On the Development of the Contemporary Czech Literature Michaela Hashemiova*1) Contents 1. Introduction 2. Contemporary Czech prose and drama 2.1. Older generation 2.2. Younger generation 3. Contemporary Czech poetry 4. Contemporary Literary Studies 5. Conclusion
1989 year (s. c. Velvet Revolution) brought into Czech literature changes, mostly to its themes. Therefore we could found nineties as a beginning of the newest contemporary literature. In the nineties a better part of the literary works was published that could not been published in the Czech official printing houses earlier. That is why in the seventies and eighties these books were published mostly in exile, e. g. in "68 Publishers" (Toronto, by writer, translator and editor Josef Skvorecky and his wife Zdena Salivarova-Skvorecka) or in "Index" (Koeln am Rhein). From these literary books written by the oldest generation belong to the best ones artificial proses by Bohumil Hrabal (1909-1997), especially his trilogy Vita nuova (1991, stylized from the narrative view point of writers wife Eliska-Pispsi). From the middle and younger generation are remarkable post-modernist proses written by Jiri Kratochvil (1940), nevertheless reading public will always prefer books written by Michal Viewegh (1968). The famous Czech dramatist remains Vaclav Havel (1936, the former president of the Czech Republic). The literary work of the best Czech poets (Jaroslav Seifert, + 1986, Jan Skacel, + 1989) of the oldest generation is closed. From the authors of the middle and younger generation is not clear yet, who will take this position in the future.
Velvet Revolution, Czech Prose, Czech Drama, Postmodernism, Czech poetry, Socialist Realism,
1. Introduction *
Ph D. Professor. Department of Czech literature, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic
We could find literary texts as a contemporary Czech Literature till nineties of the 20th century – after s. c. Velvet Revolution (1989). Such as social and political milestones could have a great influence not only to the political and cultural life, but to the literary development, too. The social changes are usually first reflected in the most immediate literary genre, which is undoubtedly poetry.
Czech
literature after 1989, however, saw a swift reaction to the revolutionary period from an author known primarily as a novelist – Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997). This world-famous writer seemed to top off both classic and avant-garde streams of Czech literature of the whole twentieth century by the power of his imagination (nourished by modern styles of the twentieth century as well as his remarkable personal experiences) and the stylistic virtuosity of his stream-of-consciousness approach. As early as 1990, in his book of literary journalism Listopadový uragán (November hurricane,1990) – paradoxically one of his weaker works – Hrabal comments on the events of the revolutionary period in the form of a spontaneous personal record of that time in fictional letters addressed to an actual person, April Clifford (Dubenka).1) Focusing on the Czech high-quality literature after 1989, we have to repeat the fact that the first wave was represented almost exclusively by publishers’ selections from underground production, exile and samizdat books previously banned because of their ideology, criticism of the Communist regime or often just because of the author’s extra-literary profile opposing the totalitarian regime. In some special cases a book was censored or self-censored and published in the official production of the 1970s or 80s, while, at the same time, being published as a samizdat or exile copy in its original, uncensored form.
2. Contemporary Czech prose and drama 2.1. Older generation Bohumil Hrabal, a writer outstanding for his artistic skills as well as his life was definitely not the only of such paradox. This applies to Hrabal’s book I Served the King of England (1974s, 1980e, 1989). The author describes it as a satire on eternal Czech inadaptability, a text of never-ending repetitions, in fact a narrative by the main character, following the tradition of Hašek’s pub-story evolution (originally a potboy Jan Ditě, then a millionaire and after the 1948 communist putsch a lone road-mender). Also other books by Bohumil Hrabal experienced similar history of samizdat, exile and, following 1989, official publication, for example Little Town Where Time Stood Still (1974s, 1978e, 1991), Too Loud a Solitude (1977s, 1980e, 1989) and finally a trilogy Svatby v domě (Weddings in the House) (officially in 1991). These works undoubtedly represent the heights of Czech prose of the 1970s and 80s.2)
1) Hrabal, B., 1990, 89-106. 2) There are many descriptions of Hrabal’s poetics. Among the best are an article by M. Jankovič (Too Deep a Solitude) the literary studies textbook Český Parnas /Literatura 1970-1990/ ( ed. Holý, J., 1993) and articles by B. Dokoupil (e.g. Little Town Where Time Stood Still), J. Schneider (Svatby v domě) and Z, Fišer (I Served the King of England)
Applying this generation point of view of the Czech prose after 1989, we come to realize that Hrabal (born 1914) was the last of the oldest generation and that the mainstream literature is determined by another, ten to fifteen-year-younger generation of writers, of whom some write abroad. This group is formed by Josef Škvorecký (1924), Arnošt Lustig (1926), Milan Kundera (1929), Pavel Kohout (1928), Václav Havel (1936), Vladimir Páral (1932), Ludvík Vaculík (1926) and Ivan Klíma (1931). Works by Josef Škvorecký, resident in Canada, bear the mark of unbalanced quality due to his, often malfunctioning, breaking of erotic taboos, and following his first book Cowards (1958), another height of his work comes with the Engineer of Human Souls (from other titles The Bride of Texas , 1998) already inspired by the author’s experience at Toronto University.
Arnošt Lustig, writing both at home and abroad (United
States) keeps arousing human awareness with his central topic – the holocaust (in 1998-2004 more than 10 titles, e. g. Rainy Stories, 2002). Milan Kundera3), unlike the others no longer writing in Czech, has repeatedly achieved international success, for instance with his last novel Ignorance (2003). One of the most talented Czech authors Pavel Kohout has focused in both his diaries and novels and plays on the depiction of an individual’s fight against the totalitarian regime, a topic similarly dealt with in the works of Václav Havel. Václav Havel, the former Czech President and co-founder of the anti-Communist Charter 77 movement, remarkably depicted the absurdity of communication and the loss of human identity. It was Havel who set the form of Czech absurd drama with the Garden Party (1958) and his poetics did not change much even in his later plays, Largo Desolato (1984), Pokoušení (Tempting) (1985). This is also true of his 1970s’ absurd morality plays Audience, Vernisáž (Preview), Protest (1975) with their central character of a timid, yet highly principled man, Ferdinand Vaněk, Havel’s literary alter ego.
(Havel
himself has played the role of Vaněk in amateur productions of his plays). Vaněk does not fall prey to the secret police tempting offers of collaboration and improving his status and insists on his dissident viewpoints (just like the author himself).
Not surprisingly, Havel’s plays were banned from official
publication until after 1989. With the changes of the 1990s’, the poetics of Vladimír Páral openly revealed an aspect always present in his work (Lovers & Murderers, 1968) and turned it into openly erotic one, even including market characteristics (Playgirls I, II, 1992, 1994) enriched with an even more significant inspiration by
in the Dictionary of Czech Prose 1945-1994 (ed. Dokoupil, B.- Zelinský, M., 1994). This also holds basically true for the characterization of the poetics for the authors mentioned in this article (with the exception of the cited works of Boučková, Kabeš, Krchovský, Macura, Malý, Topinka and the novel Ten Years by Egon Bondy). 3) The most recent examination of Kundera’s novels is H. Kosková, “Kunderovy francouzské romány”, 2004 (the issue was dedicated to the 75th birthday of Milan Kundera, who was born on 1.4.1929 in Brno). Kundera’s French-language novels Slowness (1996), Identity (1998), and Ignorance (2002) have not yet been translated into Czech; those novels of Kundera that were published by exile publishers (e.g. 68 Publishers) are not readily available to the Czech reader, including works such as Life is Elswhere (1974), Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1981) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). - Monographs on Kundera have been written by K. Chvatík, Svět románů M. Kundery, 1994; H. Kosková, Milan Kundera, H a H, 1980 and Eva le Grand, Kundera, ou, La mémoire du désir, Montréal, 1995.
oriental philosophy, bearing no reference to the political situation (as opposed to politically-aware authors like Havel, Kohout, Vaculík and Kundera). In addition to Lovers & Murderers, the heights of Páral’s work are represented by Muka obraznosti (Visual Tortures, 1980) and Kniha rozkoší, smíchu a radosti (Book of Pleasures, Laughter and Joy, 1992). Ludvík Vaculík seems to have achieved the domestic scene the greatest artistic renown among that generation of authors born in the late 1920s and early 1930s with his remarkable Český snář (Czech Dream Book, 1981s, 1982e, 1990), reflecting (from a critical point of view as well) the situation of Czech dissent. His marvelously written novel How is made a boy (1993) aroused possibly even greater literary sensation with its openness, depicting the author’s intimate relationships but also with its formal conciseness and unusual and innovative approach.
With regard to the actual people appearing in the
novel, its assessment is rather controversial and the book will have to wait for an objective and just evaluation, which, I believe, it deserves. A greater part of Ivan Klíma’s academic audience was rather disappointed with his high output in the post-1989 period, which was regarded as stereotypic (My Merry Mornings, My First Loves and My Golden Trades, all in 1990, about 19 basic titles in about 9 years, from these books 7 new ones).
2.2. Younger generation The prose of the post-1989 period logically has representatives of younger generations, authors who either previously did not publish their work at all, or were banned from publishing following the 1968 Soviet invasion. Despite attempts to classify the most recent Czech prose of the 1990s4), stable positions as well as literary sensations of this period were reserved for older authors, represented for example by the legendary author of the first underground wave in the 1950s, Egon Bondy and the recent edition of his novel Posledních deset let (The Last Ten Years, 2004). Jiří Kratochvil (1940) can be regarded as the fixed star of the 1990s. All attempts at the classification of post-1989 production4 seem to fall into simplification, whereas in prose they seem to be more plausible. Basically, we can divide prose into two streams – a narrative stream, focusing on the development of narration, and an experimental stream, characterized by: “stories that are not developing, but falling apart in front of our eyes” (Jiří Pechar)5). The narrative stream includes e. g. Michal Viewegh, Vladimír Macura, Tereza Boučková. The stream’s major representative Michal Viewegh has acquired the role of a talented, literarily well-equipped writer with a good sense of 4) L. Machala has attempted to characterize Czech prose in the 1990s in a textbook published by Cerm (1999) and more recently and in greater depth in his book Literární bludiště (Bilance polistopadové prózy), 2001. Machala is also the primary author of the first post-revolution compendium of domestic samizdat and exile literature (see Machala L.et al, 1991), which at the time filled an important informational and publicity role filling in the blank spots in Czech literature. 5) Pechar, J., 1999, 547.
humor, regardless criticism of his superficiality resulting from his high output; he is an author aware of the fact that: “he was not a dissident and therefore, in order to be read and published, he has to write interestingly”6). The experimental stream is represented by novel theorist Daniela Hodrová (born in 1946), the theorist Sylvie Richterová (1945, teaching at the university in Viterbo, Italy) and, to name a new, post-1989, author – Zuzana Brabcová (1959). The most prominent representative of this stream remains the first writer-experimenter of the 1960s, Věra Linhartová (1938). Richterová and Hodrová can be seen as followers of her style of experimental prose. Both groups (narrative and experimental)7) adopt a more or less postmodern approach (which in the West dates back to the late 1950s, when Czech literature was dominated by social realism) although some authors are opposed to this term. For almost half a century, postmodernism has been defined as being skeptical, stressing the right to the multiplicity of accounts and stories. This is, actually, the way Jiří Kratochvil characterized the development of Czech literature after 1989, as a “restoration of chaos”, multiplicity that can mark a beginning8). Kratochvil himself rightly used the term postmodern in his highly appreciated collection of short stories Má lásko, postmoderno (Postmodern, My Love, 1994)9).
3. Contemporary Czech poetry Unlike prose, poetry is remarkable for the arrival of a large wave of younger writers; hence several attempts have been made to the classify this new poetry.10) Possibly the best of these attempts identifies the following streams: “magical”, “spiritual”, “empirical” and “reflexive”. Obviously, such terms allow a certain permeability (which the author of the classification is well aware of). Nevertheless, I believe that the most precise characteristics of new aspects in poetry correspond with the specifics of earlier samizdat poetry; the switch is visible in the focus on decadent topics, such as awkwardness, evil and morbidity, which applies to several, relatively young, poets, who have already successfully made their way onto the book market – J. K. Krchovský and Jáchym Topol.11) 6) 7) 8) 9)
Viewegh, M., 2002, 35. Pechar, J.,1999, 547-565 (the chapter "Postmoderní situace"). Kratochvil, Jiří, 1992, 5. Insightful reviews of Kratochvil’s most recent works have been written by Zbynek Fišer, e.g, “Bestiář Jiřího Kratochvila”, 2003, 99. 10) For the generational division of poets see Trávníček, J., 1997, 67-74, with generalized terms like “the desire to gesture” (e.g. J. Typlt), “Reynkov’s tracks” (e.g. P. Kolmačka), “clearing” (e.g. Borkovec), “addressing reality” (e.g. B. Správcová) and a division of 17 authors into the aforementioned four groups (Group 1-5 authors, 2-3, 3-5, 4-4). Additionally, .Málková, I. , 1997, 1998; Balaštík, M., 1998, 29-36, with types such as “empiric” (e.g. Hruška ), “magic” (e.g. Typlt), “spiritual” (e.g. Borkovec) and “reflexive (e.g. Chlíbec); Novotný, V., 1998, with no analogical terminology. The most extensive and best thought out work is another of Balaštík’s typologies 1998. 11) On Topol’s provocative text Sister (which is of course prosaic) see the recent interesting article by Kouba, P., 2003, 027-054; for Krchovský, e.g. the recent essay by Exner, M., 2004, 16-18.
In a democratic society, various literary awards are means of appreciating the quality of literary works.12) Following 1989, there was a tendency towards evaluating authors on the basis of their extra-literary activities under the totalitarian regime or works banned from publication during that period. Petr Kabeš seems to be an example of both. Born in 1941, published in samizdat, first in 1963, Kabeš received the State Award for his book of poetry Těžítka, těžítka (Paperweights, Atlantis, Brno 2004). Another important award is the Jaroslav Seifert Prize (named in honor of the first Czech poet to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1984). This year’s winner of the Jaroslav Seifert Prize is Miloslav Topinka (1945). He started writing in the 1960s and in 1971, his last samizdat collection, ready for publication, was confiscated and destroyed and it took another thirty years for this book and the author to return to the Czech literary scene in 1991. The Jiří Orten Prize for young authors was awarded to a really young poet Radek Malý (1977) for his second collection Vraní zpěvy (Crow Songs, Petrov, 2004).13)
4. Contemporary Literary Studies Post-Communist period are most remarkable for changes in literary studies. Under the totalitarian regime, literary studies were restricted to the theories of Socialist Realism. In the post-Communist period literary studies has ended its isolation and gained multiplicity, in the form of a rediscovering of neo-structuralism14) and opening up to current trends in literary studies to Czech literary circles. As a literary historian I believe that in addition to the freedom of expression, whose boundary still has to be newly defined by some authors so that they can produce real art, it is the most valuable asset for the Czech culture from the fifteen years of post-revolutionary development.
5. Conclusion I finally conclude with my observation that new aspects: the latest enthusiasm in the publishing branch, springing from the fall of communist regime and the commencement of democracy, was quite soon, in mid-1990s, replaced by skepticism, one rather typical of the Czech nation. This skepticism was caused by the transformation of the previously state-controlled, but also state-subsidized, book market 12) For information on the most recent literary prizes see Novotný V., 2003-2004, 139-142 (about R. Malý on page 140). 13) Novotný, V., 2003/2004/, 3. 14) The publishing of works on structuralism is occurring in an eponymous series (Strukturalistická knihovna, since 1989 at total of about 14 volumes have been published); another of other publishers (in addition to Host from Brno and Filosofia from Prague) publish modern foreign literary theory.
into an economic one.15) The events of November 1989 initially set off an explosion in publishing. Almost immediately some 2000 publishing houses were registered, some of which have yet to publish a single book. In a very short period of time the most important samizdat and exile literary works of the preceding twenty-five years were published (namely those from the 1970s and 80s). The scale of the book market soon included high-quality books representing works of older generations of writers, as well as new writers with little or no publishing experience in the previous era; there were books of both average quality and well-written, but also books of poor quality hardly even meeting demands of pleasure reading. The most extreme cases are represented by professional misbehavior resulting from publishers’ and editors’ rush and the money-making frenzy. The hunger for high-quality literature was however soon satisfied, given fact that in a democratic society this type of literature appeals to a rather small group of people.
15) On changes in the Czech book market see Moldanová D., 2002-2003, 174-179 . – On analyses of books of lower qualities see Mocná, D., 1996.
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개요>
체코 문학의 발달에 대한 고찰 하쉐미오바 체코 문학과 체코 마사리크대학교
1989 , 벨벳혁명은 체코문학에, 특히 그 주제에 많은 변화를 가겨왔다. 그래서 우리는 1990년대를 신(新) 현대문학의 시작으로 여기는 것이다. 바로 90년대에 비로소 기존에 공식적인 체코 출판사들에서 출판될 수 없 었던 일부 훌륭한 작품이 출간되기 시작했다. 그래서 대부분이 소위 일컫는 “68 출판사” (Toronto, 작가이자 번역가 그리고 편집이었던 요세프 슈크보레츠키와 그의 부인 즈데나 살리바로바-슈크보레츠카에 의한)나 또 는 “인덱스 Index” (Kolin nad Rynem)과 같은 망명지에서 출판되었어야만 했다. 구세대 산문 중 가장 훌륭한 것으로는 바로 보후밀 흐라발(Bohumila Hrabala 1909-1997)의 작품-특히 그의 삼부작(Trilogy Vita nuova, 1991 작가의 부인 Eliska-Pispsi의 관찰자 시점의 양식)-을 꼽는다. 중간세대와 신세대 작가들 중에서, 독자들은 비록 미할 비에베그흐(Michal Viewegh, 1968~)가 쓴 포스트 모더니스트 산문들을 더 선호하기는 했지만, 이르지 크라토흐빌(Jiri Kratochvil, 1940))의 포스트모더니스트 산문들을 대표작으로 꼽는다. 체코에서 가장 유명한 희곡작가라면 역시 전 체코대통령 바츨라프 하벨(Vaclav Havel, 1936~)이며 그는 특히 자신의 연극들(1991년 전집)으로 유명하다. 야로슬라프 사이페르트(Jaroslav Seifert, + 1986)나 얀 스카첼(Jan Skacel, + 1989)과 같은 이제는 완전 구세대에 속하는 훌륭한 시인의 시대는 이미 문을 닫았다. 그리고 중간세대와 신세대 작가들 중 장래에 이 두 거장의 빈 자리를 메울 시인들은 아직 나타나지 않았다고 본다.
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> 벨벳혁명, 체코 산문, 체코 드라마, 포스트모더니즘, 체코 운문, 사회주의적 사실주의16)
본 논문은 2005년 2월 23일에 투고되어 3월 18일에 심사를 마치고, 4월 2일에 게재를 확정하였음.
PhDr. Prof. Michaela Hashemiova, Csc, Department of Czech literature, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic, Czech Baroque literature, [email protected], HUFS Foreign apt., Na 205, Kongneung - 2 - Dong, 270 – 66, Nowon gu, Seoul 139 - 242
