapomínat na interpretační úsilí desítek badatelů. Pouhý výbor z monografií, uvedený v definitivní edici Kunderova díla v prestižní edici Plejády, čítá 27 knižních titulů. V čem ale tkví magická přitažlivost Kunderova díla, která jej unáší ke stále vzdálenějším, a tedy také zcela nečekaným čtenářským okruhům? Co je v díle Milana Kundery natolik fascinujícího, zároveň také znepokojivého, že se celá řada intelektuálů, literárních kritiků, vědců a spisovatelů setrvale snaží pojmenovávat smysl Kunderova díla? Dílo Milana Kundery přitom vzbuzuje určitý optický klam, neboť svou přímočarostí, důrazem na myšlenkovou přesnost a strohost snadno vzbudí dojem, že jde o dílo autorem striktně definované, tudíž by si mělo vystačit, když ne s hlasem autora, pak maximálně s několika sumarizujícími monografiemi. Opak je přitom pravdou. Dá se říci, že dílo Milana Kundery klame tělem. Působí jednoduše, přitom však již pouhá jeho parafráze snadná vůbec není. Provokuje k pojmenování smyslu, a přitom je z mnohých pokusů vidět, že se definitivní interpretaci vzpouzí. Je samo svojí šifrou a interpretací. Z interpretací a analýz početných kunderovských badatelů smysl díla uniká, neboť leží ještě jinde než tam, kde jej tito badatelé nalézají.
本研究は、フラバルの作家としての意思表現の結晶化をたどるものである。まず扱うのは、同時代の環境（編集、検閲）によって強制された作品のヴァリアントである。次いで、たえず繰り返されるテーマを通して、... more 本研究は、フラバルの作家としての意思表現の結晶化をたどるものである。まず扱うのは、同時代の環境（編集、検閲）によって強制された作品のヴァリアントである。次いで、たえず繰り返されるテーマを通して、フラバル作品のテーマ、ナラティヴ、象徴面での核心の規定を試みる。さらに、1940年代から1950年代にかけて執筆されたボフミル・フラバルの四作品（「カイン」、「年老いたウェルテルの苦悩」、「バンビーノ・ディ・プラーガ」、「美しいポルディ」）をもとに、フラバル作品にたえず現れる起点の定義を試みる。可視化される世界を参照するメタファーの特殊な機能についても検討を加えている。
The study maps the crystallization of Hrabal's writing gesture. First, its variability, which is ... more The study maps the crystallization of Hrabal's writing gesture. First, its variability, which is originally forced by contemporary circumstances (by editorial pressure and censorship). Repeated return to the same themes also leads to the definition of the thematic, narrative and symbolic core of Hrabal's work. In four works by Bohumil Hrabal from the turn of the 1940s and 1950s (Kain, Utrpení starého Werthera, Bambino di Praga a Krásná Poldi) I define the starting points of Hrabal's work, which also become its constants. I pay special attention to the special function of metaphors that are to bring them into the visible world.
S Jakubem Češkou o Milanu Kunderovi, Bohumilu Hrabalovi, mimetickém efektu a dalších souvislostec... more S Jakubem Češkou o Milanu Kunderovi, Bohumilu Hrabalovi, mimetickém efektu a dalších souvislostech literatury rozmlouvali Martina Martinová a Jakub Horňáček. Vyšlo v časopisu A2 19/2020, 9.9.
Esej o českém vydání Kunderova posledního románu Slavnost bezvýznamnosti. Lidové noviny, příloha... more Esej o českém vydání Kunderova posledního románu Slavnost bezvýznamnosti. Lidové noviny, příloha Orientace, s. 12, 29.8. 2020.
This study aims to highlight the emotional foundation of the poetics of Milan Kundera, a topic of... more This study aims to highlight the emotional foundation of the poetics of Milan Kundera, a topic often overlooked as a result of the exaggerated emphasis placed on the intellectual aspect of Kundera's novels. It is evident here that we can infer Kundera's poetics from three sources-lyricism, his dramatic work (plays, the construction of dramatic conflict, the function of on-stage speech) and essay writing. The study therefore focuses on rehabilitating the lyrical inspiration generally considered to have been surpassed at the moment of Kundera's transition from poetry to novel writing. Here it is possible to demonstrate that not only Kundera's poetic work, but also his specific grasp of the lyrical principle, is present in his later novels. I characterize Milan Kundera as a writer with a distinctive emotional insight, regardless of whether this is a genuine authorial quality or merely an ability evoked within the world of the novel. That is, in the analysis of Kundera's work, we cannot insist upon any further interpretation. Key terms: Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, affective response to literary text, lyrical principle Klíčová slova: Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, afektivní odezva na literární text, lyrický princip
Poslední román Milana Kundery jako reflexe, reinterpretace a pointa svébytné autorské poetiky. Studie o Slavnosti bezvýznamnosti., 2019
This study focuses on the last novel by Milan Kundera La fête de l’insignifiance (The Festival of... more This study focuses on the last novel by Milan Kundera La fête de l’insignifiance (The Festival of Insignificance), which came out in Italian quite unexpectedly in 2013, two years after the „definitive“ completion of the author’s work in the prestige La Pléiade series. In this novel Milan Kundera moves resolutely beyond the horizon of his previous poetics, carrying on from his usual motifs, but not in order to repeat them, but quite the reverse, in order to redefine and re-encode them. This novel forms a kind of counterpoint to his previous work. This study focuses on the way the author reconceives his creative output in his last work: whether on the topic of mothers and their previous despotic relations with their sons, a reassessment of eroticism, the newly conceived role of laughter and an era defined as the age following the twilight of the joke, radicalized internal focalization, which no longer plays the role of a kind of semantic anchor and the like. As The Festival of Insignificance holds up a unique mirror to his previous work, we can follow him in the light of motifs from previous novels and prose works such as I, Mournful God, The Farewell Waltz, Jacques and his Master, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Life is Elsewhere. Of course, what is also essential here is the newly defined literature as a space in which authors attempt to resist the watchful surveillance of nature (materialized and metaphysically anchored in the novel as the blind eye of the belly button). Kundera’s last novel is thus also treated as a discomforting interpretational challenge that can be answered with an integrative interpretational gesture that attempts to achieve refraction into various lines of meaning, where Milan Kundera’s last novel is dealt with as the vanishing point of his entire work.
The study focuses on the reflection of quasi-argumentative strategies based on narrative. Neverth... more The study focuses on the reflection of quasi-argumentative strategies based on narrative. Nevertheless, the narrative perspective is not reflected by the authors, it is even published as a rational argumentation core. In contrast to secret narratives, I build a purposefully compo¬sed literary work that reveals the neglected aspects of human existence (using imagination). At the same time, I express the hypothesis in which the persuasiveness of literature lies: the deprivation of the author’s subject, which happens by placing the reader in the imaginary per¬spective of narration. In the extrapolation I see Roland Barthes and Václav Havel as conspirators of literature (they are hiding literary investment in their essayist contemplation) against Kundera’s straightforward and admitted art of the novel.
This essay analyzes the review and editorial processes at the Československý spiso-vatel publishi... more This essay analyzes the review and editorial processes at the Československý spiso-vatel publishing house, concerning Bohumil Hrabal's initial three works (Lark on a String, Pearl of the Deep and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age), the first of which, after being reviewed and edited in January 1959, was eventually not published. The processes in question are character ized not only by a variety of editorial and reviewer recommendations (from which we can reconstruct the origin of certain motifs and their subsequent forced transition to other novels), but also by a cer tain interpretive dispute (both within the editorial office and between the editors and the office) over the final form of Hrabal's prose, encompassing the more general problem of what can and cannot be considered a literary work (this is especially the case with Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age). Thus, there has been a certain interpretive scheme forming around Hrabal's style, which after more than fifty years has proven to be not only coherent, but also relatively constant.
Total Fear as ironized confession
Hrabal‘s late text Total Fears from November 1990 is usually u... more Total Fear as ironized confession Hrabal‘s late text Total Fears from November 1990 is usually understood as the author‘s self-accusation. This self-accusation is a mere facade to hide a sophisticated accusation of totally politicized life in the normalization and also late in the 1980s. That is why we do not understand this text as a mean of ashamed coping with the past times (confessing to weakness), but on the contrary as accusation of imposed ideologically false genre of „confession”.
The title of the monograph Bohumil Hrabal — An Author in
Plural emphasizes one of the key topics... more The title of the monograph Bohumil Hrabal — An Author in
Plural emphasizes one of the key topics of Hrabal’s poetics:
plurality of his work. This plurality has diverse reasons. First,
there are issues of the given time (variations of “Jarmilka”
display an example discussed at length in chapter four). Bohumil
Hrabal, however, accepts the pressure of that time (whose
influence was present in editorial requirements that implied
censorship) as a challenge and he starts to modify his style (he
avoids naturalism, hints and strictures concerning temporary
issues, and striking eroticism). Hrabal’s work “adapted” in
this way was considered less valuable by contemporary critics
(by Jan Lopatka primarily). However, it has been proven
by a thorough analysis that such criticism is not fully rightful:
Hrabal was not just erasing passages, he was remaking
them (by using more subtle language, moving certain motives,
clearly distinguishing narrator’s link from characters
etc.) and gradually arrived at a new, more artistically refined
posture of his writing. New and hardly traceable irony was
added. At the same time, a non-ideological narrator emerged,
one that doesn’t boast about his penetrative insight into the
world that secures him with a solid place in it. A semblance
of this non-Hrabal-like kind of narrative can be found in an
early existential short story “Kain” (1949). Recurrence of the
narrative perspective used in “Kain” is addressed in chapter
two (compared with selected passages in “Kain” and Closely
Observed Trains). Since one of the main issues of the texts previously
mentioned is the end of the Second World War, another
cause of plurality of Hrabal’s artistic gesture emerges: he is
all but a writer of realism (an opinion held not only by literary
historians). The variety of his work results from manifold
literary perspectivism used for many different situations in
life which is why he can return to the same topic (of war and
suicide) from different literary perspectives. Thus, the plurality
of Hrabal’s work results from his efforts to create literature
even in the uneasy times of censorship. However, what had
been a necessity at first (Hrabal had had to rewrite the original
versions if he’d wanted to succeed as a writer) later became
a deliberate artistic act. What other explanation is there to
the fact that one of the climactic works of Hrabal – Too Loud
a Solitude – was written in three variations? With the Too Loud
a Solitude, the variative approach becomes his deliberate creative
principle. The third chapter explores what kind of plurality
is constituted by this gesture and what meanings it could
induce. It would be rash, however, to expect the literary legacy
of Bohumil Hrabal to be dissolved into a play of variations:
therefore, the first chapter focuses on the novel I Served the
King of England that exists in one version only.
It might seem that in this work we can comprehend the
authentic Hrabal at last. In the postscript, however, the author
issues a warning to the reader not to take it too seriously
because he would like to return to it and finalise it. And if he
does not manage to do it himself, let someone from his friends
fix it after his death.
The paradox of Hrabal’s authenticity lies in the fact that
the author himself refused to warrant it and is not sure about
it. He makes this point clear in other reflective comebacks to
the novel I Served the King of England. In these reflections he
considers it a work to be yet completed. A possibility of variation
is therefore present even in Hrabal’s authentic gesture:
authenticity will be present in a work that is to be modified,
rewrote and finished (or open to yet other modifications).
The last chapter, reflecting the pragmatic attitude of Hrabal’s
writing, represents a counterpoint to the previous four
parts that focus on the key literary works exclusively. It explores
the review process of Cutting It Short, Snowdrop Festival,
Beautiful Sadness, and a short stories collection Miracle Every
Day that took place in the publishing house Československý
spisovatel in the second half of the seventies. An analysis of
the review process (taking forced modification partly into account)
can easily show how Hrabal preserves his creative freedom
and, at the same time, what form this pragmatic play on
authenticity takes on.
Despite the expectation that the review process should
result into author in plural (as was the case in the first half
of the sixties), we surprisingly learn that the same demand
leads to an opposite outcome: alteration of originals results in
their reconsidering and sometimes in a more distinct point.
The editorial and reviewer pressure in the second half of the
seventies helps the evolution of author’s gesture. We could,
therefore, arrive at a paradoxical assertion that the demand of
alterations in the seventies does not point to author in plural,
but to a fundamental and masterly original gesture of Bohumil
Hrabal that is tight and does not allow for variants, although
some partial and unimportant alterations of original versions
could be found.
This study focuses on the Československý spisovatel publishers’ reading procedures for Hrabal’s o... more This study focuses on the Československý spisovatel publishers’ reading procedures for Hrabal’s output in the latter half of the 1970s. To be specific, it deals with their reading of Postřižiny (Cutting It Short, 1975), Slavnosti sněženek (Snowdrop Festival, 1977), Krasosmutnění (Joyful Blues/Beautiful Sadness, 1977–8) and the short story collection Každý den zázrak (Every Day a Miracle, 1978). As these procedures took place against a backdrop of dispersed censorship supervision (with socially ‘unreliable’ authors, such as Hrabal, being read by ‘superreaders’, who were representatives of focused ideological supervision) I compare their structure with that of reading procedures in the 1960s. Whereas censorship in the 1960s was an external supervision institution (i.e. the Central Press Supervision Authority), the proofreaders and editors intuitively anticipated its possible objections and reflected them to some extent in their standpoints, during the 1970s the supervision institution in the form of superreaders moved right into the editorial office. However, one should not assume there was a conflict between the editors and the superreaders purely from the definition of their roles. In the three cases under review, two superreaders were assigned to one title (only one in the case of Postřižiny), but their opinions differ — what would have got past one of them is pulled up by the other one (this is particularly the case for the short story collection Každý den zázrak — Every Day a Miracle). Hence not even the superreaders can be considered a priori to be critics of Hrabal’s apolitical style, and in the given case it is Vítězslav Rzounek, who surprisingly becomes an apologist for Hrabal’s 1960s short story work. Hence this study follows the readers’ assessments in detail: their argument structure, apparent and hidden apologetics (necessarily ambivalent due to the very nature of the reading procedure) and their thematic synopsis; of course, it also focuses on the overall reading procedure mechanism. I endeavour to reveal the significant way (but nothing like as significant as normally supposed) in which the readers’ objections were reflected in Hrabal’s subsequent work. It can even be said that in the 1970s Hrabal is a different kind of writer than he was during the 1960s (when he repeatedly reworked his entire oeuvre). Now he was very sparing in his text interventions, while it can be said that in no significant way do these changes diminish the artistic value of his work. A look at the reading procedure in the latter half of the 1970s lets us see the extent to which Hrabal became a compact writer, who only slightly retreats before the pressure of the times (and the editors, including the superreaders’ opinions). The primary topic of the reading procedure turns into the ongoing replacement of the ‘old’ (meaning the 1960s literary studie 725 output) Hrabal by the ‘new’ one who wrote his works in the 1970s. Those who have assessed this find him more sensitive without being unhealthily sentimental, offering a more socially aware standpoint, criticizing the petty bourgeoisie while jettisoning decadent trends that were now passé, i.e. existentialism, late surrealism and not least eccentrically erotic motifs. Using the superreaders’ metaphors, we can detect a more general literary topos behind this subject matter, which points the way towards a New Deal (or Testament) which supersedes the old one by showing it in a new light. Hence the ‘new’ Hrabal presents readers at that time with the promise of the arrival of a better society.
Naratologický rozbor publicistického textu publikovaného ke stému výročí narození Bohumila Hrabal... more Naratologický rozbor publicistického textu publikovaného ke stému výročí narození Bohumila Hrabala v časopisu Respekt. Zároveň jako kazuistika k užívání narativních prostředků v publicistice.
Acta fabula : Revue des parutions pour les études littéraires, 2022
À propos de la signification des œuvres de jeunesse de Milan Kundera à l'exemple d'un poème, L'am... more À propos de la signification des œuvres de jeunesse de Milan Kundera à l'exemple d'un poème, L'amour et la vie, également une réponse tardive à une biographie de Milan Kundera.
URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document14376.php, page consultée le 27 avril 2022.
The study is devoted to the early fundamental starting points of Milan Kundera’s work from the 19... more The study is devoted to the early fundamental starting points of Milan Kundera’s work from the 1950s to the 1960s. According to the later authorial stylisation, the novelist is born from the ruins of his lyrical world. This assertion creates an impression of a direct, linear authorial development, in which somewhere at the beginning is Kundera’s poetry, which the author later abandons in favour of the novel upon reaching an age of artistic maturity. However, if we follow the actual course of Kundera’s poetics, we find that this conception does not correspond with the dynamics of the author’s development. This it not only because in the creative phase in which the author wrote poetry, he also wrote his first prose texts, but also because his work as a novelist is dependent upon lyrical devices (metaphors, the evocation of inner experiences etc.). For this reason, in this study I shall focus on defining three creative principles – lyrical, dramatic and novel writing. These poetic principles are not exclusively bound to the corresponding genres. The resulting form of the literary work is determined by their mutual relationship, proportions and configuration (whether this concerns poetry, drama or the novel).
Recenze románu Milana Kundery Nevědění se zřetelem ke kontextu díla, k historické tematice a s oh... more Recenze románu Milana Kundery Nevědění se zřetelem ke kontextu díla, k historické tematice a s ohledem na metonymickou motivaci Josefovy vdovecké piety.
Promlouvat o dílu Milana Kundery a oslavovat jeho autora není vůbec snadné. Jak totiž oslavovat n... more Promlouvat o dílu Milana Kundery a oslavovat jeho autora není vůbec snadné. Jak totiž oslavovat něco, co se oslavuje samo? Stačilo by zmínit rozsah a rozmanitost díla: od první básnické sbírky Člověk zahrada širá k poslednímu románu Slavnost bezvýznamnosti uběhne šedesát let. Jistě známe díla objemnější, ovšem to, co vzbuzuje úžas, je také jeho dosah. Stačí si uvědomit, že první básnická sbírka vyjde roku 1953 pouze jednou v nákladu 2 000 kusů, zatímco pozdější románové a esejistické dílo vychází v desítkách jazyků v opakovaných edicích (celkově bylo k minulému roku 2 739 různých vydání). U nejúspěšnějšího románu Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí se dopočítáme 44 jazyků v celkovém počtu 426 vydání. Jímá nás závrať již jen při pohledu na takto zmnožené literární dílo, které zní v nejrůznějších jazycích a dále se rozeznívá bližším i vzdáleným echem v rozmanitých kulturních okruzích. Přitom nelze zapomínat na interpretační úsilí desítek badatelů. Pouhý výbor z monografií, uvedený v definitivní edici Kunderova díla v prestižní edici Plejády, čítá 27 knižních titulů. V čem ale tkví magická přitažlivost Kunderova díla, která jej unáší ke stále vzdálenějším, a tedy také zcela nečekaným čtenářským okruhům? Co je v díle Milana Kundery natolik fascinujícího, zároveň také znepokojivého, že se celá řada intelektuálů, literárních kritiků, vědců a spisovatelů setrvale snaží pojmenovávat smysl Kunderova díla? Dílo Milana Kundery přitom vzbuzuje určitý optický klam, neboť svou přímočarostí, důrazem na myšlenkovou přesnost a strohost snadno vzbudí dojem, že jde o dílo autorem striktně definované, tudíž by si mělo vystačit, když ne s hlasem autora, pak maximálně s několika sumarizujícími monografiemi. Opak je přitom pravdou. Dá se říci, že dílo Milana Kundery klame tělem. Působí jednoduše, přitom však již pouhá jeho parafráze snadná vůbec není. Provokuje k pojmenování smyslu, a přitom je z mnohých pokusů vidět, že se definitivní interpretaci vzpouzí. Je samo svojí šifrou a interpretací. Z interpretací a analýz početných kunderovských badatelů smysl díla uniká, neboť leží ještě jinde než tam, kde jej tito badatelé nalézají.
本研究は、フラバルの作家としての意思表現の結晶化をたどるものである。まず扱うのは、同時代の環境（編集、検閲）によって強制された作品のヴァリアントである。次いで、たえず繰り返されるテーマを通して、... more 本研究は、フラバルの作家としての意思表現の結晶化をたどるものである。まず扱うのは、同時代の環境（編集、検閲）によって強制された作品のヴァリアントである。次いで、たえず繰り返されるテーマを通して、フラバル作品のテーマ、ナラティヴ、象徴面での核心の規定を試みる。さらに、1940年代から1950年代にかけて執筆されたボフミル・フラバルの四作品（「カイン」、「年老いたウェルテルの苦悩」、「バンビーノ・ディ・プラーガ」、「美しいポルディ」）をもとに、フラバル作品にたえず現れる起点の定義を試みる。可視化される世界を参照するメタファーの特殊な機能についても検討を加えている。
The study maps the crystallization of Hrabal's writing gesture. First, its variability, which is ... more The study maps the crystallization of Hrabal's writing gesture. First, its variability, which is originally forced by contemporary circumstances (by editorial pressure and censorship). Repeated return to the same themes also leads to the definition of the thematic, narrative and symbolic core of Hrabal's work. In four works by Bohumil Hrabal from the turn of the 1940s and 1950s (Kain, Utrpení starého Werthera, Bambino di Praga a Krásná Poldi) I define the starting points of Hrabal's work, which also become its constants. I pay special attention to the special function of metaphors that are to bring them into the visible world.
S Jakubem Češkou o Milanu Kunderovi, Bohumilu Hrabalovi, mimetickém efektu a dalších souvislostec... more S Jakubem Češkou o Milanu Kunderovi, Bohumilu Hrabalovi, mimetickém efektu a dalších souvislostech literatury rozmlouvali Martina Martinová a Jakub Horňáček. Vyšlo v časopisu A2 19/2020, 9.9.
Esej o českém vydání Kunderova posledního románu Slavnost bezvýznamnosti. Lidové noviny, příloha... more Esej o českém vydání Kunderova posledního románu Slavnost bezvýznamnosti. Lidové noviny, příloha Orientace, s. 12, 29.8. 2020.
This study aims to highlight the emotional foundation of the poetics of Milan Kundera, a topic of... more This study aims to highlight the emotional foundation of the poetics of Milan Kundera, a topic often overlooked as a result of the exaggerated emphasis placed on the intellectual aspect of Kundera's novels. It is evident here that we can infer Kundera's poetics from three sources-lyricism, his dramatic work (plays, the construction of dramatic conflict, the function of on-stage speech) and essay writing. The study therefore focuses on rehabilitating the lyrical inspiration generally considered to have been surpassed at the moment of Kundera's transition from poetry to novel writing. Here it is possible to demonstrate that not only Kundera's poetic work, but also his specific grasp of the lyrical principle, is present in his later novels. I characterize Milan Kundera as a writer with a distinctive emotional insight, regardless of whether this is a genuine authorial quality or merely an ability evoked within the world of the novel. That is, in the analysis of Kundera's work, we cannot insist upon any further interpretation. Key terms: Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, affective response to literary text, lyrical principle Klíčová slova: Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, afektivní odezva na literární text, lyrický princip
Poslední román Milana Kundery jako reflexe, reinterpretace a pointa svébytné autorské poetiky. Studie o Slavnosti bezvýznamnosti., 2019
This study focuses on the last novel by Milan Kundera La fête de l’insignifiance (The Festival of... more This study focuses on the last novel by Milan Kundera La fête de l’insignifiance (The Festival of Insignificance), which came out in Italian quite unexpectedly in 2013, two years after the „definitive“ completion of the author’s work in the prestige La Pléiade series. In this novel Milan Kundera moves resolutely beyond the horizon of his previous poetics, carrying on from his usual motifs, but not in order to repeat them, but quite the reverse, in order to redefine and re-encode them. This novel forms a kind of counterpoint to his previous work. This study focuses on the way the author reconceives his creative output in his last work: whether on the topic of mothers and their previous despotic relations with their sons, a reassessment of eroticism, the newly conceived role of laughter and an era defined as the age following the twilight of the joke, radicalized internal focalization, which no longer plays the role of a kind of semantic anchor and the like. As The Festival of Insignificance holds up a unique mirror to his previous work, we can follow him in the light of motifs from previous novels and prose works such as I, Mournful God, The Farewell Waltz, Jacques and his Master, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Life is Elsewhere. Of course, what is also essential here is the newly defined literature as a space in which authors attempt to resist the watchful surveillance of nature (materialized and metaphysically anchored in the novel as the blind eye of the belly button). Kundera’s last novel is thus also treated as a discomforting interpretational challenge that can be answered with an integrative interpretational gesture that attempts to achieve refraction into various lines of meaning, where Milan Kundera’s last novel is dealt with as the vanishing point of his entire work.
The study focuses on the reflection of quasi-argumentative strategies based on narrative. Neverth... more The study focuses on the reflection of quasi-argumentative strategies based on narrative. Nevertheless, the narrative perspective is not reflected by the authors, it is even published as a rational argumentation core. In contrast to secret narratives, I build a purposefully compo¬sed literary work that reveals the neglected aspects of human existence (using imagination). At the same time, I express the hypothesis in which the persuasiveness of literature lies: the deprivation of the author’s subject, which happens by placing the reader in the imaginary per¬spective of narration. In the extrapolation I see Roland Barthes and Václav Havel as conspirators of literature (they are hiding literary investment in their essayist contemplation) against Kundera’s straightforward and admitted art of the novel.
This essay analyzes the review and editorial processes at the Československý spiso-vatel publishi... more This essay analyzes the review and editorial processes at the Československý spiso-vatel publishing house, concerning Bohumil Hrabal's initial three works (Lark on a String, Pearl of the Deep and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age), the first of which, after being reviewed and edited in January 1959, was eventually not published. The processes in question are character ized not only by a variety of editorial and reviewer recommendations (from which we can reconstruct the origin of certain motifs and their subsequent forced transition to other novels), but also by a cer tain interpretive dispute (both within the editorial office and between the editors and the office) over the final form of Hrabal's prose, encompassing the more general problem of what can and cannot be considered a literary work (this is especially the case with Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age). Thus, there has been a certain interpretive scheme forming around Hrabal's style, which after more than fifty years has proven to be not only coherent, but also relatively constant.
Total Fear as ironized confession
Hrabal‘s late text Total Fears from November 1990 is usually u... more Total Fear as ironized confession Hrabal‘s late text Total Fears from November 1990 is usually understood as the author‘s self-accusation. This self-accusation is a mere facade to hide a sophisticated accusation of totally politicized life in the normalization and also late in the 1980s. That is why we do not understand this text as a mean of ashamed coping with the past times (confessing to weakness), but on the contrary as accusation of imposed ideologically false genre of „confession”.
The title of the monograph Bohumil Hrabal — An Author in
Plural emphasizes one of the key topics... more The title of the monograph Bohumil Hrabal — An Author in
Plural emphasizes one of the key topics of Hrabal’s poetics:
plurality of his work. This plurality has diverse reasons. First,
there are issues of the given time (variations of “Jarmilka”
display an example discussed at length in chapter four). Bohumil
Hrabal, however, accepts the pressure of that time (whose
influence was present in editorial requirements that implied
censorship) as a challenge and he starts to modify his style (he
avoids naturalism, hints and strictures concerning temporary
issues, and striking eroticism). Hrabal’s work “adapted” in
this way was considered less valuable by contemporary critics
(by Jan Lopatka primarily). However, it has been proven
by a thorough analysis that such criticism is not fully rightful:
Hrabal was not just erasing passages, he was remaking
them (by using more subtle language, moving certain motives,
clearly distinguishing narrator’s link from characters
etc.) and gradually arrived at a new, more artistically refined
posture of his writing. New and hardly traceable irony was
added. At the same time, a non-ideological narrator emerged,
one that doesn’t boast about his penetrative insight into the
world that secures him with a solid place in it. A semblance
of this non-Hrabal-like kind of narrative can be found in an
early existential short story “Kain” (1949). Recurrence of the
narrative perspective used in “Kain” is addressed in chapter
two (compared with selected passages in “Kain” and Closely
Observed Trains). Since one of the main issues of the texts previously
mentioned is the end of the Second World War, another
cause of plurality of Hrabal’s artistic gesture emerges: he is
all but a writer of realism (an opinion held not only by literary
historians). The variety of his work results from manifold
literary perspectivism used for many different situations in
life which is why he can return to the same topic (of war and
suicide) from different literary perspectives. Thus, the plurality
of Hrabal’s work results from his efforts to create literature
even in the uneasy times of censorship. However, what had
been a necessity at first (Hrabal had had to rewrite the original
versions if he’d wanted to succeed as a writer) later became
a deliberate artistic act. What other explanation is there to
the fact that one of the climactic works of Hrabal – Too Loud
a Solitude – was written in three variations? With the Too Loud
a Solitude, the variative approach becomes his deliberate creative
principle. The third chapter explores what kind of plurality
is constituted by this gesture and what meanings it could
induce. It would be rash, however, to expect the literary legacy
of Bohumil Hrabal to be dissolved into a play of variations:
therefore, the first chapter focuses on the novel I Served the
King of England that exists in one version only.
It might seem that in this work we can comprehend the
authentic Hrabal at last. In the postscript, however, the author
issues a warning to the reader not to take it too seriously
because he would like to return to it and finalise it. And if he
does not manage to do it himself, let someone from his friends
fix it after his death.
The paradox of Hrabal’s authenticity lies in the fact that
the author himself refused to warrant it and is not sure about
it. He makes this point clear in other reflective comebacks to
the novel I Served the King of England. In these reflections he
considers it a work to be yet completed. A possibility of variation
is therefore present even in Hrabal’s authentic gesture:
authenticity will be present in a work that is to be modified,
rewrote and finished (or open to yet other modifications).
The last chapter, reflecting the pragmatic attitude of Hrabal’s
writing, represents a counterpoint to the previous four
parts that focus on the key literary works exclusively. It explores
the review process of Cutting It Short, Snowdrop Festival,
Beautiful Sadness, and a short stories collection Miracle Every
Day that took place in the publishing house Československý
spisovatel in the second half of the seventies. An analysis of
the review process (taking forced modification partly into account)
can easily show how Hrabal preserves his creative freedom
and, at the same time, what form this pragmatic play on
authenticity takes on.
Despite the expectation that the review process should
result into author in plural (as was the case in the first half
of the sixties), we surprisingly learn that the same demand
leads to an opposite outcome: alteration of originals results in
their reconsidering and sometimes in a more distinct point.
The editorial and reviewer pressure in the second half of the
seventies helps the evolution of author’s gesture. We could,
therefore, arrive at a paradoxical assertion that the demand of
alterations in the seventies does not point to author in plural,
but to a fundamental and masterly original gesture of Bohumil
Hrabal that is tight and does not allow for variants, although
some partial and unimportant alterations of original versions
could be found.
This study focuses on the Československý spisovatel publishers’ reading procedures for Hrabal’s o... more This study focuses on the Československý spisovatel publishers’ reading procedures for Hrabal’s output in the latter half of the 1970s. To be specific, it deals with their reading of Postřižiny (Cutting It Short, 1975), Slavnosti sněženek (Snowdrop Festival, 1977), Krasosmutnění (Joyful Blues/Beautiful Sadness, 1977–8) and the short story collection Každý den zázrak (Every Day a Miracle, 1978). As these procedures took place against a backdrop of dispersed censorship supervision (with socially ‘unreliable’ authors, such as Hrabal, being read by ‘superreaders’, who were representatives of focused ideological supervision) I compare their structure with that of reading procedures in the 1960s. Whereas censorship in the 1960s was an external supervision institution (i.e. the Central Press Supervision Authority), the proofreaders and editors intuitively anticipated its possible objections and reflected them to some extent in their standpoints, during the 1970s the supervision institution in the form of superreaders moved right into the editorial office. However, one should not assume there was a conflict between the editors and the superreaders purely from the definition of their roles. In the three cases under review, two superreaders were assigned to one title (only one in the case of Postřižiny), but their opinions differ — what would have got past one of them is pulled up by the other one (this is particularly the case for the short story collection Každý den zázrak — Every Day a Miracle). Hence not even the superreaders can be considered a priori to be critics of Hrabal’s apolitical style, and in the given case it is Vítězslav Rzounek, who surprisingly becomes an apologist for Hrabal’s 1960s short story work. Hence this study follows the readers’ assessments in detail: their argument structure, apparent and hidden apologetics (necessarily ambivalent due to the very nature of the reading procedure) and their thematic synopsis; of course, it also focuses on the overall reading procedure mechanism. I endeavour to reveal the significant way (but nothing like as significant as normally supposed) in which the readers’ objections were reflected in Hrabal’s subsequent work. It can even be said that in the 1970s Hrabal is a different kind of writer than he was during the 1960s (when he repeatedly reworked his entire oeuvre). Now he was very sparing in his text interventions, while it can be said that in no significant way do these changes diminish the artistic value of his work. A look at the reading procedure in the latter half of the 1970s lets us see the extent to which Hrabal became a compact writer, who only slightly retreats before the pressure of the times (and the editors, including the superreaders’ opinions). The primary topic of the reading procedure turns into the ongoing replacement of the ‘old’ (meaning the 1960s literary studie 725 output) Hrabal by the ‘new’ one who wrote his works in the 1970s. Those who have assessed this find him more sensitive without being unhealthily sentimental, offering a more socially aware standpoint, criticizing the petty bourgeoisie while jettisoning decadent trends that were now passé, i.e. existentialism, late surrealism and not least eccentrically erotic motifs. Using the superreaders’ metaphors, we can detect a more general literary topos behind this subject matter, which points the way towards a New Deal (or Testament) which supersedes the old one by showing it in a new light. Hence the ‘new’ Hrabal presents readers at that time with the promise of the arrival of a better society.
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Papers by Jakub Ceska
URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document14376.php, page consultée le 27 avril 2022.
Hrabal‘s late text Total Fears from November 1990 is usually understood as the author‘s self-accusation. This self-accusation is a mere facade to hide a sophisticated accusation of totally politicized life in the normalization and also late in the 1980s. That is why we do not understand this text as a mean of ashamed coping with the past times (confessing to weakness), but on the contrary as accusation of imposed ideologically false genre of „confession”.
Plural emphasizes one of the key topics of Hrabal’s poetics:
plurality of his work. This plurality has diverse reasons. First,
there are issues of the given time (variations of “Jarmilka”
display an example discussed at length in chapter four). Bohumil
Hrabal, however, accepts the pressure of that time (whose
influence was present in editorial requirements that implied
censorship) as a challenge and he starts to modify his style (he
avoids naturalism, hints and strictures concerning temporary
issues, and striking eroticism). Hrabal’s work “adapted” in
this way was considered less valuable by contemporary critics
(by Jan Lopatka primarily). However, it has been proven
by a thorough analysis that such criticism is not fully rightful:
Hrabal was not just erasing passages, he was remaking
them (by using more subtle language, moving certain motives,
clearly distinguishing narrator’s link from characters
etc.) and gradually arrived at a new, more artistically refined
posture of his writing. New and hardly traceable irony was
added. At the same time, a non-ideological narrator emerged,
one that doesn’t boast about his penetrative insight into the
world that secures him with a solid place in it. A semblance
of this non-Hrabal-like kind of narrative can be found in an
early existential short story “Kain” (1949). Recurrence of the
narrative perspective used in “Kain” is addressed in chapter
two (compared with selected passages in “Kain” and Closely
Observed Trains). Since one of the main issues of the texts previously
mentioned is the end of the Second World War, another
cause of plurality of Hrabal’s artistic gesture emerges: he is
all but a writer of realism (an opinion held not only by literary
historians). The variety of his work results from manifold
literary perspectivism used for many different situations in
life which is why he can return to the same topic (of war and
suicide) from different literary perspectives. Thus, the plurality
of Hrabal’s work results from his efforts to create literature
even in the uneasy times of censorship. However, what had
been a necessity at first (Hrabal had had to rewrite the original
versions if he’d wanted to succeed as a writer) later became
a deliberate artistic act. What other explanation is there to
the fact that one of the climactic works of Hrabal – Too Loud
a Solitude – was written in three variations? With the Too Loud
a Solitude, the variative approach becomes his deliberate creative
principle. The third chapter explores what kind of plurality
is constituted by this gesture and what meanings it could
induce. It would be rash, however, to expect the literary legacy
of Bohumil Hrabal to be dissolved into a play of variations:
therefore, the first chapter focuses on the novel I Served the
King of England that exists in one version only.
It might seem that in this work we can comprehend the
authentic Hrabal at last. In the postscript, however, the author
issues a warning to the reader not to take it too seriously
because he would like to return to it and finalise it. And if he
does not manage to do it himself, let someone from his friends
fix it after his death.
The paradox of Hrabal’s authenticity lies in the fact that
the author himself refused to warrant it and is not sure about
it. He makes this point clear in other reflective comebacks to
the novel I Served the King of England. In these reflections he
considers it a work to be yet completed. A possibility of variation
is therefore present even in Hrabal’s authentic gesture:
authenticity will be present in a work that is to be modified,
rewrote and finished (or open to yet other modifications).
The last chapter, reflecting the pragmatic attitude of Hrabal’s
writing, represents a counterpoint to the previous four
parts that focus on the key literary works exclusively. It explores
the review process of Cutting It Short, Snowdrop Festival,
Beautiful Sadness, and a short stories collection Miracle Every
Day that took place in the publishing house Československý
spisovatel in the second half of the seventies. An analysis of
the review process (taking forced modification partly into account)
can easily show how Hrabal preserves his creative freedom
and, at the same time, what form this pragmatic play on
authenticity takes on.
Despite the expectation that the review process should
result into author in plural (as was the case in the first half
of the sixties), we surprisingly learn that the same demand
leads to an opposite outcome: alteration of originals results in
their reconsidering and sometimes in a more distinct point.
The editorial and reviewer pressure in the second half of the
seventies helps the evolution of author’s gesture. We could,
therefore, arrive at a paradoxical assertion that the demand of
alterations in the seventies does not point to author in plural,
but to a fundamental and masterly original gesture of Bohumil
Hrabal that is tight and does not allow for variants, although
some partial and unimportant alterations of original versions
could be found.
URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document14376.php, page consultée le 27 avril 2022.
Hrabal‘s late text Total Fears from November 1990 is usually understood as the author‘s self-accusation. This self-accusation is a mere facade to hide a sophisticated accusation of totally politicized life in the normalization and also late in the 1980s. That is why we do not understand this text as a mean of ashamed coping with the past times (confessing to weakness), but on the contrary as accusation of imposed ideologically false genre of „confession”.
Plural emphasizes one of the key topics of Hrabal’s poetics:
plurality of his work. This plurality has diverse reasons. First,
there are issues of the given time (variations of “Jarmilka”
display an example discussed at length in chapter four). Bohumil
Hrabal, however, accepts the pressure of that time (whose
influence was present in editorial requirements that implied
censorship) as a challenge and he starts to modify his style (he
avoids naturalism, hints and strictures concerning temporary
issues, and striking eroticism). Hrabal’s work “adapted” in
this way was considered less valuable by contemporary critics
(by Jan Lopatka primarily). However, it has been proven
by a thorough analysis that such criticism is not fully rightful:
Hrabal was not just erasing passages, he was remaking
them (by using more subtle language, moving certain motives,
clearly distinguishing narrator’s link from characters
etc.) and gradually arrived at a new, more artistically refined
posture of his writing. New and hardly traceable irony was
added. At the same time, a non-ideological narrator emerged,
one that doesn’t boast about his penetrative insight into the
world that secures him with a solid place in it. A semblance
of this non-Hrabal-like kind of narrative can be found in an
early existential short story “Kain” (1949). Recurrence of the
narrative perspective used in “Kain” is addressed in chapter
two (compared with selected passages in “Kain” and Closely
Observed Trains). Since one of the main issues of the texts previously
mentioned is the end of the Second World War, another
cause of plurality of Hrabal’s artistic gesture emerges: he is
all but a writer of realism (an opinion held not only by literary
historians). The variety of his work results from manifold
literary perspectivism used for many different situations in
life which is why he can return to the same topic (of war and
suicide) from different literary perspectives. Thus, the plurality
of Hrabal’s work results from his efforts to create literature
even in the uneasy times of censorship. However, what had
been a necessity at first (Hrabal had had to rewrite the original
versions if he’d wanted to succeed as a writer) later became
a deliberate artistic act. What other explanation is there to
the fact that one of the climactic works of Hrabal – Too Loud
a Solitude – was written in three variations? With the Too Loud
a Solitude, the variative approach becomes his deliberate creative
principle. The third chapter explores what kind of plurality
is constituted by this gesture and what meanings it could
induce. It would be rash, however, to expect the literary legacy
of Bohumil Hrabal to be dissolved into a play of variations:
therefore, the first chapter focuses on the novel I Served the
King of England that exists in one version only.
It might seem that in this work we can comprehend the
authentic Hrabal at last. In the postscript, however, the author
issues a warning to the reader not to take it too seriously
because he would like to return to it and finalise it. And if he
does not manage to do it himself, let someone from his friends
fix it after his death.
The paradox of Hrabal’s authenticity lies in the fact that
the author himself refused to warrant it and is not sure about
it. He makes this point clear in other reflective comebacks to
the novel I Served the King of England. In these reflections he
considers it a work to be yet completed. A possibility of variation
is therefore present even in Hrabal’s authentic gesture:
authenticity will be present in a work that is to be modified,
rewrote and finished (or open to yet other modifications).
The last chapter, reflecting the pragmatic attitude of Hrabal’s
writing, represents a counterpoint to the previous four
parts that focus on the key literary works exclusively. It explores
the review process of Cutting It Short, Snowdrop Festival,
Beautiful Sadness, and a short stories collection Miracle Every
Day that took place in the publishing house Československý
spisovatel in the second half of the seventies. An analysis of
the review process (taking forced modification partly into account)
can easily show how Hrabal preserves his creative freedom
and, at the same time, what form this pragmatic play on
authenticity takes on.
Despite the expectation that the review process should
result into author in plural (as was the case in the first half
of the sixties), we surprisingly learn that the same demand
leads to an opposite outcome: alteration of originals results in
their reconsidering and sometimes in a more distinct point.
The editorial and reviewer pressure in the second half of the
seventies helps the evolution of author’s gesture. We could,
therefore, arrive at a paradoxical assertion that the demand of
alterations in the seventies does not point to author in plural,
but to a fundamental and masterly original gesture of Bohumil
Hrabal that is tight and does not allow for variants, although
some partial and unimportant alterations of original versions
could be found.