The Construction of Contemporary Reality in Selected Works of Czech fiction:


                                     Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán








Jitka Peřinová


Degree: PhD

Form of study: Research

Department of Slavonic Studies

School of Modern Languages and Cultures

University of Glasgow

December 2012





© Jitka Peřinová, 2012


Table of Contents


Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………..6

Acknowledgements.………………………………………………………………………...7

Declaration………………………………………………………………………………….8

Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………….9


Introduction………………………………………………………………………………10


1. Facts about Hakl’s and Balabán’s personal lives and experiences…………13

2. The beginnings: poetry and fiction…………………………………………...16

3. Public acknowledgement. Critical recognition…..…………………………..16

4. Theoretical background……………………………………………………….20


I. ‘Life according to Jan Beneš’ by Emil Hakl…………………………………………24


Introduction………………………………………………………………………24


1. Hakl’s narrator………………………………………………………………...27


    1.1 ‘I’ as the subjective narrator of the text……………………………………..27

                1.2 The narrator of Konec světa: the identity…………………………………...28

                1.3 Emil Hakl & Jan Beneš……………………………………………………..32


2. The narrating ‘I’ in union with the world and in conflict with it

     (in relation to society)………...……………………………………………….37


                 2.1 ‘I’ in communication with others…………………………………………..37

                 2.2 The relation of the narrator to his male friends and to friendship

                        in general…………………...……………………………………………...38

                 2.3 Láďa, Fáfa and Jan Beneš………………………………………………….40

                 2.4 Narrative discourse: Jan Beneš in charge of the narrative time……………45

                 2.5 The content: the revealed and the suspended information…………………48


                 2.6 The existence of the ‘known’ and the arrival of the new and

                       the ‘unknown’……………..……………………………………………….53

                 2.7 The troublesome present and the ‘golden’ past…………………………….59

                 2.8 The relationship of the subjective narrator towards women……………….60


3. The narrating ‘I’ as a part of the System and outside the System………….72


                 3.1 Life of work………………………………………………………………...72

                 3.2 The individual facing the System…………………………………………..74

                 3.3 The ‘Quake’ and the ‘Cthulhu’…………………………………………….80

                 3.4 A ‘latent deserter’…………………………………………………………..82


4. ‘To see, to feel and to re-tell’: places and their narratives………………….85


                 4.1 ‘Seeing’: advertising, information and others………………….…………..85

                 4.2 ‘Feeling’: the city of Prague………………………………………………..90

                 4.3 ‘Re-telling’: in the centre of pub talks and random encounters……………96

                 4.4 ‘Being’: in the flat………………………………………………………….99

                 4.5 Apocalyptic visions of the world…………………………………………101

                 4.6 ‘The end of the world’: the legacy of the postmodern

                        and the apocalypse………………………………………………………..104


5. Life according to Jan Beneš – continued:

     the context of Hakl’s fiction…..…………………………………….……….108


                 5.1 Intimní schránka Sabriny Black: the history of one love,

                       the history of one career……………….………………………………….108

                 5.2 O rodičích a dětech: Father and his son, son and his Father…..………….111

                 5.3 O létajících objektech: ‘I’ amongst the ‘aliens’ and with them…………..115

                 5.4 Let čarodĕjnice: trouble with communication…………………………….123

                 5.5 Pravidla směšného chování: an end, or a new
departure?..........................127


6. Emil Hakl – Summary……………………………………………………….133


                 6.1 Jan (Honza) Beneš………………………………………………………...133

                 6.2 An image of society……………………………………………………….134

                 6.3 An image of the ‘real’ world……………………………………………...135

                 6.4 Contemporary, realistic and postmodern………………………………….136


II. The constructed and deconstructed world of Jan Balabán’s fiction……………..137


Introduction……………………………………………………………………..137


1.  A few words on the narrator and genres…………………………………...139


                 1.1 Personalisation of the narrator’s position…………………………………139

                 1.2 The gradual separation and the re-union with the
writer’s

           personality: part I. ...……………………………………………………...141

                 1.3 Understanding the complexity of Balabán’s fictive world………………..144

                 1.4 In between short stories and novels……………………………………….146


2. Collective (social) experience………………………………………………...149


                 2.1 Human relationships and love…………………………………………….149

                       2.1.1 Destructive: a search for love………………….……………………149

                       2.1.2 Destructive: lack of personal comprehension….…………………...150

                       2.1.3 Destructive: the fear of parenthood (the fear of adult

                                responsibility)……………………………………………………….154

                       2.1.4 Destructive: sexual frustration (the fear of intimacy)………………155

                       2.1.5 Destructive: external circumstances which make people part

                                their ways…………………………………………………………...156

                       2.1.6 The history of love – revealed and unrevealed……………………..156

                       2.1.7 Re-constructive: newly-found and recovered love…………………157

                       2.1.8 To sum up: love, relationships and society…………………………158

                 2.2 Family relationships: given, lost and found………………………………159

                       2.2.1 Children and their parents…………………………………………..159

                       2.2.2 Parents and their children…………………………………………...163

                       2.2.3 Brothers and sisters (siblings’ rivalry and reunion)………………...165

                 2.3 Relationships with friends and random people…………………………...168

                 2.4 To sum up: Balabán’s characters in relationship with the other people –

                       the image of the real and the fictive………………………………………170


3. The individual experience……………………………………………………172


     3.1 Life as a reflection of the self. Words and thoughts versus actions………172

                 3.2 The difference between Balabán’s male and female characters…………..175

                       3.2.1 Balabán’s men and their escapes……………………………………175

                       3.2.2 Women, their responsibilities and their grief.………………………177

                       3.2.3 The acceptance of ageing and its denial…………………………….180

                       3.2.4 Men are out for themselves, women work for others……………….182

                 3.3 Body (time) and soul (eternity)…………………………………………...183

                       3.3.1 Illnesses and mental disorders………………………………………184

                       3.3.2 Death………………………………………………………………..185

                 3.4 God and the universe….…………………………………………………..190

                 3.5 The present and the past: time and places………………………………...197

                       3.5.1 Memories……………………………………………………………197

                       3.5.2 The perception of time – linear and cyclic, destroyed

                                 and re-built…………………………………………………………202

                       3.5.3 Time and place – the external reality……………………………….203

                       3.5.4 Places discovered and re-discovered – universal and real………….210


4. Summary: The gradual separation and the re-union with

    the writer’s personality: part II. …………………………………………....214


Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….218


1 The constructed world of Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction –

    comparisons being made……..………………………………………………218

2. The image of history and the image of society……………………………...221


Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………….223




Abstract


At the beginning of the 1990’s, after a period of momentary confusion, when Czech literature seems
to have temporarily lost its way in the newly establishing democratic society which emerged after
the fall of communism a number of rather interesting and important writers appeared. Holding the
memories of recent communist past and experiencing the historical turning point when Czech society
rejoined the capitalist West, they produced an image of cultural and political initiation. They
bore witness to the arrival of chaos, associated with regime change, to a crisis of personal values
and a search for new ways of existence. This thesis analyzes the literary work of two contemporary
Czech writers, Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán. It explores the way the reality of their narratives is
shaped. It investigates the reality these narratives reflect, the reality these narratives create
and the reality that the reader of these narratives re-creates on the basis of his or her knowledge
of the world. The thesis considers the value judgments which are being made by Czech society
through its contemporary literature about its post-communist present. The thesis also examines the
question to what extent these narratives construct an image of contemporary Czech society. The
thesis deals with the complete fiction written by Emil Hakl (b. 1958) and Jan Balabán (1961-2010),
two popular and critically acclaimed Czech writers. The first part of the thesis analyzes Hakl’s
fiction, in particular his debut Konec světa (The End of the World), a work which opens the world
of Jan Beneš (Hakl’s real name), the subjective narrator of this text and also the narrator of all
the other texts written by Emil Hakl. The second part of the thesis focuses on the constructed and
deconstructed world of Jan Balabán’s fiction. It deals with themes and motifs that appear and
re-appear in the lives of Balabán’s male and female characters and explores individual characters
whose lives have been shaped by their own personal breakdowns as well as by changes in the social
and political conditions of the external world. The thesis analyzes Hakl’s and Balabán’s narratives
from a narratological point of view. The thesis uses the semiotic and narratological approach (H.
Porter Abbott, Gerald Prince, Seymour Chatman), the post-structuralist approach (Roland Barthes,
Julia Kristeva), the psychoanalytical approach (Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek), the postmodern
(Steven Connor), the theories dealing with the typology and the mythology of the novel and the city
(Daniela Hodrová), the cultural approach (John Storey) and the approach of New Historicism (Louis
Montrose, Hayden White).


Acknowledgements


I would like to offer my sincerest thanks to the following people for their help: my supervisor,
Dr. Jan Čulík (University of Glasgow), for the continuous support he has given me over the years I
have been working on this project, and also for helping me with the translations of the quotations
from Czech into English.


I would like to thank Dr. John Bates (University of Glasgow) and Dr. Jim Simpson (University of
Glasgow) for their advice and the important critical comments they have given me in the last stages
of my thesis.


I would like to thank Bobbie Dickie for her help with proofreading this thesis.


Many warm thanks are also due to my family and my friends Anna Krajčiková, Ilona Kratochvílová,
Joanna Kucieba and Bo Hanley for the encouragement they have given me through all the years of my
writing. Last but not least, I would like to thank my partner Erick Valentin Mauricia for his love
and his patience.


















Declaration


I declare that this thesis contains the results of my own work, that it has been composed by me and
that it does not include work forming part of a thesis presented successfully for a degree in this
or any other University.

Jitka Peřinová
…………………………..




















Abbreviations


AH: Ahoj Honzo! Setkání s Janem Balabánem

BL: Boží lano

CB: Černý beran

e. g.: Latin: ‘exempli gratia’ – ‘for example’

Ibid.: Latin: ‘ibidem’ – ‘the same place’

i. e.: Latin: ‘id est’ – ‘that is’; ‘in other words’

JT: Jsme tady

KS: Konec světa

KSA: Kudy šel anděl

LC: Let čarodějnice

LO: O létajících objektech

MO: Možná že odcházíme

ORD: O rodičích a dětech

PSC: Pravidla směšného chování

PR: Prázdniny

SB: Intimní schránka Sabriny Black

ST: Středověk

ZT: Zeptej se táty















Introduction


     Telling a story is as old as the verbal history of humankind; it enables people to recognize
the world they live in, places they act in and the spheres they think in. All humans have their own
narratives which they enjoy and share with others; from childhood, they carry a compulsion to
communicate their ideas and images with which they have been surrounded every day since they began
to put words together and create simple sentences:


‘Our very definition as human beings is very much bound up with the stories we tell about our own
lives and the world in which we live. We cannot, in our dreams, our daydreams, our ambitious
fantasies, avoid the imaginative imposition of form of life’ (Abbott 2002: 3).

.

Through a narrative, we search for our understanding of the ‘real’ world and for the recognition of
our life in time and space:


‘[W]herever we look in this world, we seek to grasp what we see not just in space but in time as
well. Narrative gives us this understanding; it gives us what could be called the shape of time.
Accordingly, our narrative perception stands ready to be activated in order to give us frame or
context for even the most static and eventful scenes. And without understanding the narrative we
often feel we don’t understand what we see. We cannot find the meaning’ (Ibid. 11).


     Narrative rises from the tension and the relation between the outer time, which is marked off
by the permanent motion of the hands of the clocks, by the astronomical cycle of the universe, by
the inner time shaped by our mind and by our apprehension of incidents and events that accompany
our lives during the whole period of our existence. Both the human being (the story of one’s life)
and his or her way of living his or her life (the narration) within the constraints of his or her
internal and external experience (the discourse) of his or her life construct the narrative of an
individual’s world and, in union with others, the narrative of the whole human world.

     The story of people born in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the twentieth century has
been shaped by the collective experience of communist times and by the political pro-democratic and
pro-capitalist regime change that affected the country after 1989. The people living in
Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic have reflected in their life stories upon an individual’s
perception of these events and borne witness to the individual’s journeys through the new
developments. A new, different narrative has been created in all spheres of life.

     The literary works written in this era have played an essential and creative part in the story
that Czech society has produced over the years of its existence. Their narratives have attempted to
capture what has been happening to individuals’ lives in the post-communist world and their
interpretations have been journeys taken to find out what has been happening with us, the readers
living in the world of today. To sum up, their narratives have acted as


‘[t]he structuring mechanisms of the human mind’ and ‘the means by which [human beings] make sense
out of chaos, and literature [has been] a fundamental means by which human beings explain the world
to themselves, that is, make sense out of chaos’ (Tyson 2006: 219).


Subsequently, the narratives of the contemporary world have been constructs of people’s minds
created in the moment of their recording and re-created every time a reading individual approached
them. Finally, these narratives have also been narratives of individual’s life when he or she
decided to acknowledge them, voice them and interpret – within the time and the space of their own
being. As Myers, the interpreter of Žižek’s theoretical legacy, puts it:


‘I am not the fastest athlete in the world until it is verified by the established athletics
institutions. Nor am I a poet until my poems have been published. Equally, I will still be a
learner-driver until I have passed the driving test. In each case, even though I will be exactly
the same person with exactly the same skills, the fact of my being the fastest athlete in the
world, a poet or a driver does not become operative for me or anyone else concerned until it is
registered by the big Other of the Symbolic institution’ (Myers 2007: 50-51).


Or, in other words, as McAfee says:


‘we become who we are as a result of taking part in signifying processes. There is no self-aware
self prior to our use of language. (…) Language [is] the discursive or signifying system in which
the “the speaking subject makes and unmakes himself”’ (McAfee 2004: 29).


Or in other words, as Tyson puts it:


‘[m]eaning is created by the reader in the act of reading (…) [M]eaning is produced by the play of
language through the vehicle of the reader, though we generally refer to this process as “the
reader.” Furthermore, the meaning that is created is not a stable element capable of producing
closure; that is, no interpretation has the final word’ (Tyson 2006: 258-259).

     There are various ways we can approach narratives of literary works. One approach leads from
the writer’s experience of the ‘real’ world to his or her reflection of this experience in the
text. The other approach goes in the reverse direction: from a text and the ‘fictive’ reality a
text constructs to the reader’s subjective perception of this text and the reality he or she
considers a text constructs. My thesis analyzes the work of two contemporary Czech writers, Emil
Hakl (b. 1958) and Jan Balabán (1961-2010) and it uses both ways to approach them. It examines the
relation between Hakl’s and Balabán’s texts, the ‘reality’ these texts reflect, the ‘reality’ these
texts create and the ‘reality’ that ‘I’, the reader, re-create on the basis of my own knowledge of
the world. The thesis touches on these two writers’ actual individual and social experiences – as
one of their sources of inspiration; it investigates the structure of their narratives – as a
unique product of creation; it constructs the model of the world these narratives create and it
looks for the possible meanings of these texts, based on the reader’s (in this case my own)
subjective experience of literary and social discourses that participated in the process of the
text creation (or not). Somewhere in between, the thesis searches for the understanding of the text
and the reality it contemplates. It looks at Hakl’s and Balabán’s literary work as an image, as it
is:


‘a representation of the world and the representation of reality despite the fact that it is also
an individual unit and that it creates a fictive world which is real only in varying degrees.’

[‘(Literární dílo zobrazuje) a značí svět a realitu navzdory tomu, že je svébytným celkem a že
buduje svět fiktivní, v různém stupni reálný.’] (Hodrová 2001: 112)


Or, in other words, because:


‘[a] literary work is a specific literary representation (a sign and a model) of reality. In
varying degrees, it is focused on gaining knowledge about reality and on creating an aesthetic
effect. At the same time, a literary work shows a tendency to create a reality of its own kind, its
own fictive world.’

[‘Dílo je specifickým literárním vyjádřením (znakem i modelem) skutečnosti, vyjádřením v různé míře
zaměřeným k poznání skutečnosti i k estetickému účinu, přičemž jeví tendenci, větší či menší,
vytvářet realitu svého druhu, vlastní, fiktivní svět.’] (Ibid. 112)


My thesis will relate to both the unique product of human creation and the image Hakl’s and
Balabán’s works depict and re-create.


     Before we start exploring the work of the two authors mentioned above, it is important to
explain what has influenced my decision to select the texts by Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán as two
subject matters of my work about contemporary Czech fiction. For this reason, the thesis will begin
with an introduction of both writers: it will outline their personal background; it will touch upon
some aspects of their political, social and cultural experience and upon their own revelations
about their writing career. In other words, it will recall the time and the place in which both
writers created their work and consider whether there is anything that connects them. Subsequently,
it will turn its attention to the public recognition of Hakl’s and Balabán’s work. This all will be
done with the intention to put the literary work of both writers into the context of contemporary
Czech society and with an intention to connect their testimonies with the social impact of their
works. It follows from the information about the reception of the works of these two authors that
the themes with which the authors deal – and which are the subject of this thesis – receive serious
consideration in the ongoing public debate in the Czech Republic. This is why it is important to
analyze their testimonies about contemporary life in the Czech Republic. This is also why it is
important to analyze any literary testimony about contemporary life in the Czech Republic. It is a
message which people give to themselves about themselves and about the reality they live. Each
literary testimony contains this message. We, in our perception of these works, relate this message
to our own experience of the world.


1. Facts about Hakl’s and Balabán’s personal lives and experiences


     Both writers, Emil Hakl (b. 1958) and Jan Balabán (1961-2010), came from the same generation
which grew up during the communist 1960s, experienced the ‘normalized’[1] 1970s and 1980s and were
affected by the post-communist era after the 1989 regime change. Emil Hakl (his real name is Jan
Beneš) spent this time in the capital, Prague, and its regional surroundings. Jan Balabán lived
mainly in Ostrava, in an industrial city in the north-east of Moravia, near the borders between
Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia and Poland.


     The central Bohemian region, and especially Prague, Prague boroughs, Prague streets, buildings
and parks, local figures, local clubs and pubs, local concerts and literary happenings became
characteristic features of Hakl’s literary world. The author’s professional career in various jobs
and his participation in numerous cultural activities have also served as inspiration for his work,
as we will explore later. In the first half of the 1980s, Hakl took part in several amateur theatre
performances with a group of his friends; these included adaptations of such authors as Vladimir
Khlebnikov (1885-1922)[2] and Boris Vian (1920-1959)[3]. At this time, Emil Hakl graduated from the
Jaroslav Ježek Conservatoire (as the institution is called today), specializing in creative
writing; later, he also completed two years of dramatic studies at the same school. In 1988, Hakl
participated in the establishment of the literary group Moderní analfabet (The Modern
Illiterates)[4], whose activity consisted of regular author’s reading performances in various
Prague and regional clubs. Their tradition was later taken over by Literární klub 8 (Literary Club
8). Hakl also cooperated with the literary Pant klub.

     Under the communist regime, Hakl worked in various manual labour jobs. After being a
decorator, librarian, warehouseman, petrol station attendant and sound engineer, in 1996-2000 he
found himself employed as a copywriter for an advertising company; in 2001 he held the position of
an editor for the fortnightly literary journal Tvar. Nowadays, he works as a journalist for the
popular weekly glossy Instinkt. His articles and excerpts from his literary work have also been
published in Iniciály, Literární noviny, Aluze, Salon, the cultural supplement to the daily Právo,
the weekly magazine Týden and in the internet magazine Dobrá adresa.


     Jan Balabán, on the other hand, chose Ostrava, the place where he grew up and raised his
family, the place with a long history of steel-making, a city which is dominated by coal mines,
steel furnaces and its surroundings, including the Beskydy Mountains, as the main locations for his
prose. His work emphasizes the unique industrial architecture of the city of Ostrava, and the post
communist remnants of the culture represented by working class housing estates, factories, local
residential schemes and people living in them.

     Balabán was brought up in a family with a Protestant intellectual tradition. His grandfather
was a Protestant minister. His uncle, Milan Balabán (b. 1929), is a well-known minister, theologian
and professor at the Protestant Theological Faculty at Charles University in Prague. Balabán’s bond
to his family tradition and to his religious faith is reflected in all of his fiction. Faith is
omnipresent but it is often questioned.

     Like Emil Hakl, Jan Balabán maintained contact with the alternative cultural scene from the
1980s onwards. With his brother Daniel, an artist, and other people with similar political,
artistic and cultural view points (e. g. Jiří Surůvka, Jaroslav Žila, Petr Hruška and Ivan
Motýl[5]) he held various meetings and unofficial exhibitions in the lofts or stairwells, sometimes
also producing anthologies typed on typewriters. In one of the interviews, when discussing the
beginnings of his literary career, Balabán said:


‘We were not really terribly typical members of the underground anti-establishment; after all, we
did manage to finish our university studies; we did not say to each other, “Let’s ignore the
official structures and create our own, alternative ones”, but we found out that we could not find
satisfaction in those official structures. So we did it all [the unofficial activities] mainly for
our own pleasure. But it was, as I said before, also accompanied by our lack of critical judgement
and by pseudo-heroism.’

[‘My jsme taky nebyli žádní undergrounďáci, my jsme nakonec ty vysoké školy vystudovali. Neřekli
jsme si, tak na všechno kašlem a budeme se realizovat v jiných strukturách, my jsme akorát
zjistili, že v těch oficiálních strukturách se realizovat nelze. Takže jsme to dělali hlavně
samozřejmě pro své potěšení, ale bylo to, jak už jsem říkal, provázeno také nekritičností a
pseudohrdinstvím.’]

(Balabán; Horák 2002: Tvar, vol. 18: 1, 14-15)


This attitude will turn out to have been significant for Balabán’s whole writing career.

     After graduating from Palacký University in Olomouc where he studied Czech and English,
Balabán got a job as a technical translator for the Vítkovice Ironworks; later he also worked as a
free-lance translator from English (he translated H. P. Lovecraft, Terry Eagleton and other
authors) and regularly as a journalist for the Czech political weekly Respekt. Jan Balabán died in
2010.


     What connected Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán in their lives was their age, their general political
and social experiences, a similar critical attitude towards official communist culture (they
participated in the creation of the underground and alternative literary structures), their
involvement in various cultural activities, in journalism and in an urban existence. What made them
different were the places where they live[d], their family backgrounds, their religious traditions
and their individual personalities.


2. The beginnings: poetry and fiction


     Both Hakl and Balabán started publishing in the 1990s. Emil Hakl brought out his first work, a
book of poetry, Rozpojená slova (Disconnected Words), in 1991; the second volume Zkušební trylky z
Marsu (Experimental trills from Mars) came out much later, in 2000. Since then, he has been
publishing short stories and novels.

     Jan Balabán published his first work, Středověk (The Middle Ages), a collection of short
stories, in 1995. But, like Hakl, he also wrote poetry first, although none of his poems has
appeared in a single published anthology. A little fragment of his poetic attempts can still be
found in Balabán’s prose debut mentioned above. However, the influence of poetry and a drive to
write stories are evident in all of his fiction.

     Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán have consciously decided to write fiction and both have chosen the
form of short stories as well as the form of novels, although Jan Balabán also wrote a drama
(Bezruč?!, 2009) and a graphic novel (Srdce draka – The Heart of A Dragon, 2001) and Hakl co-wrote
a film script of his novel (O rodičích a dětech – Of Kids and Parents, 2008). How the literary work
by Emil Hakl differs from the work by Jan Balabán and whether there is something that connects them
on the semantic level and on the level of form is one of the main themes of this thesis. The
reality which these works depict is another one.


3. Public acknowledgement. Critical recognition.


     As it was mentioned above, Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán published their literary works after the
1989 fall of the communist regime. They brought their first works out at the time of political,
social and cultural transformation of Czech society and at the time of the arrival of publishing
freedom. Generally speaking, unlike during the communist era, since the fall of communism, Czech
writers have not had to struggle with any political and cultural restrictions in order to publish
their work in recognised publishing houses.  But at the same time,


‘literature lost its role which it had played in the past, specifically from the period of the
National Revival[6] onwards when it stood in not only for all the other fields of culture, but also
for politology, sociology, philosophy and journalism. The concept of the writer as the “nation’s
conscience” disintegrated after the “velvet revolution”[7]’

[‘literatura zcela zjevně ztratila roli, kterou hrála v minulosti, od doby národního obrození, kdy
literatura suplovala nejen veškerou ostatní kulturu, ale také politologii, sociologii, filozofii a
novinářství. Pojem spisovatele jako “svědomí národa” se po “sametové revoluci” rozložil.’]

(Bílek 2003: Britské listy: http://www.blisty.cz/art/12456.html)


Nowadays, Czech literature does not play the role of the mouthpiece of the nation, for nowadays
there is no totalitarianism in the Czech Republic, no oppressive regime which would suppress an
individual’s freedom in the name of ideology. There is no need to use literature as a weapon
against an ideology of the state anymore as the external conditions which required literature to be
the “nation’s conscience” have disappeared. Much of the former substitute role of Czech literature
was taken over by the media after the fall of communism. Nowadays, Czech literature concentrates on
entertaining readers by dealing with various subject matters, including those which were in the
past taboo. Contemporary Czech literature is now a dynamic part of contemporary Czech culture and
at the same time an important vehicle which contributes substantially to our understanding of
contemporary Czech society and the world it creates.

     The literary work of both Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán is an integral and highly regarded part of
contemporary Czech culture. It has received accolades from the Czech reading public as well as from
Czech literary critics, as we can see from the following list of various awards and from the large
number of articles and reviews published about the work of these two writers in the Czech Republic
as well as abroad (see the Bibliography).

     Until now, Emil Hakl has published two collections of poems and six works of fiction (see
below). Together with Petr Šabach (b. 1951) and Martin Šmaus (b. 1965), two contemporary Czech
writers, he also published a collection of short stories, Někdy jindy, někde jinde (In Another
Time, in Another Place, 2009). His own collection of short stories, Konec světa (The End of the
World), was released in three subsequent editions (2001, 2002 and 2003). His novel, Intimní
schránka Sabriny Black (Sabrina Black’s Intimate Mailbox, 2002), was re-edited by the author and
published in a new ‘final cut’ version in 2010. His novella, O rodičích a dětech (Of Kids and
Parents), was published in three subsequent editions (2002, 2003 and 2008). In 2003, this novella
received the Magnesia Litera Prize[8] for the best contemporary Czech work of fiction. The novella
was translated into English in 2007. Marek Tomin’s translation, Of Kids and Parents, was nominated
for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize in 2009 and was one of the seven books of the year featured in the
RALPH magazine. This novella was also made into a film directed by Vladimír Michálek (in 2008).
Hakl’s latest work, Pravidla směšného chování (The Rules of Laughable Behaviour), received a
nomination for Magnesia Litera Prize (2011), the Josef Škvorecký Prize for the best work of fiction
in 2010 and the 2^nd place in the Lidové noviny Award for the best literary work of the year
2010.


     During his professional career, Jan Balabán published seven works of fiction, one graphic
novel and one drama (see below). He also contributed his texts to two collections of stories
written by a selected number of contemporary Czech writers: 7edm (7even, 2005) and Nech mě žít (Let
me Live, 2006). His collection of short stories, Prázdniny (Holidays), was published twice (1998
and 2007). The second edition, dated 2007, included an audio CD with the author’s own recording of
four stories from the collection. His novel, Kudy šel anděl (Where the Angel Walked), was published
twice (2003 and 2005) and the collection of short stories, Možná že odcházíme (Maybe We Are
Leaving), in three editions (2004, 2007 and 2011). In 2004, Možná že odcházíme (Maybe We Are
Leaving) received the Lidové noviny Award for the best literary work and a nomination for the State
Prize for Literature. In 2005, the collection was awarded the Magnesia Litera Award for the best
work of fiction and later also it received the award Magnesia Litera – The Book of the 2000-2010
decade. Balabán’s last novel, Zeptej se táty (Ask Your Dad), which was published after his death,
received the Lidové noviny Award – the Book of the Year for 2010, the weekly magazine Respekt Book
of the Year Award for 2010 and the Magnesia Litera Book of the Year Prize for 2010. In 2012; the
same novel was recorded and released on audio CD.

     In 2010, the publishing house Host brought out the first volume of Balabán’s collective work,
Povídky (A Collection of Short Stories). The second volume containing novels and novellas was
published a year later. In 2011, Balabán’s family, friends and colleagues gathered their memories
and views of the author in their collective work entitled Honzo, ahoj! Setkání s Janem Balabánem
(Honza, good bye! An Encounter with Jan Balabán). On 29^th December 2011, Czech Television 2
broadcast the documentary: Jan Balabán svými vlastními slovy. Záznamy z let 1998 až 2010.
Dokumentární film o Janu Balabánovi, českém spisovateli, překladateli a publicistovi (Jan Balabán,
in his own words. Recordings from 1998–2010. A Documentary about Jan Balabán, Czech writer,
translator and journalist.)


     Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán have presented their work of fiction at various literary events and
reading sessions in the Czech Republic as well as abroad. Their names are mentioned in several
anthologies, textbooks and critical works. Their fiction can be found in almost every Czech library
and bookshop.

     A closer look at the list of Hakl’s and Balabán’s awards and their publishing successes makes
us consider some interesting points about their literary work. The works of these two writers have
been ‘appreciated’ by both the general reading public and by literary theorists and critics. The
literary texts by Hakl and Balabán have been widely read, which suggests that there is a connection
between both writers’ works and their readers on the level of common interest, experience,
affection and similarity. The literariness of Hakl’s and Balabán’s works has been noted and
recognized by number of literary theoreticians and critics, which makes us think about the
existence of some kind of harmony between the form and the essence of the texts. This gives the
writings of both Hakl and Balabán a rather unique position. It is possible to suggest that the
popularity and literary ‘quality’ of Hakl’s and Balabán’s works lies in their meaning, in the
message which they give the world about the world. Nevertheless, it also lies in the way these
works speak to and affect their readers. For ‘[m]eaning is not made just denotatively, with words
denoting thoughts or things. Meaning is made in large part by the poetic and affective aspects of
texts as well’ (McAfee 2004: 13). The meaning of Hakl’s and Balabán’s works seems to connect both
aspects well. These literary works are entertaining, hence they have an aesthetic value for the
reader, but they are also seen as an interesting analysis of the picture which contemporary Czech
society creates on the basis of its own experience of the real world and about itself, so they also
have a cognitive value for the reader.


4. Theoretical background


     My thesis on the construction of contemporary reality in selected works of Czech fiction
consists of two parts: the first part analyzes Emil Hakl’s literary works; the second part analyzes
the fiction by Jan Balabán. The part focusing on Emil Hakl’s work is based on a detailed semiotic
analysis of a single volume of his writing. Comparisons are then drawn with the whole context of
Hakl’s fiction – both in relation to the ‘real’ world and the contemporary ‘reality’ of Czech
writing. The chapter, ‘Life according to Jan Beneš, by Emil Hakl’, explores these literary texts as
the story of one subjective narrator and his perception of life around him. This is because I
believe that the whole of Hakl’s fiction is a variation on one individual life – Jan Beneš’s life.
It deals with the transformations of Jan’s life. The volume entitled Konec světa (The End of the
World, 2001) is looked at from the perspective of the identity of the narrator, the identity of the
subjective narrator in relation to the author, the narrator’s ‘I’ in relation to his image of the
outer world, the narrator’s ‘I’ and his acceptance or non-acceptance of the world and the
narrator’s ‘I’ and his perception of being within the world. The identity of the narrator is
analysed from the perspective of his awareness of the self, of his body, of his actions and of his
mind, as it reacts and interacts with the world. Some aspects of the psychoanalytical approach to
the human being have proved useful here, especially the thoughts articulated by the French
theorist, Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), and their application to the identity of literary characters
and the way they see each other and perceive their own selves within the ‘fictive-real’.

     The narrator’s position within the world is then considered externally in relation to the
position of other characters and to the multi-perspective and multi-dimensional reality in which
nothing is stable and everything flows; in which nothing is certain and everything is fragmented.
In this section, the thesis follows the ideas which have been formulated by the scholars responding
to the theory of post-structuralism, especially by Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Luce Irigaray (b.
1930) and Geoffrey Hartman (b. 1929). In Tyson’s interpretation, it is these theoreticians who
claim that


‘[o]ur mental life consists not of concepts – not of solid, stable meanings – but of a fleeting,
continually changing play of signifiers. These signifiers may seem to be stable concepts – they
look stable enough when we hear them spoken or see them written down! But they don’t operate in a
stable manner in our mind’ (Tyson 2006: 252-253).


The narrator’s perception of the world within these concepts is analyzed from a subjective
perspective, yet acknowledging that this view is not the only one view that applies in the
individual’s narrative of the world but that it is also influenced by the interplay of various
contexts which the contemporary world signifies. In Hakl’s works, this thesis explores possible
interactions between his texts and the texts written by other authors and, on the basis of these
findings it attempts to construct their fictive-real. The thesis is guided in this by
post-structuralist theory on inter-textuality, specifically by the theoretical work of Julia
Kristeva (b. 1941). Finally, the subjectivity of Hakl’s narrator is assessed in relation to the
subjectivity of the author – Jan Beneš-the narrator in relation to Jan Beneš-the writer, his own
experience of the ‘real’ world and the reader’s perception of it.


     The part of the thesis dedicated to Balabán’s fiction is structured differently, just as
Balabán’s fiction is structured differently. Here, the thesis does not analyze the subjectivity of
one narrator, as there is no single narrating subjectivity behind Balabán’s texts but there are
many. It analyzes all Balabán’s texts as they expand on individual themes and on a variety of
individual characters. It explores various situations as they appear and re-appear in the lives of
Balabán’s male and female narrating and non-narrating characters. It considers how Balabán’s texts
touch upon human relationships, erotic love, family and friendship and how they see their position
in the world. In Balabán’s fiction, we find human beings in the middle of society, yet alone. They
are human beings facing their mortality and the passing time. They are human beings who constantly
question God and the universe.

     In the analysis of the texts by Jan Balabán, semiotics is used as the main theoretical
approach to the narrative. The analysis focuses on the interplay between personal narrators and
their non-narrating counterparts and on the way they all occupy or swap their positions and roles
both in a given moment and in sequence. This is one of the key bits of information for
understanding the structure and dynamics of Balabán’s fictive world. However, the analysis of
Balabán’s fiction is, more than in Hakl’s case, influenced by psychoanalysis, especially in the
parts focused on love and family relationships (as these are the main themes of Balabán’s fiction),
and by the theory of deconstruction – especially in those parts where it discusses the multiplicity
of individuals’ testimonies and their perception of the world in terms of binary opposites. Also,
in the case of Balabán’s fiction, the analysis considers the relationship between the writer’s
experience of his own life and the fictive reality of his texts. For autobiographical inspiration
in Balabán’s fiction, as in Hakl’s fiction, is undeniable.

     The final part of this thesis is comparative and conclusive. In its last chapter, the thesis
summarizes the previously carried out analysis of Emil Hakl’s and Jan Balabán’s work, compares
their forms of delivery and contemplates their testimonies about the world and to the world. It
considers their work in the context of contemporary Czech culture and in the context of a social
reality these texts reflect upon, construct and reconstruct. Here, the thesis uses the approach
introduced by those literary theorists whose work expands on the ideas of New Historicism and
Culture Criticism, for instance the ideas developed by Stephen Greenblatt (b. 1943) and Louis A.
Montrose. According to them,


‘literary texts are cultural artefacts that can tell us something about the interplay of
discourses, the web of social meanings, operating in the time and place in which the text was
written. And they can do so because the literary text is itself a part of the interplay of
discourses, a thread in the dynamic web of social meaning. (…) [T]he literary text and the
historical situation from which it emerged are equally important because text (the literary work)
and context (the historical conditions that produced it) are mutually constitutive: they create
each other. Like the dynamic interplay between individual identity and society, literary texts
shape and are shaped by their historical contexts’ (Tyson 2006: 291-292).


One cannot really know what the person involved in the creation of a particular narrative
experienced, thought or believed. One can only follow the way the person interpreted his or her
personal experience and, based on this knowledge, construct his or her own interpretation of their
account of events and things:


‘[T]he literary text, through its representation of human experience at a given time and place, is
an interpretation of history. As such, the literary text maps the discourses circulating at the
time it was written and is itself one of those discourses. That is, the literary text shaped and
was shaped by the discourses circulating in the culture in which it was produced. Likewise, our
interpretations of literature shape and are shaped by the culture in which we live’ (Ibid. 295).


In this sense, Hakl’s and Balabán’s works are interpretations of history and therefore also
interpretations of culture. They construct their own fictive world by using discourses existing at
the time they were written and at the same time, they also create one of those discourses. The aim
of this thesis is to explore how the perception of Hakl’s and Balabán’s works shapes the perception
of the time and the culture in which these works were written and the perception of the time and
the culture in which we live. In other words, the aim of this thesis is to explore how the
perception of Hakl’s and Balabán’s works shapes the perception of Czech reality in which these
works were written and in which we currently live.

     Finally, it is important to point out that all translations of Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction
and other texts used in this study have been made especially for the purposes of this work. This is
because, apart from Hakl’s novella, O rodičích a dětech (Of Kids and Parents), English translations
of Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction are not available.





























I. ‘Life according to Jan Beneš’ by Emil Hakl


Introduction


     ‘It was my greatest desire to pick myself up and get out of the city early in the morning. But
by the time the alarm clock went, it turned eleven, by the time I was finishing my cup of coffee,
it turned half past two, by the time Pavlik pressed the doorbell, it turned four. From the way the
light landed on my curtains, I guessed it must be a beautiful day outside. Pavlik and I both drank
an extra cup of strong coffee and then set out for a stroll.

     In front of the greengrocers next door, we saw a gypsy man, a shop manager hanging about and
smoking, fully concentrated on his cigarette. He was trying to scratch his back but with little
success. A radio was booming from the inside of the shop. The deregulation of the rental costs was
again postponed, indefinitely. The gross domestic product has dropped by two tenths of a per cent.
The sign, Emil’s Greengrocers, was manually painted on a black gable. Around the contorted letters
decorated in an oriental style, dreamy kohlrabies, bananas, radishes and sickly looking,
translucent pineapples levitated, and millions of midges sat on shrunken celeries and carrots
displayed behind the shop window. The air was full of radiant dust and fluff. Illuminated by the
sun, the tower of the television transmitter stood ankle-deep in the paddling pool of houses, as
though it was a feature from a book by Jules Verne. As if Verne’s Steel City began to rise from
there, from somewhere in the mists above the Žižkov hillside.

     Pavlik yawned: “Let’s have a pint somewhere…”

     The world around was drowning in ceaseless conversation. Restless, buzzing vapour of talk was
hovering above the continents. The ether was packed with useless information. It was indescribably
pleasant to go for a pint with Pavlik and drink it with him in silence.’

     [‘Mojí největší touhou bylo sebrat se a hned ráno vypadnout z města. Ale když zařinčel budík,
bylo jedenáct, když jsem dopíjel kafe, bylo půl třetí, a když zazvonil Pavlik, byly čtyři. Podle
toho, jak světlo dopadalo na závěs v pokoji, musel být venku nádherný den. Vypil jsem s Pavlikem
ještě jednoho turka a vyšli jsme na ulici.

     Před zeleninou ve vedlejším baráku postával vedoucí, dvoumetrákový cikán, zhluboka kouřil a
marně se snažil poškrábat na zádech. Z nitra krámu dunělo rádio. Deregulace nájemného byla opět
odložena na neurčito. Hrubý domácí produkt klesl o dvě desetiny procenta. Na černém, ručně
malovaném štítu byl vyveden nápis Zelenina u Emila. Kolem pokroucených, orientálně zdobných písmen
levitovaly zasněné kedlubny, banány, ředkvičky a ananasy, neduživé a průsvitné, a na scvrklých
celerech a mrkvičkách ve výloze posedávaly miliony drobounkých mušek. Vzduch byl plný zářícího
prachu a chmýří. Světlem zalitá věž televizního vysílače stála po kotníky v brouzdališti domů jako
atribut z verneovky. Jako by tam někde v té mlze nad stráněmi Žižkova už začínalo Ocelové město.

     Pavlik zívnul: “Tak pudem někam na jedno…”

     Svět kolem nás se zalykal nepřetržitými rozhovory. Nad kontinenty se vznášel neklidný, bzučivý
opar řečí. Éter byl nabit neužitečnými informacemi. Bylo nepopsatelně příjemné jít s Pavlikem na
pivo a mlčet.’] (KS: 5).


     With these words, Emil Hakl opens Konec světa (The End of the World, henceforth KS). The very
first sentence of the first text in this volume pre-signifies the tone that will become an
important characteristic feature of the whole book and later also of the whole literary output by
Emil Hakl. For, as we will soon discover, all Hakl’s narratives, no matter if they are short
stories collected in a single volume or if they are novels, are connected by one and the same
narrating character – Jan Beneš. Some of the narratives take place in his active presence (e. g.
the nine stories of Konec světa), others are hidden behind the narrating voice of another character
(e.g. Láďa in ‘Láďovo poslední tango’). How these narratives work in relation to the subject of the
narration, to the reality they construct and in relation to the readers will be discussed in the
following chapters.


‘It was my greatest desire to pick myself up and get out of the city early in the morning.’ [‘Mojí
největší touhou bylo sebrat se a hned ráno vypadnout z města.’]

(KS: 5)


     What we have here is the subjective narrator using the means of internal monologue to express
his desire to leave the city. And what is the city? A greengrocers’, a shop down the street, a
gypsy man, a booming radio, deregulated rent prices, the GDP, the tower of the television
transmitter and radiant dust. The suburban areas of Jules Verne’s ‘steel city’[9] bathed in
sunlight. This all makes up the atmosphere of the city which the narrator of this passage sees,
feels and describes as he walks through it. It is the narrator’s own, subjective, visual and
auditory perception of the city which functions as a background for the story that starts and
continues with his ‘I’, moving about in the streets of Žižkov, one of the Prague quarters, and its
localities. The city is contained within the narrator’s eyes and ears. Through his subjective
testimony, we see that it is a place of various colours and noises and words; a chaos in which it
was still ‘incredibly pleasant to enjoy a beer with Pavlik and drink it with him in silence.’ Our
narrator is completely swallowed up by the atmosphere of the place and yet he desires to escape
from it. He wants to abandon the city but, instead, he walks about within it. He lets himself be
surrounded by the city’s striking narratives and yet he enjoys a drink in a silent place. All that
comes afterwards happens within the constraints of these contradictions. The narrator’s ‘I’ is
considered within these texts as being in harmony with the world and at the same time in conflict
with it; as being a part of it as well as outside it; as being in harmony and at the same time in
conflict with the ‘orderly’, and the ‘chaotic’, the ‘fictive-real’ and the ‘fictive-imaginary’. In
an attempt to capture the reality of Hakl’s narratives, we will not only discuss the nature of the
narrating self (speaking to us through the narrating character of Jan Beneš) but we will also look
at the way the above contradictions shape both the narrator and the narrative discourse and
therefore the world they construct.


     Hakl’s first prose work, Konec světa, published in 2001, will serve as a point of departure
for my analysis. This will start with the narrating self.





























1. Hakl’s narrator


1.1 ‘I’ as the subjective narrator of the text


     ‘I was passing Mostecká Street when Renata appeared, suddenly, walking towards me dressed in a
flapping skirt. Like two individuals lost somewhere in a desert, we greeted each other and then we
went for a drink.

     She told me all about London, how busy the city was. How she went to a pub there, but it
wasn’t a pub, it was rather a wailing cave; everyone was dressed like a sinner who had been sent to
hell, all were drunk and stoned, unable to recognize who they were. Cages were hanging down from
the ceiling above their heads and naked girls were sitting in those cages. And how everywhere she
went people said, “Hey, it’s not really our problem, but you shouldn’t be taking so much of the
stuff, see, you are in an overdrive”. And how she said, taking what, how much of what, and they
said, well, you know, it’s crystal clear …’

     [‘Šel jsem Mosteckou, a najednou jsem uviděl proti sobě rázovat Renatu ve vlající sukni.
Přivítali jsme se jako dva ztracení na poušti a šli to zapít.

     Vyprávěla mi o Londýně, jak to tam žilo. Jak tam přišla do hospody, ale nebyla to hospoda,
byla to spíš jeskyně nářků: všichni tam byli oháknutí jako hříšníci v pekle, sjetí a zkouření, že
nevěděli, čí jsou, a nad hlavami se jim houpaly na stropě zavěšené klece a v těch klecích seděly
nahaté holky. A jak jí všude, kam přišla, říkali: hele, ty, nic nám do toho není, ale neměla bys
toho tak hrozně moc brát, dyť seš rozjetá jako vlak, a jak ona říkala: a čeho jako brát, co brát, a
oni říkali: no dyť víš, dyť je to jasný...’] (KS: 50-51) .


     Generally speaking, each story that is told is mediated by the narrative discourse. In the
world of literary fiction, a story is constructed by a voice (the narrator), a style of writing
(the writer) and by the reader’s interpretations (Abbott 2002: 17). The voice in the passage quoted
above belongs to a man speaking about his experience from the first person perspective (‘I was
passing...’). It is his voice that takes us into the internal world of the main character and his
perception of what is happening around. It would be, therefore, crucial ‘to determine the kind of
person we have for a narrator because this lets us know just how [he] injects into the narration
[his] own needs and desires and limitations, and whether we should fully trust the information we
are getting’ (Abbott 2002: 65-66).


     Hakl’s narrator of both examples, given above, and also of most of his other texts, as we will
see further below, belongs to the narrated world; he lives within it together with many other
characters which appear in the story. He tells the stories that he himself has had a chance to
experience either at the given moment or earlier. He also tells the stories which he has heard from
the other characters. He presents these stories as his own acts of perception. The narrator’s ‘I’
in Konec světa is the actor, a persona actively participating in the world in which he lives (‘I
was passing Mostecká Street’); the ‘I’ is the subjective narrator and the observer of all that is
happening (‘when Renata appeared, suddenly’); the ‘I’ is a thinker, a philosopher of his own mind
(he develops various theories about human existence, about society, about Europe) and finally also
the ‘I’ is the mediator of other people’s thoughts and speech (‘She told me all about London...’),
even when his own presence hides behind another voice.

     Each ‘I’ that functions in Hakl’s narratives represents a different role the narrator holds
within the process of his narration. We will examine how these individual roles work and interact
on the level of the narrative discourse and also how they impact on our understanding of the world,
which is being constructed by the narration.


1.2 The narrator of Konec světa: the identity


     We have determined that the narrator of Hakl’s Konec světa is a man. He is Jan Beneš, the
narrating ‘I’ and the being ‘I’ of the story he shares with us. He lives in Prague. The time is the
end of the 20^th century and the first years of the 21^st century. Apart from this, what else do we
know about the narrator? How does he present himself to the reader? What is his place in the world
he creates and perceives? What testimony about his world does he provide?

     Jan Beneš’s perception of his own personality is created in interaction with the world in
which he lives. His personality develops from numerous encounters with other people – with women,
with his friends, with his family and with random people – and from the situations to which these
encounters lead him. At the same time, his personality is also shaped by his own perception of
himself and by his doubts whether it is true. This is again happening within a process of comparing
contradictions of different conflicting visions – ‘I’ as ‘I see myself’, ‘I’ as ‘I am seen by
others’; ‘I’ as ‘I articulate myself within the world’, ‘I’ as ‘I listen to the world and to all it
says about me’; and finally, ‘I’ as what ‘I want from life’ and ‘I’ as ‘what I should be wanting
from life’. All these different approaches confuse the character’s internal world and the process
of construction of his external reality. All these different approaches have the greatest impact on
the narrator’s personal relationships, on his work and on his overall attitude to society (not just
Czech/Czechoslovak society) and what should the individual’s place be within it.


     Jan Beneš is about 40 years old. He lives alone or occasionally with his friends, partners or
random people. As far as we learn from this particular book, he is divorced and open to sexual
relationships with women. He works and he does not work; he enjoys and at the same time dislikes
being with friends. He enjoys and dislikes being alone. Whenever he looks at himself, it is more
with emphasized disgust and irony than with self-confidence. As a result, his own image of his
physical himself is rather raw, quite bitter and definitely far from any iconic glossy magazine
model of male beauty. After one of his sexual adventures, during which he and his partner mutually
shaved their bodies, the narrator describes, in quite an expressive manner, his image reflected in
the mirror:


‘I was horrified. I saw a swollen baby, ninety-kilos of weight. A larva with a shaven, rapidly
blinking human head attached to it. I saw a bald creature insulting Mother Nature’s honest
intentions.’

[‘Zděsil jsem se. Uviděl jsem napuchlé devadesátikilové nemluvně. Moučného červa s přimontovanou
ostříhanou, rychle mrkající lidskou hlavou. Uviděl jsem jakousi lysou kreaturu, urážející poctivé
záměry matky přírody.’] (KS: 209).


Or elsewhere, this time at a countryside pond where he goes for a swim, he says:


‘It came to my mind that, for the female part of the audience, I should pull my stomach back, at
least a little bit. But I decided I would not give a damn. It was one of those moments when there
was no point in pretending.’

[‘Napadlo mě, že bych s ohledem na dívčí část obecenstva mohl alespoň trochu zatáhnout břicho, ale
hned jsem se na to vykašlal. Byl to jeden z momentů, kdy nestojí za to nic předstírat.’] (KS:
46-47)


     When the narrator talks about his body, he uses the image of a ‘larva’ or, to be more literal,
the image of a ‘flour-beetle’ (see I., 3.2), a beast which he regards as something quite ugly,
shapeless and fat; as something that is not pleasant to see. Even more, he says that he is
‘horrified’ by the image of himself he sees in the mirror. Nevertheless, one thing is the way he
describes himself (in a negative manner), the other is what he does with his perception of the self
and how he confronts it, and as it seems, he does not confront it at all. Instead, he turns his
head away in a gesture of a careless man:


‘Instead I pushed Radka back into her bed and once more jumped in as well.’

[‘Raději jsem dostrkal Radku k posteli a skočil zase zpátky do té zahřáté tůně.’]

(KS: 209)


In the bed, the narrator behaves in a resigned manner, just like when he went swimming: instead of
pulling his belly back, he decides to ignore it.

     The narrator uses a mirror, water or other people’s eyes to reflect upon his own image but, no
less importantly, also upon his own behaviour. After one of his drinking nights, he pulls out a
kitchen knife and wants to stick it into his friend because he had vomited on his books.
Immediately thereafter, the narrator’s thoughts turn inside and against his own actions. Suddenly,
he reflects on what he has tried to do, criticizing himself for his selfish behaviour:


‘What a beast you are I told myself. Books are closer to you than a human being I told myself. Than
a friend.’

[‘Co seš to za hovado, říkal jsem si. Knihy jsou ti bližší než člověk, říkal jsem si. Než
kamarád.’] (KS: 62-63)


Elsewhere, we learn about the narrator from a dialogue he leads with some of the people he
encounters:


“But Honza, you mustn’t be alone. Loneliness is not good for you.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because, when you’re alone, you are incapable of being happy. (…) Especially you! When you’re
alone, you are almost invisible! When you’re alone, you hardly exist!”

[„Honza, ale. Ty nesmíš být sám. Samota pro tebe není dobrá.“ „Proč myslíš?“ „Protože když ty sám,
nejsi schopen být šťastný.“ (...) „Speciálně ty! Když ty sám, ty nejsi vidět skoro! Když ty sám,
tak skoro vůbec nejsi!“] (KS: 23)


     To want to pull in one’s stomach and not to do it, to want to attack a friend for his careless
behaviour and not to, and to seek out loneliness while he thinks he ‘should not’ – these are the
two salient sides of the narrator’s personality, or at least those two aspects of his personality
which the narrator decided to tell us about. Whilst one side of Jan Beneš’s personality acts
instinctively, the other seems to follow external rules, and the narrator is aware of both types of
his behaviour. He wants to live in total, ‘natural’ freedom of human individuals, yet he knows that
he lives in a world which is ruled by constraints and that individuals are expected to conform to
certain rules imposed on them by society. This is the way he perceives it. He fights against the
imposed rules – as a human being, as a man, and perhaps even more as an employee of an
advertisement agency and as a journalist who is in everyday contact with poster-like images of
‘ideal beauty’ and with the glossy magazine ‘propaganda’ demanding that he should have a perfect
body and a perfect lifestyle.[10] Describing himself in a negative manner is his natural reaction
to the world of proposed images and norms.

     Jan Beneš is a man in his middle years who sees himself as a person without any particular
physical sex appeal for women. It is important to stress that this is his own entirely subjective
view because, as we will see, women do not necessarily seem to care that his body is imperfect,
they still sleep with him anyway. Furthermore, his friends and other people seem to like his
company too. No matter how rude he might sometimes be to them (or he thinks he is), his company is
often sought out.

     The fact that the narrator ‘presents himself’ as an unattractive man can be interpreted in two
ways: as a pose he assumes in order to excuse his own inability to look ‘better’ (‘I am what I am
and I cannot change it’ – due to his lack of confidence or laziness) or a pose he assumes in order
to express a carefree attitude towards the shape of his own body and the shape of things in general
(‘I am what I want to be so leave me alone’) whilst he thinks something else. So even on the level
of what he feels and thinks, there are two contradicting powers that contribute to the shaping of
the narrator’s life: his instinctive reactions and the impact of social rules. The narrator is
playing with both of them. He listens to his instincts and suppresses them. He adapts to the social
rules and rejects them.

     These two factors also influence the attitude the narrator employs during his encounters with
other people. He is angry with his friend who messed up his books but, at the same time, he admits
that this attitude might be selfish and unfair. People around him comment on the conflict which is
present in his behaviour. The Danish Arab, Husta, with whom the narrator conducts the dialogue on
loneliness quoted above, points out to him that, when he is alone, he is not ‘capable of being
happy’. Husta warns Jan Beneš that loneliness, which he perhaps ‘instinctively’ seeks, does not
seem to have a positive impact on his personality. In Husta’s view, Jan Beneš ‘should not’ be
alone. But why?

     Where does this narrator’s split personality come from? What are the causes of his
indecisiveness that leaves the narrator always wandering between two opposite attitudes? Is it his
lack of confidence that makes him question all he sees or does? (But he does see and do things.) Is
it his lack of interest in other people’s views? (But he does listen to other people.) Is he afraid
to confront his own desires? (But he does confront them.) Is he disgusted by the prevailing social
norms? (But he does participate in social life.) To answer all these questions and relate the
answers to the reality the narrative constructs, we need to learn more about Jan Beneš’s world
now.


1.3 Emil Hakl & Jan Beneš


     ‘In some cases, when the voice is strong or interesting enough, it may be that the narrator
[him]self, rather than the story, is the centre of interest’, says Abbott in his introduction to
the theory of the narrative (Abbott 2002: 65-66). This seems to be the case in Hakl’s work. Konec
světa is a story of one man and his perception of reality. It is this man’s voice that stands in
the centre of the narrative and shapes all that comes into his mind and that comes out of it into a
story of the world. That story is called Jan Beneš (or Honza Beneš in a variation of the name). In
this sense, the first question is who this Jan Beneš is.

     Jan Beneš is the main character of Hakl’s work. He is the narrator of the text. He is also the
writer of the text, or, to be more precise, the real name of the person who acts behind the mask of
the pen-name Emil Hakl as the real writer of the text. Jan Beneš-the narrator is approximately
forty years old at the time when the story takes place; Jan Beneš-the writer was born in 1958. Jan
Beneš-the narrator lives in Prague; Jan Beneš-the writer also does. [11]

     These things suggest that Konec světa is inspired by Hakl’s own life or, at least, that Jan
Beneš-the writer ‘uses’ real people, real places and events to create a fictive ‘real’ which is
presented in the book. He uses his perception of real people (e. g. Jan Beneš), real places (e. g.
Prague, the Žižkov and the Letná quarters) and real events to construct the fictive reality of his
book. He uses his perception of the self in order to construct the character and the main narrator,
Jan Beneš. Finally, he uses his perception of some features of his own self in order to construct
the whole character of Jan Beneš. Nevertheless, how close to the real world Hakl’s fictive reality
is and how much it reflects just the sheer joy of the writer’s playful imagination that is the
subject of the reader’s construction. The writer, no matter how convincing he may be, is only a
vehicle through whom the message is channelled and passed to its audience. ‘[I]t is not man as
conscious subject who thinks, acts or speaks, but the linguistic unconscious that determines his
every thought, action and utterance’ (Burke 1992: 13). It is not a reality that Hakl imposes on us
that we read about in his texts. It is reality itself that ‘uses’ Hakl as a means of communication
between the outside world and us. ‘[A] text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’
meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of
writings, none of them original, blend and clash’ (Ibid. 25). Furthermore, it is not the writer who
gives the text its meaning but the reader who does it in the process of his or her reading. ‘[The
reader] is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the
written text is constituted’ (Ibid. 27). The author reappears afterwards, ‘as a desire of the
reader’s, a spectre spirited back into existence by the critic himself’(Ibid. 30). If Burke is
right, it is not Hakl’s subjective and conscious self that creates the text. It is the linguistic
unconscious that determines the content of his writing. The writer chooses the form in which the
content will be passed to the readers. However, only the readers can give this content (and form)
its meaning.

     When I, as a reader, stated that the text of Konec světa was inspired by Jan Beneš’s own life,
I was referring to the result of my reading experience of Hakl’s books and to my own knowledge (and
interpretation) of the world. From my own experience, I knew that certain places existed, certain
events happened and certain people lived. But there were also other sources such as, for example,
the articles and the interviews published in various periodicals that made me consider the
autobiographical inspiration of Hakl’s work.[12] For it was from these articles and interviews I
learnt about the writer’s perception of his own life and discovered certain similarities between
the story of Konec svĕta and the story of Hakl’s life. This information can sometimes be gleaned
also from some of the works of Hakl’s literary friends. See, for instance, a text written by Václav
Kahuda: Technologie dubnového večera (The Technology of an April Evening, 2000). In this work by
Kahuda, Jan Beneš is one of the two main characters and here he also carries certain attributes
which connect him with both the narrator and the writer of Hakl’s text.

     In order to examine Hakl’s construction of reality, we need to analyze the identity of Jan
Beneš-the character because he is the main subjective narrator of Hakl’s texts and because it is
his story that he shares with us, the readers. In order to understand his identity, we need to
consider all the information available to us, no matter whether it has come from the text only or
also from the external world (see the above debate on the autobiographical inspiration of Hakl’s
fiction). Only a combination of both can give us the desired result.


     Speaking in general, every literary work is the product of reality. Every narrative, no matter
if autobiographical, biographical, fantastic or documentary, is, to a certain level, inspired by
the real. Hence, the narrative of Konec světa is also inspired by the real – regardless of the fact
that the author has tried to use his own perception of real persons, places and events for the
construction of a fictive world that he has created or totally fictive persons, places and events
that remind the reader only of the ‘real’ by their structure. However, this is only one way of
understanding a literary work. Another way of understanding it is to look at it as a piece of
autobiographical writing.

     Emil Hakl is not the only writer who uses personal experience as a source of inspiration for
his writing. He works within a vibrant contemporary tradition of autobiographic or
semi-autobiographic literature. Czech literary scholar Aleš Haman has pointed out that Czech
fiction has been developing along two main lines since the 1990s.[13] In his view, the first line
has tended towards the deconstruction of the narrative using a sophisticated but tricky game of
various associations. This type of literature mixes fantastic visions with real images. This is,
according to Haman, the line of fantastic, imaginative and metaphysical literature. Its
representatives are usually regarded as literary postmodernists, even though not all of them accept
such a label.[14] The prose of these authors is based on their creative personalities and on their
lust for freedom. Their stories are mostly set in a city (often Prague), which is full of bizarre
spaces, secret corners, cellars and labyrinths, at the same time reflecting the mythology of the
current era with all its icons – advertising, computer games, mass media. Behind the secret, though
real places, new spaces inhabited by mysterious creatures are discovered. Fantastic plants and
animals complete the picture of a ‘chaotic’ world. Such narratives are inspired by a desire to
explore the depths of the collective consciousness. They use the principles of folk tales,
particularly the never ending fight between good and evil; they re-use old allegories and fables
and shock their readers by re-interpretations of traditional tales and legends. This type of
literature is characterized by intentional work with a number of existing texts and their
combinations. Thus a complicated structure of meaning is created within every new narrative.

     The second line of contemporary Czech prose, says Haman, uses authenticity and awareness. This
work of fiction highlights people’s existence which is limited by the passage of time and by the
gradual destruction of all the idols which could have served as anchor points on the scale of
passing time. The authors of authentic literature show how the ‘I’ perceives the world and how this
‘I’ lives within it. Often these writers try to recall various impressions, feelings and moments
connected with their pasts as they search for family roots and traditions or their own personal
history. Their testimony can sometimes resemble diaries or memoirs but it also uses a more
subjective perspective.[15] Often, especially in the texts of younger authors, this type of writing
is distinctively lyrical.[16] Such literature occurs between personal memories and reflections of
contemporary life. It is often characterized by variation and by the blending of different time
planes, as the ‘I’ travels through its own past and recalls the moments that play more or less
important roles in its later adulthood. The authors are often looking for a new conception of
‘authentic’ literature. That is why, apart from writing memoirs and diaries, they approach various
literary styles and genres (the epistolary form, gospel writing, parody and fiction) and use their
techniques to create a new and different type of prose based in its main intention on
authenticity[17] or even better, on quasi authenticity.[18]

     There are serious doubts about the validity of Haman’s theory of two main strands in Czech
fiction after 1989. How would, for example, Ludvík Vaculík’s novel, Jak se dělá chlapec (How a boy
is made, 1993), fit into Haman’s theory? Vaculík’s novel follows the writer’s authentic life
experience but, at the same time, employs that type of narrative discourse which can be seen in the
works fully based on the imagination of the creator. And what about the novels of Jáchym Topol,
which have also been inspired by the writer’s life experience (childhood, youth and his life in the
underground) as well as by the mythology of American native folklore and by Christianity? All these
works are based on fictive as well as non-fictive material (or on a perception of non-fictive
material). They are all based on the author’s perception of real facts, but they also depict magic
places. They all exist in a linear real-like time, but there are many escapes to dreams and to
apocalyptic myths. Perhaps it is incorrect to assume that there exist two distinctive literary
strands in contemporary Czech fiction. Perhaps all themes co-exist and flourish in literary texts
simultaneously, only sometimes the accent is given to the ‘real’ and sometimes to ‘imaginative’.

     Considering the above theory, we may say that Hakl’s work is very close to what Haman sees as
the line of ‘authentic’ literature in contemporary Czech writing. (It seems closely related to work
of Jan Balabán, Jan Vrak and Václav Kahuda – if we mention only Czech authors of the same
generation as Hakl. The work of Jan Balabán will be discussed in the second part of this thesis.)
Yet, Hakl’s work never fully conforms to Haman’s definition. It is closer to the ‘real world’ as it
uses the image of the ‘real world’ to construct the fictive world. At the same time, it uses
fantastic imagination (see chapters 3 and 4) when the text describes the narrator’s dreams and the
narrator’s thoughts. How both these aspects shape Hakl’s literary text and how they affect the
reader’s perception of Hakl’s work as an account of the real is the subject of further analysis of
the narrator’s ‘I’ and his position within the outside world.



























2. The narrating ‘I’ in union with the world and in conflict with it (in relation to society)


2.1 ‘I’ in communication with others


     When the narrator talks about himself, it is often the result of his communication with the
people around him; with his friends, with his colleagues, with women or just with random people
whom he meets on the streets of Prague or in a pub. How the narrator presents himself varies. It
depends on the situation in which he finds himself at the time and on the people he encounters.
When he is with his closest friend, he says:


‘…it was indescribably pleasant to enjoy a beer with Pavlik and drink it with him in silence.’

[‘…bylo nepopsatelně příjemné jít s Pavlikem na pivo a mlčet.’] (KS: 5)


But when talking about his interaction with strangers, he describes himself with irony:


‘I was rather good in impressing strangers with cheap tricks. It was one of the things I’ve always
been the best at.’

[‘Dojímat cizí lidi lacinými triky, to mi šlo odjakživa ze všeho nejlíp.’] (KS: 40)


and produces personal statements balancing on the verge of bitterness:


‘…yes, there have always been loonies around me; I have always attracted them though longed to be
in the company of sensible, intelligent, well-read people with whom it would be possible to analyse
serious, preferably philosophical, topics for hours. (…) I longed to be in the company of sensible,
intelligent people but when I met them, they bored me and pissed me off so much that I always
instinctively detached myself from them even before I managed to notice them.’

[‘…ano, magorů jsem kolem sebe měl vždycky dost; přitahoval jsem je, zatímco jsem toužil po
rozumných, inteligentních, sečtělých lidech, se kterými by bylo možno hodiny a hodiny rozebírat
vážná, pokud možno filozofická témata. (…) Toužil jsem po rozumných, inteligentních lidech, ale
když jsem je potkal, nudili mě a srali tak a natolik, že jsem se pokaždé instinktivně odpoutal
dřív, než jsem si jich vůbec stačil všimnout.’] (KS: 61)


     These three examples represent three different assessments the narrator gives himself after
being ‘confronted’ with other people. The meeting with Pavlik is unambiguously a positive
experience. The statement refers to the narrator’s intimate friendship that does not need words or
any other form of communication. It is enough only to ‘drink’ ‘in silence’ and ‘be’. On the other
hand, his random encounters with strangers make him talk, act and pretend. These encounters make
him become a stranger to himself. They make him behave in a different manner – as a person who
impresses other people ‘with cheap tricks’ rather than behaving naturally. They make him act
against his own natural self, which desires an unpretentious life in peace and quiet and abhors
pretence. But the narrator finds it difficult to decide whether to be true to himself or to play
act in front of other people. He suffers from indecision and oscillates between one and the other
position.

     The narrator’s personality is defined by indecisive chaos – at least the personality he
perceives within himself when he speaks about his attitude towards intelligent people and towards
‘loonies’. In his own words, intelligent people attract him but he cannot stand them and so he
keeps escaping to the ‘loonies’. The ‘loonies’ always welcome him, but he does not want to be with
them either. He is afraid of becoming ‘a loony’ himself and so he longs for the company of
intelligent people. His conscious mind tells him to lead a responsible life with an aim. His
unconscious mind drags him away from the responsibility for his own actions to the safety and
inactivity of his own self. Being in the company of sensible and intelligent people (but
‘strangers’) means to him he has ‘to pretend’. Being with ‘loonies’ (but his friends), gives the
luxury that he can just ‘exist’. The narrator does not say that all strangers are sensible and
intelligent people. What he says is that sensible and intelligent people are strangers. He does not
imply that friends are ‘loonies’, but that ‘loonies’ are good friends. He is lost in between these
two worlds.

     Konec světa is a life story of one character of Jan Beneš. It tells us how he sees the world.
The ‘world’ consists of people and places he encounters at a particular time. It encompasses all
that exists as a result of activity around the central figure of Jan Beneš. The following chapter
is about the narrator’s male friends. Women play a different role in the narrator’s life and
therefore I will discuss them separately.


2.2 The relation of the narrator to his male friends and to friendship in general


     There are many men who flit through Jan Beneš’s personal life but only a few of them stay in
his mind for any length of time. These are the only ones we know by name, often in a shortened form
or as a nickname. So we learn, for example, about Pavlik, with whom the narrator likes to share a
quiet beer in the local bar (‘Jedno odpoledne’: KS), about Jirka Vokurka, a parody representation
of a member of what was once an underground[19] generation, who now barely survives in capitalist
society (‘Zlaté časy’: KS); about Fáfa, the narrator’s pub friend, whom some people see as a
well-respected ‘bohemian’, others as a hopeless alcoholic (‘Zlaté časy’, ‘Zlaté časy, díl 2’: KS);
about Láďa, whom the reader first encounters on the way across India where Láďa travels in order to
recover from what he saw as his wife’s infidelity (‘Láďovo poslední tango’, ‘Bouřka’: KS); about
Zdeněk, Jan’s former colleague from the Prague Waterworks and a punk with black sunglasses who says
he knows how to steal cars (‘Druhá třetina’: KS); and about Kratochvil, with whom the narrator
takes a walk up a hill (Ibid.). Names are also given to the  three foreigners who appear in the
narrator’s life only for a short time but make a strong impression on him: Husta (an Arab from
Denmark), the drug dealer (‘První cizinci v Praze’: KS); the American, Džouzef, a former soldier
who had been fired from the army for some unspecified shady dealings (Ibid.); and the German,
Georg, ‘Hollywood filmmaker’, whom the narrator’s friend, Láďa, had met in India and later
introduced to others (‘Láďovo poslední tango’, ‘Bouřka’: KS).

     Nearly all these characters have one significant thing in common: they are the narrator’s
‘loonies’. It is their never-ending struggle for survival in this world, which is hostile and
indifferent to them, so that it makes them act as ‘loonies’. What is attractive to the narrator is
how these characters behave and what they do in order to survive the present era which threatens to
overwhelm them. The narrator empathizes with their ‘lunacy’ or ‘lunatic otherness’ which he sees as
nothing more and nothing less than a search for a stable place within the world and society – he is
searching for the same things. He observes their behaviour and, on the ground of what he sees, he
tries to understand.

     The narrator’s ‘loonies’ are described as sad caricatures of people who lost their confident
and active selves some time in the past. The present seems to be too complicated for them and so
they struggle. While struggling, they behave passively or look for ways to escape. They spend time
in pubs; they drink alcohol, use drugs or steal. They preoccupy themselves with their own memories
and constantly talk about them. They hide behind their ‘lunacy’ and their own spoken and unspoken
monologues; they keep escaping to dreams; some of them run away to a different country or they just
wander about. Beneš’s ‘loonies’ or ‘tiring cranks’, as he also calls them, are outsiders standing
on the periphery of society which they do not understand or do not want to accept. As a result,
they do things (if they act at all) that are seen by the ‘orderly’ side of the narrator’s
personality as sad and crazy (one of the characters dances with an umbrella in the middle of the
road in the middle of busy traffic, another one sleeps in a polythene bag). But the other, the
‘disorderly’ side of the narrator’s character, prefers these ‘tiring cranks’ to individuals who
conform to the system and pragmatically use its resources for their own profit and ‘who are only
interested in whether the other person agrees with them at the given moment’ [‘ty, které zajímá jen
a jen to, jestli s nimi ten druhý v dané chvíli souhlasí’] (Ibid. 148).

      The narrator’s interest in ‘loonies’ manifests itself on two parallel levels: on the level of
the narrating self and on the level of the acting self. The narrating Jan Beneš enjoys the rich
tapestry of ‘loonies’ because they give him stories – life-like and tangible stories. He does not
find ‘orderly’ and pragmatic people interesting and worthy of mention. He claims they bore him. But
he cannot deny that he needs them as much as he needs those ‘loonies and tiring cranks’. Without
either of them, he claims, his story would not be complete.

     The acting Jan Beneš cares for the company of the ‘loonies and tiring cranks’, but the main
reason for this lies in his emotional world. Such individuals attract him, but they also irritate
him. Their presence calms him down, but their unpretentious and unpredictable behaviour scares him.
This is due to one thing: Jan Beneš-the character feels that he may be one of them. Or perhaps only
one side of his personality feels this. The other side of his personality is struggling to make
sure that Jan Beneš is not like them. It is trying to persuade him to integrate within ‘orderly’
and pragmatic society. Here, the same applies: the acting Jan Beneš needs both companies. He cannot
be with only the ‘loonies’ because their lack of stability tires him. He cannot be with only the
‘orderly people’ because their stability bores him. Jan Beneš’s position within these two worlds
can be demonstrated by discussing three characters of Konec světa: Láďa, Fáfa and Jan Beneš.


2.3 Láďa, Fáfa and Jan Beneš


     Not all of Jan Beneš’s friends and acquaintances are drawn as round characters. Only a few of
them were given a chance to present their world to the reader and to show us various layers of
their complicated personalities as they clash with the reality they live in. We often learn about
them from the conversations they have with the narrator over a pint of beer or elsewhere, or from
the narrator’s recollection of the past.

     Some characters that participate in the creation of the narrative of Konec světa come from the
narrator’s past, some from his present. The former have been in the narrator’s life since his youth
or early adulthood. The latter turn up in the narrator’s life all of sudden, put it out of order
and then leave. Only a few characters, mostly people from his past, have been able to get close to
the narrator’s heart.

     There are individuals who appear in the narrative on more than one occasion, others just once.
Those characters who appear more frequently are again mostly people the narrator knows from his
past. Those who flit through the story only once are usually from his present. This distinction is,
however, not straightforward. ‘Once’ does not necessarily mean that they are unimportant. Some
characters appear once but, according to the tone the narrator applies when talking about them, we
recognize their importance in his life. This happens for instance, in the case of Kratochvil, with
whom the narrator takes a walk in the Czech countryside (‘Druhá třetina’: KS). Kratochvil’s
importance is again related to Jan Beneš’s past and to his understanding of security and of peace
of mind.

     There are two characters the narrator mentions several times: Láďa, who also becomes the
narrator of one story included in Konec světa – ‘Láďovo poslední tango’, and Fáfa (‘Zlaté časy’,
‘Zlaté časy, díl 2’: KS). Jan Beneš finds it interesting and important to observe their
personalities, their behaviour in certain situations and their personal struggles for a place
within the social environment and so he comments on it. We meet both characters when everything in
their lives seems to be breaking down and they have to decide what to do in order to survive. Both
of them make an effort but each of them ends up with a completely different personal outcome: Láďa,
returning from a lonely journey to India, chooses to lead an orderly or perhaps a semi-orderly
life. He acquires a family and a house with a garden for growing vegetables and secretly also
marihuana plants. Fáfa, losing his chance for an orderly life after leaving his girlfriend, ends up
drinking enormous amounts of alcohol and crying over his loss.

     Láďa, Fáfa and Jan Beneš are old friends. We do not know much about their friendship but what
we learn from Jan Beneš is that the three men do have something that connects them on a personal
level. They know each other from the past, they come from the same generation of people born some
time in the 1950s and they all find it difficult to cope with the present. They all struggle and,
while doing so, they do things or fall into things that confuse and surprise them. In the end, it
is only Láďa who succeeds in gaining a certain stability and inner peace. His personal
reconciliation does not come at once, though. It is a process that starts with Láďa’s personal
breakdown, continues in a small Indian village where he travels to calm his burning emotions, and
ends in a rediscovery of his forgotten self in the city of Prague and in the Czech countryside:


‘The train now travelled very slowly. The hollowed-out chassis chortled noisily. A tiny,
child-sized quarter of Libeň was visible from the window. (…) Everything was somehow colourless,
faded, yet so familiar... He realized that from now he would have to live here.’

[‘Vlak už jel krokem. Vymleté podvozky hluše rachotily. Dole pod oknem se rozprostírala drobounká,
dětská Libeň. (…) Všechno to bylo jaksi bezbarvé, jakoby vyuzené, a přesto tak známé… Uvědomil si,
že tady teď bude muset žít.’]

(KS: 135)


      Fáfa’s life is fully governed by the spirit of freedom. He constantly travels around, wastes
money excessively but is able to survive without it. He drinks and socializes with people. He lives
from day to day in a carefree manner. He worries about nothing, especially not about the future:


‘He lived like on a conveyor belt. He felt the need constantly to change his personal
circumstances, because he was never able to look at where he was and how he was getting to a
particular place for any length of time. He used to be away for weeks. Then he always returned and,
with total carelessness, made debts which he could not repay.’

[‘Žil jako na běžícím pásu. Potřeboval pořád měnit okolnosti svého života, protože se nikdy
nevydržel dlouho dívat na to, kde zrovna je a jak se tam má. Býval pryč celé týdny. Potom se vracel
a s ukrutnou bezstarostností dělal dluhy, které nemohl splatit.’] (KS: 138)


In his life, everything seems to be going fine, up and down, but still OK. But then he falls in
love with a girl and he loses her. He sacrifices his personal freedom for love and for a sudden
vision of stable life and when his relationship, i.e. his dream of something ‘orderly and normal’,
disintegrates – partly due to his lack of self-confidence and partly due to his misbehaviour – he
breaks down. Instead of a free man who knew how to enjoy life, the narrator suddenly sees a broken
individual who has given up on his life and who has succumbed to alcohol.

     The third person in this group is the narrator, Jan Beneš. If, from the point of view of
conventional wisdom, Láďa is a social success and Fáfa a failure, then, the narrator’s position
would be somewhere in between – never precisely in the middle but as a point constantly moving from
one place to another. He is successful when he manages to get a job, when he finds a woman and when
he enjoys his one-off sexual encounters, possibly also when he writes his own literary texts. He
feels he is a failure when he loses all this. In between, he contemplates his life in relation to
the decisions he has made or he is thinking of making and in relation to the people around.

     Jan Beneš talks about both of these friends and spends time with them because he searches for
his own identity in them. He compares himself to them. Láďa’s story attracts him because it brings
some kind of solution and clarity to the man’s chaotic existence. Perhaps it is not a very brave
solution, for it means that Láďa is forced to accept the ways of the establishment and to adjust to
them, but it is a solution for a person who does not want to live in turmoil. Fáfa, on the other
hand, becomes the subject of the narrator’s interest because he is an embodied representation of
unsettled human nature, unexpected behaviour, sadness and apathy into which people fall after
losing their place beside someone they love.

     All these three individuals, Láďa, Fáfa and Jan Beneš, have grown up in the same environment
but their contemporary existence now differs greatly: Láďa’s lifestyle is now close to the
lifestyle of the ‘orderly’ world; Fáfa is vegetating on the margins of society; and the indecisive
Jan Beneš struggles somewhere in between. His sympathy lies with those individuals who defy society
as well as with those who conform to it. He himself is everywhere and nowhere.

     Láďa’s and Fáfa’s behaviour represents two different aspects of how Jan Beneš tries to cope
with the current ‘real’. But these two men are not the only individuals in Konec světa who have
been exposed to a desperate situation and whom the narrator confronts. There are many other
characters going through much personal turmoil and struggling to find a way of organizing their
lives. There is a group of foreigners who play quite an important role in one of the stages of the
narrator’s life, though their influence does not last for long (see I., 2.2). They come and they
leave. They bring stories, expensive cars, alcohol and drugs and take away the narrator’s peace and
his Czech girlfriends. Still, he sympathises with them: he observes them, talks to them and listens
to them; he tolerates them but only for a time. As soon as they disappear, he forgets them. The
foreigners function within the narrator’s present. He knows nothing about their past. Their
stories, if any, are always connected to the present and are always part of the world in chaos.
Unlike the ‘loonies’, the foreigners do not make a deeper impact on Jan Beneš’s life but he cannot
deny their influence on him and their overwhelming presence he feels when he is around them.


     There seems to be a major difference in Jan Beneš’s mind between who is a friend and who just
a passer by. The way Jan Beneš talks about certain people gives the impression that he values
friendship. For instance, there is friendship between Jan Beneš and Fáfa, although it is often
developed in pubs and is accompanied with sudden flashes of Jan Beneš’s anger; between Jan Beneš
and Pavlik, because the friendship does not need any words to communicate (they drink a beer in
silence together); or between Jan Beneš and a woman named Renata, who, as the narrator says, still
belongs to the ‘slowly disintegrating company of people from my younger days’ [‘zvolna se
rozpadající party mladších let’]  (KS: 45). It is the shared past and the similar life experience
that bring Jan Beneš, Fáfa, Láďa, Kratochvil and Renata together. The past is something that
connects them; a bond that has developed over the years spent in the same social and political
environment. It does not matter if Láďa later joins the ‘orderly’ world and Fáfa rebels against it.
What connects them all is that they share the same past. And ‘sharing’ means ‘trust’ in the
narrator’s understanding of the world. ‘Trust’ is given by the narrator to those who ‘share’ the
same experience of the past with him.

     Newcomers and youngsters belong to Jan Beneš’s present world. But the present world, as the
narrator keeps pointing out, is nothing more than wandering between ‘moving’, ‘becoming’ and
‘staying’. The past seems to be the only thing that is well-known to him and therefore safe. The
present is unknown and therefore unsafe. Láďa, Fáfa and Petr Kratochvil come from Jan Beneš’s past.
The narrator knows what to expect from them and so he feels safe in their company, even though it
sometimes means that he feels like being a ‘waster’. Newcomers and young people bring ideas, views
and things that are new and unknown. Still, it would not be true to say that the narrator despises
them. On the contrary, he sympathises with them as much as he sympathises with people locked in a
personal struggle and the same way he sympathizes with ‘loonies’. However, he never trusts the
newcomers because he does not feel a real friendship. This belongs to those who are part of his
past; those who did not give up on him as he did not give up on them. His friends might be wasters
who spend their days drinking, but still he feels more comfortable and safe among them because he
knows them, because nothing about them can surprise him. His friends represent stability in his
chaotic world. Paradoxically, it is a stability of people who themselves feel unstable and
struggling.

     The notion of ‘sharing the past’ is important in the narrator’s approach to the people around
him. The present is confusing. How his past and present experiences interact depends on the time he
spends in the contemplation of both and on the amount of space he is willing to give them.



2.4 Narrative discourse: Jan Beneš in charge of the narrative time


     During one of his numerous encounters, Jan Beneš turns his attention to the concept of reality
and he states:


„... yep! Because reality is definitely only what one wants to see as reality at that time, and it
is only what one does and doesn’t like...!“

[„...jo! Protože realita je definitivně jen a jenom to, co člověk v tu chvíli jako realitu chce
vnímat, zas jenom to, co má a nemá rád...!“] (KS: 218)


What, then, is the reality he has in mind?

     We have already noted that the individual stories of Konec světa take place in Czech society
of the 1980s-1990s, which is the time when Hakl’s own personal history unrolls (see I., 1.3). The
time in which these narratives are told is therefore linear (successive), as it follows the line of
Jan Beneš’s life, but it is also cyclic (retrospective, anticipated) as it follows his narrating
mind. The ‘live’ story of his world flows but it is interrupted with quite a few excursions to his
own past, to his dreams and to the stories of the other characters, which the narrator re-tells in
his own way (sometimes he is even hidden behind the voice of another character). It is exactly
thanks to these interruptions from the past and the present that we have a chance to examine the
narrator’s perception of these events and thoughts and to ascertain which memories have been
selected by him for inclusion into his literary text and why and which of them have been
intentionally or incidentally blanked out.

     The temporal linearity of each single story, of each single volume and of the whole literary
output by Hakl is affected by the order in which the narrator retells his experiences and the
experiences of others. However, the flow of Hakl’s texts is also influenced by the duration of the
narrated story and by the speed with which the narrator describes various events and thoughts that
have happened in the course of the narrative. According to Prince,


‘[t]he speed of a narrative is equal to the relationship between the duration of the narrated – the
(approximate) time the events recounted go on or are thought to go on – and the length of the
narrative (in words, lines, or pages for example). (…) [T]he speed of a narrative varies
considerably and it is [the] narration which helps to give the narrative a certain rhythm’ (Prince
1982: 55-56).


We have already noted that the stories included in the volume of Konec světa are told by the
subjective narrator, Jan Beneš, and this narrator fully controls the speed of the narrative. Where
the narrator’s voice focuses on a particular action which has just happened, there the time of the
event corresponds to the time of its narration. The event has only been delayed by the fact of its
retelling. A direct mode of discourse, accompanied by the narrator’s indirect speech is used here:
‘Pavlik yawned: “Let’s have a drink somewhere…”’ [‘Pavlik zívnul: “Tak pudem někam na pivo…”’] (KS:
5); or not (in dialogues), or the text consists of a sequence of closely connected events: ‘When
the door slammed shut, I lay down on my sofa (…)’ [‘Když zaklaply dveře, lehnul jsem si na kanape
(…)’] (KS: 25). These are the devices that give the Hakl’s text the characteristics of a scene
(Prince 1982: 55-56). Where the narrator’s voice concentrates on the events that happened some time
in the past, the time during which these events occurred and the time of their retelling varies.
Such events are often summarized:


‘These were bright and erratic times. It did not occur to anyone at that time that they would end.
Summer gently broke and autumn was approaching.’

[‘Byly to pestré, proměnlivé časy. Nikoho z nás ani nenapadlo, že by měly tehdy skončit. Léto se
zlehka přelomilo a začal se blížit podzim.’] (KS: 20)


stretched:


‘It came to my mind that, for the female part of the audience, I should pull my stomach back, at
least a little bit. But I decided I would not give a damn. It was one of those moments when there
was no point in pretending.’

[‘Napadlo mě, že bych s ohledem na dívčí část obecenstva mohl alespoň trochu zatáhnout břicho, ale
hned jsem se na to vykašlal. Byl to jeden z momentů, kdy nestojí za to nic předstírat.’]  (KS:
46-47)


or elliptic:


‘They took the meat out, put it on the table together with a French roll to go with it. I brought
mustard. They applauded me. After the meal, they lit cigarettes and smoke.’

[‘Vytáhli maso, donesli na stůl, k tomu byla veka. Přinesl jsem hořčici. Zatleskali mi. Po jídle si
zapálili.’] (KS: 24)


Where the narrator concentrates on one given moment in the present or in the past, the time of the
event slows down or freezes completely; the dynamic flow changes to the static, the active to the
passive and the action to the scene. The static scene can have the shape of a momentary impression
(dynamic within, but static when viewed from the outside):


‘Words we did not want to be connected with flew aimlessly all around us. The rain became heavier.’

[‘Všude kolem nás bloudila slova, se kterými jsme nechtěli mít nic společného. Déšť zesílil.’] (KS:
47)


or of a description of people, things or places:


‘Pavlik had huge, round, thoughtful eyes I had never seen on him before.’

[‘Pavlik měl velké, kulaté, pozorné oči, které jsem u něj ještě nikdy neviděl.’]

(KS: 9)


Finally, where the narration becomes the narration of a thought, time separates and, instead of one
line, it forms two different lines that run across each other – the first one, horizontal, is ruled
by the real order of events (linear and cyclic; slow, normal and fast), the second one, vertical,
follows the internal world of a single human mind and its perception of human existence in
general:


‘What a beast you are, I told myself. Books are closer to you than a human being, I told myself.
Than a friend. But it is not the books I am concerned about, I tried to calm myself down, what
matters is my living space…’

[‘Co seš to za hovado, říkal jsem si. Knihy jsou ti bližší než člověk, říkal jsem si. Než kamarád.
Jenomže o knihy nejde, uklidňoval jsem se, jde o prostor k životu...’] (KS: 62-63)


     ‘The speed at which the narrated unfolds clearly has implications for our processing and
evaluating that narrated and for our response to the narrative as a whole’ (Prince 1982: 59). Both
the order and the speed at which the narrating Jan Beneš introduces his story are subjective. This
fully conforms to Jan Beneš’s subjective perception of the world and his intention to communicate
it to his readers. The narrator is the one who decides what events and thoughts will be involved in
the story he narrates, to what extent they will be modified (in time) and how much space they will
take up in the story. He shapes our perception of his world.

     ‘[T]he more fore-grounded that event is, the more importance it takes. Similarly, the more
frequently an event is described, the more significant it presumably is,’ says Prince (Ibid. 59).
However, as he points out, it is also true that this way of writing ‘allows the writer to trick us:
an event that was barely described proves to be essential; another that was described at length
proves to be insignificant’ (Prince 1982: 59). In one of the chapters above (see I., 2.3) we have
discussed this ambiguity in relation to ‘once’ and to ‘on more than one occasion’.This has been
done in relation to the various encounters which the narrator of Konec světa has with different
people. These contradictions can be found on all the levels of Hakl’s text.

     The most frequent motif in the stories of Konec světa is the permanent presence of the
narrator, Jan Beneš, in all the stories; Jan Beneš – the acting and the speaking ‘I’ – is
omnipresent. He is the entity that lies behind each narrative and therefore his life is an ‘event’
which is discussed in considerable depth and in considerable detail. However, a large field
occupied by other people and other events lies around this centralizing ‘I’. This field always
shrinks and expands – in both the horizontal (frequency/numbers) and the vertical (depth/details)
direction.

     The existence of the narrating character, Jan Beneš, is one thing. All that shapes him and all
that comes out of him is another. What shapes him is society that surrounds him; the society that
exists and develops under certain conditions, at a certain time, in a certain place, in a certain
language and within a certain political and cultural background. What emerges from him is his
living, observant and critical experience of all that. What we perceive is the outcome of his
willingness to share.


2.5 The content: the revealed and the suspended information


     It is not only the omnipresent existence of the character Jan Beneš (or Honza) which brings
all the stories presented in the narratives of Konec světa together. What also matters here is how
the individual narratives are both told and integrated within the structure of the whole volume and
within the reality which they (re)present.

      From the perspective of genre distinction, Konec světa consists of ten individual stories.
Some of these stories appear as an individual unit, others are divided into several chapters. Each
story has a name, every chapter is numbered. All together, however, they build the integrated
volume of Konec světa; the volume which seems to be balancing on the verge between a novel and a
collection of short stories. The linking element is Jan Beneš and his life.

     Each narrative of Konec světa is different but, at the same time, similar to all the others.
Each narrative works with a specific situation or event, yet the main characteristics of the whole
book, including the narrator, the places and the memories, stay the same throughout the volume.
Time has a major impact on the way each story is narrated and perceived. The narrator’s focus keeps
shifting our attention from one person, one situation and one scene to another and back. The
overall attitude stays the same: it is ‘life according to Jan Beneš’. To see how this principle
works throughout the whole volume of Konec světa, we have to look at the summaries of all the
storylines included in the texts of this volume:

     ‘Jedno odpoledne’ (‘One afternoon’) opens the book with the narrator’s impression of the
momentary atmosphere that surrounds him and his friend Pavlik on the walk down the streets of
Prague and on their visit to one of the local pubs where they both order a beer and observe what
the usual drunkards do and say. ‘První cizinci v Praze’ (‘The First Foreigners in Prague’) plays
with the idea of the suddenly blossoming tourist trade and its dual effect on the Prague locals and
especially on the narrator himself, his own life and the life of Czech contemporary society. The
main narrative is filled with various personal stories which the narrator’s acquaintances told him
or which the narrator has himself observed and understood. ‘Zlaté časy’ (‘Golden Times’)
contemplates friendship; ‘Konec světa’ (‘The End of the World’) is an account of sexual encounters
between Jan Beneš and an ageing ballet-dancer. The sex act provokes an explosion of thoughts in the
narrator about what might happen if the world comes to an end. ‘Vzpomínka na Ozzyho’ (‘Remembering
Ozzy’) juxtaposes the narrator’s work for the advertisement industry with the personal life of his
alcoholic artist friend. ‘Láďovo poslední tango’ (‘Láďa’s Last Tango’) follows the narrator’s
friend’s Láďa’s journey through India; ‘Zlaté časy, díl 2’ (‘Golden Times, part 2’) continues the
narrator’s exposition on the nature of friendship, this time listening to the narrative of his
friend, Fáfa; in ‘Bouřka’ (‘The Storm’), the narrator meets Láďa, his family, his German companion,
George, from India and his girlfriend in a rather awkward situation which occurs during their
meeting in Láďa’s house. ‘Vrah’ (‘The Murderer’) is based on one of the conversations overheard in
a pub. Finally, ‘Druhá třetina’ (‘The Second Third’), with the subtitle ‘rychlorozpustný román’
(‘an instantly soluble novel’), mixes all the above themes. We learn that the narrator found a job
and then lost it. We learn about his attitude to friendship, love and sexual experience with
various women; we learn about his thoughts regarding his solitude. We learn what he thinks about TV
programmes, about his trips abroad, about memories and several of his activities, even addictions.

     One way is to look at the stories of Konec světa in sequence; the other is to consider the
content of the volume from the perspective of time, working closely with the narrator’s focus on
particular characters, events and objects:

     In ‘Zlaté časy’ (‘The Golden Times’) we learn about the existence of the narrator’s friend,
Fáfa, who likes playing the guitar. We meet this character again in ‘Zlaté časy, díl 2’ (‘The
Golden Times, part 2’), this time as a person who has lost his girlfriend and now, sitting in the
pub with the narrator, talking about it with great regret. ‘Láďovo poslední tango’ (‘Láďa’s Last
Tango’) is written in the style of a personal diary of a traveller. Láďa recounts the experience of
his journey through India where he decided to go after his girlfriend had left him. Later on, we
meet Láďa and his German friend, Georg, whose acquaintance he made in India, in ‘Bouřka’ (‘The
Storm’), a story which describes their subsequent encounter at Láďa’s place. Here the narrator, an
acquaintance of both men, gives us a brief outline of what happened with them and their lifestyles
during the period between their Indian journey and this particular meeting. In ‘První cizinci v
Praze’ (‘The First Foreigners in Prague’), the narrator describes his feelings about the first
foreigners coming to Czechoslovakia after its opening to Western Europe. He talks about his wild
experiences with Danish, French, English and American people as he had a chance to meet them while
being in a relationship with his girlfriend, Řípa, and then with Renata. Renata is remembered also
in the last story, ‘Druhá Třetina’ (‘The Second Third’) in connection with the narrator’s
advertised reading performance during a literary evening where he was unable to read his texts
because he was drunk. The narrator mentions Renata’s presence as his then partner in connection
with the apology she made on his behalf to the audience. In several other texts, we learn about Jan
Beneš’s work in the advertising industry and about his personal interest in aeroplanes, pub talk,
beer drinking and films.

     As we may see, there are certain characters (Fáfa, Láďa, Renata), certain motifs (pub talks,
beer, airplanes, dreams, encounters, advertisement, Prague) and themes (‘I’ with/against ‘them’,
friendship, sexual relationship, periphery and mainstream, present and past) that keep appearing
and disappearing throughout the volume. Altogether, they create the master plot of Konec světa. The
order of the narration, the narrator’s focus on certain people, places and moments and the
narrator’s omnipresence in all individual narratives of Konec světa are the important factors of
the narrative discourse that shape this master plot.


     We have already suggested that the master plot of Konec světa is ‘life according to Jan
Beneš’. We have also noted that since it is the ‘life’ of Jan Beneš, it moves forward as it follows
Jan Beneš’s experience of the real. Since it is the life ‘according to’ Jan Beneš, it is ruled by
the subjective powers of the narrating self. It is Jan Beneš who decides whether the order of the
story follows the ordinary flow of time or whether it takes us back to his own memories or to
memories of others; whether the story is presented at a pace that corresponds to what we perceive
as the real pace of the event or whether it is slowed down or made faster; whether the story is
told at all and just left to the reader’s own imagination.

     What is presented in Konec světa are Jan Beneš’s encounters with friends and with ‘loonies’,
his sexual encounters with various women, his walks through the city of Prague, his visits to
Prague local pubs, his observations of other people’s behaviour, his dreams and his contemplations
of the world and human existence in it. Other things have been left out or barely mentioned. For
example, we know only a little about the narrator’s personal background in the past. We know that
he was married, that he worked for Prague Waterworks, that he befriended Kratochvil, Láďa and Fáfa
and that he was a regular visitor of certain places and pubs. The last two bits of information seem
to hold a significant importance in the narrator’s life. Hence, the narrator gives us the history
of these events and places and their present picture on several occasions and in more detail. The
first two pieces of information mentioned here appear in the story only as brief remarks lying
outside the narrator’s main focus on events and objects. Some information is omitted completely.
For instance, we know nothing about the narrator’s birth, his family and his childhood.

     There is the revealed part of the text and there is the part which is hidden. In order to
understand the narrator’s choice to speak about one thing and not about another, we need to examine
both the information the narrator has given us and the information he has decided to leave out, and
this has to be done within the context of the whole narrative of Konec světa.

     Firstly, we have to make clear that there is no way of ascertaining the motives of the
narrator’s decision regarding what to put in and what to leave out, because the decision was made
as a result of the narrator’s conscious and unconscious thought processes or, more precisely, as a
result of the author’s conscious and unconscious thought processes. Nevertheless, there are still
certain paths we may take in order to approach the narrative of Konec světa from the perspective of
what is ‘in the text’ and what is ‘outside the text’ while respecting their suggested but hidden
sense.

     One approach expands on the passage from Prince’s work quoted above: ‘[T]he more foregrounded
that event is, the more importance it takes’ (Prince 1982: 59). According to this statement, what
Jan Beneš mentions and what he mentions more often and in greater detail than anything else may be
the core information for our understanding of his image of life. Specifically, in Konec světa, it
is ‘friendship’ (a representation of what the narrator sees as a social bond that lasts), ‘the
narrator’s sympathy with ‘loonies’’ (a counterpart of what is ‘orderly and normal’, a
representation of life in emotional turmoil), his ‘sexual encounters’ (a representation of the
world of physical desires and needs), ‘the city of Prague’ (a representation of the narrator’s
home), ‘pub talk’ (a representation of the world of bustling narratives), ‘pub visits’ (a
representation of the narrator’s need to socialize and share), ‘dreams’ (a form of escape from the
real) and ‘contemplation of the contemporary world’ (critical reflections on the human existence
within it). All these topics taken together make the core structure of the narrative of Konec
světa. The other topics, which are barely mentioned, are insignificant. Without these significant
topics, the narrative would be radically different. Without the insignificant topics, the narrative
would remain basically unchanged.

     Another approach to narrative argues the exact opposite of the first one. It points out that
‘an event that was barely described proves to be essential’ (Prince 1982: p.59). In accordance with
this statement, the information Jan Beneš has concealed from us is essential for our interpretation
of his story. We have already noted that the narrator does not talk about his family, about his
childhood and about his married life. There are many different ways that this can be interpreted.
The first approach would see the lack of the narrator’s past personal details in the text as
‘insignificant’ or ‘unimportant’ for the story the narrative seeks to tell. The second approach
would play with various ideas and among them it would try to discover those which might be crucial
to our understanding of the reality the narrative presents and those which might be just of a
marginal character in the overall structure of the text. From this point of view, we would analyze
the information in the following binary opposites of public (revealed) information and private
(omitted) information, pleasant (revealed) information and unpleasant (omitted) information,
interesting (revealed) information and boring (omitted) information and important (revealed)
information and unimportant (omitted) information. Whilst ‘public’ information refers to Beneš’s
adulthood, ‘private’ information is his childhood; whilst ‘pleasant’ information is his frequent
sexual affairs, ‘unpleasant’ information is his failure in the role of husband; whilst
‘interesting’ information is the life of ‘loonies’, ‘boring’ information is the life of mainstream
society; and ‘important’ information is his pub friends, ‘unimportant’ information is his working
environment. This varies in Hakl’s other works (see I., 5).

     Considering both approaches in relation to our understanding of Hakl’s narrative, it can be
seen that they both have a significant place as an instrument for analyzing the structure of the
text. The revealed information is core to our overview of the narrator’s world, the revealed and
the suspended information taken together is core to our interpretation of the narrator’s reactions
and his behaviour in a certain place and at a certain time. In this sense, if we want to find out
why Jan Beneš talks about his ‘loony’ friends in such vivid colours, we also need to find out why
he finds his life within the ‘normal’ society uninteresting and almost not worth mentioning. The
same will apply to all the other binary opposites.


2.6 The existence of the ‘known’ and the arrival of the new and the ‘unknown’


     When we discussed the narrator’s attitude to friendship, we mentioned the names Láďa, Fáfa,
Pavlik, Petr Kratochvil and Renata. These were all the people whom Jan Beneš would probably
classify as the ‘slowly disintegrating company of people from my younger days [zvolna se
rozpadající party mladších let] (KS: 45)’, although he uses this expression only in the case of
Renata. We can hardly say anything about the character of Pavlik and about the character of Petr,
for the only time we meet them is during the peaceful walk they take with the narrator in the city
and in the countryside. On the other hand, Láďa, Fáfa and Renata are remembered on several
occasions but always in connection with things like living (or trying to live) a relatively free
life; drinking, smoking marihuana, socializing and talking. All of them have been trying to escape
from their current lives and all of them have experienced failure. What is also significant for all
these characters is that their escape always falls into the category of something ‘foreign’, or
takes the shape of something ‘new’ and ‘young’. Láďa travels to India to run away from his broken
relationship but he fails to survive there. Renata travels to London to seek adventure and love but
fails to adjust. Fáfa falls in love with a wealthy East German girl but fails to adjust to a world
of different morals.

     ‘[T]he slowly disintegrating company of my younger days’ – the expression itself signifies
that something that was familiar and complete is approaching its end and instead something new,
foreign, different is coming. The feeling of the departure of the old and the arrival of the new is
referred to repeatedly through the whole narrative; it touches on the narrator’s thoughts when
thinking about his frequent encounters with women:


‘These were bright and erratic times. It did not occur to anyone at that time that they would end.
Summer gently broke and autumn was approaching.’

[‘Byly to pestré, proměnlivé časy. Nikoho z nás ani nenapadlo, že by měly tehdy skončit. Léto se
zlehka přelomilo a začal se blížit podzim.’] (KS: 20)


when attending a concert where a group of young French people perform; when throwing the leaving
party for Renata:


‘Even those of us who preferred describable life over unfruitful dreaming felt the weight of the
recognition that something was changing during this very night. We could not only feel it but we
could almost see it. We found ourselves in a hollow. Something had finished and something had not
yet started.’

[‘I na ty z nás, kteří dávali přednost popsatelnému životu před neplodným sněním, dolehlo poznání,
že právě této noci se něco mění. Bylo to nejen cítit, bylo to skoro vidět. Nacházeli jsme se
v dutině. Něco už skončilo a něco ještě nezačalo.’]

(KS: 47)


or when lying in a ditch with his friend, drunk:


‘A new day was approaching. Future still wanted to uncover many incredible secrets for us.
Somewhere behind the horizon, the digital era was slowly making its preparations. But we were lying
in a ditch and in no way could we come to life.’

[‘Začínal nový den. Budoucnost nám chtěla odhalit ještě mnohá a neuvěřitelná tajemství. Někde za
obzorem se už pomalounku chystala digitální éra. Jenomže my jsme leželi v příkopě a za žádnou cenu
se nemohli probrat k životu.’]  (KS: 149)


These examples show that narrator’s attitude to the new, which could be anything – adulthood, new
society, a new relationship – is ambiguous. The narrator is full of curiosity but he is sceptical
too; he is also full of excitement and nostalgia too. Adulthood brings a sexual interest in young
women to the narrator but this interest does not last because the gap between the expectations of
enthusiastic and young people and the expectations of a sceptical and tired middle-aged man, as he
often sees himself, seems to be too big to be overcome. The new political regime in Czechoslovakia
after the 1989 fall of communism to which the narrative refers  gives the narrator an opportunity
to try things he would hardly be able to do under the old regime (to set up his own business, to
travel to the West). Nevertheless, he is often unable to cope with the new moves of post-communist
society and fails:


‘That summer I was a co-owner of one small firm in the Letná quarter. Business went from bad to
worse… There were no customers. So the best of all was to sit in the garden of the Šlechtovka
restaurant, to enjoy the late morning shade and drink beer, eat frankfurters with a double portion
of mustard for lunch, and try not to disturb the scarcely visible summer phantoms which appeared in
the corners of the crumbling summer house.’

[‘To léto jsem byl spoluvlastníkem jedné firmičky na Letné. Co se té firmy týká, šlo to od desíti
k pěti... Kšefty se nehýbaly. A tak jsem ze všeho nejraději sedával na zahradě Šlechtovky, užíval
si dopoledního stínu, pil desítku, obědval párky s dvojitou hořčicí a snažil se co nejmíň rušit
řiďounké letní fantómy, zjevující se v koutech rozpadajícího se letohrádku.’] (KS: 85)


In an attempt to adjust to the new, Jan Beneš and his friends set up their own business together,
but he struggles to sustain it and so he leaves. He tries to find the best way to communicate with
foreigners coming to Prague after the regime change to live with him, but he fails to adjust to
their needs and finally sends them away. He joins an advertising company but, disgusted by a sudden
change in the behaviour of his superiors, his former colleagues, he quits.

     In Konec světa, there are characters who make similar attempts to integrate within the new
post-communist regime and enjoy what it offers although only a few of them are able to do so
successfully. These are mainly young people, still full of energy and ideas about the bright future
that lies ahead (the narrator’s girlfriends Řípa and Petruše) but, even among young people, there
are individuals who struggle with depression (Mirka, a girl from the flat next door in ‘Zlaté
časy’: KS) and often end up taking drugs (Jan Beneš’s visitors in ‘První cizinci v Praze’: KS).
Most of Hakl’s key characters, however, belong to the generation of middle-aged people who have
experienced the communist past and are now learning to adjust to the principles of the new
capitalist society. This seems to be for many an insurmountable problem. The narrator describes
(and meets) individuals who have been caught within a single, tight circle from which they do not
have the power to escape, or do not want to escape. So often these characters try, but they end up
following the lifestyle of those persons who live on the periphery of society (Fáfa, Smrček, Jirka
Vokurka – see below) or in the grey zone (Igor, the old barflies – see below). Many of them
position themselves as far away as possible from the official structures and the growing capitalist
outlook which does not appeal to them. They feel safer on the periphery of mainstream events
because there is no one there who would expect them to behave in a certain manner. On the
periphery, they do not feel obliged to act according to the ruling society which expects them to
find a well-paid job, build a career, get a mortgage and succeed. There, they enjoy day-to-day life
in terms of simple things, basic to one’s survival, but far away from the external pressure of the
new world.


     Ageing, the awareness of passing time and memories are important themes which play a
significant role in the individuals’ search for their identity within the new world. For Hakl’s
middle-aged characters (Jan Beneš’s friends especially), accepting anything new is difficult and
sometimes even painful, almost unbearable. Almost every effort these characters attempt to make in
order to change their personal and social situation ends in awkwardness and in surrender. But,
whilst this surrender means for some to be ‘out’ (Fáfa, Smrček, Jirka Vokurka), for others it means
to be passively ‘in’ but actively ‘dead’ or ‘in limbo’ (Igor, Láďa, the old barflies).

     How problematic it is for Hakl’s characters to cope with life under the changing political and
social circumstances can be demonstrated in the character of the waiter Igor (‘Vzpomínka na
Ozzyho’: KS). Igor was:

‘…once a well-known, famous waiter at the U Kafků pub. At one time he was the only waiter who would
occasionally pour you drinks for free; you just had to manage to stay at U Kafků until closing time
with the right people. This wasn’t difficult because they were always the same ones. (…) And Igor
smiled, turned a corkscrew, made wisecracks, and he was a king. This was fifteen years ago.
Nowadays, with his sleek white hair combed to cover a bald patch he looked like a retired
entertainer. (…) He was still a king. Only his kingdom was now covered with cobwebs, many of the
subjects in his kingdom had died of heart attacks, had not come back from emigration, stopped
drinking and smoking, hanged themselves or drank themselves to death.’

[‘Kdysi známý a slavní vrchní od Kafků. Býval to svého času jediný vrchní, který příležitostně
naléval zadarmo, stačilo tenkrát zůstat U Kafků do zavíračky s těmi správnými lidmi, což nebylo
nijak nesnadné, protože to byli pořád ti samí... A Igor se usmíval, točil vývrtkou, trousil
poznámky a byl král. To bylo před patnácti lety. Teď vypadal s bílou ulíznutou přehazovačkou jako
estrádní umělec na penzi... Pořád byl král. Jenom se to jeho království tak trochu potáhlo
pavučinami, pomřelo na infarkty, nevrátilo se z emigrace, přestalo pít a kouřit, hodilo si mašlí a
uchlastalo se.’] (KS: 86)


Igor is a typical example of how difficult it is for the characters of Konec světa to adapt to the
principles of the new society, especially for someone who is getting old. As the narrator points
out, Igor grew up in communism. He had found his place in one of the local pubs and there he built
his reputation as a head waiter who provided his regular guests with shelter and with a few moments
of freedom behind a locked door, especially after the official closing times. Years afterwards,
when democracy came and there was not longer any need to look for a hidden place to enjoy freedom,
Igor had lost his importance. His pub became only a memory of the old times, now swallowed up by
the market-orientated environment, and Igor a vendor at an ordinary garden kiosk selling snacks and
beverages.

     Jirka Vokurka (‘Vzpomínka na Ozzyho’: KS) is another character whom the narrator sees as a
person struggling in between memories of the communist past and the contemporary world:


‘Jirka Vokurka lived somewhere there around and led an old-world life; he painted pictures, paid
alimony and drank. (…) He was a quiet but persistent man, often seen in a jumper saturated with
smoke. His shoes were as though a cow had chewed them. He was like a person from the old times,
when the truth and the lie still functioned approximately the way they are supposed to. In those
times which may have never taken place.’

[‘Jirka Vokurka bydlel někde tam v okolí a vedl starosvětský život; maloval obrazy, platil alimenty
a chlastal. (...) Nosil v sobě zvláštní tichou urpustnost. Prokouřený svetr. Boty jak vytažené
krávě z huby. Byl jako ze starých časů, kdy ještě pravda i lež fungovaly přibližně tak, jak mají.
Z časů, které možná vůbec neexistovaly.’] (KS: 86)


In communist times, the waiter Igor was a saviour for many people who found it difficult to fight
oppression because he held the ‘door keys to freedom’. Also, Jirka Vokurka was someone who played
an important part in terms of freedom. He used his creativity to expose the practices of the
communist regime. Igor was a ‘king’ and a happy man because people needed him. With the arrival of
democracy, everything in his life changed, though. There suddenly was no need for freedom behind a
closed door he provided. With the arrival of the market economy, life became a question of money.
State property was privatized and everything became subject to business practice. Igor’s pub was no
exception. His pub also became a private business and came to be ruled by the market forces. Igor,
who used to share what did not belong to him with others for free, lost his popularity, his respect
and, finally, his job. Jirka Vokurka was a recognized artist in the communist era, when art was an
important weapon in the struggle for truth (see 1.3), but his existence in the world of capitalism
is seriously shaken. He is not the only one who finds himself to be in such a situation. As the old
regime disintegrated, art lost its political role and artists lost their privileged position of
being the voice of the oppressed Czechoslovak nation. Paradoxically, for an artist from the
communist times, the chaotic freedom of post-communism became a bigger problem than was the
previous communist oppression (Kratochvil 1992). Jirka Vokurka, as presented by the narrator of
Konec světa, is a victim of this change. The way Jan Beneš describes him he has always been living
on the periphery of what can be understood as the mainstream but nowadays, he is just a shadow of
his former self. He is still painting, but his personal appearance (he wears loose jumpers and
shabby shoes) is suddenly not as ‘alternative and cool’ as it might have been before. Due to his
obsession with his personal grief over his penniless existence, he forfeits perhaps the greatest
opportunity of his life. He misses the only serious admirers of his work, when they come, and thus
he misses the chance to become once again a well-known and recognized artist. Because these days,
the text implies, it is not enough just to be exceptional, you also have to be a good PR manager
for your work. Otherwise your voice is lost in the clamour of all the others. And that was what
exactly happened to Jirka Vokurka.


     In his essay, ‘Obnovení chaosu v české literatuře’ (‘The Renewal of Chaos in Czech literature’
1992), Jiří Kratochvil commented on the fact that the impact of Czech writers on society seriously
decreased in the first years after the fall of communism:


‘But after November 1989, a completely new and unusual situation arose in the relationship between
society and writers, society and literature. The community of writers is no longer seen as “the
nation’s conscience” (the conception suddenly sounds false and comic); if there are still writers
who find themselves in the centre of a revival movement, the nation now expects them to act as
politicians who will implement sensible measures, it is no longer interested in them as in authors
of absurd drama. The writer’s profession has rapidly descended to one of the lowest ranks in
society. Czech literature has never been as free as it is now. But, it has remained alone only in
its own company (and the company of a handful of its most loyal readers) in an autistic and
solipsistic isolation.’

[‘Ale po listopadu 1989 dochází k naprosto neovyklé situaci ve vztahu společnosti ke spisovatelům a
k literatuře. Spisovatelská obec už není chápána co ‘svědomí národa’ (ten pojem zní najednou
falešně a komicky) a pokud se několik spisovatelů znovu octne v centru obrodného pohybu, národní
očekávání se k nim tentokrát od počátku obrací jako k smysluplným politikům a ne autorům absurdních
dramat. Spisovatelské povolání velice rychle spadne na jednu z nejnižších příček společenského
žebříčku. Dosud nikdy nebyla česká literature tak svobodná, jako je dnes. Ale zůstala už jen sama
se sebou (a s hrstkou těch nejvěrnějších čtenářů) v autistické a solipsistické izolaci.’]
(Kratochvil 1992: Literární noviny: Vol 47: 5)


The character Jirka Vokurka is not a writer, but what Kratochvil says about contemporary literature
can also be applied to contemporary Czech visual art. With the arrival of democracy, the writer’s
position has changed and so has the position of those persons practising visual art, persons like
Jirka Vokurka. We do not know whether Jirka Vokurka is an original artist or not. We can only
assume that he was from the fact that a couple of Americans decided to buy all his work which they
found on display in a beer garden. What we do know is that he was fairly comfortable to lead a life
as it was defined by the rules of the communist system, when there was only one clear-cut entity –
the communist state – to collaborate with or to fight against. Jirka Vokurka finds the
post-communist regime chaotic and unclear. He either despises the ‘new ways’ or is afraid to accept
them. Due to his inability to adjust, Vokurka fails to understand the new role of the visual arts
in Czech post-communist society and so he fails. His pictures, displayed on the ropes hanging
outside one of the Prague beer garden restaurants, stay unsold. This leaves them ‘in an autistic
and solipsistic isolation’. The text indicates clearly that Jirka is unhappy with his failure, but
is at a loss what to do about it and so he does nothing, only vegetates:


“Well, man. I would rather be dead today. I am so pissed off! Yesterday, you know… what a day that
was! I cannot even go out anywhere. Otherwise I would have to hit someone. The only thing I can
just do is to sit here with you, well, of course only if you are not in a hurry... ”

[„Človeče, mně se dneska ani nechce žít, jak jsem nasranej Včera, víš... to zas bylo! Já ani nikam
nemůžu jít, jinak bych někomu musel... Jediný, co můžu dělat, je tady s tebou trošku posedět,
jestli teda nespěcháš...“] (KS: 88)

2.7 The troublesome present and the ‘golden’ past


     When thinking about the present times (and the ‘new’ customs), the narrator expresses many
sceptical thoughts about contemporary Czech society. In his thinking about the past (and the ‘old’
ways), there is a certain hint of nostalgia. Jan Beneš talks about his life back in the 1980s in
two stories called ‘Zlaté časy’ (‘The Golden Times’) and ‘Zlaté časy, díl 2)’ (‘The Golden Times,
part 2’). When he speaks of the present, he speaks in terms of what has happened for the ‘first’
time (‘První cizinci v Praze’ – ‘The First Foreigners in Prague’), in terms of memory (‘Vzpomínka
na Ozzyho’ – ‘The Remembrance of Ozzy’) and in terms of the ‘last’ (‘Láďovo poslední tango’ –
‘Láďa’s Last Tango’). When he contemplates the times of regime change at the end of the 1980s and
the beginning of the 1990s, he uses words like ‘the end’ (‘Konec světa’ – ‘The End of the World’).

     The world in ‘Zlaté časy’ is a world of friendship, of cheap accommodation shared with
friends, of wild drinking in various Prague pubs, of hangovers and of women in bed. It is the world
of Jan Beneš’s youth, of his life on a day-to-day basis when the only worry comes with the morning
headaches, with the thoughts on how to get over the effects of alcohol and marihuana intoxication,
how to manage the relationship with one of his neurotic flatmates and how to survive the end of his
sexual relationships. In ‘Zlaté časy’, the lives of the individual characters are shown in turmoil
but this turmoil does not necessarily mean that the characters have lost control of their
existence. As long as they still have a bed, a flat and a company of others, the world is fine. As
long as they know what place they hold within society, the world is bearable and safe; as long as
they ‘belong’ somewhere, there are no causes for anxiety. The arrival of the new era does not bring
them more happiness, it brings them more troubles. These troubles are for instance the incoming
foreigners, whose extended presence in post-communist Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic is felt to be
overwhelming and distracting. The arrival of the foreigners is only the first sign of the changing
times which Konec světa records. Then the narrator notes a change in the political and economic
functioning of Czech society, when he talks about the waiter Igor or about his own attempts to set
up a business. All these changes bother his mind as he observes what is happening with the people
around him, worrying that the world has gone mad.

     Konec světa shows people such as Jirka Vokurka, Igor and Fáfa who find it hard to face the new
post-communist society and who all fail in their attempt to adjust to it – Jirka Vokurka and Fáfa
because they lack self-confidence and assertive behaviour both at work and in their relationships;
Igor fails because his principles are in conflict with the new market-orientated values of Czech
society. The character of Jan Beneš is caught in Konec světa on the borderline between the world of
the new consumerist establishment and the individuals marginalised by it.


2.8 The relationship of the subjective narrator towards women


     In the chapters above, we have mainly discussed the narrator’s attitude to other men. This is
purely based on the fact that men are discussed in Konec světa more often and also with more depth
than their female counterparts. Nevertheless, the narrator cannot deny that his meetings with
various women; women as partners in love and in sex, women as his family members, friends or just
those whom he meets in the pub or about whom he learns from other people are of  similar importance
in his life as his male friends. Just as his male friends, women also provide psychological support
to the narrator in his personal struggle for a place within new ‘thrusting’ society, and in his
search for recognition and for love.

     It looks as though we cannot really draw any general conclusions about the narrator’s attitude
to female characters because the information he is giving us about them is fragmentary. Is this
because he is hiding things? Is this because he considers his love life to be a private matter? Is
this because he finds his dealings with women too sensitive and painful so that he pushes it to the
back of his mind and, instead, talks about other topics which are not so difficult for him, such as
his work or his pub friends? Does he keep his love life to himself because he thinks he has failed?
Or, on the contrary, does he think his relationship with women is an unimportant and boring matter
so that there is no real reason to provide the reader with more detail than what he considers
essential for the understanding of his overall attitude to life? There are many questions we can
ask about the narrator’s love life, but once again, we can only find the answers by examining what
the narrator has decided to reveal and not to reveal to the public. Only from these fragments can
we build a picture that gives us some sort of idea about his love life. These fragments will help
us to search for an explanation of Jan Beneš’s behaviour towards all the female characters that
have crossed his path. We will discuss his behaviour in the role of their partner, their boyfriend,
their lover, their friend, their son and their grandson. The starting point of my analysis will be
the narrator’s experience of marriage and of some of his most serious and lasting sexual
relationships with other women.

     Only at one point do we find out that Jan Beneš was married once but, apart from the fact
itself, he does not mention anything else about his marriage. He does not go into a detailed
description of his relationship with his wife. He just simply announces: ‘[m]y marriage had broken
down forever and I did not have anywhere to live’ [‘mně se definitivně zkazilo manželství a neměl
jsem kde bydlet’] (KS: 58). Jan Beneš’s relationship with the next woman, Řípa, ends up in the same
emptiness and, again, the narrator hardly speaks about it. Řípa appears in the text when she brings
some foreigners into his flat. She disappears when she decides to leave Jan Beneš for others and
for life in a different country (‘První cizinci v Praze’: KS). There are no memories of Jan Beneš’s
and Řípa’s shared past, only a brief statement that she had been there and that she had left.
Moreover, the narrator does not even display any particular sympathy towards this girl; on the
contrary, all he talks about is a great relief that her youth, her personal determination and her
requirements had disappeared from his life. He is pleased that he has regained his male freedom and
his self after their separation was announced:


‘She absorbed every new bit of information which had reached her, immediately and fully. I had been
living with her for nearly two years and I had got really fed up. I hated her ambitious, selfish,
bosomy world. So when she finally moved her mane of hair and announced that, anyway, she had
decided to leave the country, for someone had given her such an offer, basically I was relieved.’

[‘Nasávala do sebe okamžitě a beze zbytku každou novou informaci, která k ní dorazila. Žil jsem
s ní druhý rok a měl jsem toho právě tak dost. Jejího ctižádostivého, sobeckého, prsatého světa.
Takže když si nakonec nahodila hřívu a řekla, že se rozhodla a že tak jako tak odjíždí do ciziny,
neb jí to bylo kýmsi nabídnuto, v podstatě se mi ulevilo.’] (KS: 17)


     The narrator’s ex-wife represents the world that calls for responsible, reliable and caring
husbands, fathers and men, the world he is not able to offer her because he himself struggles with
the concept of freedom and with the need to comply with certain obligations. He does not want to
face the memories of his married past and so he keeps this information secret. Řípa represents the
new, enthusiastic but unstable and unknown world which he finds difficult to accept and he does not
want to accept it. She is a young girl. She wants to try to enjoy everything the present offers;
she wants to meet new people, foreigners, because they represent an ‘exotic’ world; she wants to
travel and learn about life abroad or about the world that lies beyond the routine. She splutters
with energy and youth and, what is more, she is described as a woman with such physical features
(‘bosomy world [prsatý svět]’, ‘mane hair [hříva vlasů]’) that would be able to “bring a large
number of males to her feet”. Řípa is a person of change and that is something Jan Beneš finds hard
to cope with. She is open to the public; he values his own privacy, his solitude and the company of
the closest friends or harmless barflies above all. She is keen on constantly learning new things;
he prefers to hibernate in the world he knows well. She has ambitions and future goals; he prefers
to stop, live and contemplate various things that momentarily surround him, and his mind often
wanders in the past. She uses her physical features to attract the attention of other people; he
sees himself as a creature with nothing to display and everything to hide.

     With Jan Beneš and Řípa it is the same as it is with Jan Beneš and the world of the people who
have fully integrated into society: when he complies with them, he enjoys them; after being a part
of them for a while, he cannot bear them, he gets bored, fed up and so he leaves. The moments he is
away from them, he feels relieved and appreciates every minute of being free. But again, this
feeling lasts only until he realizes the inevitability of his life in a relationship or within the
system. It is the same circle in which the narrator always finds himself imprisoned. His intensely
felt desire to protect his own individuality and pride requires that he should be completely free;
his manhood, on the other hand, searches out for love, passion and the company of others and so it
asks him to adapt.

     There are many ways of understanding the narrator’s attitude towards his relationship with
Řípa. The narrator’s expression of relief caused by Řípa’s departure may be his true feeling or
just a mask to hide his own jealousy towards his partner’s public openness, her energy and
enthusiasm for life - a mask to hide his inability to act in the same way. He is the one who is not
capable of being as open as she is towards the contemporary world. That makes him confused and
emotionally lost. Since he does not know a better way of coping with such a situation, he pretends
antipathy and ignorance and decides not to analyze his relationship with Řípa more than is
necessary for his narrative.

     Some time after Beneš’s break up with Řípa, Renata appears (‘První cizinci v Praze’: KS) - his
long-term friend and partner for eight years; also his saviour and protector during the time when
he could not cope with his alcoholism. Again, we do not learn much about their life together.
Everything we learn about Renata is from the time they were friends. All that happened between them
afterwards is described in few words and without any specific details.

     The narrator’s next and, in Konec světa, also the last serious relationship with a woman
called Petruše (‘Druhá třetina’: KS) does not appear until the end of the book.[20] In between, he
shares his bed with various women whom he encounters on different occasions. These are one-off
adventures or repeated meetings; none of these relationships lasts for long although he describes
some of these sex scenes in quite vivid details. This is contrary to his real partnership which he
mentions only briefly.

     First, we learn that Jan Beneš met with Izabela (‘První cizinci v Praze’: KS), a beautiful
woman whom he used to see in the streets. Their nights followed their occasional meetings in one of
the Prague night clubs and, as the narrator claims, they always ended up in a fiasco. Still, we
learn about this woman’s passion for scarves. Then a Chinese girl turns up (Ibid.), cleaning his
flat, listening to him speaking, even though she cannot understand a single word, and sleeping with
him. After her departure, it is Ela, the narrator’s flatmate from the years after his broken
marriage (‘Zlaté časy’: KS):


‘She was a little bit over twenty. She was not particularly clever, but had an instinct. I never
tried to touch her. Once before sunrise, I secretly watched her when she was changing her clothes,
but that was all. She looked very good. (…) She had a very pretty figure and so I suffered from
fits of shyness whenever I saw her.’

[‘Bylo jí něco přes dvacet. Nebyla zvlášť chytrá, ale měla instinkt. Jakživ jsem si k ní nic
nedovolil. Jednou jsem se nad ránem tajně díval, když se převlíkla, a to bylo všechno. Slušelo jí
to…. Měla figuru, vůči které jsem nemohl netrpět záchvaty nesmělosti.’] (KS: 69)


Again, it is attraction to this ‘young’ woman and shyness in approaching her ‘very pretty figure’
which keeps the narrator drawn to Ela while he remains physically distant. Only once does he
succeed in breaking the invisible wall that stands between them and ends up in bed with her. Yet
this happens as a result of one of his experiences with drug abuse and not as a result of his
finally overcoming his shyness or because he has fallen in love.

     Perhaps the most powerful is Jan Beneš’s experience of a psychically painful sexual adventure
with an ageing female ballet dancer in the Botanic Gardens (‘Konec světa’: KS). The act is
described in an expressive, rather naturalistic way; from the beginning, the relationship is marked
by mutual sadness, by his personal distaste, and by his cowardice, and it is accompanied with the
narrator’s images of the end of the world:


‘She could have weighed about 40 kilos. Above her pathetic dog’s ribs her breasts protruded,
screaming for help. Her stomach was criss-crossed with a mash of deep scars; it looked like it had
been all slashed and sewn back again. From her under-hanging, girly pelvis, a horrible bushy bogey
watched me, hysterically.’

[‘Mohla mít tak 40 kilo. Nad dojemnými, psími žebry trčela prsa, která hlasitě křičela o pomoc.
Břicho měla zbrázděné změtí hlubokých jizev, vypadalo jako rozsekané a zase sešité. Zpod vysedlé,
holčičí pánve na mě nepříčetně hleděl strašný, chundelatý bubák.’] (KS: 81)


In this case, Jan Beneš’s view of both their bodies in a mutual embrace does not come with pleasure
but rather with fear, and so, as soon as the sexual encounter is over, he leaves, confused, and is
relieved to be away. He never comes back again. Another unstable relationship is waiting for him
when he meets Radka (‘Druhá třetina’: KS). He describes her as a ginger haired woman with whom it
was suicidal to sleep:


‘She was hiding from life. She clearly distinguished that part of reality in which she was at home,
and the other one, about which she did not want to know anything at all. That was the main thing
that was keeping us together.’

[‘Schovávala se před životem. Přesně rozlišovala tu část skutečnosti, ve které je doma, a tu
druhou, o které nechce nic vědět. To bylo to hlavní, co nás spojovalo.’] (KS: 207)


     Jan Beneš experiences many sexual episodes but no proper relationship ever develops from the
described short-lived encounters (and there are more than I have quoted here as examples for the
purpose of this research). They always start with a sudden temptation which quickly arises and soon
burns out. For the narrator, the sexual encounter is a moment of great pleasure and joy but, when
the encounter ends, he is often relieved and welcomes the chance to be alone again. Jan Beneš is a
kind of man who seems to attract women, in spite of the fact that he describes himself as a
completely boring and unattractive person. He is able to spend days and nights embracing a woman’s
body but, before something more serious can develop, he often escapes, cutting himself off and
going back to his own loneliness. He cannot stand permanent female company but he is also scared
because, whenever he tries to live with someone else and love, he fails.

     Sexual promiscuity brings the narrator many intimate moments; it gives him a certain freedom
to act the way he momentarily likes and keeps his male ego inflated. However, it must be noted that
most of his one-off encounters we learn about happen with the initial help of alcohol, possibly
also drugs. Without their ‘liberating’ effects, he is hardly able to approach anyone at all:


‘For some time, I eyed her up. My heart began to pump blood into my brain in order to help it think
up something reasonable. However, it was clear that, if I ever decided to talk to her, what I would
tell her would be nonsense; such a woman would disqualify any attempts before they were even
started, because she knows. In no time at all, I gave up and broke away. (…) After a while, she
stood up. (…) When she came back, I tried to look in her direction again, but I failed.
Mechanically, I drank one shot of vodka after another. (…) I went for a pee. And there, standing in
front of the urinal, I was finally revisited by courage… I’ll try to drag her out of here! (…) I
lit a cigarette and opened the door. Her seat was empty.’

[‘Chvíli jsem s ní hrál na koukanou. Srdce začalo pumpovat krev do mozku ve snaze pomoci mu vydumat
cokoli přiměřeného. Bylo však jasné, že kdybych ji i nakrásně oslovil, byla by to opravdová
hovadina, co bych řekl; takováhle ženská už předem diskvalifikuje všechny pokusy, protože ví svoje.
Obratem jsem to vzdal a odpojil se. (…) Po nějaké době vstala. (…) Když se vracela, marně jsem
hledal sílu se tam znovu podívat. Mechanicky jsem pil vodku za vodkou. (…) Šel jsem se vymočit. A
teprve nad pisoárem mě konečně navštívila kuráž…. Zkusím ji odtud vytáhnout! (…) Zapálil jsem si a
vzal za kliku. Její místo bylo prázdné.’]

(KS: 144-145)


     The narrator describes himself as a man of no ambition and no will to fight for success.
Rather than chasing a woman, he would sit and wait for her to invite him to go with her to her flat
(the ageing ballet dancer), to her bed (Ela) or for her to turn up in his own flat (Izabela, the
Chinese girl). He hardly takes any action to approach women; he likes to be overwhelmed by female
interest and enjoys being lost in it.


     Jan Beneš seems totally unable to keep any relationship going for longer. When he meets a good
looking, young, popular and enthusiastic woman who is full of energy and new ideas (like Řípa or
Petruše), he is prone to fall for her (we can only assume for the length of such a relationship)
and so he does. However, he soon realizes he does not have the energy to cope with such female
beauty and youth and that is the moment he starts to lose it.  Then, he claims:


‘Ugly women calm me down. With them, I know how to relax. They do not have any expectations about
what is going to happen; they are not concentrated on what they look like all the time. (…) They
tend to listen to what people are talking about. They are more humane simply because they do not
have the possibilities.’

[‘Nehezké ženské mě uklidňují. Umím se vedle nich uvolnit. Nečekají už předem, co bude, a nejsou
věčně soustředěné na to, jak vypadají. Nevrhají na sebe kontrolky do každého zrcadla. Mají tendenci
vnímat, co kdo říká. Jsou lidštější, protože zkrátka nemají ty možnosti.’] (KS: 188)


But this is all just another mask which the narrator uses to cover his failures. For ugly women do
not really become his partners; they do not end up in Beneš’s bed. He observes them; he talks about
them but does not have any sexual relations with them. It is purely the attitude of the observing
self, not the attitude of the acting self that is interested in ‘ugly’ women. One of the examples
that demonstrate the narrator’s interest in visual aspects of life and his being prone to end up in
embarrassing situations is this observation of two bar ladies:


‘[with] bottom[s] (…), which in the light of the fluorescent lamp looked grey-pink and were
peppered with dark purple pimples (…) scraped armpits, family style…’

[‘zadnice (...) ve světle zářivek šedorůžová, posetá tmavě fialovými pupenci...podomácku oškrábaná
podpaží…’] (KS: 7),


who are dancing almost naked in the local pub. It is a mixture of admiration, curiosity, sadness
and disgust that keeps him interested in the ridiculous behaviour of these rather ‘worn-out’ ladies
and their shapes rather than physical attraction he would be overcome by while watching them.


     Women, generally, play a significant role in the narrator’s life, although he will not express
this fact often and in full. He needs to be with women just as much as he needs to be alone; only
he does not know how to cope with both of these needs separately and together. He can be very
dependent on a woman’s gesture when, for example, he bashfully waits for an invitation to share a
bed with her (the Chinese girl or Ela) or when he accepts a woman’s slaps and insults with pleasure
(‘Bouřka’: KS). But he also knows how to be stubborn, uncooperative and uncompromising towards
women, and he is rather distressed whenever something undermines his privacy and his male self
(Řípa disrupting his privacy by bringing a group of strangers into his flat and letting them stay
there for as long as they want to; Petruše with her busy life full of work and friends, as a result
of which she even forgets their date; the lady in the pub waiting for his attention which he is not
able to give her because he cannot find the courage for this while sober).

     The narrator of Konec světa does not spend much time thinking about any relationship and he
does not work on developing any relationship. At least he never mentions this. All his serious
relationships end up in a dead end and in separation, but somehow he always claims to be relieved
rather than depressed. Personal freedom within a relationship and out of it is very important to
Jan Beneš and, whenever this freedom is restricted, he is annoyed and protests. Paradoxically, the
same attitude is applied by his partners. As soon as they feel their personal freedom is being
threatened by restrictions or by boredom, they escape. At least, this is how the narrator sees
them.

     There is no open talk of love in the whole of Konec světa. Every sexual relationship of the
narrator is presented free of any sentiment. All these relationships are emotionally quite dull.
They are described factually and usually as being in decline. These are sexual encounters of
friends rather than passionate romances and they are always problematic. This is the same for all
Hakl’s male characters. If they have ever experienced any passion and love, we know that it is long
gone and the reader only learns about the consequences of these failed relationships.


     In Konec svĕta, we see women as quite flat characters (the only exception perhaps being the
ageing ballet dancer) just appearing and disappearing in the narrator’s life. They have no depth,
no internal thoughts. What is more, they are often depicted in negative terms because most of the
time their image is drawn just at the moment when the relationship is breaking down or shortly
after it has broken down.

     The narrator considers women to be providers of both positive and negative energy; women for
him are the providers of loving warmth and safety, which he longs for (when hiding with them in
bed). Women are for him also disturbers of his privacy and of his male self, which he always
carefully protects (see the relationship with Řípa). As seen by the narrator, women bring pleasure
but often break a man’s heart and drive him to drink. In Konec světa, this happens not only to Jan
Beneš but also to his friends. Láďa goes on a trip to India in order to find peace after his
girlfriend has swapped him for another man (he thinks); Fáfa isolates himself from the outside
world after an East German girl rejects him; a random man, whom the narrator encounters in the pub,
drowns his sorrow in alcohol. He drinks, cries and talks about his wife who has left him (‘Vrah’:
KS).


     For the narrator and his friends, love and the long-term relationship with women always equal
trouble. As the narrator applies only a male perspective, it is specifically the men who are seen
as the ones who suffer. Men think themselves to be the victims of women’s constant criticism, their
ambitions, their youth and their beauty. It is men who feel humiliated and lost, both when in a
relationship and out of it.

     Hakl’s men lack self-confidence in their physicality and flexibility in their actions, and
this, as they believe, makes them fail in the eyes of their partners and in their own eyes. As they
are not able to face their presumed failure, overcome their self-indulgent behaviour or become
happy, they struggle. They look for a way to escape: to pubs, to loneliness and to a different
reality. Jan Beneš escapes from his young partner, Řípa, into the quiet environment of his flat;
Láďa escapes from his unfaithful partner to India; Fáfa escapes to alcohol and the local barflies
escape to the pubs. Or, in other words: Jan Beneš escapes from long term relationships into
short-lived sexual affairs; Láďa chooses ‘safe’ marriage with a village girl; Fáfa goes for
whatever woman crosses the path of his drunken wanderings and the local barflies enjoy looking at
the half-naked dancing bar ladies.


      Contrary to Hakl’s men, the role of the women in the narrative of Konec světa is extremely
shallow. Mostly, they are described as empty bodies with no soul. The narrator gives them only few
opportunities to speak about their own personal feelings. Some of the women do not speak at all;
they are just like passive figures he meets on his journey through life.

     Hakl’s women are not given the opportunity to defend themselves. Whatever is said about them
is fully controlled by men and by the narrator himself. The narrator gives them only as much space
as he needs in order to explain his own behaviour in the matters of love or in anything that is
related to his personality and love. There are women who are only mentioned briefly when the
narrator refers to his present personal situation (his wife, Petruše); some are provided with a
little space to act (Renata, Radka, Izabela), some other women are given the opportunity to act and
speak a little (Řípa, Ela, the ageing ballet dancer). However, none of the women is ever a rounded
character able to stand up to the narrator and his male companions on an equal footing. They come
and leave whilst men stay. We learn much more about men and their views than about women.


     The narrator is a representative of the generation born sometime at the end of 1950s or during
the 1960s. The stories of Konec svĕta take place around thirty or forty years later, at the time
when the narrator approaches middle-age. The women he encounters belong either to his own
generation (Renata, the ageing ballet dancer, perhaps also the two bar ladies), to the generation
born in the 1980s (Řípa, Ela) or somewhere in between the two (Petruše). But the way in which Jan
Beneš approaches them is different. While Renata is described as a person who was able to support
the narrator in the most awkward situations (sending him home in a drunken state after he had
failed to read his literary texts at a public event) and as a person with whom he could talk for
hours about anything, Petruše, Řípa and Ela are women whom he feels he will never be able to
understand. The three latter women are young. They bring youthful energy but also instability into
the narrator’s life and that is why he is not able to cope with them for long. After attempting to
be in a serious relationship with them, he escapes back to his lonely life. Their youthfulness is
too ‘alien’ for him. It requires too much flexibility, too much effort and too much of a compromise
and this he is not able to give.

     The narrator is aware of the danger that women constitute for him and that is why he often
steps back and leaves. But still he cannot resist them, especially their sex appeal. On the one
hand, he is attracted by them and by their physical beauty, always noticing the women’s hair (often
red), their breasts and legs. On the other, he is horrified by them, particularly by the worn-out
bodies of certain women of his age. He is scared of young women, of their yet innocent energy and
of their lack of experience but he admires them. He is frightened of older women’s ageing bodies
but he appreciates their experience and their understanding of the world. No matter how much Jan
Beneš likes women, he does not go from one relationship straight into another one. However, he is
never alone for long. The women are frequent episodes in his life; he enjoys these when they last,
but he also enjoys when the women leave. How much he misses them when they leave we hardly ever
learn for, as we have noted, he does not express this.


     In Konec světa, women feature not only in the role of the narrator’s partners and lovers, they
are also friends, mothers, grandmothers and random passers by. Unlike young and middle-aged women
who become the narrator’s objects of sexual admiration, older women are there to share with him
their stories about what they have experienced throughout their lives. Jan Beneš talks to his dead
grandmother after enjoying the effects of magic mushrooms; another old lady listens to his stories
a minute after he had consumed some drugs with a girl from the neighbourhood. During one of his
travels, he speaks to Mrs Olczak, the widow of a navy captain living in the suburbs of Gdansk; at
another time, he thinks about his mum and the day he went to collect her funeral casket. These
meetings with various older women are rare and often happen only in the narrator’s imagination,
provoked by a momentary situation or a sudden thought. In such moments, the narrator does not act
but simply exists. Whenever he meets an older woman, he feels he does not have to pretend anything
or behave like an adult man; he only is. During that time, he regresses to a small boy, Honcek, who
did something naughty and now he wants to make his confession and ask for forgiveness, or he just
wants to talk about any nonsense that comes into his head.

     The narrator’s experiences with young and middle-aged women always pin him down to his life at
the present time and lead him to doubt his manhood. On the other hand, his conversations with
grannies and his memories of his mother clear his head. Older women represent the wisdom of old
age, experience and death. Young women represent the energetic world of the present time and of the
narrator’s adulthood which is anchored in the carelessness of youth. Jan Beneš stands somewhere in
between. He acts as a middle-aged man reacting grumpily when someone incautiously invades his
privacy. He acts as a wise man when we consider his many thoughts on society and on the world’s
future. He acts as a young man who enjoys everything life brings, women, friends, drink and walks.
Finally, he also acts as a child who dreams about aeroplanes and who allows the older people to
tell him their own personal stories and to give him advice.


     In his work The Little Czech Nation (1996), Ladislav Holý asks a number of Czech respondents
about their views on what is ‘traditional’ about male-female relationships in the Czech society and
in Western culture and, in reaction to this, he concludes:


‘I was told that men are naturally predisposed to be assertive and women to be shy, tender, and
submissive; that men are more guided by reason and rational calculation and women more by their
feelings and intuitions; that men are openly confrontational and women likely to resort to
subterfuge, flattery, and subtle manipulation from behind the scenes; that men are innovative and
willing to experiment and women tend to stick to traditional and time-honoured ways of doing
things; that men are firm in their opinions and intolerant of those of others and women less sure
of their opinions and more prepared to see another’s point of views; that men are egoistic and
authoritarian and women unselfish, loving, and caring. At the same time, it is seen as natural for
women to arouse men sexually and for men to show sexual interest in them. As in other spheres of
life, it is considered natural for men to initiate sexual encounters and for women to show
restraint before submitting to their sexual advances’ (Holý 1996: 175).


     Contradictory to Holý’s findings, in Hakl’s Konec světa, men and women seem to display almost
opposite characteristics to the ones Holý’s respondents suggested. Hakl’s male characters are far
from being assertive and firm in their opinions. It takes them a long time before they make a
decision and try to enforce it on others (see Jan Beneš’s inability to leave his malfunctioning
relationship). They are not really guided by reason and rational calculation, for they often act
without consideration and on an impulse (Láďa’s Indian journey, Beneš’s sexual encounters). They
are not very innovative or willing to experiment. On the contrary, they have great difficulty in
adjusting to what is new and foreign and they often turn away from everything that seems to be
unknown and ‘alien’ to them (like the enthusiasm of youth). They are neither egoistic nor
authoritarian, for they struggle to hold on to their masculine self and anything that means
responsibility and care (marriage, a long-term relationship). Their authority is doubted and it is
never enforced; their ego is more about their escape to loneliness and about their sexual desire
than about anything else. Finally, Hakl’s men do not even initiate sexual encounters as it is
mostly his women who show interest in men first; at least, this is what the narrator wants us to
believe. Hakl’s men are broken individuals with a confused and unstable mind.

     Looking at Hakl’s female characters, we can hardly agree with Holý’s respondents either. Women
described in Hakl’s work are not shy, tender and submissive. On the contrary, his young women are
described as independent human beings acting on their own initiative and are free; his middle-aged
and older women seem to overcome their shyness and they behave openly and in a friendly manner.
Hakl’s female characters do not stick to traditional and time-honoured ways of doing things. They
are innovative. They experiment with people, places and styles; they are the characters of change.
The narrator sees them as loving and caring individuals (Renata) but as selfish and ruthless too
(Řípa, Petruše). Hakl’s women do not show restraint before indulging in sexual activity. They are
the ones who are first to show interest and initiate sexual activity. Some of Hakl’s female
characters are broken individuals with a struggling mind (see the ageing ballet dancer), but others
are self-confident people who follow their own aims regardless of others (Řípa, Petruše).

     What Holý’s respondents describe is their view of traditional behaviour of men and women in
Czech society of the 1990s. By contrast, Hakl’s narrative, published in 2001, constructs an image
of society which seems to have almost diametrically opposed characteristics. The difference between
Holý’s findings and Hakl’s image of Czech men and women may be due to the fact that both works
refer to a different era – Holý’s work refers to the time of the regime change, when people just
started realizing what had happened with their old world but they were still unable to detach
themselves fully from the past, whilst Hakl’s work refers to the decade afterwards, when people had
already had a chance to adapt to some of the aspects of the new pro-capitalist regime and they had
made an active decision to behave selfishly and individualistically rather than to obey the rules,
or they had made an active decision to step back from the new capitalist world and seek a private,
personal space into which they could escape within it. Secondly, the difference between Holý’s
findings and Hakl’s image of Czech society may be caused by the fact that Holý’s work is an
anthropological study based on interviews while Hakl has created a subjective, semi-fictious image
of contemporary Czech society. In Holý’s work, we find a survey of various personal views; Hakl
offers us a subjective perception of a single person. Yet, there is no doubt that the works of both
authors are important parts of the general discourse created by Czech post-communist society: both
the view of the sociologist as well as the perspective of the creative soul are important for our
understanding of the ‘real’ world.






3. The narrating ‘I’ as a part of the System and outside the System


3.1 Life of work

.

     A professional business career and an influential position in the new capitalist society never
meant much to Jan Beneš. But even Beneš could not avoid being involved in new possibilities for
individual enterprise after the fall of communism. Just like many others, Jan Beneš starts looking
for a new job where he would be able to use his professional skills better than in the Prague
Waterworks. He joins an advertising agency. When this does not work out, he opens his own
advertising agency and runs it with a couple of his friends. When even this does not work out, he
finds a job as a journalist. In between these jobs, he experiences short periods of unemployment.

     Jan Beneš’s attitude to work changes all the time. There are periods when he feels obliged to
work and there are periods when he longs to stay at home and do nothing, perhaps just to enjoy
visiting local pubs and watching the world around him. Whilst it seems that he prefers inactivity,
he is aware that, if he wants to function in this world, he must participate in it. Often it is the
lack of money, a pile of unpaid bills, the suddenly unbearable freedom, boredom or a spirit of a
momentary ambition that makes him to look for new employment. But, since the narrator is not used
to being in a regular job, he has many problems coping with it. Frequently, he tries to overcome
his negative attitude towards the official structures and accept the constraints of a regular job.

     As a writer, Jan Beneš usually applies for a job with an advertisement agency and starts to
work as one of its ideas-men. At the same time, however, he despises his job as something that
works against the nature of the human being. In his view, advertising abuses language to create a
new reality in order to manipulate the world instead of making the world more accessible and
comprehensible to all:


‘I listened to Špitz’s babbling, greeted the director and made up all kinds of happy lies which
were not allowed to have anything in common with the real world. (…) The money machine could not be
stopped; although the money was not and could never be ours, the factory of promises had to go on
functioning. We served a beautiful glittering clown of total stylization; a clown with whom it was
necessary to speak using a special sterilised, forced, baby language, otherwise there was a danger
that he would have a fit; he would begin writhing in pain, bumping into furniture, fall to the
floor, vomit gastric juices and bleat: “I don’t understand, I don’t understand…”’

[‘Poslouchal jsem Špitzovo žvanění, zdravil ředitele a vymýšlel všelijaké veselé lži, které nesměly
mít nic společného s tím, jak život opravdu vypadá. (...) Stroj na prachy se nedal zastavit, sice
to nebyly a v životě nemohly být naše prachy, ale slibotechna musela fungovat. Sloužili jsme
nádhernému, lesklému kašparu totální stylizace. Kašparu, na kterého se muselo mluvit zvláštním
šišlavým, šroubovaným, důsledně předistilovaným jazykem, jinak hrozilo, že by mohl dostat psotník,
mohl by se začít svíjet, mlátit sebou o nábytek, padnout na zem, dávit žaludeční šťávy a mečet. „Já
nerozumim, já nerozumim... “’] (KS: 199)


The narrator is using the example of his own working experience in order to express his concerns
about the ‘real’ and, in his view, the ‘pretentious’ functioning of contemporary Czech society
within the official structures of the new, post-communist market economy. Using expressive
language, the narrator voices his confusion which he has been feeling since he accepted a job in
advertising. He raises grave doubts about the true nature of his work (and language) and about the
sincerity of his superiors and his colleagues. He looks at the others and, through them, he sees
himself as someone he cannot recognize any more. He is aware of the fact that, by accepting a job,
he has joined the official structures and adopted a questionable, dehumanizing work ethic, and he
does not like it. He feels he has become a machine-like creature of blind determination, whose only
aim is to survive but not to feel:


‘…a flat, yet a little greasy face with a rough-hewn jaw, a minuscule head thrust between my
shoulders (…) wearing metallic, opalescent armour, silver cosmic ski boots afoot, a shotgun in my
hand, whenever I need it… I am a little assembly kit figure from a children’s chocolate egg.’

[‘...plochý, trochu pravda vymaštěný obličej s hrubě přitesanou čelistí, nicotnou hlavičku vraženou
mezi rameny (...), na sobě kovově opalizující pancíř, na nohou stříbřité kosmické lyžáky, v ruce
podle potřeby brokovnici... skládací figurka z dětského čokoládového vejce.’] (KS: 205)


Earlier, the narrator described himself as a flour-beetle. In connection with his work, he sees
himself as an alien-looking toy or a computerized character. He considers himself as a useless
insect that everyone despises and a creature belonging to the artificial world of PC games. Both
the images which Jan Beneš uses indicate there is something inhuman in the behaviour of his
society. He observes a world that produces machines but not people; a world that brings alienation
and uncertainty to individuals’ lives. It may be the narrator’s awareness of such things that puts
him off any cooperation with the official structures and any relationships with the people who
represent the economic, social and cultural elites of the state and hence the power of the state.
He seems convinced that it is due to them and their insolent and pretentious behaviour that people
lose their grip on reality; that people do not understand anymore what is happening around them and
to them. They either blindly follow what is offered to them, like machines, or they seek to escape
as outsiders. Jan Beneš examines both positions critically.


3.2 The individual facing the System


     This is what Jan Beneš’s thinks about the individual and the power of the System:


‘(…) for sure, the meaning of all this manifests itself undoubtedly somewhere else than where we
think. Somewhere in a place which we cannot see from here; and, if we can, it is as if we were in a
cage hanging on some oily, steel rope a few metres above sea level, in a cage where a man waits for
hours and hours to see whether an angel comes down and lets himself be seen, attracted by buckets
of liquidized fish thrown from a ship by a well-paid crew. It is the same crew which is, at the
very same moment, comfortably watching a Real Madrid football match on TV while you are waiting
down here in suspension, in the middle of a crimson-grey cloud of fish which peacefully descends.
From time to time, a madly spinning fish head flies past. And, when one begins to doubt and slowly
becomes bored with occupying one’s mind with a lot of rubbish ideas, only then the old Grim Reaper
appears and smiles, as long as the angel who has come to announce that the creator is pissed off
knows how to smile and is allowed to do so. He appears, gives him a stony look and leaves. And
then, when you are alone once more, you feel, deep inside, such deep emptiness you have never had a
chance to experience so far.’

[‘(…) smysl toho všeho probíhá dozajista úplně jindy, než jsme zvyklí si představovat. Někudy, kam
odtud není vidět; a když, tak jenom jako z klece, zavěšené pár metrů nad hladinou na zaolejovaném
ocelovém laně, z klece, kde člověk hodiny a hodiny čeká, jestli se mu ukáže anděl, přilákaný kýbly
rozmixovaných ryb, které sem seshora z paluby sypou zřízenci, kteří jsou za to – a ne blbě –
placeni, a při tom se spokojeně koukají na přenosnou televizi, jak to strká Real Madrid... a člověk
čeká tady dole, uprostřed pokojně klesajícího rudošedého mraku, tu a tam kolem proletí bláznivě
roztočená rybí hlava. A když už začne pochybovat a začne se nudit a z dlouhé chvíle si vymýšlet
hovadiny, tak se mu teprve zjeví zubatec a usměje se, pokud se anděl, který přišel zvěstovat, že se
stvořitel nasral, může a umí usmát. Zjeví se, pohlédne na něj dutým okem a zmizí. A teprve potom,
když už je člověk zase sám, ucítí v sobě takovou prázdnotu, jakou do té chvíle nepoznal.’] (KS:
194)


It is the narrator’s criticism of society that is expressed here; the society which has given up
its own significance in order to serve the machinery of an alienated System, blindly and
unquestioningly. In this example, the machine (the System) is represented by a ship; people who
control the ship are the ship’s crew. The man suspended in a cage is fully dependent on both the
ship and the ship’s crew although he never meets them. He lives in a cage which is hanging on a
rope attached to the ship. The cage and the ship are the only reality and also the only certainty
he currently has. His only task is to sit in the cage and await the solution. The ship’s crew
members keep the man under control and in constant awareness of their superior position, but they
ignore him, living their own existence independently of him. Over the years of the seemingly
endless waiting time, the man gets so much used to the reality of his imprisonment that he never
tries to escape, not even after he comes to the end of his waiting. He knows that he has been
degraded and dehumanized but he does not complain, not even after he loses his faith and reveals
the true emptiness of his life. Before, it was a hope for a better future that kept him satisfied
with his condition; later, it is just the tiredness of his ageing self that keeps him going.

     The narrator’s parable is a reflection on the humiliation of the individual by the System and
his or her inability to fight it, a reflection on his or her blind acceptance of what is going on,
on the suppression of his or her individuality in the name of the System, on his or her false hope
for salvation and on the alienation of the self, which are staple concerns discussed throughout the
twentieth century. Franz Kafka’s (1883-1924) dehumanized world, which suppresses all individuals
who submit to it, has similarities to Hakl’s fictional world. Jan Beneš’s caged man may be compared
to Kafka’s Josef K.

     Kafka’s Josef K., the main protagonist of his novel The Trial (1920), is arrested shortly
after he wakes up. Although he does not understand what he has been accused of, he takes his arrest
as a matter of fact that happened but immediately seeks a solution and defence. Similarly, Jan
Beneš’s man also desires a solution to his current situation but his journey is passive. It is
permanent waiting. Beneš never acts.

     The ‘trial’ is Josef K.’s journey in search of recognition of his life. According to Patrick
Bridgwater, The Trial


‘is about that process. Once his conscience has awoken’ [the arrest] ‘Josef K.’s life can never be
the same again. He has been leading senseless, routine existence; this being symbolized in his
supposed profession: he is shown as working in a bank because he is a Bankmensch in the figurative
sense of a routine person’ (Bridgwater 2003: 110).


The trial brings to Josef K’s life a different dimension. It enables him to step out and see things
he has never seen before because he was too enclosed in himself, too selfish, too self-indulgent
and too blind to be aware of the threat coming from the System. And what he sees is a person with
‘no belief, in anything or anyone’, a person who ‘has pride but no self-respect’, who ‘believes in
his own importance’ [within the System], ‘but not in his own significance’ [within his Self] (Ibid.
183-184). Josef K. sees a person who gave up his individuality in order to become a blind servant
of the dehumanized System driven by materialism and power. ‘He is guilty of being who and what he
is, and of acting against his own first subconscious and then conscious judgement of how he should
have been conducting his life’ (Ibid. 112-113). He is guilty because he has forgotten how to live
and for this he is also punished. ‘K. ‘dies’, and dies like a dog because he has lived a dog’s
life’ (Ibid. 201). In Kafka’s imagination, the dog parable may simply be understood as a metaphor
of a person who does not have his own free will and who lives only at mercy of his owner and his or
her decision to keep him or not. The dog has lost his freedom when he decided to obey the man. He
has sacrificed his freedom for the sake of comfort and as such he is treated, as the man’s
companion in life but as a creature which is always dependent on others. If he disobeys, he is
punished and hence lost.[21] It seems that the same also applies to K.

     In the case of Jan Beneš’s man, the trial has the form of a cage. A cage is his journey to
recognition. Only there, if he sits and waits (as Josef K. was waiting), will he be able to learn
about the meaning of his life and about freedom because:


‘…for sure, the meaning of all this manifests itself undoubtedly somewhere else than where we
think. Somewhere in a place which we cannot see from here; and if we can, it is as if we were in a
cage hanging on some oily, steel rope a few metres above sea level, in a cage where a man waits for
hours and hours whether an angel comes down and lets himself be seen…’

[‘… smysl toho všeho probíhá dozajista úplně jindy, než jsme zvyklí si představovat. Někudy, kam
odtud není vidět; a když, tak jenom jako z klece, zavěšené pár metrů nad hladinou na zaolejovaném
ocelovém laně, z klece, kde člověk hodiny a hodiny čeká, jestli se mu ukáže anděl... ’] (KS: 194)


Without a cage, the man will never be able to uncover the truth. And what is the truth? The
emptiness of his life, the idleness of his existence, the lost Self. And what is his guilt? His
blind servitude to the power of the System (the ship). His animal-like obedience to his superiors.
The lack of interest in the needs of his subconscious and distinctive Self. And what is his
punishment? Loneliness, God’s anger and Death’s laughter:


‘And when one begins to doubt and slowly becomes bored occupying one’s mind with a lot of rubbish
ideas, only then the old Grim Reaper appears and smiles, as long as the angel who has come to
announce that the creator is pissed off knows how to smile and is allowed to do so. He appears,
gives him a stony look and leaves. And then, when you are alone once more, you feel, deep inside,
such deep emptiness you have never experienced before.’

[‘A když už začne pochybovat a začne se nudit a z dlouhé chvíle si vymýšlet hovadiny, tak se mu
teprve zjeví zubatec a usměje se, pokud se anděl, který přišel zvěstovat, že se stvořitel nasral,
může a umí usmát. Zjeví se, pohlédne na něj dutým okem a zmizí. A teprve potom, když už je člověk
zase sám, ucítí v sobě takovou prázdnotu, jakou do té chvíle nepoznal.’] (KS: 194)


     It is their conscious decision to accept life within the System that makes both Josef K. and
Jan Beneš’s man guilty. The moment they consciously agree to give up their selves to the System and
stop questioning it, their path to freedom and salvation is lost forever. The moment they lose
their individual’s significance in order to become the servants of the machine, they lose their
future forever. The moment they become selfless animals, they lose their human nature.

     Another similarity[22] between Kafka’s and Hakl’s literary imagination can be found in their
use of the same metaphor of a human body being transformed into a gigantic insect. In the case of
Hakl, it is the character of Jan Beneš who has to deal with such a bodily form when, during one of
his occasional sexual encounters, he accidentally looks in the mirror, and there, instead of a man,
he sees a larva, a flour-beetle, staring at him from the other side of the room, and he is
frightened:


‘I was horrified. I saw a swollen baby, ninety kilos in weight. A larva with a shaven, rapidly
blinking human head attached to it. I saw a bald creature insulting Mother Nature’s honest
intentions.’

[‘Zděsil jsem se. Uviděl jsem napuchlé devadesátikilové nemluvně. Moučného červa s přimontovanou
ostříhanou, rychle mrkající lidskou hlavou. Uviděl jsem jakousi lysou kreaturu, urážející poctivé
záměry matky přírody. ’] (KS: 209)


Beneš’s self-consciousness echoes the transformation of Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Kafka’s
Metamorphosis (1915):


‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into
a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as if it were armour-plated, back and, when he lifted
his head a little, he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff, arched segments on
top of which the quilt could hardly stay in position and was about to slide off completely. His
numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before
his eyes’ (Kafka 1961: 9).


The transformation of both characters is the same but the outcome is different. Jan Beneš is a
beetle only in his mind and only for a moment. To Gregor Samsa, the body of a gigantic insect
becomes the true and the unavoidable reality of his life. Furthermore, the way in which both
characters deal with their new shapes differs. Jan Beneš’s transformation is not fixed and so he
can still turn his head away from the mirror and forget about it in the arms of his lover. However,
Gregor Samsa’s transformation is permanent and this is a completely different situation. The only
thing Gregor can do is to learn how to cope with his new shape.

     Gregor Samsa, Josef K. and Jan Beneš’s caged man can be seen as personified metaphors of the
world which, according to both Kafka and Hakl, creates monsters, objects and emotionless characters
instead of free individuals. In their fictive world, ‘[t]he beast is a product of [people’s] own
blindness, self-centredness and lack of courage, and it springs when [they] realizes that [their]
own life has been rendered sterile by [their] efforts to protect [themselves]’ (Storr 1985: 23).
All three characters represent people who have placed their personal selves freely and
unquestioningly in the service of the dehumanized system for which they are punished for this. They
have all sacrificed their human lives for the sake of the machine and when they realize that it has
been nothing but a delusion, it is far too late to change it.

     The vision of a beetle confronts Hakl’s Jan Beneš at the time of a momentary lull. It occurs
between two of his attempts to enter the structures of the ruling machine. The image of a beetle
appears as a warning of what may happen if he submits fully to the dehumanised power, as Gregor
Samsa has done. Jan Beneš only imagines the transformation to happen. His transformation is not
final because he has not yet abandoned his life outside the system. Nevertheless, the danger is
always present. Only sometimes does the warning manifest itself in the shape of a beetle, sometimes
as a mechanised toy or a computerised character.


     We find a resemblance between Emil Hakl’s fictive world and the world of Franz Kafka. This may
be due to various factors. Franz Kafka’s account of an absurd world appeared at the time of vast
political and social changes in Czech society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kafka’s
literary work was a reaction to the times in turmoil; the time which produced war and general
confusion instead of prosperity, a decline of the traditional Habsburg values instead of their
strengthening and the introduction of new ways of thinking and behaviour. Kafka’s writing reflected
a society disrupted by its failing system, yet corrupted by its own blind contribution to it.[23]
And it was society, though presented by certain individuals, that was arraigned, found guilty and
punished in Kafka’s works – for its ‘slavish submission to the system in which [it was] enmeshed’
(Robertson: Kafka 2009: XXV).

     Kafka’s writing can also be understood as a reflection of the writer’s fears about his own
self struggling between the acceptance of the System and his secret wish but inability to escape
from it. It is existential and critical. It is Kafka himself who can be recognized in the character
of Josef K., in the character of Gregor Samsa and in the gigantic insect he describes. It is
Kafka’s own history that can be traced in his fiction.

     Hakl’s literary work was written almost a hundred years later but it also describes a society
undergoing a rapid change. Hakl’s writing bears witness to people who find themselves trapped,
first in the oppressive communist system and later in the machinery of the capitalist economy (both
of which they have helped to build) and who do not know how to free themselves. It is them and
their obedience to the System which is the cause of their confusion. For it was their conscious
decision to allow the System to take over their lives. Thus, they are being punished – by being
dehumanised – in the same way that Kafka’s characters are punished.

     Just as with Kafka, Hakl’s writing may be also seen as a mirror to the writer’s doubts about
his own existence within the world of the System and about the consequences of being outside it. It
is Hakl himself who can be recognized in the character of Jan Beneš; it is Jan Beneš who can be
traced in the character of the caged man.

     There are similarities between Kafka’s writing and Hakl’s works, but there is also a major
difference between the way and the extent to which both writers apply their criticism. Kafka’s
picture of society is thoroughly sceptical and hopeless. His people are lost from the moment we
meet them and forever. We follow their frustration – they cannot change their predicament. Just
like Kafka, Hakl expresses criticism of people’s subservience to the System, yet he gives his
characters hope. His people still have a chance to avoid the complete destruction of their selves,
but only if they recognize what is happening to them and if they recognize it in time. Jan Beneš
seems to be one of them.





3.3 The ‘Quake’ and the ‘Cthulhu’


     In another example, it is again Jan Beneš who is the centre of Hakl’s thoughts and again it is
him who speaks about his doubts concerning humans and their position within the world of today.
Only this time, he does not approach this world with ‘Kafka’s eyes’ but instead, he looks at it
from the perspective of someone who has been living in virtual reality of PC games and myths and
who is conscious of their hidden powers:


‘I was blundering around the labyrinth of a computer game. I was totally absorbed in it. (…) At the
beginning, it was quite a common thing that I had to get up quickly and go and throw up. Although
gradually, I got used to playing. I was becoming a part of a reality behind the looking glass. That
game was called Quake. After several months of wearisome time sitting in the chair, I finally
reached a rock cathedral with its ceiling disappearing somewhere in eternity. And there, in the
middle of the spluttering pool of lava, a living thing was waiting, waving at me with a bunch of
rotten tentacles. It wanted to teach me about the futility of all sensible effort and also about
desire and its victory over mere mechanical existence, no matter what desire and what existence.
His name was Shub-Niggurath…(…) In those days I had a new body. (…) It looked like a little
assembly-kit figure from a children’s chocolate egg (…) I managed to survive there for a year
exactly. Then I typed out my letter of resignation on a Macintosh computer and left.’

[‘Tápal jsem v labyrintu počítačové hry. Byl jsem tím cele zaujat. (…) Ze začátku se běžně stávalo,
že jsem tu a tam musel vstát a jít se rychle vyblít. Postupně jsem si ale zvykal. Stával jsem se
součástí reality za zrcadlem. Jméno te hry bylo Quake. Nakonec jsem, po několika měsících na židli
protrmáceného času, dospěl až do skalního dómu, jehož strop se ztrácel kdesi ve věčnosti. A tam,
uprostřed prskajícího lávového jezírka, na mě čekal něčemu živému podobný tvor, mávající pugétem
hnijících chapadel, aby mě poučil o zbytečnosti každého rozumného snažení a zároveň i o vítězství
touhy nad pouhým mechanickým bytím, ať už je ta touha a to bytí jakékoliv. Jeho jméno bylo
Shub-Niggurath...(...) Měl jsem v té době nový tělo.(...) Vypadal jsem jako skládací figurka
z dětského čokoládového vejce. (...) Vydržel jsem to přesně rok. Potom jsem napsal na počítači
značky Macintosh výpověď.’] (KS: 205)


     Beneš begins working at an advertising agency again, after a period of unemployment. However,
as he becomes integrated into the system, he starts getting warning signs in his mind. Suddenly, he
imagines himself to be a player in a new ‘computer game’ and quickly he ‘gets used to playing’. He
adapts to the new environment and soon follows all the rules of the game. It is not until about a
year later that he breaks down and realizes he cannot go on. He starts drinking and he has visions
of himself being transformed into an inhuman form. He thinks his life has become a labyrinth of
various corridors through which he has to pass in order to set himself free. He is given the
chance. Since he is never fully committed, he has been given the ability to recognize when to move
away and this he does.

     In Beneš’s view, the world within the System is a world of intellect, order, structure and an
exhaustive effort to protect them. The world outside the System is a world of emotions, but also a
world of personal confusion and chaos. The journey, which leads from one of these worlds to the
other, goes through a labyrinth, or the ‘Quake’. In the narrator’s playful mind, the gate dividing
the System and the outside world is guarded by Shub-Niggurath. We know that Shub Niggurath is an
entity of an ambiguous character which comes from two different worlds - from the world of a PC
game called the ‘Quake’ and from the mythical world of ‘Cthulhu’. In the description of the
‘Quake’, Shub Niggurath is:


‘the absolute ruler of the demons and monsters. (…) She has spawned an army to invade the Earth
using the humans’ own portal technology. (…) [She] spawns hundreds of demons but has no attacks of
her own, relying purely on the power of her children. (…) None of the players’ weapons can hurt
Shub-Niggurath, making her practically invulnerable’ (http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Shub-Niggurath).


In other words, Shub Niggurath is the embodiment of the ‘imposing’ system, the absolute ruler of
the alienated inhuman world. She is the ‘imposing’ ideology and the ‘imposing’ power that uses
those who respond to her will to destroy the others, those who are still free (human). She uses the
humans’ weapons to fight humans. The second image of Shub-Niggurath is an image of the ‘Cthulhu’
goddess, a deity belonging to the realm first mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft’s (1890-1937) The Last
Test (1928). According to this myth, Shub-Niggurath is a goddess of life who rules over sexuality
and all possible forms of pleasure and creation. Her power is in the bohemian lifestyle. Phrases
that characterize her best are ‘women, wine and music or sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ or ‘life is
not to be lived but enjoyed.’ ‘[She] responds to the principle of emotions, she is the antinomy of
intellect’ which is represented by her partner, Nyarlathotep’
(http://acetda.blog.cz/1007/shub-niggurath-a-nyarlathotep).

     Shub Niggurath, who is waiting for the narrator at the end of his path which goes to the
centre of the labyrinth, is a creature of two powers. The first power is employed to teach the
narrator ‘about the pettiness of any sensible effort.’ Here, Shub Niggurath is a ‘Quake’ being. She
embodies the System and the inevitable destiny of each human being who gives up his or her life in
order to serve the will of the System. But Shub Niggurath is also a guardian who wants to teach the
narrator ‘about desire and its victory over the mechanic existence of the self.’ Here, she is
‘Cthulhu’, a goddess of life, of enjoyment (‘sex, drugs and alcohol’), of emotions and chaos. Shub
Niggurath is both. She has two faces. She is Jan Beneš and the never-ending controversy of an
unstable life.

     As we consider Shub Niggurath to be one of the narrator’s solipsistic visions of his self, we
may consider both the world of the ‘Quake’ and the world of the ‘Cthulhu’ to be his perception of
reality that surrounds him. He sees the world as a game (of successes and failures) and as a place
where two powers of supernatural character clash – one of reason and one of the heart. The narrator
copes with both dimensions of the game in his own way, although he often struggles to find a way
through them and around them.


3.4 A ‘latent deserter’


     It is the combination of fear and personal distaste towards any form of officialdom (the
System) that drives Jan Beneš away from the establishment and makes him concentrate on what he
considers to be a ‘more real’, and therefore ‘human’, on identity of the individual and on the
freedom of the self. Whenever he reaches the point where he is exhausted from all the effort to be
a successful man in the ‘prosperous’ world, he quits all his jobs and becomes a ‘domestic animal’,
hiding away in his flat, his burrow, going out just to get the daily products essential for his
survival or to drink with his friends who lead their lives on the margins of society:


‘…I did not want to go back into dungarees, I had already tried that, and neither did I want to
wear ties; I had tried that as well. I just wanted to walk on cobblestones, every morning to the
newsagent’s round the corner, to buy fags and the newspaper and then simply go straight home again.
And so I did.’

[‘...Do montérek se mi nechtělo, to už jsem zkusil, a nechtělo se mi ani do kravaty; to už jsem měl
taky za sebou. Chtělo se mi jen každé ráno jít po kočičích hlavách za roh do trafiky, koupit cigára
a noviny a jít zase pěkně rovnou domů. A tak jsem to tak dělal.’] (KS: 225)


     The narrator presents himself as a person who does not care much about his   career and about
a successful position within the world of profits. He tries various things but he never succeeds.
He does not succeed because he does not want to (as in the example) or because he cannot:


‘I could not think of anything at all I could support myself by. (…) Perhaps I did not know the
right tricks; actually I did not know any tricks at all. I only knew what every idiot did: to find
a job and then do it.’

[‘Ani náhodou jsem neuměl vymyslet, z čeho budu živ. Asi jsem neznal ty správné triky; neznal jsem
vlastně vůbec žádné triky. Uměl jsem jenom to, co každý vůl: najít si práci a tu pak dělat.’] (KS:
240)


     There are two sides to the narrator’s personality: the one, described above, which tends
towards his wish to lead a simple life with no stress, with no external pressure and with no
worries about his place in its ‘voracious machinery’ of production and consumption. This part of
his personality always takes him back to his internal self. The individualised stance in his case
equals a conscious escape from society into his own privacy, to his home burrow and to the
seclusion of his own mind. The narrator in no way strives to assert himself in society as a strong
personality to be known and admired by others. Occasionally though, Jan Beneš feels compelled by
the changing times and by people’s expectations to leave his lair and venture out into the outside
world. In those moments, he tries to pull himself together, plucks up his spirits and goes to find
a job. But the enthusiasm he brings to the new work quickly burns out. Disillusioned, Jan Beneš
quits and quickly turns back again to his own lonely world, to idleness and presumed comfort and
safety. The resumption of his solitary life has cleansing effects but only until he is again driven
by renewed inner or outer pressure to work, earn money, socialize, become successful, find a
partner, and make love.

     For Jan Beneš, life seems to be like a never-ending cycle. He repeatedly leaves his solitary
lair to interact with the outside world and then again returns to being on his own. He is
repeatedly within himself then out in the world; in the centre of mainstream society or out of it,
with his marginalised friends. It is the narrator’s lack of stability which makes him struggle with
his own personality, with people and with work; with the past and the present times. It is the
narrator’s desire for stability that brings him back to interactive life.

     Jan Beneš is a confused personality who struggles between how he views his individuality
within contemporary society and outside it. He is trapped in his own inability to decide whether to
belong to mainstream society, whether to work, socialize and discuss common things, or whether to
search for his own perceived true identity. Being immobilized in this cycle for the whole of his
life, he finally resigns himself to the fact that he cannot escape from these two extremes and so
submits with some sort of clarity and level of self-expectance that he is who he is:


‘All over the world, a war of the practical majority of people against the dysfunctional minority
is being fought night and day… I realized that, no matter which side I take in the future, I will
always be a latent deserter…’

[‘Ve dne v noci po celém světě probíhala válka praktické většiny proti nepraktické menšině...
Uvědomil jsem si, že budu vždycky, ať už se v budoucnu octnu na kterékoliv straně, vždycky budu
latentní dezertér.’] (KS: 148)


     The narrator’s inability to decide whether he wants to be one or the other is the result of
his own internal doubts. His doubts are the result of his observation of the real; his observations
of the real are his reflections of the world which he sees in a constant fight between the
‘practical majority’ and the ‘dysfunctional minority’ of humans. The narrator’s nature and his
lifestyle turn out to be more sympathetic towards the latter group. Yet their ‘dysfunctionality’,
which often represents them, scares him, and that is the reason why he often returns to the
‘practical’ and the ‘majority’. However, being part of the ‘majority’ does not give him enough
freedom to move and so he ends up again in the sidelines with the minority.

     The narrator’s recognition of himself as being a ‘latent deserter’ is a form of escape from
the reality he sees around him. It is either an escape into his thoughts and into the comfort of
life without any expectations or, on the contrary, an escape into mainstream society and into the
functioning world. Both directions can bring him certain satisfaction if he is willing to accept
them, and both can bring him fear, insecurity and chaos if he starts to question them.


     As we have noticed, the narrator is a thinking individual who does not seem able to adapt
permanently to either side. He will always question the reliability of the world which enables the
‘practical majority’ to create the rules and use them to rule over the others. That is where his
images of the dehumanized virtual reality of computer games, alien-looking toys made of plastic and
steel and visions of the ‘steel city’ come from. He also questions the so called ‘freedom’ of the
‘dysfunctional minority’ and critically observes their chaotic and lost selves. That is where his
fear of individual responsibility over one’s life comes from. This is where his silence with regard
to his failed marriage and lost family life originates.

     From the above mentioned perspective, life according to Jan Beneš does not seem very
optimistic. Beneš claims that a man is either a part of a machine within the System or a
dysfunctional individuality outside the System, wandering in chaos and oblivion.








4. ‘To see, to feel and to re-tell’: places and their narratives


4.1 ‘Seeing’: advertising, information and others


     Jan Beneš’s awareness of the unbreakable cycle of his life and his acknowledgment that he is
an ‘eternal escapee’ increases his need for a rich internal world. He often closes himself off in a
bubble of his own solitude where he plays with all the impulses his mind produces in response to
outer reality. In those moments, he forgets about all the responsibilities he has in his life and
just quietly observes what is happening in front of his eyes and comments on it. He carefully notes
everything around him and then ‘digests’ it. The stories of the people he encounters, the places
where he grew up and which he shares, his dreams, films and TV programmes fill his life and give
him enough entertainment and pleasure in order to survive in this chaotic world. Nothing is more
important for him than the stories life provides. Everything is, according to Beneš, only a mask
which people put on pursuing the idea of a ‘better’ world but are rarely successful in creating it.

    Jan Beneš looks for any excuse to defend his personal attitude. He does not show any desire to
become a well-paid, working, married man who has achieved his goals and has set out his aims; his
ambition is to live and, throughout this ‘living’, to see, to feel and to re-tell. That seems to be
the sum total of his wishes, his purpose for living and also his personal excuse for all he has
been doing so far.

     ‘To see, to feel and to re-tell’ are the three verbs that follow the narrator everywhere he
goes. When he chooses to find work within official structures, he applies for jobs in advertising
agencies or in magazines and then these three verbs become his source of subsistence. This is what
both Emil Hakl and the character of Jan Beneš have in common (see the Introduction). Both use words
to turn their inner, subjective world into the outside world. Apart from working in a job, they
also both attempt to write in order to capture the sense of all they can see.

     Advertising and work in the media are the professions in which ‘words’ and images are the
means of information and misinformation about society and about the world:


‘Very little of what we think we know of the social realities of the world have we found out
first-hand. Most of ‘the pictures in our heads’ we have gained from these media – even to the point
where we often do not really believe what we see before us until we read about it in the paper of
hear about it on the radio. The media not only give us information; they guide our very
experiences. (…) [T]he media tell the man in the mass who he is – they give him identity; they tell
him what he wants to be – they give him aspirations; they tell him how to get that way – they give
him technique; and they tell him how to feel that he is that way even when he is not – they give
him escape. (…) They are an important cause of the destruction of privacy in its full human
meaning’ (Mills 1995: 87-88).


The narrator is aware of all these powers the media have and this makes him interested but worried.
As he is not an ambitious person, he does not seek to use the media and the words as a means of
getting into the highest echelons of society. He is neither a politician nor a philosopher and he
does not wish to become one. On the contrary, the fact that he is employed either in advertising or
in journalism, and therefore as a person whose task is to create sentences, slogans and texts in
order to manipulate people to embrace the new consumerism, to instil within them a false desire to
own or know more than the others, makes him feel terrified and inactive:


‘I wrote advertising copy. Later, whenever I walked the streets and was confronted without a
warning by one of those silly texts I had created, I was always rattled. Whenever those big black
letters yelled at me from the side of a house or a billboard or jumped out of the page of a
magazine at me, I was always truly scared. I do not know why. I was never able to shake off this
feeling.’

[‘Psal jsem reklamní texty. Vždycky když jsem pak někde na ulici bez varování natrefil na jedno
z těch pitomostí, které jsem vymýšlel, ve mně hrklo. Pokaždé, když na mě zařvala ta velká černá
písmena ze zdi baráku nebo z plakátovací plochy nebo ze stránky časopisu, jsem se upřímně leknul.
Nevím proč. Nikdy jsem se toho nedokázal zbavit.’] (KS: 197)


The advertising world and work for the media becomes a major source of income but also a nightmare
for Jan Beneš. As he says, he is ‘always rattled’ when being ‘confronted by one of those silly
texts’ he has created, although he admits that he does not know why he feels like this. The answer
may lie in another section of the text in which the narrator remembers himself walking home with an
urn containing his mother’s ashes placed in a plastic bag decorated with a slogan advertising:
GORBATSCHOW WODKA, CLEAR WODKA SPIRIT [GORBATSCHOW WODKA, ČISTÝ DUCH VODKY.] (KS: 194) It is the
same sign which he finds above the bar in a brothel he visits with his younger colleagues from
Libeň Waterworks. The awkwardness of the situation which transforms the serious into the ridiculous
and enjoyment into apathy may be exactly what the narrator has in mind when he talks about a
‘spirit’. ‘Gorbatschow wodka’ is not only a product to him (a product that makes people drunk and
oblivious) but a series of words referring not just to alcohol but also to the Soviet era[24]. It
is a slogan (‘come and get me!’). It is a metaphor for him, a ‘spirit’ from a world that, in his
view, has not yet managed to digest the past (the traumas of the communist era, the fact that the
narrator’s mother has died, that the narrator youth is gone) and already has to fight with the new
(capitalism, consumerism, loneliness and ageing). The urn in a polythene bag with the sign
‘Gorbatschow wodka’ is a sad paradox of the narrator’s life; it is an ironic picture of what he
sees as a reality of this world.

     There are other reflections that arise in connection with the narrator’s scepticism. For
example, why is it that the narrator is shocked when he sees his own ‘big black letters’ shouting
at him from various billboards or magazines? Does he feel ashamed for being a part of the state’s
official policy that plays on people’s emotions and uses their weakest points to fulfil the
country’s market-orientated targets? Does the existence of slogans on billboards remind him of the
past when similar signs were created to celebrate the ‘greatness’ of the united communist nation
and to suppress the identity of individual human beings? Is it both the present and the past that,
in their joint effort to suppress one thing in the name of power, make the narrator shiver?

     Advertising, banners and slogans have always been instruments of propaganda and propaganda has
always been the instrument to promote the idea of a country’s political and economic strength.
‘Propaganda is the broadest sense is the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation
of representations.’ (Lasswell 1995: 13) Every system uses the power of propaganda to rule people’s
lives. It attacks their choice of lifestyle, their political views and their personal philosophy.
Propaganda seeks the destruction of all that arises from the individual human being and what is
associated with freedom; it wants nothing else but absolute obedience to its principles. In
Lippmann’s view,


‘[t]he private citizen today has come to feel rather like a deaf spectator in the back row who
ought to keep his mind on the mystery off there [on the stage], but cannot quite manage to keep
awake. He knows he is somehow affected by what is going on. Rules and regulations continually,
taxes annually and wars occasionally remind him that he is being swept along by great drifts of
circumstances. (…) He lives in a world he cannot see, does not understand and is unable to direct.’

(Lippmann 1995: 47)

There are various sources of propaganda. Some are in politics, others are in business. The narrator
of Konec světa is exercised by the pernicious influence of advertising because advertising is a
source of his income and also the source of his fears and hatred. It is his way to success (he sees
his own slogans on buildings) but also a source of his demoralisation and he does not enjoy either
of these, at least not for long.

     Advertising is not the only thing that bothers Jan Beneš in his account of the present world
and his position in it. Apart from advertising, there is suddenly an information overload. There is
a sudden influx of Western travellers (‘amusing buggers, demons, lonely beasts and melancholic
freaks’ [‘zábavné bestie, démoni, samotářské šelmy a smutní podivíni’] and later ‘pretentious
yuppies’ [‘vtipní, dobře oháknutí vrabci.’]) (KS: 144-145). There are suddenly foreign words,
foreign languages and foreign cultures. The borders have opened. American programmes flood TV
channels and cinemas, Western technologies are omnipresent. Accordingly, everything becomes
ambiguous for Jan Beneš. Advertising and journalism provide him with enough money to live on but he
despises these professions. ‘The world around [is] drowning in ceaseless conversation.’ [‘Svět
kolem nás se zalykal nepřetržitými rozhovory.’] (KS: 5) This is the impression that overwhelms Jan
Beneš walking through Prague. He finds these conversations ‘useless’. Foreigners coming to the
country enliven the narrator’s life, yet he is glad when they leave: ‘A new, kind, familiar and
empty world opened up in front of me.’ [‘Otevřel se přede mnou nový, vlídný, důvěrně prázdný
svět.’] (KS: 18) Foreign languages and cultures appeal to him as long as he is able just to observe
them, yet he feels lost when he stays among foreigners. In order to make their world more familiar
to him, he (or more precisely, the writer acting behind the narrator) transcribes English words by
means of Czech phonetics (Czech people – ‘ček pípl’; Joseph – ‘Džouzef‘; where are you from –
‘verárjůfrom‘). Freedom to travel gives the characters of Konec světa the opportunity to move out
of the Czech Republic and to learn about the world, and so they go and travel (Láďa travels to
India, Řípa to France, Renata to London). But again, the narrator’s attitude to travelling is
different:


‘Really, there is no need anymore to travel across the continents and photograph waterfalls and
pyramids. That used to be. Basically, the current world is without mystery because the population
of the planet is now all the same. For a long time, they were trying to become the same and now
they have succeeded. Nowadays, those who have courage and good nerves, those who long for real
adventure, stay at home. They sit, look around and listen.’

[‘Opravdu, už není třeba se štvát po světadílech a fotit vodopády a pyramidy. To bývalo. Svět je
v podstatě už bez tajemství, protože obyvatelstvo planety se od sebe přestalo lišit. Tak dlouho se
o to snažili, až se jim to podařilo. Dneska ten, kdo má odvahu a dobré nervy, kdo touží po
opravdovém dobrodružství, sedí doma. Sedí, dívá se a poslouchá.’] (KS: 226)


The narrator does not believe that travelling opens minds. He accepts it as an experience of
considerable significance (a trip to India helped his friend Láďa to overcome his personal problems
with a relationship) but not as something that would bring something overtly new. His characters
travel but they come back to the Czech Republic, their own country. He himself befriends foreigners
but he always returns to his Czech friends and to Czech society. He observes the ‘new’ with a
considerable concern but, as he himself becomes part of it, he realizes that the ‘new’ is
practically equal to the ‘old’ and the ‘different’ is practically the ‘same’. He does not reject
the mores of the new capitalist society, but he is not enthusiastic about it either. He feels the
same about Central and Eastern Europe, criticizing it as well as praising it. According to him,
Central and Eastern Europe is:


‘...a ‘biedermeier’ guest room; a room with a nice cup of coffee on an embroidered tablecloth, and
a semolina cake on the table... Twenty, thirty years this lasted and nothing happened but, in the
end, the doorbell rang, all the moths flew up, the chambermaid stiffly walked to the door, opened
it wide and, her jaw clattering idly, gabbled with a hollow voice: “We… have… been… expecting… you…
come… in…”’

[‘...ten biedermeirový pokoj pro hosty, pokoj s kafíčkem na háčkovaném ubruse, s bábovkou na
stole... Dvacet, třicet let to trvá a nic se neděje, ale nakonec se přeci jen ozve zvonek, moli
vzlétnou, pokojská toporně kráčí ke dveřím, otvírá dokořán a sanice jí naprázdno klapne, když dutým
hlasem odříkává: „Už... na... vás... čekáme... pojďte... dál...“’] (KS: 24)


The grotesqueness of this image only underlines the narrator’s irony when assessing the country’s
integration into Western Europe, which people surmised would be positive but, unfortunately, that
is not what has really happened. In his view, Western influence has brought into people’s lives an
excess of information and multiple options but also chaos. ‘These were bright and erratic times’
[‘byly to pestré, proměnlivé časy’] (KS: 20) full of ‘the buzzing vapour of talk’ [‘bzučivý opar
řeči‘] (KS: 5) and yet they did not bring anything better and new. Significantly, also the
paragraph which closes the whole narrative of Konec světa summarizes what has already been said
above:


‘But you, rat, you have to understand this. You just can’t do what you feel like! This is Central
Europe!’

[‘Jenomže tady, hajzlíku, není holubník! Tady je střední Evropa!’] (KS: 246)


4.2 ‘Feeling’: the city of Prague


     The narrator’s passion for ‘seeing’ and ‘feeling’ is also centred on Prague, because it is
exactly Prague that stands for the genius loci of Konec světa and of the vast majority of Hakl’s
works. It is the place that determines Jan Beneš’s life as


‘[t]he nature of a place is usually associated with the nature of a person who dwells there or who
moves around there. To a great extent, a place determines a person and a person determines a
place.’

[‘Povaha místa bývá spjata s typem postavy, která se v něm zdržuje, nebo se jím pohybuje, místo do
značné míry determinuje postavu a postava místo.’]

(Hodrová 1997: 18)


In Prague, Jan Beneš’s steps lead across the boroughs of Žižkov, Bubeneč, Letná, Libeň and Smíchov;
they pass through the streets of Na Záhonech, Mostecká, Pernerova and through the parks of
Stromovka and Letná; they stop in local restaurants and pubs like Šlechtovka, U Modré hvězdy, U
Pšenice, U Sládečků in order to listen to the narrator’s stories and stories of other people whom
he meets over a pint of beer. In Konec světa, we learn hardly anything about the historical
testimony of old-town squares, gothic cathedrals and renaissance palaces. Jan Beneš’s Prague is not
a city that hides magical labyrinths, magical places and secret messages about other civilizations,
as it does in books by Michal Ajvaz (b. 1949). Neither is it a place of mystique, as it is in the
literary fiction by Miloš Urban (b. 1967). It is not even a culture depository of the Czech nation,
a place of bustling businesses, shopping zones, blooming parks and attractions for tourists. It is
his home and the reality of his daily life.

     Jan Beneš does not embrace the Prague Castle or St Vitus Cathedral but the tower of the
television transmitter which:


‘[i]lluminated by the sun (…) stood ankle-deep in the paddling pool of houses, as though it was a
feature from a book by Jules Verne. As if Verne’s Steel City began to rise from there, from
somewhere in the mists above the Žižkov hillside.’

[‘Světlem zalitá věž televizního vysílače stála po kotníky v brouzdališti domů jako atribut z
verneovky. Jako by tam někde v té mlze nad stráněmi Žižkova už začínalo Ocelové město.’]  (KS: 5)


His walks do not lead across the well-known Charles Bridge or along the banks of the river Vltava,
but along one of the built-up sites of Prague’s Botič stream:


‘Taking a narrow path, I slowly approached the banks of the Botič stream. I entered a stinking rat
jungle full of scum, mud and waste. Skeletons of dumped buggies and ironing boards were waiting for
me in the gloom.’

[‘Po úzké pěšince jsem pomalu došel k Botiči a vstoupil do smrduté krysí džungle, plné pěny, kalu a
odpadků. Kostry vyhozených kočárků a žehlicích prken číhaly v přítmí.’] (KS: 37)


In his view, the evening sky above Smíchov borough is covered up with ‘shining sheet-metal clouds’
[‘zářící plechové mraky’] (KS: 177). The autumn in Letná borough has a ‘taste of iron and
aluminium’ [‘železná a hliníková chuť’] (KS: 243). With the coming darkness, ‘blackened fingers of
the Vyšehrad church point[s] up to the sky’ [‘ukazovaly do nebe zčernalé prsty Vyšehradu’] (KS:
177) and the Castle ‘is reminiscent of a cracked distillation apparatus, abandoned in a corner of a
dusty closet’ [‘vypadal jako prasklý destilační přístroj, odložený v koutě zaprášeného kabinetu’]
(KS: 91). At the end of the summer, ‘the points of the spires of the Emauzy monastery [rip] the
dense sky above the river embankment as if they were a dragon’s teeth’ [‘špičky Emauz páraly
neproniknutelnou oblohu nad nábřežím jako hadí zuby’] (KS: 48). The restaurant U Modré hvězdy is
located ‘behind the Radlice footbridge, on the bank of a railway landscape full of signal lights,
switch tongues, wires, dead cats and shining rail tracks’ [‘za radlickou lávkou, na břehu
železniční krajiny plné signálních světel, výhybek, drátů, chcíplých koček a zářících kolejí’] (KS:
169). ‘[T]he ball of the Libeň gas-holder’ [‘koule libeňského plynojemu’] represents an ‘optimistic
replica of the Globe’ [‘optimistickou kopii zeměkoule’] (KS: 184). From the train going from Libeň
railway station to Prague Central Station, one can see ‘the tiny, childlike borough of Libeň’
[‘drobounká dětská Libeň’] and then also ‘a factory chimney’ [‘tovární komín’], ‘house for the
invalids’ [‘Invalidovnu’], ‘[t]he courtyard full of scrap trucks and buses, a crane called “the
cat”’ [‘dvůr plný vyřazených náklaďáků a autobusů, jeřáb, zvaný “kočka”’], ‘boarded house
galleries’ [‘oprýskanými palubkami obložené pavlače’] and ‘laundry, hanging on rotting
clothes-lines’ [‘prádlo na puchřících šňůrách’] (KS: 135). And the beer-garden restaurant
Šlechtovka is located on the ground ‘bearded with grass and nettles’ [‘travou a hluchavkami
zarostlý’]; in the place ‘adjacent to the ruins of a small manor house from one side, to a hollow
brick wall from the second side and to a dead fence from the third side’ [‘obklopený z jedné strany
ruinou zámečku, z druhé vykotlanou cihlovou zdí a ze třetí prkenným plotem’] (KS:  85).

     Jan Beneš looks up in order to see heavy clouds and steel constructions; he looks ahead in
order to see ‘ordinary’ streets with ‘ordinary’ people standing by and ‘ordinary’ pubs filled with
‘(extra)ordinary’ people’s lives. In his city, there is no emphasis on the historical background of
the place. On the contrary, what we find in the centre of the narrator’s attention is a
contemporary image of Prague and his momentary impression of it – it is the image of the night as
it reminds him of the world of dark, fantasy fiction. It is industrial as it evokes Verne’s idea of
the ‘Steel City’. It is shabby and colourless as the narrator reflects upon the concrete
architecture of recent times and what has remained of it. His Prague is either dark and grey, or
metallic yellow and silver as it gleams in the sunlight or in the light of the local street lamps.
His Prague does not have many colours. It is rather ‘ordinary’ and raw, but sometimes it also
shines. It is full of contradictions and also full of individual stories and small surprises –
within its sites and its residents. It is vibrant, yet dull too.


     Jan Beneš’s attitude to Prague and to life within is ambiguous, in terms of colours and
especially in his feelings towards the place. In Prague, he feels alienated and at home at the same
time. There, he experiences fear and hostility when he observes how the atmosphere in the city has
changed with the arrival of the market economy and Western influences. He feels a sincere affection
for the place which has always been his home:


‘I am going home by subway. In my carriage, couples who do not have any words to exchange anymore
stare at the same spot ahead. There are two happy-looking schoolgirls giggling over the magazine
‘Girlie’. A lady with a wrinkled face which is covered by a coat of face-powder is on her way to
the theatre, her fur-coat on. The regime has returned the family house to her, her son lives in
Canada, her daughter is married to a Czech living in Switzerland and her husband has a prostate the
size of a cucumber. Nearby, a monk dressed in a frock displays his noble profile (…).  At the door,
a family hangs about. They seem to be discussing something serious in the language of tourists.
(…) but, you can’t do just what you like here! This is Central Europe!’

[‘Vracím se metrem domů. Ve vagónu zírají rovně před sebe dvojice, které si už všechno řekly. Pár
školaček se šťastně dusí nad časopisem Dívka. Dáma se zapudrovanými vráskami směřuje do divadla, na
sobě kožich, vrátili barák, syn v Kanadě, dcera za Čechošvýcara, muž prostatu jako okurku. Opodál
vystavuje ušlechtilý profil mnich v kutně (...). U dveří postává rodinka. Vážně před sebou
rozmlouvají turistickým jazykem. (...) Jenomže tady, hajzlíku, není holubník! Tady je střední
Evropa!’] (KS: 245-246)


But the way he and some of his friends often describe this place is marked with scepticism and
disgust:


‘Somehow, all seemed to be colourless, as if it was blacked by smoke. Yet, it was so familiar. (…)
[C]rushed polystyrene cups. Ice-lolly wooden-stick leftovers. Matches. Cups. Empty water bottles.’

[‘Všechno to bylo jaksi bezbarvé, jakoby vyuzené, a přesto tak známé (...) zmačkané polystyrénové
pohárky. Dřívka od nanuků. Sirky. Kelímky. Flašky od Dobré vody.’] (KS: 135).


     It is again the confusion of the unknown and of the new (unexpected) that makes the narrator
doubt all he sees in Prague and around it; it is the familiarity of the well-known and the
remembered (recognized) that makes him reconciled to the city. Both the opposite feelings generate
his story, as well as the city of Prague – a theatre mundi of his perceptive self – interesting and
alive.


     Hakl’s way of seeing Prague and life within is not exceptional or unique. Similar images of
Prague may be found in the literary fiction of other contemporary writers. Václav Kahuda’s (b.
1965) story, Technologie dubnového večera (The Technology of an April Evening, 2000), follows two
main characters into a ‘coal-dusk’ [‘uhelné šero’] that is ‘sprawling across the city’ [‘vznášelo
nad městem’], into the park, Stromovka, which is ‘a dark district in the silence and lanterns gloom
there’ [‘tmavý okres ticha a lucerny tam svítí v křovinách’] and where ‘a small light is burning in
the kiosk at the Šlechtovka restaurant’ [‘v kiosku u Šlechtovy restaurace plane světýlko’]. On the
way to the pub, both characters observe ‘the walls of Bohnice housing estate glowing from behind
the river’ [‘za řekou, v dálce, svítily stěny bohnického sídliště’]; they see the chimney of the
Holešovice power station, ‘the defoliated brick gate’ [‘opadaná cihlová brána’] and ‘the slated
roofs of the Cathedral’ [‘břidlicové střechy katedrály’] which ‘arises from the tree overgrowth
located behind the Letná ground’ [‘za Letenskou plání se vynořuje nad hladinou stromů’] (Kahuda
2000: 9-10). All these impressions come from a single text which Kahuda dated Prague, June 1998.
This is a story about Jan Beneš (Hakl’s real name) and Petr Kratochvil (Kahuda’s real name),
specifically about one of their common talks these characters share together on their way through
Prague. In Jáchym Topol’s (b. 1962) books – Sestra (City Silver Sister, 1994) and Anděl (Angel,
1995) - the image of contemporary Prague is similar; perhaps more negative and extreme in the
description of certain places and colours that determine them (blood coloured clouds, a pot hole in
the middle of the Anděl crossroads, the smell of urine when passing a synagogue, the metal
roller-shutters, hospitals, McDonalds, dodgy pubs, slot-machines, gypsies and junkies in Anděl).

     In Hakl’s, Kahuda’s and Topol’s fiction we see a realistic but multi-dimensional picture of
life in Prague. The Prague buildings, its quarters, streets, pubs, notices and shops create the
scenery for people’s actions here, and people bring life into the these walls, giving them enough
attention and space so that they become also the active participants of the present world. In the
works of all three writers, the city is something one can really see (images), hear (voices, TV,
radio), feel (atmosphere) and touch (things). It is a city of ‘real’ things - if we consider the
‘real’ to represent the ‘authentic’ rather than the imagined (with the exception of the narrator’s
anticipated visions on the decline of Czech society).


     The attention to the city and an interest in ordinary things that inhabit the city has been a
key characteristic of various literary groups since the introduction of the realistic style of
writing. In 1945–1948, Skupina 42 (Group 42)[25] wrote poetry which dealt with the ‘real’ life in
the city - the city as a place of raw and civilised but a multi-layered and sprawling reality –,
and with the life of ordinary human beings living and working within its walls.


‘The reality of the modern artist and the modern poet is practically the city: its inhabitants, its
pavements, its lamp-posts, its shop notices, its buildings, its staircases and its flats. (…)
Should art re-gain its lost meaning in an individual’s life, it has to return its attention to
things amongst which and with which [Man] lives. (…) Art discovers the real, it creates the real;
art reveals the real, i.e. that world that we live in and us, who live within it. Nothing else but
the everyday, horrifying and glorious drama of humanity and the real world, a drama facing the
miracle is the theme, the meaning and the intention of art.’

[‘Skutečností moderního malíře a básníka je prakticky město; jeho lidé, jeho dláždění, stojany jeho
lamp, návěští jeho krámů, jeho domy, schodiště, byty. (...) Má-li umění nabýti ztraceného významu
v životě jednotlivcově, musí se vrátit k věcem, mezi nimiž a s nimiž [člověk] žije. (…) Umění
objevuje skutečnost, vytváří skutečnost, odhaluje skutečnost, ten svět, v němž žijeme, a nás, kteří
žijeme. Neboť nejen tématem, ale smyslem a záměrem umění není nic než každodenní, úděsné a slavné
drama člověka a skutečnosti: drama záhady čelící zázraku.’] (Chalupecký 1940: 88-89)


Skupina 42[26] sees reality in motion and in fragments rather than as a static and complex unit of
creation. Its contribution to the world of writing lies in portraying human banality as well as in
creating an image of human life, an individual’s everyday reality and an individual’s predicament.
The literary work which Skupina 42 produced was not particularly lyrical; it was, rather, a
non-literary record of reality which saw the present as a myth of the contemporary world.

     The poetics, style and themes of Skupina 42 have had a large impact on that strand of Czech
literature that includes works by authors such as Egon Bondy (1930–2007), Bohumil Hrabal
(1914–1997) and, later, the literature of the Czech underground movement of the 1970s and
1980s.[27] Furthermore, Skupina 42 was an important source of inspiration for the work of all the
three above-mentioned writers, Hakl, Kahuda and Topol. These writers have also become interested in
the lives of ordinary people living on the periphery of society. They have also assumed a critical
attitude to officialdom.

     Nevertheless, there is another source of inspiration which may be discovered when reading the
works by the three above-mentioned Czech writers. Hakl, Kahuda and Topol follow not just the line
of realistic authenticity, but also the line of human fantasy and myth to construct an image of the
current life, Prague included. Hakl uses elements of magic realism,[28] fantasy[29] and sci-fi[30]
(the Emauzy monastery looking like ‘a dragon’s teeth’, the reference to Verne’s Steel City, to a
man in a space suit, to Shub Niggurath). In Konec světa, the inspiration by a fantasy-based
literary style becomes the most appealing when the narrator speaks about his dreams, about his day
visions of Prague, about his thoughts regarding how the self is being trapped within the system
and, finally, about his contemplations of the world which balances on the verge of the chaotic
present and an apocalyptic future.


     The double inspiration of Hakl’s perception of Prague takes us back to Aleš Haman’s theory
regarding the two strands in post-communist Czech literature. As it has been noted before, Hakl’s
work cannot be put into either of the two pigeon holes Haman employs. Hakl’s writing uses the
elements of both realistic fiction and fantastic fiction. By doing so, it contributes to the
creation of a new, postmodern mythology of the postmodern city of Prague. In Hakl’s work (and also
in the work of Kahuda and Topol), Prague is a multi-layered, multi-dimensional, ambiguous place
where everything is possible if a person knows what to see and where to go, and if this person
imagines and lives. This is what we may call a ‘postmodern’ perception of the city and the world
(see I, 4.6). Konec světa is an important part of Hakl’s literary construction. It is realistic as
well as imaginative.


4.3 ‘Re-telling’: in the centre of pub talks and random encounters


     A large part of Jan Beneš’s contemporary world is filled with various stories he has had a
chance to experience or he has heard from other people.  Individuals’ stories approach him whenever
he lets them do so: on TV and radio, in dreams, in various flats, on the streets and, most
commonly, in pubs. He tells us everything he can see or hear around him. When walking in the
streets or sitting in a pub, he describes everything he manages to notice and live through; the
buildings, the signs, the noise, the fragmented dialogues and the people whom he encounters. For to
him, everything and everyone has its own story to say, no matter how confusing the message is. It
is especially the pub which becomes one of the main sites of Jan Beneš’s narrations.

     Within the context of Czech culture, the pub has always been a public place which has played
an important part in communication. People have gone to pubs to express their ideas and to share
their own personal difficulties and breakdowns. According to Vladimír Macura, in the first half of
the nineteenth century, the pub environment played a crucial role ‘in the socialization of the
national culture project’ [‘v socializaci vlasteneckého kulturního projektu’] (Macura 1997: 65).
The pub was a place where people could choose whatever language they would like to speak; a place
where people could express their national ideas; a place where Czech intellectuals could lead
discussions with the bourgeois, with the artists as well as with the ordinary town folk about their
shared problems. However, the pub has always also been the place of (un)controllable beer drinking
and of human decline. In the light of such an ambiguity, the attitude to the pub has constantly
been changing. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the pub was regarded as a place of
alcoholism and of human destruction. ‘Bohemia has often been seen as a country where all activity
eventually dissolves hopelessly in beer.’ [‘Obvyklým tématem je reflexe Čech jako země, kde se
aktivita beznadějně rozpustila v pivu.’] (Ibid. 69) The pub is a place where action ends in
passivity – due to beer drinking.

     In the twentieth century, the pub continued to be a place of political and cultural
discussions, and also a place of desperate escapism to alcohol. It has been a place of encounters
and of forgetting; a place of much talk and little activity. Hakl’s Konec světa fits this image of
the pub. His Jan Beneš is a regular visitor of local pubs in Prague. He speaks with his friends in
pubs whenever he feels frustrated by the world of work and when he feels lonely. In pubs, he hears
his friends’ personal life stories and witnesses their breakdowns. He sits and quietly observes
what is happening around him. The pub is a place where extraordinary things may happen when no one
really expects them (for instance, a dancing performance by two ageing barmaids to amuse the local
barflies; Jan Beneš exchanges slaps with his colleague’s girlfriend, or he exchanges a long kiss
with a local floozy). It is in the pub where serious talk blends in with background noise (a
murderer’s testimony is heard at one point against the background of normal pub noise). It is in
the pub that person’s weaknesses are revealed. (This is where we learn that Jan Beneš is unable to
approach an attractive woman and Fáfa is unable to stay reasonably calm and often runs crazy and
that local barflies are unable to fully enjoy the barmaids’ striptease show).

     In Jan Beneš’s world, the contemporary pub is a place where one feels at home, safe and never
alone. It is especially a place of a sharing (conversations), of uncontrolled behaviour (wild
drinking nights) and of unpretentious silence (quiet observation). It is never a place for
important political discussions, at least not at the present time. The time for political debate
has already passed, as the narrator argues when talking about the life of one of his acquaintances
– the waiter, Igor. For Jan Beneš, the pub had political significance previously in the text where
he talks about his friend, Igor the waiter, but only because in the past, ‘Igor’s pub’ was
frequented by people who were interested in music, in books and in events which were suppressed by
official communist propaganda. Igor’s pub used to be visited by people who exchanged their works of
arts there, after closing time and behind locked doors. Beneš’s pubs are not even places where
people go to show off. They are places where everyone tends to be equal but unique, as unique as
their characters and their stories are. At least the narrator perceives them as such.


     The pubs where Jan Beneš spends his time are ordinary places. They are interesting because of
their atmosphere, not because of their ranking, their prices or the quality of food. These are
mostly cheap pubs. Jan Beneš is also interested in shabby garden kiosks:


‘U Pšenice is an ordinary communal pub located down there in the Vršovice borough. Only a few
guests were sitting inside. Some youngsters were having a game of pool at the bar situated at the
rear of the pub.’

[‘U Pšenice je obyčejná občanská hospoda dole ve Vršovicích. Sedělo tam pár hostů, vzadu v locale
šťouchala mládež biliár.’] (KS: 6)


‘Behind the Radlice footbridge, (…) there is the restaurant U modré hvězdy. Nowadays, it is an
ordinary pub which differs in no way from hundreds of thousands of similar places. Yet, still at
the beginning of the 1990s, a person who poked his nose in could not miss the atmosphere that
dominated the place… It was an exceptionally silent place. Different from other pubs. (…) You see,
the majority of the guests had spent ten, fifteen years in prison. Various plotters, liars and
dodgers were sitting there and then, separately from the aristocrats - discreet men in their
fifties with blue-coloured chubby circles under their eyes.’

[‘Za radlickou lávkou... stojí restaurace U modré hvězdy. Dneska už je to běžná hospoda, která se
ničím neliší od statisíců podobných pajzlů. Ale ještě začátkem devadesátých let si každý, kdo tam
strčil nos, nemohl nevšimnout té atmosféry... Panovalo tam zvláštní ticho. Jiné než v ostatních
hospodách. (…) Většina štamgastů totiž měla odkroucená tak deset patnáct roků. Vysedávali tu různí
kšeftaři, lháři, uhejbáci a stranou od nich šlechta: rozvážní padesátníci s inkoustovým tukem pod
okem.’] (KS: 169)


Nevertheless, they are the places full of memories of the past communist times:


‘A new, kind and familiar empty world opened up to me. I went to work. I spent my time with friends
in pubs. I visited the musty catacombs under the former Stalin Monument. They smelled of old
concrete. Beer was on tap there. Bands performed there and some customers danced in the stirring
dust. Others watched them from the tables, still others wandered along the underground corridors,
all euphoric and with lighters in their hands on.  (…) These were the corridors where, for many
decades, only the heavy-stone steps of the Czechoslovak people resounded.’

[‘Otevřel se přede mnou nový, vlídný, důvěrně známý prázdný svět. Chodil jsem do práce, s kamarády
do hospod, navštěvoval jsem zatuchlé, starou maltou vonící katakomby pod bývalým Stalinovým
pomníkem. Točilo se tam tenkrát pivo, na pódiu se střídaly kapely, někteří návštěvníci trsali
v rozvířeném prachu, jiní je od stolu pozorovali a ještě jiní bloudili v povzneseném stavu
podzemními chodbami s plápolajícími zapalovači v ruce. (…) Chodbami, kterými se léta a léta
rozléhaly jenom kamenné kroky československého lidu.’] (KS: 18)


Every pub which Jan Beneš visits has its own peculiar atmosphere; every person he meets has his or
her own place within the pub; every person he picks up from the crowd has his or her own
unchangeable character. It could be a friend, a woman or just a random person. Only once does he go
to a pub with his boss and with his workmates but this does not seem to bring him any pleasure at
all. The very next day, when they all sober up and meet at work, the boss acts as if the previous
night had never happened. From now on, he is again the boss who does whatever suits his position
best, regardless of others (KS: 179-246).

     In Beneš’s pubs, there is hardly any place for bosses, for work and for hierarchy and
pretence. It is an open environment where everyone feels equal: the regular barflies, the junkies,
the loonies, the criminals, the aristocrats, the businessmen, the artists, the teenagers and just
ordinary people of every age. It is the place where everyone can talk about whatever they want or
just sit quietly and observe. And people do talk there, and the narrator listens. And everything he
hears he marks down: vivid dialogues, intensive monologues, fragmented discussions and the noises.
His pub is a place of sharing and that is the main reason why Jan Beneš goes there – to enjoy the
company of others (he does so as one of their regular visitors) and to learn about the nature of
their human selves (he does so as the narrating self). Jan Beneš’s pub is not a place where people
come to protest against the regime or to support it. It is not even a place where people get
seriously drunk, although occasionally his pubs can get very busy and wild. Jan Beneš’s pub is a
shelter for those people who feel lonely and lost in the world. It is also a place of entertainment
and fun. In sum, Jan Beneš’s pub is its own universe.

     The pub is not the only place where the narrator learns about people’s personal lives. No less
important are his walks across the streets of Prague and his occasional travels to the Czech
countryside. These ‘trips’ also bring him desired satisfaction and relief. They inspire him, give
him various impulses and various stories to hear and then re-tell. And he does re-tell them,
retaining the complexity of all the images and sounds. He carefully distinguishes between language
and noise. He describes both meticulously.


4.4 ‘Being’: in the flat


     The city, the streets and the pubs are the places where the narrator goes whenever he feels
lonely and isolated. On the other hand, whenever he feels overburdened and overwhelmed by others,
he shuts himself up in the seclusion of his flat. The pub is, for him, a representation of his
extrovert self; his need to be open to new impulses. The flat is for him a representation of his
introvert self; his necessity to dedicate himself only to his own being, to his thoughts, dreams
and imaginations, and to his writing. As the flat is a place of his own inner depth and the only
safety he feels, he is very careful about who is allowed to enter. In the majority of cases, he
meets people outside. Those who are always permitted to come in are the narrator’s closest friends
(his friend Pavlik) and his girlfriends (Řípa, Petruše).

     The flat is a representation of Jan Beneš’s natural and unpretentious self. There, he can do
anything he wants. There, he does not have to care about his masculine image. He can be completely
relaxed and free of any mask if he is on his own:


‘One evening, I was wandering about the flat only in my boxer shorts. I was listening to MTV and
was getting ready to go to bed.’

[‘Jednou večer jsem bloumal po bytě v trenýrkách, poslouchal MTV a chystal se jít spát.’] (KS: 20)


‘I just wanted to walk along cobblestones, to the newsagent’s round the corner every morning, to
buy fags and a newspaper and then simply go straight home again. And so I did this everyday.’

[‘Chtělo se mi jen každé ráno jít po kočičích hlavách za roh do trafiky, koupit cigára a noviny a
jít zase pěkně rovnou domů. A tak jsem to tak dělal.’] (KS: 225)


The flat is his sanctuary. It is the place that belongs to him only. It is well hidden. Once the
flat becomes occupied by other people (the Danish and French foreigners, Jan Beneš’s partners), it
loses its spiritual dimension and becomes an alien place. Once the other people are gone, the flat
regains its palliative qualities:


‘As soon as the door closed, I lay down on the sofa and gazed up at the ceiling for a long time. I
knew that ceiling well. A new, kind and familiar world opened up before me. The old times came back
for a while, when the radio played in the kitchen and a lid bobbed up on a cooking pot on the
stove.’

[‘Když zaklaply dveře, lehl jsem si na kanape a dlouho se díval do stropu. Znal jsem ten strop
dobře. Otevřel se přede mnou nový, vlídný, důvěrně známý svět. Zase se na chvíli vrátil ten starý
čas, kdy v kuchyni hrálo rádio a na plotně nadskakovala poklička.’] (KS: 25-26)


     While the pub is, for Jan Beneš, a place for sharing, for enjoyment and for escape from
responsibility and from loneliness, the flat hides him from the outside world. It calms him down,
it inspires him but it also constrains him. Jan Beneš goes home to seek protection and peace from
the outside world in his flat. He goes to the pub to seek the company of others. He leaves home
because he cannot stand being alone with only his own thoughts. He leaves the outside world because
he is depressed by the behaviour of other people, whom he regards as too dysfunctional, ignorant or
hypocritical:


‘I did not want to go home yet. Because, if possible, a person should go home only if he is free of
all emotional images and all emotional experience. Otherwise, these experiences will stay with him
in the flat longer than this person wants to, he will not like them then.’

[‘Domů se mi ještě nechtělo, protože domů má člověk chodit pokud možno oproštěn od jakýchkoliv
emocemi zatížených zážitků a představ. Jinak tam s ním ty zážitky zůstanou v podnájmu vždycky o
něco déle, než aby se mu pak ještě mohly líbit.’] (KS: 9-10)


     Beneš is an eternal seeker of both his own inner self and of the outside world but he
continually keeps escaping from both.




4.5 Apocalyptic visions of the world


     It is his negative attitude to the contemporary world that makes the narrator escape and hide
in his flat or in the Czech countryside or escape from his inner self and hide in a pub or in
another public space. Negative thoughts enter his mind whenever he feels touched by a strong
emotional experience. This can be an encounter with a particularly vulnerable individual, a painful
sexual experience, stress from work, ‘a date’ with a bottle of schnapps, a brutal programme on TV
or a chaotic dream. Whenever the narrator falls into one of these traps, he loses control over his
mind. When this happens, he detaches himself from his physical self and observes whatever is
happening in front of him and in him from a distance. Then he comments on it, as if he was an
omniscient observer and an omniscient narrator.

      The picture which the narrator sees in the moments of his personal crisis is quite
horrendous. It is a picture of confusion, fear and ignorance. It is a vision of the world in which
individuals do not care about anything in life; they do not care about others or their own selves.
It is a picture of the world which is trapped between struggle and survival; the world of
destruction and of no hope; the world of inhuman forms and no feelings. It is an approaching
apocalypse, the ‘end of the world’ and bitter demise of society.

     One of the most appalling and the most expressive visions appears in Jan Beneš’s mind when he
describes his sexual experience with the ageing ballet dancer when collapsing onto her scarred,
desperate body:


‘The city creaked, wobbled and floated along the Earth’s surface, on and on. No one really knew why
they were alive. Pubs were full of shining noggins, and tired jokes resounded into space. Red-hot
missiles of the ‘shoot and forget’ kind incessantly flew above the cooling musk of the human
spirit.’

[‘Město skřípalo, kymácelo se a plulo po zemském povrchu dál a dál. Nikdo pořádně nevěděl, proč
žije. V hospodách zářily panáky s kořalkou a sršely upocené vtípky. Nad vychládající kaší ducha bez
přestání létaly rozžhavené střely typu ‘vystřel a zapomeň’. ’] (KS: 82)


What appears in his mind at the moment of climax is not a woman but a repugnant vision of a
stagnant society which is in a perpetual ‘contradictory’ motion; a society which has ceased to
evolve and, instead, is now oblivious to its ignorant hedonism. It is not just Czech society he
talks about here; it is human society in general which, the narrator fears, is threatened by a
descent into apathy towards the individual and, therefore, towards society as a whole. To drive
this point home, the narrator uses the figure of a random man who observes a sex act from start to
finish with a blank expression. The narrator uses this device to mirror his own detachment from his
own act of copulation and from the misery of the whole scene: ‘red-hot missiles of the “shoot and
forget” kind’ [‘rozžhavené střely typu „vystřel a zapomeň“’] (KS: 82).


     As the narrator’s imagination goes further, the same vision, which originally emerged from the
sex act with the ageing lady, expands into many directions and creates a string of other pictures
that, in the end, lead to his thoughts about the cruelty of human behaviour and, finally, about the
anticipated ‘end of the world’:


‘Guys tormented their dolls with their incomprehensible silence. The dolls tormented their guys
with their irrational reproaches. The nursery children already knew exactly how to be hellish to
each other. No one seemed to know what the following day might bring. Everybody was scared to think
about it, though everybody could not stop themselves from thinking about it. This created a special
tension; that was the best thing one could ask for. Everyone supposed that this was not the end of
the world because the end of the world surely did not look like this. They knew from the movies
what it should look like. Some people fantasized that life could be organised differently, if there
was a will, (…) but they were also mistaken. No one could grasp the basic eternal idea that the
world could not possibly end for everybody at the same moment, for each individual’s death is
unique. Because reality is nothing more than a collection of wishes and hopes. The end of the world
is a purely personal category. What one person sees as the end is for another a good opportunity to
open a bottle and to enjoy the exhilarating feeling that now is the best time of his life.’

[‘Chlapi týrali ženské nepochopitelným mlčením. Ženské trápily chlapy iracionálními výčitkami. Už
děti ve školce přesně věděly, jak si navzájem vyrobit to nejhorší peklo. Nikdo neměl zdání, co ho
čeká příští den. Všichni se na to báli myslet, a všichni na to museli myslet. Tím vznikalo zvláštní
povrchové napětí; to na tom bylo to nejlepší. Všichni věřili, že toto ještě není konec světa,
protože takhle konec světa přece nevypadá. Jak může vypadat, to znali z kina. Někteří tušili, že by
to při troše fantazie mohlo možná být i jinak... jenže i ti se mýlili. Všem napořád unikala
základní věčná úvaha, že svět dobře nemůže skončit pro všechny najednou, jedině pro každého zvlášť.
Protože skutečnost není nic jiného než soubor přání a nadějí. Konec světa je čistě osobní
kategorie. Co se jednomu jeví jako konec, v tom si jiný s radostí otevře flašku a má přesný pocit,
že teprve teď je to ono.’] (KS: 82).


It is the desperation the narrator sees in the woman’s desire to expose her scarred body and his
own feeling of inadequacy to deal with the situation compassionately that triggers his catastrophic
thoughts about social cruelty and social ignorance. He leaves the woman exposed to nature and
retreats into his own world. Jan Beneš’s apocalyptic vision is nothing less than an expression of
his own desperate feeling which further shatters the already shattered world. All hope recedes into
the distance.

     The narrator’s critical view of himself and of Czech society can be discerned throughout the
whole text of Konec světa. It is directed against the system which turns each individual who
condones the situation into a machine. It is also directed against every individual who collapses
in his or her effort to fight the apocalyptic vision. To express his concerns about the human
decline, Jan Beneš uses various metaphors and other devices which come from the world of his
experience or which he imagines.


‘Something was going on. But I didn’t have a clue what it was. Suddenly, I could feel the Earth
plates moving underneath my feet, slightly. I could feel how they chafed against each other and how
they creaked, almost soundlessly. (…) I saw so much candy floss which would cause toothache to a
large number of nations. I saw enormous, large and empty bags of time, which could never be filled
up with anything else but talk. Shoals of words were running through the screen of my memory. They
were swelling like sealant foam and stuffed up my skull from the inside. (…) The sun was rolling
across the horizon. It jumped over the hills as if it was a fireball. It was flying around the
Earth with a diabolical speed. The Earth was smiling like a corpse which had been stored in the
ice. (…) Shattered relationships were moving about the fragile bones of seconds. (…) The ocean was
swelling and phantasmagorical creatures the human eye would never see were floating in its depths.
Their movement was jerky. Livid undersea bombers were running through the inky waters and luminous
hippocampuses jumped up and down in the space between the sea corals as if they were majorettes.
(…) I was sitting in a needlessly large, feckless robotic body, surrounded by bubbling fluid,
spattering nerve endings, creaking bones, grouching pancreas, beating pumps, dry-crowing lungs and
various rattling defective  aggregates which were all unnecessarily complicated. (…) I was
encircled by terrific, chaotically scuttling forms. It is not within human power to describe
everything, but still there is an odd possibility to look down into that bottomless, sparkling
hole, into a hollow of the collective mind whose bottom hides the slowly beating heart, the single
heart that belongs to all of us. We call this heart “habit”…’

[‘Něco se dělo. Ale vůbec jsem nevěděl, co. Najednou jsem ucítil, jak se pode mnou zlehka posouvají
zemské kry, jak se o sebe třou a jak táhle, sotva slyšitelně skřípou. (...) Spatřil jsem lány
cukrové vaty, ze které by rozbolely zuby celé národy. Uviděl jsem obrovské prázdné futrály času,
které nikdy nikdo nenaplní ničím jiným než řečmi. Sítem paměti proplouvala hejna slov, která se na
druhé straně nafukovala jako těsnící pěna a ucpávala mi zevnitř lebku. (...) Slunce se kutálelo po
obzoru, skákalo po kopcích jako kulový blesk, lítalo kolem Země pekelnou rychlostí. Země se
usmívala jako mrtvola v ledu. (...) V křehkých kostech vteřin se přesýpaly střepy vztahů. (...)
Oceán se vzdouval a v hlubinách trhaně pluli přízrační, lidským okem nikdy nespatření tvorové.
Inkoustovými vodami proplouvaly sinalé podmořské bombardéry a světélkující mořští koníci hopkali
mezi korály jako mažoretky. (...) Seděl jsem v nadbytečně velkém, nešikovném stroji těla, obkloben
bublajícími tekutinami, prskáním nervových spojů, vrzáním kostí, hudrováním slinivky, tlukotem pump
a čerpadel, suchým kokrháním plic a drnčením různých zbytečně složitých, poruchových agregátů.(...)
Kolem dokola se nacházelo strašlivé rejdiště forem. Není v lidských silách popsat všechno, ale je
možné tu a tam nahlédnout do té bezedné, jiskřící jámy, do Macochy kolektivní mysli, na jejímž dně
pomalu buší společné srdce nás všech, a to srdce se jmenuje „zvyk“...’] (KS: 215-216).


This rather expressive vision appears as the result of the narrator’s playful imagination which has
been boosted by his experience of the real and highlighted by his momentary alcoholic intoxication.
It describes the Earth already moving, oceans already swelling, time already losing its sense and
sun already burning the ground; it sees shattered relationships, freezing smiles, phantasmagorical
creatures and close-up pictures of vital human organs. It describes a man sitting amongst all these
earthly forms, trapped in a robotic body of his own habit and his own inability to leave. It
describes the narrator himself at the moment of his idle existence and yet it laughs at him, in a
sad and a sarcastic tune. It laughs at the society which the man in the robotic body represents.


4.6 ‘The end of the world‘: the legacy of the postmodern and the apocalypse


     The apocalyptic visions of the world, self-reflection, anti-elitism, the rejection of existing
practices in post-communist society, spontaneity, escape to the countryside or to the world of
illusions and dreams and films, an interest in myths (Shub Niggurath) and literature (Rousseau’s
Candide in ‘Zlaté časy’: KS, Jules Verne), almost the equal position of reality and dreams,
strongly expressed eroticism, the existence of labyrinths and mirrors, and a grotesque perception
of the world - these are some of the elements of Hakl’s Konec světa. These are also some of the
elements which some contemporary literary theoreticians would clasify as the characteristics of a
‘postmodern’ style of writing. Umberto Eco[31] and some other critics see these features as
characteristics of the literary style by ‘apocalyptic’ writers and by ‘non-integrated’ writers. Can
we say that Emil Hakl is an author of postmodern fiction? Can we say that he is an ‘apocalyptic’
and a ‘non-integrated writer’? In order to answer these questions we need to include a brief
discussion here of what the concepts of the ‘postmodern’, the ‘apocalyptic’ and the
‘non-integrated’ means.


     According to Connor, the postmodern concept of seeing things appears in the second half of the
20^th century as a reaction to the ‘important changes [that have] taken place in politics,
economics and social life; changes that could broadly be characterized by the two words
delegitimation and dedifferentiation.’ (Connor 2008: 3) It is a reaction to the world in which

‘[a]uthority and legitimacy [are] no longer so powerfully concentrated in the centres they [have]
previously occupied, and the differentiations – for example, those between what [have] been called
“centres” and “margins”, but also between classes, regions, and cultural levels (high culture and
low culture) – [are] being eroded or compiled’ (Ibid. 3).


In other words,


‘[p]ostmodernism is said to signal the collapse of all universalist meta-narratives with their
privileged truth to tell, and to witness instead the increasing sound of a plurality of voices from
the margins, with their insistence on difference, on cultural diversity, and the claims of
heterogeneity over homogeneity’ (Storey 2001: 150).


Postmodernism reflects upon the world in which ‘the “real” and the imaginary continually collapse
into each other’ and in which the ‘reality and simulation are experienced as without difference’
(Ibid. 153).

     Postmodernism is ‘a culture production born out of previous cultural production’. It
‘experiences time not as a continuum (past-present-future), but as a perpetual present which is
only occasionally marked by the intrusion of the past or the possibility of a future’ (Ibid. 159).
It pronounces identity crises, ‘the end of man’ and the birth of the new but plural identity of the
self; and so it plays with the idea of the ‘end of the real’ and the birth of the new hyper-real
(virtual real). These characteristics of postmodernism have been discussed in many theoretical
works analyzing the contemporary culture of the West. The extent to which these characteristics
apply to Hakl’s text is the focus here.


     The text of Hakl’s Konec světa is a testimony about one man, about Jan Beneš, whose existence
is continuously on the move between different places and different spheres. He is a character and
so he is a representative of the reality he lives. But he is also the narrator of the text and
therefore a representative of the meta-real (or the hyper-real). His ‘real’ self lives at the time
which corresponds to the time of the fall of communism and to the time of the introduction of a new
capitalist (and consumerist) lifestyle in Central Europe. He struggles to cope with these. He is
alone or with others, with loonies or with ordinary people, with the unemployed, with the employed
or with businessmen. He tries to find a place in his life for all of them or just for himself. Jan
Beneš’s ‘meta-real’ self dwells in the world of narrations (or representations). He is mostly
subjective but sometimes he lends his voice to the personal narrator (in the case of Beneš’s
friend, Láďa, in ‘Láďovo poslední tango’) and to the subjective narrator with an omniscient view
(speaking from a god-like perspective). The narrating ‘I’ lives in the present (as ‘I’ is also the
character of the story) but his narration involves all time planes – the vibrant present or, more
precisely, the present delayed by the actual moment of narration, memories of the past and thoughts
regarding the approaching future. It inter-mixes observations and impressions, descriptions of
places and visions, dreams, films and literary texts. Jan Beneš as both the acting and the
narrating ‘I’ is constantly dubious about the world and his own place within it. He characterizes
himself but he does it in the way other people would see him. He is constructing and deconstructing
himself. He talks about the world but he never approves or disapproves of what is happening around
him. He lives ‘the real’ but speaks of his perception of ‘the real’ and of everything ‘the real’
represents for him. He is situated amongst the narratives of the world and so he narrates them.

     Is it possible to say, then, that there is Jan Beneš who is a postmodern narrator and a
philosopher of both the narratives of the world and the narratives of the self? Is it possible to
say that the world he reflects upon is itself postmodern? It is a world in which the truth is
constructed from many stories narrated by different people with multifarious views; it is a world
in which most people suffer an identity crisis; it is a world of a plurality of approaches, it is a
world of the deconstruction and the rebirth of the self; it is a world in which different cultures
perpetually blend; it is a world where the multidimensional and the perpetual present is created by
the media and by digital technology. Is it possible to say, then, that Konec světa is a postmodern
text? Finally, is Emil Hakl an author of postmodern fiction? Or more specifically, is Emil Hakl an
author of a postmodern ‘apocalypse’ or an author of the post-modern ‘integration’?


     Vladimír Novotný (b. 1946) attempts to analyze contemporary Czech literature with reference to
Umberto Eco’s thesis from 1964. In Apocalypse Postponed, Umberto Eco (b. 1932) describes two kinds
of writers: ‘sceptics’ (‘apocalyptics’), who defend themselves from any phenomenon connected to
mass culture, and the ‘integrated’ (‘comforters’), who, on the contrary, associate with the
theories and practices of mass culture production. Using Eco’s theory, Novotný (Novotný 2002:
38-40) talks about two main groups of Czech contemporary writers. Into the first group of the
‘integrated’ he places those authors who signed up for the codified family of mid-culture genres in
the 1990s[32], e. g. for mass production of professionally written bestsellers, new conventional
narrative fiction, a post-modern polemic with postmodernism, socio-journalism, political
tabloid-novel production, popular feminist writing, a didactically-catholic version of the
‘Bildungsroman’ and  academically theorizing fiction. On the other hand, in his view, the
‘apocalyptics’ create an apocalyptic image of human micro-/macrocosm.[33] Some of their works grow
under the influence of magic realism; others go back to classical existentialism. Some writers
create a negative vision of society; others create a documentary record of human authenticity or
build a new genre of the postmodern grotesque. Whilst the literature of the ‘integrated’ is,
according to Novotný (and Eco), a ‘sophisticated entertainment for lavishly spent leisure’
[‘sofistikovaná zábava pro marnotratně prožívaný volný čas’] (Ibid. 40), the literature of the
‘apocalyptics’ reflects a plurality of styles and thoughts; whilst the ‘integrated’ create a new
literary tradition of the ‘integrated’ (mid-cult) world, the ‘apocalyptics’ use their right to
pronounce disagreement with the current world (Ibid. 34-42).

     Considering all the aspects that Novotný (and Eco) suggested in relation to mid-cult
literature and in relation to the postmodern, and taking into account the theories that define the
postmodern, it can be said about Hakl’s Konec světa that it fits somewhere in between. The work is
‘apocalyptic’ as it is about a person’s doubting individuality, about an individual’s destruction
of the self and thoughts regarding ‘the end of the world’. However, it is also ‘integrated’ because
it is about the acceptance of the current world. It is about a person’s acceptance, perhaps even a
person’s joy of being a part of life. Konec světa is ‘apocalyptic’ as it is built on the variety of
different narratives and individual structures. It is ‘integrated’ as it flows along the life of a
single character and along his unprecedented observations of the world he sees around him.

     As Emil Hakl is the author of Konec světa, he is also an author of a postmodern text and so an
author of an apocalyptic and multi-dimensional image of the current world. Hence, he is also an
author of ‘integration’, as his work is a part of the tradition of socio-realistic literature[34];
that kind of literature which represents the world of ordinary people living their chaotic lives in
post-communist Czech society and which comments on the image it has constructed.





5. Life according to Jan Beneš – continued: the context of Hakl’s fiction


     Konec svĕta was Hakl’s first attempt at fiction. Since then, he has published several other
volumes of prose: the novel Intimní schránka Sabriny Black (Sabrina Black’s Intimate Mailbox 2002),
the novella O rodičích a dĕtech (Of Kids and Parents 2002), the collection of short stories O
létajících objektech (On Flying Objects 2004), the novel Let čarodĕjnice (Flight of the Witch 2008)
and, most recently, three single stories collected in Pravidla smĕšného chování (The Rules of
Ridiculous Behaviour 2010). It is the aim of this brief discussion of Hakl’s later fiction to
ascertain whether the reality of Hakl’s writing has changed with the passing time and if so, what
impact this change may have on our perception of the contemporary world.


5.1 Intimní schránka Sabriny Black: the history of one love, the history of one career


     The main character and at the same time the only subjective narrator of the novel, Intimní
schránka Sabriny Black (henceforth Sabrina Black), is again – Honza Beneš, though now he is known
as Hanz (and Honst). Hanz lives in Prague. If he has a job, it is work for an advertising agency,
for a magazine or he tries to run his own business. Similarly to his counterpart in Konec svĕta, he
experiences a very unstable life when in work and out of work, in a sexual relationship and out of
a sexual relationship, in a friendship and out of a friendship. He struggles with existence on the
margins of mainstream society after losing his ability to cope with the chaotic world of business.
He suffers from broken relationships with a woman he loves and from a broken friendship with men he
thought were his friends. He struggles with life within the official structures after joining a
company of young, materialistic professionals. In disagreement with the lifestyle of mainstream
society and with his own frustration with it, he often locks himself in his flat or hides in pubs.
In his flat, he enjoys the solitude of his own self; in pubs, he enjoys both his own company and
the company of local barflies and the people who share the same experience of having an unstable,
chaotic mind. He drinks, smokes, quietly observes the world around him and absorbs everything that
surrounds him – pub talk, sounds, pictures, various slogans, television programmes and dreams. All
of them are important for his world; all form part of the narrator’s fictive reality.

     Honza (Konec svĕta) and Hanz (Intimní schránka Sabriny Black) share many character
similarities (friends, partners, places, environments), as we can see from the above brief
description. It would not be far from the truth to say that the two characters are the same person,
only this time Hanz is seen from a slightly different perspective and at a slightly different
age.

     In comparison to Konec světa, which relates to many different topics, the novel, Intimní
schránka Sabriny Black (henceforth Sabrina Black or SB), concentrates more on two main themes: one
is the narrator’s experience with the running of a private advertisement agency, the second, and
maybe more focused here, is his relationship with Petruše and the withdrawal symptoms he suffers
after losing her. What was only glanced at in the previous volume (there was a short remark that
the narrator had a share in a company; there was a brief reference to how wild his life was with
Petruše) is used here in detail to create a complex picture of the narrator’s world and all it
embraces. In Sabrina Black, the narrator reveals various personal details that are a part of both
his working life and his privacy.

     The structure of Sabrina Black is slightly different – as a novel, it is more linear and less
fragmented. The story begins when the narrator accepts employment in an advertising agency and it
goes on to describe his attempts to set up a private business and his failure to make it
profitable. The novel then follows Hanz’s unemployment, his unsuccessful attempts to work for
another advertising agency, a long break when he writes a literary text, and it ends up announcing
that Hanz was offered an editor’s position on staff of the literary magazine, Tvar. Certain
linearity can also be found in Hanz’s testimony of his relationship with Petruše. It begins with a
description of their mutual understanding and love; it continues with several arguments and
break-ups and ends with separation and with the narrator’s depression over Petruše’s disappearance
from his life.

     In my analysis of Hakl’s Konec svĕta, I pointed out the existence of several parallels we find
when taking into account all we know about the narrator and about the author. In Sabrina Black, the
resemblance of the two worlds, the fictive world and the real world, seems to have increased. Hanz
is a German version of the name Jan (as we know, the real first name of Emil Hakl). The narrator’s
great-aunt, whom he mentions on one occasion, has the writer’s surname, Benešová (the male form of
this name is Beneš). Both Jan Beneš-the author and Hanz live in Prague. The narrator visits the
really existing Club 8 (Klub 8, which is frequented by people with literary ambitions). Both Jan
Beneš and Emil Hakl have worked in various places including the Libeň Waterworks, the university
library, an advertising agency and the literary magazine, Tvar. Both write. What is more, Hanz
talks about certain people who exist in the real world, for example the actor Radovan Lukavský
(1919–2008), Karel Gott (singer, b. 1939), Petr Zelenka (film director and playwright, b. 1967),
Petr Kratochvil (pseudonym of Václav Kahuda, writer, b. 1965), Mejla Hlavsa (singer and musician
from The Plastic People of the Universe music band, 1951–2001), Magor (Ivan Martin Jirous, poet, a
representative of the Czech underground, 1944-2011) and Jim Čert (František Horáček, singer, b.
1956). These similarities between Hakl’s fictive world and Hakl’s experience of the real world
confirm what has been said in the analysis of Konec světa. Even in Intimní schránka Sabriny Black,
Emil Hakl uses the perception of his own life as one of his inspirations to construct the fictive
character of Jan Beneš and the world that surrounds him.


     As has already been shown, also the picture of society, drawn in Konec svĕta, is inspired by
Hakl’s own experience and his perception of the contemporary world. Konec svĕta describes a broken
society; a society full of people who do not know what to do with their lives after the fall of the
previous political regime and after the arrival of the ‘new’ and so they struggle. The work shows a
whole range of people – the enthusiastic and ambitious (perhaps also naïve) youths on the one hand,
the lost and depressed young people trying to find the reason for their existence on the other; the
assertive sharpshooters and business owners, the servile and pretentious employees as well as
various middle-aged individuals lost in the chaos of the post-communist society, who find
themselves unable to cope with the present. There are some people who somehow manage to find a way
through life without losing their own identity, but these are only few and they often build their
lives on the margins of the society, living in isolation in the countryside, far from the
prosperous civilization.

     Just as there are similarities between Emil Hakl, Jan Beneš as the narrator of Konec světa and
Hanz in Intimní schránka Sabriny Black, Czech society reflected in Sabrina Black is also very
similar to the society known to the reader from Konec svĕta. Czech society in both these literary
texts appears to have been constructed on the basis of Emil Hakl’s experience of life under the
communist regime in Czechoslovakia of the 1970s and 1980s, on the basis of his experience of the
breakdown of the communist system in 1989 and of the capitalist takeover and the chaotic times
thereafter. Sabrina Black is also crowded with all the above mentioned categories of people but, in
comparison to the previous work, it solely concentrates on the figure of the narrator and on what
he personally experiences within his life. The narrator and his perception of society is the raison
d’être of the whole narrative and its main theme. However, the picture we reconstruct is similar to
the picture formed in Hakl’s Konec světa.




5.2 O rodičích a dětech: Father and his son, son and his Father


     In 2002, Hakl published the novella, O rodičích a dĕtech (Of Kids and Parents, henceforth
ORD). Unlike both previous texts, this novella is a single dialogue – a dialogue between a son and
his father. The forty-two-year old son and the narrating ‘I’ of the text comes to visit his
seventy-one-year-old father who works as a tour guide in the Prague ZOO, and takes him for a walk
via several Prague pubs. The narrative is built up from variations on serious themes (racism,
family history and the war) as well as humorous themes (food, the broken washing machine, poems,
sex), and from comments of each of the two characters on the surrounding world. The conversation
grows from the characters’ need to communicate everything, all the past and the present, and all
that has been experienced and observed in one single moment. The dialogue contains complete stories
as well as only narrative fragments. Some stories are told once and in full, others are scattered
throughout the narrative and we return to them several times. Topics such as food, aeroplanes,
health and women appear on a regular basis.

     The atmosphere of the talk between the son and his father changes as often as their mood goes
up and down. The conversation fluctuates between sarcasm, irony and personal bitterness, and
respect and mutual love, which are more hidden than openly manifested.

     The narrative of Konec světa plays with a variety of different themes. Sabrina Black explores
Honza’s working life and his relationship with Petruše. O rodičích a dĕtech talks of Honza Beneš’s
relationship with his father, Ivan. The text features the father’s narratives and his son’s
reactions to them and vice versa. It contains the father’s memories of the Second World War and of
his life in Yugoslavia at that time, the father’s reminiscences about his marriage, his fatherhood,
his friends (and their stories) and his professional experiences as a scientist. It follows his
talk about his health problems, his adventures as the ZOO tour guide, his worries about his son and
his rather critical opinion of the contemporary world. The son, Honza, contributes the memories of
his childhood. He talks about his life in the town, Buštĕhrad, where he lived with his mother,
Zdena, now dead, and his stepfather. He remembers how his mother cleaned their flat and that his
father had problems with alcohol. He speaks about his youth and his experience with women (he has
had two unsuccessful marriages), about his current relationship with Hanka, about his dreams and
about his interest in aeroplanes. He shares his opinions (on life, on racism, on food and on a
healthy lifestyle), his feelings, his thoughts, his momentary observations of the surrounding
atmosphere and the stories of other people, as he has heard them from his father or from others. In
short, there is the perspective of the son (as the narrating and the acting ‘I’) and the
perspective of his father (as the narrator’s essential counterpart); there is a perception of the
past and the present; there is experience of today’s society (because the two characters live
within it and are observing it). There are the characters’ internal feelings and thoughts.

     The father and the son look at the world from different points of view. The father’s views are
influenced by the attitude of his generation – he is a representative of the generation of the
people who have experienced not only the Second World War and communist Czechoslovakia, in which
they have lived for most of their lives, but also the regime change of 1989 and what followed. The
father is scared by years of humiliation (experienced when living under fascism in Yugoslavia and
under communism in Czechoslovakia). He has coped with these regimes by isolating himself from them
and devoting himself to science and alcohol, though his past traumas have not been forgotten. For
years he has been waiting for an appropriate moment to talk about them. The father’s dialogue with
his son seems to be the best opportunity for the old man to give his own testimony of life. He is
full of scepticism but what he says has still its importance and its value.

     The father’s attitude has been formed by many years during which he has lived under a
dictatorship. His personal freedom was always limited by the rules created by other people in the
name of ideology. The only thing he could do was to find a way of surviving by ‘sneaking through’ –
by avoiding political commitment – without losing his integrity. For the seventy-one-year-old
father, the arrival of democracy does not mean anything particularly exciting. He continues living
in the past. His memories, his job, his health, food, women and his son’s life are the only things
that still bring him joy and that are worth of discussing, worth becoming angry about. Contemporary
Czech society is observed and criticised but more from the perspective of an old man, from the
point of view of a person who has most of his life behind him and who does not bother learning
about the new world. The father does not have a particular desire to understand it any more,
commenting caustically on what is fashionable:


“Blondes have definitely been massively on the increase over the last thirty years,” Father said
incredulously. “It didn’t used to be like this. Today there are blonde girls all over the place…
Maybe it’s the diet or something…” (ORD: 59),


on the media which influence the ways people think:


“No one gives a toss about the fact that the cetaceans are almost extinct, but everyone’s
interested in the fact that a ninety-year-old woman got raped, that was in the papers this morning
(…)” (ORD: 145),


and on the new generation of Czech drunks:


‘I took a swig and realised Father was staring with a terrified expression at something in one
corner of the room. I looked in that direction. There was a bunch of grown-up kids, their hair
already going grey, lowering shots of green mint liqueur into freshly drawn pints of beer. The
shots descended to the bottom of their mugs like small, heavy divers.

“Oh Christ…, ” Father said slowly’ (ORD: 84).


In the father’s present life, the most important things are those which survive any regime change
without major harm: memories, science, sex, food. Due to this belief, his dialogue with his son
goes in circles and repeatedly comes back to discussing various historical, scientific, culinary or
personal topics (women, health and friends).

     Over the years, the father’s personal views have hardened and narrowed. He appears to be less
tolerant and less open now towards the new regime and towards anything he does not know and will
probably not have a chance of learning about in detail. He tends to be a bit grumpy, sometimes
sentimental, explanatory and apologetic. At other times, he likes to preach to his son, to
criticise his behaviour and to persuade him to accept the father’s views as the truth and to force
him to accept his own vision of the world:


“Something’s always happening! Even if you’re sitting at home in your comfy armchair, something’s
always happening! Increasingly sophisticated viruses are continuously trying to reprogramme the way
your cells work, antibiotics have almost lost their potency, organisms are being cloned, almost
every day an animal species disappears from the planet, the darkies have got the atomic bomb,
that’s not enough for you? Entire nations are being displaced around the world, is that not enough
for you?”

“The only thing I’m interested in is people you can sometimes have an interesting conversation
with, and there’s not many of them left, either. And don’t say darkies!” (ORD: 53).


Father does all this to provoke the son to a reaction, thus prolonging their conversation and the
time shared together:


“There’s always a need to talk about the soul! Look around you in the street, or in the metro, just
take a moment to look around and you’ll get the creeps!”

“From what?”

“The freak show.”

“I can see it alright, but it doesn’t surprise me one bit. From the moment something takes a wrong
turn on the evolutionary path, it just keeps going down it and there’s no way of turning it back…
Just look at all the growth anomalies around, all those deformations and obvious mutations and
aberrations, look at the current U. S. president - with a mug like that, the most you could
accomplish a hundred years ago was doing the milk rounds in a loony bin! By that I mean to say
that, if we consider the body to be normal today, in what state must the soul be! But knowing you,
you probably wanted to say something about yourself…” (ORD: 140).


     It is quite evident from the two examples quoted above that the son’s attitude to life is much
more open and much more tolerant. He has also spent many years under the communist rule but this
has never affected his attitude to politics. Apart from one occasion (he mentions that he witnessed
the arrival of Russian tanks in 1968 when he was still a child), he does not talk about politics or
about any moments when politics has affected someone’s life. He listens to his father; he asks him
about his past but joins the discussion only when it touches on politically neutral subjects. He
argues with his father about the differences in their personal taste (types of aeroplanes, types of
women, kinds of alcohol) and in their personal attitudes towards contemporary society (work,
racism, youth). Honza hides his anger within himself. Face to face with someone, he is not capable
of letting his rage explode. No matter whether it is out of respect (‘father’ is always capitalised
as ‘Father’) or whether it is because Honza lacks confidence or interest in things. He suppresses
his views and does not remonstrate.

     The son’s youth and his early adulthood were influenced by living in a communist country but,
when the regime change came, there were many years in front of him. As a result, his attitude
towards contemporary society is much more understanding and open than that of his father. In this
work, the son does not really criticise what is going on around him. His criticism is directed only
at his father whom he secretly reproaches for lack of care, and at the past he remembers from the
time when he was still a child. At the same time, the son also records what is happening around
him. He notes down everything he can see, hear or sense. In his description of the world, he tries
to catch every single impression, speech or sound, but without weighing its positive or negative
side:


‘Cigarettes in hand, we then entered the heart of the Bubeneč district. The space opening before
us, framed by graffiti spattered garages, decomposing villas, and brand new used car salons, was
called Papírenská Street’ (ORD:  42).


The son does not make any direct personal comment on current society. His opinion is fully
reflected in the way in which he observes the world around himself during the walks with his
father, not in spoken words.

     Representatives of three generations meet in this book by Hakl: the father’s, the son’s and
finally the youngest generation of grandsons and granddaughters. Whilst the first two generations,
represented by the two main characters, actively respond to what they see around them in the text,
the youngest generation is only the object of their conversation. The youngest generation is
criticised by the father, observed and in part also defended by the son. However, the grandchildren
never have a chance to speak for themselves. The existence of the youngest generation serves as a
background for the performances of father and son.


     The image of society in the narrative of O rodičích a dětech seems unchanged from the image of
society in Hakl’s previous works. Neither the father nor his son bring anything significantly new
which would radically change our perception of society as depicted in Hakl’s earlier work. All is
happening in fixed constants. The dialogue of the protagonists is built on archetypes as much as on
their actual reactions to the current state of the world. It is influenced by their age and the
experience they share in the moment of their talk. This transforms them into objects within the
world’s narrative discourse. At the same time, they act as subjective powers within the world:


“So what’s new?” I asked.

“Nothing’s been new in this world for more than two billion years; it’s all just variations on the
same theme of carbon, hydrogen, helium and nitrogen,” Father answered.

(…)

“For goodness sake, why do you of all people always ask what’s new?” Father said in time to his
strides. “That’s such a difficult question, in fact it’s the most difficult of all! Now, if you had
asked me how I am, that I would know…” (ORD: 10-11).


5.3 O létajících objektech: ‘I’ amongst the ‘aliens’ and with them


     In 2004, Emil Hakl published his fourth work of fiction entitled O létajících objektech (On
Flying Objects, henceforth LO). This book was Hakl’s second attempt to write short stories with a
similar theme and to gather them together in one volume. The volume contains eleven stories (two of
them are built up from several subchapters carrying separate titles or, alternatively, numbers).
There is also one photo-story done by the book illustrator, Miro Švolík.

     Most of the stories are again told from the perspective of the subjective narrator and so by a
man – Honza – in his middle-age, a man who has the same characteristic features as the narrators we
already know from Hakl’s previous works. Placed among them, we find the story, ‘Dva dny ze života
Evy F.’ (‘Two days in the life of Eva F.’), which is presented by a female subjective narrator, and
the story ‘Večer’ (‘Evening’) retold by a male personal narrator. A photo-story ‘Pejsek
(fotopovídka Mira Švolíka)’ – (‘Doggie, a photo story by Miro Švolík’) - holds a special position.
It consists of fifteen pictures without any additional text.

     When analyzing Konec svĕta, we discussed the subjective narrator of the text and his present
(subjective) as well as his hidden (omniscient, personal) existence in the individual stories of
the volume. We have argued that Konec svĕta can be seen as a novel because of its characteristic
features and its structure. We cannot draw the same conclusion about O létajících objektech. The
three stories mentioned above are testimonies made by different characters. From this perspective,
they are individual. However, as we will see below, the stories of O létajících objektech have many
features which make them rightful participants in the structure of Hakl’s literary work.

     In O létajících objektech, the main narrating character of Honza is again a man in his
forties. He still lives in Prague, he still writes and struggles with occasional employment, he
still enjoys going to a variety of pubs, he still talks to different people and contemplates his
own feelings and thoughts. The world in which this Honza (Jan) lives and which he observes is again
not very different from the one introduced by the narrator of Hakl’s previous works. Only this
time, everything he describes is even more distorted. It is stranger and more ‘alien’ than before.
Things that Honza observes in this volume look to him as though they have been brought to this
world from a different planet and as though they have hugely attacked it. People and their noisy
and everlasting presence remind him of a swarm of insect, always in a clustery motion:


‘The smoky sky above his head had been vertically cut by a thin white beam of  light. Although it
was past ten o’clock, the inside of the building was still alive. Lively, gesticulating figures
were streaming up and down the escalators. Shops were bursting with noise. Cafés were buzzing.
Young salegirls, allured by the trappings of advertised promises, were yawning out of boredom.
Hundreds of mandibles were trying to process numerous salads, crisps and sandwiches, lipstick
painted lips were sucking spaghetti, lame pincers of old gaffers were pulping chicken fillets. In
front of the entrance door, an unfinished fountain was bubbling among black marble-slabs.’

[‘Zakouřenou oblohu nad jeho střechou prořezával kolmo do výšky tenký bílý paprsek. Ačkoliv bylo
deset pryč, uvnitř to žilo. Po eskalátorech plynuly živě gestikulující figurky. Řvaly tam obchody.
Hučely kavárny. Zívaly mlaďounké prodavačky, chycené na inzerát do pasti. Stovky kusadel tam
zpracovávaly saláty, brambůrky, chlebíčky, rtěnkou obarvená makadla srkala špagety, polámané
chelicery starých fotrů drtily kuřecí řízky. Před vchodem bublal mezi hromadami černých mramorových
desek nedostavěný vodotrysk.’] (LO: 10-11)


The space around Honza is full of visions that describe an alienated world. Prague buildings become
like structures created by UFOs. He describes them as if they were animal and all that was inside
them was their internal organs, vessels, veins and liquids. The situations the narrator comes
across, the people he meets, the places he passes, all form a picture of the world which confuses
him. Everything he experiences he finds incredible and hard to understand. He walks the streets and
meets a girl holding a dog dying from a wound caused by a cross-bow. On his trip to the
countryside, he and his friends lose their way and, at a building site, a man shoots at them with a
gun. With an American lady, he conducts a long discussion on life, exploring his theory of disguise
(living as within the shell of a spacesuit) and the chaotic emptiness outside it. Tourists, filling
the space around him, remind him of aliens; they look to him unbelievable and strange and he feels
lost and breathless surrounded by them. A handless waiter is carrying a tray with two ‘shots filled
up to the top with a poisonous reminiscence of something we used to drink once’ [‘panáky naplněné
až po okraj jedovatou reminiscencí na něco, co se kdysi dalo pít.’] (LO: 67). When buying meat at a
local butcher’s, Honza is listening to the news on the radio about a human hand found in a rubbish
bin. In the street, he is stopped by a twenty-five-year-old girl who asks him for a cigarette and
afterwards offers him sex. Outside the new Carrefour supermarket, a new artificial hill stands,
made from the soil dug out for the construction purposes. As he finds out from a random boy, the
trees planted on this hill were brought here by trucks and grass carpets were rolled over the land.
The bailiff who comes to visit him in order to speak about his debts turns out to be an amateur
poet. A goat is carrying a heavy chain around its neck and a pilot, whom the narrator meets on his
holiday, talks about buying his dog a bitch.

     The narrator’s ‘alienated‘ visions expand even more as they are fed by his interest in world
cinema and literature (which he often quotes). Together, they create an incredible, almost
apocalyptic picture of the human race, similar to the one commented in Konec světa. This time, the
vision is even more intense:


‘In front of me a man was hurtling on his motorbike along the pavement towards me. His back mirror
touched my sleeve, only lightly, and he was away. I passed a few people who resembled a
well-made-up group of extras waiting to act in a story taking place fifty years after a global
nuclear catastrophe. I saw a big lump of a woman swallowing a whole potato pancake at once. I saw a
lame man with a severe squint. I saw a pensioner with the look of a dolphin, with a smooth face
without any features whatsoever. There was a convoy of little children with evil eyes and bat-ears.
There was a granny with a tiny, almost  bald, head, three or four wisps of tangly hair remaining on
it. She looked at me, pouted her little goat mouth and let out a sharp laugh.’

[‘Naproti mně se po chodníku řítil člověk na motorce. Lehce mi lízl zpětným zrcátkem rukáv, opravdu
jenom lehce, a byl pryč. Minul jsem několik lidí připomínajících náročně namaskovaný kompars
k příběhu odehrávajícímu se padesát let po globální jaderné katastrofě. Odulou machnu, polykající
vcelku bramborák. Krutě šilhajícího muže s koňskou nohou. Delfíního starce s hladkým obličejem,
prostým jakýchkoliv rysů. Konvoj drobounkých dětí se zlýma očima a netopýříma ušima. Babičku
s malinkou holou hlavou, ze které trčely tři čtyři chomáče zhoudelených vlasů. Ta na mě pohlédla,
našpulila kozí pusinku a ostře se uchechtla.’] (LO: 154).


     In O létajících objektech, the narrator once again analyzes and observes his feelings of
confusion regarding the current world. As he struggles, his mind travels back to his past, back to
his own self and other people’s stories only to find out where exactly is his place within all that
intensive chaos the present life offers him. As an unemployed man, he locks himself up in his flat
where he lies on the sofa, watches TV and allows himself to be fully absorbed in its fictive
reality, far from the real world which confuses him and which he claims he does not understand. He
writes but, when he writes, he does not seem to be himself either. He is sceptical about his self
as well as about the outside world. He calls himself an idiot to whom people speak only out of
pretended politeness. He sympathizes with a random girl’s statement that all people are ‘cunts’ and
he thinks of himself in the same manner.

     As Honza is dubious about his personal position, he is unhappy with the whole world and
society living in it. His doubts increase when his friend says he cannot come to see him because he
is ill. As a reaction to this, Honza questions everything the present has brought to people; he
wonders what has happened to their past and where all the fun and careless freedom they possessed
when young and single has gone. He asks existential questions and expresses existential thoughts
about humans and their reaction to the passing time:


‘Where are we, a sudden thought occurred to me. Where are we and what are we doing here!? Where did
all the fun we used to share go? The only thing we have been doing lately is swearing, grouching
and laughing at the same things all over and over again; where is real humour? Where are those days
when we kept drinking the whole night through until late morning, when we ran from one big beat
concert to another and then set off to work straight afterwards? Nowadays, the only thing we are
able to do is walk and talk. And even this we do not enjoy anymore!’

[‘Kde to jsme, napadlo mě. Kde to jsme a co to tu vyvádíme!? Kam se poděla sranda? Poslední dobou
už jenom sekáme pyskem, pořád dokola nadáváme na ty samé věci a těm samým věcem se smějeme, kde je
humor? Kde jsou ty časy, kde jsme pili do rána a lítali po bigbítech a ráno šli do práce? Teď už se
jenom procházíme a mlátíme pantem, a ani to nás už nebaví!’] (LO: 144)


     Honza is disappointed with his generation, with his friend and he also criticizes other
people. He cannot come to terms with the sudden growth of new supermarkets around him or with the
streets overcrowded by tourists. He cannot cope with the attention of young girls. He is afraid of
being the centre of attention. It is only through contemplation and experience that he is able to
achieve some sort of relief. It is only through observation that he is able to find himself and his
place in the world. No matter how much the world he sees seems to be out of joint, he still finds
it fascinating and worth living in – for these reasons:


‘The gentle blondes from the counting offices. The pale girls from the housing blocks. All these
rummy old geezers who are constantly pissed off. All these arts educated frog princes with whom it
is nice to talk but from whom you must never expect any sort of help. And after all, all those fast
crooks who know how to cheat you even before you manage to notice them. It is their way of
communication.’

[‘Měkké blondýny v účtárnách. Bledé holky ze sídlišť. Všechny ty věčně nasrané rumové dědky.
Všechny ty humanitně vzdělané žabí prince, se kterými se tak pěkně žvaní a kteří pak pro člověka
nehnou prstem. A koneckonců i všechny ty rychlé šmejdy, co s člověkem zametou dřív, než si jich
stačí všimnout, protože je to jejich způsob komunikace.’] (LO: 19-20)


     What the narrator of most of the stories collected in O létajících objektech describes is the
feelings of a man in a mid-life crisis; a man who wanders about the world but cannot recognize it
any longer. Everything around him seems to be changing and he feels it is changing for the worse;
his friends are growing old and they bore him, women starve him of sex and shocking news hovers
around. He feels like a lost boy whose youth has been stolen and, instead, he has been given an
existence in a new, chaotic world. However, as the time goes on, he realizes that the only way to
cope with the confusion is to accept it and carry on, which he does. Then he claims:


‘I was standing on a hilltop covered by darkness. And suddenly I had it. I understood that in fact
everything was ok here. Completely everything. That all those chintzy ideals for which people used
to perish for thousands of years - good, evil, justice, all these kinds of things - are gone. Or
they are still here, but no one really takes them for real anymore, luckily. (…) I realised that it
was enough to be purely on one’s own behalf; that there was no reason to become angry about
unimportant details. This is simply the point we had reached and from here we would go on. (…)
Suddenly an unclear but unexpectedly strong feeling of luck filled my head; luck that I lived at
this and at no other time (…).’

[‘Stál jsem na kopci v černé tmě. A zčistajasna mi došlo, že je to tu vlastně všechno v nejlepším
pořádku. Úplně všechno. Že už jsou pryč ty křiklavě nabarvené plechové ideály, kvůli kterým se
chcípalo několik tisíc let, dobro, zlo, pravda, kdesi cosi. Že jsou tu sice pořád, ale nikdo je
naštěstí už nebere vážně. (...) Došlo mi, že už opravdu stačí být jenom sám za sebe. A že není
nejmenší důvod rozčilovat se kvůli nějakým nepodstatným detailům. Sem to zkrátka došlo a odtud to
zase půjde dál. (...) A zalehlo mě nejasné, ale zato nečekaně silné štěstí, že žiju právě v tomhle
a ne jiném čase (...)’] (LO: 157-158).


     This gradual change from resisting the ‘alienated’ world and then coming to terms with it, the
change from confusion to personal openness, is reflected in the structure of the volume. As I have
said above, the volume, O létajících objektech (On Flying Objects), contains twelve stories.
‘Blízká setkání’ (‘Close Encounters’) reveals the narrator’s discovery of the ‘alienated’ world of
Czech society. The reference to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, seems to be more
than obvious. Both Spielberg’s film and Hakl’s stories follow the story of a man whose life went
through a lot of changes after he had encountered an unidentified flying object. The story,
‘Amerika je zkrátka Amerika’ (‘America is simply America’), describes the narrator’s meeting with
an American woman and their discussion of American films, his fantastic theories and her
frustration due to lack of sex. The third story with the significant title, ‘O létajících
objektech’ (‘On Flying Objects’), revolves around Honza’s adventures which he experiences with his
friends during their journey through the countryside. This time, the flying objects are the bullets
fired by the man protecting a building site. The scene appears as if it was taken from some
unspecified Western movie which has been shifted to the Czech environment. The next story, called
‘Dusno’ (‘Muggy’), expresses the narrator’s sultriness and confusion which he feels in the middle
of a crowd of tourists in the Old Town of Prague. He imagines that people who surround him are
Martians whom he is never going to understand. In ‘Podivín’ (‘Weirdo’), the narrator listens to his
female friend’s story of her relationship with a man who had decided to prefer a collection of toy
army vehicles to going out with her. In ‘Macha’ (‘The Routine’), the narrator looks critically at
his writing skills and his life. Sitting in a pub with one of his friends he gets nostalgic,
thinking of his past experience at school, of girls and of bedtime stories. Any topic that touches
the narrator’s future is recognized as nothing more than nonsense.

     After these six short stories with a similar subjective narrator, the volume includes the
three stories which are told from the perspectives of other people. The story, ‘Dva dny ze života
Evy F.’ (‘Two days in the life of Eva F.’), describes the journey which two characters - Eva and
her husband Josef - take in order to find a way back to their own selves and to their relationship.
The road that awaits them is both real and symbolic. It takes them to an exploration of their
momentary state of mind and to an examination of their attitude to reality. It is a test of their
relationship, of their mutual tolerance and love. It reveals their fears and their personal
differences.

     In this story, the man and the woman both oppose each other and support each other. On one
side, there is the man (Josef) who does not want to be a hero and prefers doing only those things
that are safe and that cannot cause any personal damage or change to him and to others. From his
perspective, his whole life has dried out and so the only thing one can do is accept what is going
on in the world and carry on. On the other side, there is the woman (Eva) and her way of seeing the
world. Since she is the narrator of the story, we learn a lot about her and about her perception of
the world. Eva is more open and more sensitive towards reality than Josef. She is still full of
hope that nothing is lost and everything can be fixed. Where Eva comes with a positive view, there
Josef appears as a pessimist. She is the one who wants to have children, he is the one who does
not. She believes in the exceptionality of each individual and in the individual’s power and
strength, he dismisses all this. She is an idealist and romantic, he is a rationally acting man who
has already thought through the questions of his future life and has decided on his own what to do
next, not taking her into consideration at all. His scepticism towards society leads him to claim
that we are all ‘in the shit’ [‘v hajzlu’] (LO: 97) and the only way to survive it is to be
completely passive and to avoid any changes.

     The story, ‘Dva dny ze života Evy F.’, is about two individuals, two representatives of two
different genders and two different worlds who meet on their life journey and who do not really
know how to protect their relationship against the outside world and against themselves. While Eva
seems to see the solution in founding a family, Josef talks about being passive towards everything
life offers. While Eva dreams of children and love, Josef talks about sexual desire and its
destructive powers. Where Eva is confused by what she sees as male deviousness and fear, there
Josef invokes rational behaviour and behaves with the frigidity of a man who is willing to gamble
for life when his or her life is in danger but denies everything else. What connects Eva and Josef
is their habit and love, regardless of the fact that they are so different. What separates them is
their individuality and their different ways of seeing life and the future. The photo-story,
‘Pejsek’ (‘Doggie’), features a man’s and a woman’s frustration from their unfulfilled sexuality.
The third non-Honza story is entitled ‘Večer’ (‘Evening’). It is the testimony of a man who is
losing his sexual interest in his wife when he sees her ageing body. He does nothing to change his
situation. He just accepts it.

     The last three stories of the volume are once more in the hands of the main male subjective
narrator, Honza. ‘Události a komentáře’ (‘News and Comment’) again highlights the narrator’s
feeling of loneliness in the alienated world that surrounds him and of his passive acceptance of
this. ‘Vyhlídkové lety nad mořem’ (‘Sightseeing flights above the sea’) and ‘Nesmíš se dát!’ (‘No
one must get you!’) feature (extra)ordinary stories the narrator has heard from some other people
or has experienced during his holidays in the Czech countryside.

     All the twelve stories deal with the same topic. They are testimonies of people who live in
the contemporary world. They feature tales of confusion in which the personal pendulum of each
individual constantly swings between recognition of the new social lifestyle and its denial,
between the will to act and the passive observation and acceptance of what is around. This is the
theme of all previously published writings by Hakl. In Hakl’s earlier work, the theme of confusion
dominates. It also dominates in O létajících objektech in the first six stories narrated by Honza
and in the three stories narrated by other characters, but the last three stories centre more on
acceptance of the new social conditions. In O létajících objektech, the narrator, Honza, realizes
that, if he accepts the new social conditions, he can still exist comfortably and enjoy all the
stories the world offers.


     The text of O létajících objektech was published in 2004, about fifteen years after the fall
of communism and the re-introduction of the new economic, political and social lifestyle. By 2004,
capitalism had put down its roots firmly in Czech society and commercial principles and
“managerialism” would have assumed control over all walks of life.[35] The writer consciously
observes all these changes and points out some of their significant features. He notes that pubs
have now regular opening hours; that there are chain stores and shopping centres which are open
twenty-four-seven; that bailiffs come to knock on the debtors’ doors; that cinemas and television
show mostly American films and TV series, and that Prague is full of foreigners. Hakl’s narrator
walks, passing the places he should know well but he suddenly cannot identify them anymore. He
meets people but cannot understand them. He talks to various women, listens to their appeals but
stays completely detached from any possibility of a close relationship. All the places and people
seem to him strange. He is fully alienated from the new society. Places have lost their original
shapes. People have lost their anchors, their roots and their confidence for life. The gap between
men and women has grown and friendship does not have the same qualities as before. The narrator
feels that more and more barriers are built between individuals and society, individuals and the
machinery of the state, the past and the current times. From this point of view, the narrator’s
reaction to the new state of affairs is negative. Yet, there is now also hope in the narrator’s
world and this hope appears as he begins to understand and accept what is the nature of the new
real.


5.4 Let čarodĕjnice: trouble with communication


     In 2008, Emil Hakl published the novel, Let čarodĕjnice (A Flight of the Witch, henceforth
LC). It is again a story about Honza’s life, now again, from a slightly different angle. The
narrative takes place in the first years of the 21^st century. It again describes Czech society as
it looked, in the narrator’s view, approximately fifteen years after the fall of communism: there
are large chain-store shopping centres, American films, mobile phones and omnipresent advertising
and consumerism. Honza is again totally confused by the new society. On one hand, he operates
within mainstream society by working for a low-brow, glossy magazine, writing articles about the
lives of celebrities; on the other hand, he admits he can do this job only under the influence of
marihuana. He does his food shopping in the local supermarket but cannot bear the crowds and the
recklessness of some people. At the first opportunity, he explodes and stabs one of the security
guards with a pen knife. The mobile phone becomes his main tool for communication with women.
Marihuana keeps him active and well-behaved in the company of his workmates; its effects help him
cope with the requirements put on him by his employer and by the society he questions. This is the
way he lives in Prague and tries to enjoy it. However, this does not last. Honza realizes that this
is not how he wants to live. When there is a chance to escape, he accepts an internship in Lisbon.
When the internship finishes, he does not return to Prague. He is not bothered that he has left
everything behind. In Lisbon, he shares a flat with Iris, a girl of half-Hungarian origin, and her
aunt Bea and earns money by delivering various strange parcels to the most awkward places. He cuts
himself off from everything connected with Czech life – from women and from work. However, his stay
in Portugal is again only a temporary solution and, as soon as he realizes that he cannot live
there, he returns home, renews the relationship with a girl, Barunka, gets in touch with his
ex-wife, his friends, visits the man he knifed in the supermarket and finds a new job. At home, he
loses his mother (who dies); in Portugal, he loses Iris (who moves back to her husband) as well as
her aunt Bea (who dies shortly after he leaves).

     So, no matter where he stays, Honza finds communication with the outside world and the people
living around him very difficult. He works himself into a state where he only talks to his Czech
girlfriends by mobile phone and he is only able to talk to anyone when under the influence of
marihuana or alcohol. He is hardly able to speak with his mother and sister. The two women he meets
in Portugal, Iris and Bea, are exceptions to this rule. They make it possible for him to say things
freely, for their conversation is the result of mutual effort to understand each other’s languages
and worlds rather than to fight with the prejudice of his own kin.

     The most difficult relationship Honza has is with his mother. From everything he says about
her, we feel a great distance has grown between both mother and son over the years of his
adulthood. On the one hand, there is the mother, a former sympathizer with the Communist Party, for
many years an organizer of official cultural-political entertainment shows. On the other hand,
there is the son whose personal background is that of the anti-communist social periphery. The
mother and the son are thus incompatible and this incompatibility never disappears. The mother is
now retired. She is writing her personal memoirs. The son does not argue with her anymore; he
visits her, does the shopping and helps her run her household. Yet, neither of them is able to talk
freely to the other. Both are wrapped up in their own thoughts and they disregard anything else
that transcends their narrow personal interest. The narrator’s attitude to his mother does not
change even after he learns about his mother’s death. He looks at her body and sees the body of a
stranger. He turns to her writing hoping this might help him to understand her life, but does not
find anything which might bring him closer to her.

     The narrator’s relationship with his mother fails because they are both totally different
personalities. His engagement within Czech society fails as a result of his experiences at work in
the editorial office of a popular magazine and as a result of his perceptions while walking the
streets and observing Prague life. Honza’s boss on the glossy magazine is a lady who will make any
personal sacrifice in order to get a good interview with a celebrity. His colleagues at work,
mostly women, are pictured as dull office workers who love chocolates and laugh at the narrator’s
jokes. The world of Czech celebrities is a world of hypocrisy:


‘Many of them did not tolerate any interruptions and said only what they wanted to say. Others
revealed everything about themselves, then they thought about it but, during the process of
authorization of the interview, at the last minute they started sending manic tracts overloaded
with general moralizations. When this happened, the whole article had to be completely broken down
into bits and then again built up, while the graphic designers vomited their gastric juices, for
the text should have been sent to print five minutes ago. Most frequently, however, I did battle
with unemotional robots, pre-set to behave in a detached way, and I always lost. Such people used
language which disintegrated when you tried to write it down and melted into evil-smelling slop.
They always attempted to look pleasant while trying to hide the existence of their villas or of
their wife who was in a psychiatrist’s care. This made me anxious. I did not need to care, for even
the most widely read Czech daily newspapers produced only helpless noise, and grammatical and
stylistic and factual mistakes had long since formed one, large, dirty inflationary river.’

[‘Mnozí si do toho nenechali mluvit a řekli jen, co chtěli. Jiní na sebe pověděli první poslední,
ale při autorizaci se jim to rozleželo a posílali na poslední chvíli traktáty plné maniakálně
přezdobených všeobecných moralizmů. Takže se stať musela komplet rozebrat a znovu poskládat,
zatímco grafici blili žaludeční šťávy, jelikož to mělo jít před pěti minutami do tisku. Nejčastěji
však šlo o předem ztracené klání s chladně nastavenými roboty, používajícími řeč, která při prvním
pokusu převést ji do psané podoby tála a rozpouštěla se ve škaredě páchnoucí louži. Bývalo mi úzko
z té jejich snahy být za každou cenu fajn, zatlouct ty vily, manželku v péči psychiatra. Mohlo mi
to být fuk, i nejčtenější deníky v republice už vydávaly jen bezmocný lomoz a gramatické a
stylistické a faktické chyby dávno plynuly v kalný inflační veletok.’] (LC: 109),


and the Czech print media is regarded as the power which blindly follows profit instead of quality.
The only way Honza can cope with working for a magazine like this is to smoke marihuana, as its
effects allow him to look at things in a laid back manner and with detachment. In doing so, the
narrator withdraws from his bosses, managers and leaders who act selfishly and ignorantly as well
as from his colleagues at work who act subserviently and are double-faced. Apart from using
marihuana, Honza also escapes by going to the countryside and to Portugal, by watching films or
children’s stories which he remembers from the past. He is always trying to escape to a different
reality. He hides in these areas from the ferocity of his work, from women, from his family and
from his own personal cowardice and fear he feels after stabbing a man in the supermarket. The
world seems to him to run too fast; too many things are happening around him and he does not have
the power to stop them. His journey to Portugal and his prolonged stay there give him a chance to
get out of the never-ending world of interviews and articles he is forced to write in order to
fulfil the expectations of his boss. It offers him the desired break from his unsettled and unclear
relationship with Barunka. It enables him to flee from Czech society, superficial in actions and
thoughts, tragic in the idleness of its behaviour and ridiculous in its effort to embrace fully the
capitalist system. His stay in Portugal, although it lasts only for a few months, gives him rest
and peace; it provides him with time to gather his strength to come back home and cope with life in
his native country again.

     The narrator searches for help from his overloaded existence at a psychiatrist’s and a
healer’s but the only outcome is that he is given tablets to reduce his anxiety. He looks for help
in his mother’s writings but does not find anything that might tell him why he feels so excluded
from society. He seeks understanding from a lady called Barunka and accepts her flat as a place of
hiding after he stabs the supermarket guard, but Barunka is not the solution of his problems with
his own identity. Neither is the Portuguese break.

     Reality in Let čarodějnice is constructed from a variety of different narratives. There are
Honza’s own stories as well as the stories of the people who live around him. There is some other
material which the narrator uses in his text: his mother’s writing, letters from magazine readers,
various articles, adverts, films scenes and tales he has made up. The tension between all these
conflicting narratives attracts Honza. It makes him look through each text in order to seek an
explanation of the world around him and of the way people live. All this is the material that
provides him with impulses to start thinking critically about society. Adverts, magazine articles
and their readers all seem to him rather silly. His mother’s writing is a simple diary of her life
and he discovers nothing surprising or deep in its content.

     The narrator looks for answers within the texts. He is strongly interested in language as a
vehicle that signifies these texts and Czech reality that lies behind them. His relish for a
diversity of words and their function is a matter of his professional career as well as of his
personal enjoyment. It is a part of his job to go through the texts written by other people in
order to check their compatibility with the house style of the magazine and he does not seem to
enjoy this. He points out that whenever he tries to use unusual language humour in the magazine
articles, he is criticised for being irrational, too ‘difficult’ and too abstract for the readers.

     The narrator likes to observe words and play with them, with their flexibility and their
sounds. By playing this game, he again hides his personality behind it. He has a special taste for
words which originate in the animal kingdom. The names of existing animals, their diminutives and
their fictional counterparts are used as metaphors of the human form and human behaviour. And this
applies to him as well as to the description of other characters:


‘I was a proudie, I was proud. Karel, Kája, Michal or Martin, mole, spider. A Proudie-cunt with a
capital P, a Daftie and a junkie; surprisingly, my memory was now my sharpest instrument. A
functional lack of concentration and memory do not go well together.’

[‘Byl jsem pyšánek, pyšan. Karel, Kája, Michal nebo Martin, krtek, pavouk. Pyščan s velkým pé,
Blboš a feťák, paměť byla teď kupodivu můj nejostřejší nástroj, funkční nesoustředěnost a paměť
spolu nemají co dělat.’] (LC: 134).


Honza’s girlfriend, Barunka, takes him for a proud junkie who enjoys his marihuana trips too much.
His female boss calls him various names, never addressing him by his real name. He sees himself as
a mole who escapes the light and happiness and hides in a dark hole, in his flat-burrow. He is a
spider, a predator that spins his net to catch victims, but then lets them pursue their own destiny
as he cares no longer. All the pictures he draws of his own character are full of strong
self-criticism, irony and sarcasm. The narrator does not seem to value himself very highly but
neither does he think highly of Czech society he belongs to. His life is a verbal extravaganza.
Words serve him as an instrument for his observations, his feelings and his criticism and doubtful
tolerance of society. The reality he experiences is the subject of his perception, it is much more
passively observed than enjoyed and lived. Because living, it seems to him, is chaotic and painful.

      Let čarodĕjnice is again the story of a man who finds it very difficult to relate to the
world today. The only way he can survive is by means of numerous escapes to different realities.
However, he is not the only one who suffers from such a predicament. His mother encloses herself in
the memories of her past life; Barunka isolates herself within her affection for the narrator; his
friend, Arnošt, locks himself up in a hut located far away from civilization. Communication between
these individuals and the outside world is still possible, but the gap between them seems to be
growing. Their world is made up of confusion and chaos. They are confusion and chaos, and this is
one of the messages this novel communicates.


5.5 Pravidla směšného chování: an end, or a new departure?


     Hakl 2010 novel Pravidla smĕšného chování (2010, The Rules of Laughable Behaviour, henceforth
PSC) is again a contribution to the reader’s knowledge about Honza’s life; it continues the story
of the same autobiographical narrator and people and places which surround him. Thematically, the
novella, which addresses us in three parts, follows the story of a son, a fifty-year-old man, and
his dying father, Ivan. We may find a forerunner to this novella in O rodičích a dĕtech. Pravidla
smĕšného chování bears witness to the end of one stage in the narrator’s life – the period when he
was a son.

     The work consists of three separate parts but what the writer finally produces is a single,
integrated account. Pravidla smĕšného chování is the story of a person whose life has more or less
disintegrated after he has found himself alone, after he has lost his wife (see Konec světa), his
son, the love of his latest girlfriend, Hanka (see O rodičích a dĕtech he was happily living with
her), his mother (see Let čarodějnice) and finally his father. The book is a self-ironic account of
the narrator’s actions, talk and thoughts during the days of his father’s hospitalization and
death. The three stories are interconnected and all of them are narrated in the present tense,
unlike the previous texts which were basically written in the past tense. The first story coincides
with one of the last phone calls the son has with his father before he goes to hospital. In the
second story, the son listens to his hospitalized father and later to some recordings he made with
his father during the last days of his life and some time before. In the third story, the son is
looking for the best place to scatter the ashes of his father’s cremated body.

     The action in all the three stories serves only as a catalyst for various thoughts that go
through the narrator’s mind when sharing the last minutes with his father and shortly after his
death. Whatever occurs during this period, no matter if it is paragliding, walking in the streets
or rowing on the Danube, all this serves only as a background to the real story that is once again
happening in the narrator’s mind. When paragliding above the Czech countryside (in the story ‘Ve
visu’ – ‘In hanging’), his thoughts drift back and forth between the present and the the past. The
momentary feelings of the person who finds himself imprisoned in the company of two practically
unknown men (Rulpo and Murgo) and later tied to the paragliding equipment are intertwined with his
memories of his former girlfriend, Hafina, the years spent in the army, his uncle and his random
meeting with both the above-mentioned men. The regular visits he pays to his father, in the
hospital or at home (in the story ‘Pravidla smĕšného chování’ – ‘The Rules of Laughable
Behaviour’), are complemented with random walks and talks with his friend, text messages to his
girl-friend and recordings of his phone calls with his father made some time ago. His trip to the
Danube delta in Romania and to the sea (in the story ‘Hřbitov na pláži’ – ‘The Graveyard on the
Beach’) is not only a random holiday he tries to enjoy with Murgo and Rulpo but also the fulfilment
of the promise he had given to his father before he died. The narrative connects the personal
stories of each participant, the narrator’s perceptions of the surrounding country life and, again,
a mobile phone conversation between him and the same girl-friend.

      Once again, the world Emil Hakl presents in this book shows a society of people who lack an
ability to respond to the requirements which the present time puts in front of them. The narrator
himself again seems to have serious problems with his life. Often he encloses himself in his own
inner world of images and words, letting in only those which cannot harm his contested freedom and
solitude. It is easy for him to share a pint with his friends, Vláďa or Michal as, in their
company, he does not have to pretend anything (compare with Konec světa). He finds communication
with women much harder than before. His attitude towards a ‘mobile phone’ lady is very distant, as
is her attitude to him. She blames him that he is distant from her, she criticises him for his
ignorance, his self-centredness and his cowardice. In spite of all this criticism, the narrator
cannot avoid texting her but protects himself by keeping away from any intimacy that could develop
if they meet. Out of fear, he prefers a safe distance to the possible devastating effects of a
relationship.

     The communication between the narrator and his two mates, Murgo and Rulpo, floats on the waves
of mutual agreement to be silent when needed, to talk when it seems necessary to talk. We can
assume Murgo and Rulpo have been good friends for a long time before they met the narrator. They
have their own interests; they know the same people and each other’s lives more than the
narrator’s. One day, they turn up in front of him and later they do this twice more – they take him
for paragliding and to the Danube delta. Conversation, when it happens, occurs mainly between Murgo
and Rulpo. The narrator seems to be left aside – firstly, because he does not share the environment
the two friends come from, and secondly, because he wants to. There is a certain conflict between
his thoughts and actions. When considering things in his mind, he often denies them; when things
happen, he accepts them. He does not want to go paragliding but, in the end, he does go. He does
not enjoy flying but pretends it was a great experience. He rarely expresses his own opinion.
Rather, he keeps all his thoughts locked up inside his head. If he does talk, the outcome he sees
is more than awkward.

     The same problem the narrator has with communicating with others also appears in his
relationship to his father, as we can observe best in the novella, O rodičích a dĕtech. In Pravidla
směšného chování, his behaviour towards his father becomes more sincere, tolerant and open. The
narrator suddenly realizes that there is no need for him to hide his thoughts anymore. His father
is dying. Questions are answered, private experiences and doubts shared. Their mutual conversations
circle on various topics but none of them goes very deep. Both talk about scientific discoveries,
about politics, about the son’s work or about women. The father complains, the son listens,
possibly giving back certain facts and answers. His time comes when sitting at the bed of his
unconscious father. There, he finally uses the opportunity and, with no internal barriers, he
speaks of everything that touches his mind - his own son, history, wars, aeroplanes:

“It might look strange, the fact that I am interested in such a rubbish,” I say. “I am simply
fascinated by this gratuitously vehement optimism and the traumas of the twentieth century, this
alternation of slaughtering and the paradise of flourishing economies. The gradual transformation
of a careless outing into a march of death. I am interested in the real shape of these moments …”

[„Možná je divný, že se zabejvám takovejma kravinama,“ říkám. „Mě zkrátka fascinuje ten bezdůvodně
prudkej optimizmus a traumata dvacátýho století, střídání jatek s rajskejma zahradama kvetoucích
ekonomik. Plynulej přerod bezstarostnýho vejletu v pochod smrti. Zajímá mě pravá podoba těch
chvil.(...)“] (PSC: 62)


Only at this moment does he feel free to express himself - he is talking to someone who is not
going to oppose him, only listen. It is the same opportunity that Honza had, for example, with the
Chinese girl in Konec svĕta. She, too, was unable to understand him. The language of unconscious
people or the language of foreigners gives the narrator a freedom to say things that are normally
stuck behind the barrier of his own doubt.


     Pravidla smĕšného chování is another chapter of the oeuvre Emil Hakl has published since 2000.
But now the main character, the subjective narrator Honza, is slightly older, around fifty years of
age. He is employed but works from home, and he still writes. He lives alone. Apart from his
‘mobile phone’ girl-friend, he does not mention having any sexual affairs. He has never ceased to
enjoy friendly beers with his peers. He loves his father, though he blames him for the years of the
narrator’s childhood. His relationship towards the other family members is very impersonal. He is a
good observer and a good recorder of everything he is able to absorb with all of his five senses.
Everything he chooses to say is noted down in its raw form. The language is a mixture of proper
Czech (in indirect speech) and its colloquial counterpart. There is also Russian, English and
French, mostly in their broken form (in the direct speech of the characters). When the toothless
father speaks, this is presented as the narrator perceives it. The same principle is used when the
narrator tries to take down all the sounds he can recognize from the phone calls he receives during
his paragliding experience. He attempts to catch everything in detail. After all, these are his
last days with his father.

     In Pravidla směšného chování, Emil Hakl depicts Czech (specifically Prague) society as it
exists more than twenty years after the fall of the communist regime. The narrator, Honza, seems to
have found stability so that he is able to work, but he still lives alone, not able to keep a
relationship with any woman. Age and loneliness do not seem to bother him much. However, this all
changes after he experiences his father’s death which forces him to contemplate his situation.
Still, he keeps out of mainstream Czech society. He does not rush about, although mobile phones,
taxis, paragliding and billboards become part of his everyday reality. He even becomes a part of
the mainstream culture when posing for a billboard advertisement, which was originally meant as a
protest against the pettiness of the famous, but has resulted in the narrator’s self-exposure. He
then feels that he has made himself into a laughing stock.

     The position of the other characters in the work by Emil Hakl does not seem to be any less
complicated than before. The characters are also just as diffident as ever in Hakl’s prose. The
‘mobile phone’ lady, the woman with whom Honza exchanges text messages, has basically wasted her
youth. She is a woman who now yearns for intimacy after many years of wild and chaotic personal
relationships and alcohol abuse. Rulpo and Murgo lead lives of everyday surprises and enjoyment.
But, like the narrator, they live on their own. The narrator’s father, a grumpy old man who lately
used to be a caring person, fights his illness by exercising his memory and by questioning his son
about certain discoveries in biology, comparing his knowledge with what can be found on the
internet.

     In Pravidla směšného chování, Hakl presents a picture of the same society we know from his
previous work. Furthermore, the style he uses to describe his fictive world follows the same
principles. But this time, the composition of the text is much more tightly tied up with the
narrator’s story. The text does not stretch out in various directions; it holds on to a single line
and enriches it with details which the narrator perceives at the given moment. In comparison to
other texts by Emil Hakl, this moment is always the immediate present. The narrator’s memories are
no longer the only important thing. The thing that matters now is the present world, everything
that is happening right now. There is no reason to go back in time anymore. The present itself is
overwhelming; it swallows up everything and everyone around. The narrator’s dying father is a true
symbol of the departing times. And, with the father’s death, comes the son’s recognition of the
present and the ‘new’. Is this the end of ‘life according to Honza Beneš’? Or is it just the
beginning of another story – the story of the world here and now?


     The narrating and the acting Jan Beneš lived in his stories for nearly fifty years. When he
was in his forties he made a decision to share with us what he experienced on his journey through
Prague and along the lives of his friends, his family, his partners, colleagues and random people
he met on his everyday wanderings. In Konec světa he was a passive observer of the present world,
in Pravidla směšného chování he mainly acts. In Konec světa, he was still living in the gap between
the memories of his past and the present world. In Pravidla směšného chování he finds his ‘now’ and
he tries to live it. Here, he is not a son anymore but a grown-up man who decided to face his life
the way it is:

          ‘(…) The water is still, medium-dense, bland.

     I’m plunging, I’m diving, I’m swimming under the water-level. I’m opening my eyes. I’m peering
at my face. It’s a horrible spectacle but it’s still much better than to see nothing.’

[‘(…)Voda je nehybná, středně hustá, nijaká.

     Nořím se do ní, potápím se, plavu pod hladinou. Otevírám oči. Dívám se sám sobě zblízka do
ksichtu. Je to hrozný pohled, ale pořád mnohem lepší, než nevidět nic.’] (PSC: 134)


In Konec světa Jan Beneš was a critic of Czech society, sceptical to its existence within the
post-communist world. In Pravidla směšného chování he accepts it. In spite of the fact, that his
position of in-betweener stays unchanged.


























6. Emil Hakl - Summary


6.1 Jan (Honza) Beneš


     The analysis of Emil Hakl’s work has revealed several changes that have occurred in the level
of the writer’s style as well as in the subject described – ‘life according to Honza’ and the
society that surrounds him. As the narrative discourse oscillates between an attempted diversity of
perspectives and their final centralization within the single character of one subjective
narrator-actor, and shifts from the distant past to recent moments and to the present and from the
narrator’s internal thoughts to his reflection about the world around him, the main theme of Hakl’s
prose stays the same. The narrator of most of his texts is the same man, Honza, whom the reader
meets in the Prague streets welcoming the first foreigners who came to Czechoslovakia after the
fall of communism (Konec svĕta). It is the same Honza who struggles with the loss of his
girlfriend, Petruše, and his inability to participate in the life of mainstream society (Intimní
schránka Sabriny Black), the same man who argues with his father (O rodičích a dĕtech), who wanders
through the alienated world of the city of Prague (O létajících objektech), who escapes from
reality into exotic places and other languages (Let čarodĕjnice), who thinks about his mother (Let
čarodějnice) and who speaks with his dying father (Pravidla smĕšného chování).

    Honza’s world reflects the world of a person who has spent his youth under communism and under
the decades of Czechoslovak ‘normalization’. There, he chooses the lifestyle of an individual
living on the periphery of Czechoslovak society, being involved with the country’s socialist
politics as little as possible. He retains the attitude of a detached observer when living in the
post-communist system but this time, he acts as a person who is not completely against the system
but stands somewhere in between. He is a person who is always partly ‘in’ (accepting mainstream,
capitalism and the consumerist society) and always partly ‘out’ (behaving as an outcast and as an
outsider). The narrator is always on the move between being a successful person and being a
failure, not only in his career but also in his personal relationships. With the awareness of the
character’s advancing age and of the passing of time, Honza Beneš’s attitude slowly shifts. As a
result of this, protest against the system slowly loses its power and he becomes more and more
tolerant towards the society that surrounds him. But his criticism never disappears completely as
it is in his nature to look at the world critically and never as a member of an unthinking mass of
people.

    From this point of view, the series of literary texts by Emil Hakl can be seen as the
narrator’s record of his own psychological process of adaptation to the previous communist regime
and to the contemporary post-communist world.


6.2 An image of society


     In all his works, Emil Hakl takes us close to the society of lonely people who find their
adaptation to the principles of the world in which they live extremely difficult. His key
characters are ordinary and extraordinary people who come from different generations, represent
varying values but still have one thing in common – they experience solitude and confusion and are
threatened by mental breakdown as they struggle to cope. Their life is a zigzagging journey between
triumphs and defeats, between partial success and repeated failure. They are seekers of personal
stability and love but, instead, they find chaos and grief. It turns out that the world is
complicated and more hostile than they could ever imagine. The communist regime did not make their
lives happy. Capitalism does not make them happy either. The generation of older people does not
see anything overtly positive in the democratic openness of the country. They reject it for its
focus on consumerism, for a multiplicity of options and for its impact on an individual’s ability
to make a decision and pursue it. They also cannot cope with the confusion which the new society
seems to have created in its value system. There appears to exist no single truth any longer. They
hide themselves in their personal memories and in chatting about seemingly unimportant things. The
generation of their sons survives on alcohol, in temporary employment and in nostalgia for their
anti-regime, underground lifestyle which some of them led in their youth and which made their
youth, in their eyes, socially and politically worthwhile. Finally, there is the generation of
young people. These are also lost in the ferocity and aggression of the adult world that surrounds
them. They cope with the new world in their own way: they become either fast and furious
participants in the activities of the new era, or they fall by the wayside, depressed.

     The world of losers, loners and freaks, in the works by Emil Hakl, is contrasted with the
world of enthusiastic individuals, businessmen and their obedient employees, successful directors,
musicians and filmmakers. As the narrator looks at the first group with love, with compassion and
dismay, he sees the second group as a bunch of naïve, hypocritical and careerist individuals who
exchanged the real for a life of pretension. Yet, he sees some of these people as a source of
inspiration. In the narrator’s view, Czech society he describes is full of both types of people: of
idealistic and careerist yuppies on the one hand and of depressed young people on the other; of
disappointed, scared and confused adults on the one hand and of successful and aggressive
businessmen on the other; of sceptical old women and men on the one hand and of contented people on
the other. Jan Beneš stands always in between. He is an alien in all these worlds. He is a
respectful observer of a society which has gone through a political, economic, social and cultural
transition. He faces the victorious capitalism and seeks new recognition, stability and love. In
the new freedom, it seems difficult for the members of Czech society to find these values. From
this point of view, the series of literary texts by Emil Hakl can also be seen as the narrator’s
record of a psychological process of adaptation of society to the previous communist regime and,
later, to the contemporary post-communist world.


6.3 An image of the ‘real’ world


     In the majority of Hakl’s works, the narrative is subjected to one, single and subjective
personality. This personality is Jan Beneš – the character, the narrator, the author. The character
of Jan Beneš is Hakl’s main actor, although sometimes he stays hidden behind the voice of another
person. Jan Beneš-the author is Hakl’s real name and, therefore, the real personality that lies
behind each text by Hakl, although he is never directly present.

     The reality in which Jan Beneš-the character lives, in which Jan Beneš-the narrator shapes and
Jan Beneš-the writer experiences carries information which we are free to compare with our own
perception of the real world. Throughout the narratives of Hakl’s works, we follow the image of
Czech communist and post-communist society, we learn about existing places, about political, social
and cultural events and about authentic representatives of the contemporary world. The
autobiographical inspiration of Hakl’s texts is indisputable. However, it is only one of many
sources that play a part in each construction of Hakl’s fictive-real. In this sense, Hakl’s
perception of the real world functions as a point of departure for the construction of Jan
Beneš’s-the narrator’s account of a fictive-real world. This fictive-real world then functions as a
point of departure for the reader’s perception of Hakl’s text in relation to both the real and the
fictive world.

     The series of literary texts by Emil Hakl can also be seen as the author’s and the reader’s
record of a psychological process of adaptation of Jan Beneš-the author and of the real Czech
society to the previous communist regime and to the contemporary post-communist system. From this
point of view, everything that has been said about the narrator and about his perception of the
world can be seen as a critical reflection of the real world in a work of fiction.

6.4 Contemporary, realistic and postmodern


     The world which the narrative of Hakl’s texts constructs combines both the vertical and the
horizontal perspective. It responds to the linear time flow (the actual flow of Jan Beneš’s life)
and to the characters’ memory (the cyclic time). It incorporates the observations and thoughts of
individuals and their actions (the network of different perspectives, perceptions and lives). It is
complex as it is centralized around the subjective narrator of Jan Beneš and it is fragmented as it
consists of a variety of different stories and views. It is articulate in a way it describes
different characters, situations and events, and silent in a way it does not speak about certain
things. It is chaotic in an individual’s erratic actions and thoughts but it also conforms to the
order of human life and it respects it. It is deconstructive, depressive and critical in its
relationship with the outside world and the self, but it is also understanding towards all human
imperfections. It admires the variety of human natures. It is ambiguous, versatile and elusive, yet
it despises it.

     Hakl’s narrative connects the world of the real with the world of fantasy and imagination. It
follows a single story of a man and yet it spreads into many directions and spheres. It is highly
subjective and yet it plays with objectivising views. In its description of the world, it acts
realistic and yet it is multidimensional and postmodern.

     From this point of view, the series of literary texts by Emil Hakl can be seen as a postmodern
game with the author’s/the narrator’s/the reader’s record of the psychological process of
adaptation of real Czech society to the communist regime and later to the post-communist system. It
is a society which is wandering along the streets of Verne’s Steel City and through the labyrinth
of the Quake and the Cthulhu. It is a society which is struggling to find a way out of a Kafkaesque
alienated world. It is a society which waits to free itself from sci-fi visions of the apocalypse
and of glossy magazines, billboards and TV programmes. It is society which found itself in the
narratives of the others but in actions it stays indecisive and stagnant. It is society in which
every individual leads a journey towards recognition of the self.

     ‘Life according to Jan Beneš’ is an individual’s perception of the world of today and yet it
arises from the contemporary Czech world. It is a story of Czech society seen through the eyes of a
middle-aged man who grew up on the periphery of communist system and who has struggled in his
search for a stable place within the post-communist system. This man is Hakl’s embodiment of Czech
society - and he is confused.



II. The constructed and deconstructed world of Jan Balabán’s fiction


Introduction


     Unlike the writing by Emil Hakl, Balabán’s texts are built up of personal stories of different
individuals whose lives go separate ways or connect in the most common way such as within a family
bond, love or a childhood friendship. Balabán offers a variety of individual stories. Some of them
are narrated once and within the confines of a single collection or a novel. Some of them extend
beyond a single volume and re-appear in a series of other texts.

     Balabán’s works consist of literary sketches which contain a gallery of people whose lives are
followed from the moment of their personal breakdown onwards. Some of these texts are in-depth
studies of certain individuals connected by the same environment and the same circle of people that
surrounds them. Others are just single stories of single characters and single events.

     Balabán’s texts work in line with their structures: they expand on several themes and explore
particular characters. To deal with both aspects in full, Balabán’s works will be analyzed from two
different perspectives. One will concentrate on the themes (thoughts and events) and motifs
(elements) as they appear and re-appear in the lives of individual characters within single texts,
single volumes and in the whole context of Balabán’s fiction. The analysis will follow certain
topics which are repeatedly discussed in connection with individuals’ life experiences, the
variations in these topics and the forms and the frequency with which certain events intervene in
the lives of each character. In addition, the analysis will focus on the nature of particular
characters and their transformation within various stages of their personal existence.

     The first chapter of the analysis will establish the way Balabán’s work is constructed. It
will consider certain principles that shape the structure of these texts and points out certain
changes these texts have formally implied in the course of their creation. It will discuss the
narratorial perspective, subjectivity in the narrator’s view of the world and the way it influences
the reader’s perception of both the fictive and the real. This will set the ground for a semantic
exploration of Balabán’s works. This exploration will have two major parts: one will follow the
collective (social) experience of Balabán’s characters; the other will follow their individual
experience. It will touch upon the individual’s position within the outside world and upon the
individual’s perception of the self within the self. The analysis will reveal the parameters of
Balabán’s fictive reality which his characters keep exploring and which the reader of Balabán’s
universe perceives and relates to the world he or she knows best – the reality he or she lives.


     The following are Balabán’s texts I will examine: the collection of stories, Středověk (Middle
Ages, 1995, henceforth ST), Boží lano (God’s Rope, 1998, henceforth BL) and Prázdniny (Holidays,
1998, henceforth PR), the novel, Černý beran (The Black Ram, 2000, henceforth CB), the novel, Kudy
šel anděl (Where the Angel Walked, 2003, henceforth KSA), the collections of stories, Možná že
odcházíme (Maybe We Are Leaving, 2004, henceforth MO) and Jsme tady (We Are Here, 2006, henceforth
JT) and the novel, Zeptej se táty (Ask Your Dad, 2010, henceforth ZT). I will leave aside Balabán’s
graphic novel, Srdce draka (The Heart of the Dragon, 2001), his drama, Bezruč?! (Bezruč?!, 2009)
and his journalistic and essayistic work because non-prose works are outwith the scope of my
analysis.





















1.  A few words on the narrator and genres


1.1 Personalisation of the narrator’s position


     There are several narratorial tendencies in Jan Balabán’s writing. The first one is
represented by the changes in the narrator’s voice and by the perspective each narrator of each of
the stories applies while reflecting on the world. In his prose debut, Středověk, Jan Balabán
introduced all three types of narration (subjective, personal and omniscient). In Boží lano, he
experimented with opportunities offered by the subjective narrator only. All the other texts
written and published thereafter employ the personal perspective of the narrator (with only a few
exceptions of an omniscient view). The personal perspective of the narrator is the view of a man, a
woman or a child. It is either a single narrator, two alternating narrators – a man and a man (Hans
and Emil in Balabán’s last three works), a man and a woman (Roman and Uršula in ‘Uršula’: MO) or a
woman and a child (Magda and Jaromír in ‘Magda’: MO), or several people who share their experiences
and their views within a single narrative (KSA).

     In Balabán’s collections of stories, one person acts as the narrator of several texts (Pavel
Nedostál or Ivan Satinský: PR; Emil, Hans or Kateřina in Balabán’s last three works) or as the
narrator of a single story. In Balabán’s novels, the situation is similar. There are three
narrators in Černý beran (František Josef, Patricie and Jennifer) and even ten narrators in Kudy
šel anděl. Some of them take the opportunity to speak on more occasions, others speak only once.
Both in Balabán’s short stories and in his novels, it also applies that a person who acts as the
narrator of one particular story becomes later one of many characters in the other text, and vice
versa.

     The changing voice of the narrator opens up the world of various interpretations and meanings.
A testimony provided by one individual is never clear as it is often fragmented and often
interrupted by the views of other people. An individual’s reality is looked at from different
perspectives. An individual’s truth is questioned by a variety of other individuals who adjust it
according to their own perception of the world. Single characters become the narrators of their own
lives, the readers of lives of others and the objects of someone else’s narration. They access
reality that cannot be fully discovered because it consists of multiple meanings and subjective
truths. They explore their own behaviour, their feelings and their minds. What they find they apply
to their present lives. They submerge themselves in their own selves and through these selves they
question their relationships to certain people and things.

     Initial experiments with the perspective of the narration and with the narrator’s point of
view led Jan Balabán to a decision to drop the omniscient and subjective view and, instead, to
replace it with the personal view only, or with a number of personal views. By application of the
personal narration to his texts, Jan Balabán separates his subjective ‘I’ from the fictive reality
of his works and enables them to act as independent constructs of human life. His subjective
narrator


 ‘recedes behind the characters of the narration so the reader is not aware of his presence
anymore. (…) The reader is there under an impression that he is in the middle of the narration, or
that he observes the narration through the character who does not narrate but who reflects the
narrated in their mind.’

[‘ustupuje za postavy vyprávění, takže si čtenář už ani neuvědomuje jeho přítomnost. [V]e čtenáři
vzniká iluze, že se nachází uprostřed dění, nebo toto dění pozoruje očima postavy, která sice
nevypráví, ale v jejímž vědomí se vyprávěné zrcadlí.’] (Kubíček 2007: 60).


From the perspective of time, the personalized testimony gives the reader of Balabán’s texts a
chance to follow the lives of his characters in their immediate presence. Moreover, it supports the
reader’s freedom to choose the way he reads the text, he feels about the text and he understands
the text. It provides him with an opportunity to make his own independent judgment about the
presented fictive reality without being subordinated by the strong subjective ‘I’ or by someone
else acting externally, outside the constructed world. It gives him an illusion of objectivity and
his subjective powers.

     The illusion of objectivity of Balabán’s texts is also supported and, at the same time,
rejected by another factor. This factor is the application of multiple narrations – the narrations
in which two or more characters look at the same relationship, the same situation or the same event
from their own perspectives. To quote Kubíček, multiple narrations have


‘a special ability to shake the identity of the fictive world by pointing out their individual and
legitimate truths. (T)he fictive truth becomes a subjective construct with only a temporal
validity. (…) It is the reader who becomes responsible for the reconstruction of the truth in his
search for the unity of the text.’

[‘zvláštní schopnost znejistit identitu fikčního světa tím, že poukáže na jeho individuální
platnost. (F)ikční pravda se ukazuje jako subjektivní, dočasně platný konstrukt. (...) (V)elkou
část odpovědnosti za její re-konstrukci přebírá pak čtenář v interpretačním procesu sjednocení.’]
(Ibid. 136)


The reader is the unifying element of Balabán’s texts with multiple personal narrations. This is
because, in these texts, there is no one else who could be trusted. In these texts, every character
is reliable and unreliable at the same time. Their projection of the self is either parallel to or
in conflict with other people’s perception of their identity. As a result, the overall picture of
the fictive world is deprived of its simple clarity and its simple truth and replaced with
uncertainty about the recognition of human life. It signals that the presented image is relative.

     Balabán has chosen a personal narrator for the majority of his works because he wishes to be
objective and detached. For the same reason, he uses multiple narrations and looks at every
individual, every situation and every event from different angles and from a distance. However, the
principle of multiple narrations destroys objectivity. The principle of multiple narrations
transfers all the responsibility for reconstructing the text onto the reader only and so it makes
the interpretation of the text subjective and its truth relative again. In this sense, the picture
we seek to recognize in Balabán’s works is the reader’s subjective perception of a
multi-perspective, fragmented and uncertain fictive world which has been created from the author’s
interaction with the external reality of his texts and from the reader’s own recognition of the
world.

     In Balabán’s texts, each truth – the author’s, the narrator’s and the reader’s – is being
questioned, constantly integrated with other truths and destroyed. Hence, it makes both the real
and the fictive worlds multidimensional and alive, yet insistent.


1.2 The gradual separation and the re-union with the writer’s personality: part I.


     A few paragraphs above, it was noted that: ‘[b]y application of the personal narration to his
texts, Jan Balabán separates his subjective ‘I’ from the fictive reality of his works and enables
them to act as independent constructs of human life.’ This separation is definitely happening on
the level of the narrative discourse. On the level of the story itself, the change is not so
straightforward. There, the ‘I’ of the writer and the story of his characters find their common
ground. Certainly, we can have a look at Balabán’s life, we can examine the various interviews he
gave to the Czech media about his literary fiction or we can take into account all that Balabán’s
family and their closest friends have said about Jan Balabán, for example, in the work, Honzo,
ahoj! Setkání s Janem Balabánem (Bye, Honza! An Encounter with Jan Balabán, henceforth AH)
published posthumously in memory of Jan Balabán in 2011. In this work, various people who had a
chance to know Jan Balabán have published their memories and reflections about him and his
testimony about the world. It is also here, where we, the readers, learn more about certain
episodes, images and thoughts that have helped to shape Balabán’s life and later also his literary
world.

     Some statements which repeatedly come up in people’s testimonies about Balabán’s personality
reflect his family background:


‘Jan’s stories are full of things he knew very well. They are about his family, about the church,
about the city he inhabited. His religious faith and theology also play an important role (…) At
the beginning of the 1960s, when the family of Daniel Balabán M.D. moved to Ostrava, their two
children perceived this new environment with intensity and eagerness. (…)  But there were also
other things: the regional hospital with pavilions located in various areas of a large garden; the
hospital environment which had its own specific problems of doctors and their patients.’

[‘Janovy povídky se zabývají opravdu tím, co důvěrně znal, prostředím rodiny, církevního sboru,
města, v němž žil. Také víra a teologie si přišly na své. (...) Když se začátkem šedesátých let
rodina MUDr. Daniela Balabána přistěhovala do Ostravy, vnímaly jejich dvě děti nové prostředí ostře
a dychtivě. (…) Ale bylo tu i leccos jiného: Prostředí krajské nemocnice s pavilony rozhozenými ve
velké zahradě, které si žilo specifickými problémy lékařů i těch jimi léčených.’] (Klobása 2011:
AH: 27);


his relationship to brother Daniel:


‘[f]or Honza, it was his older brother Daniel, an artist and a very highly educated person, who
played an essential role during his growing up. Jeník wished to be an artist too, but... he became
a writer.’

[‘Zásadní postavou Honzova dospívání byl jeho starší bratr Daniel, akademický malíř a člověk
velkého rozhledu. Jeník si přál být také malíř, ale... stal se z něj spisovatel.’] (Žila 2011: AH:
39);


his relationship to his daughter:


‘[y]ou suffer from diabetes. This is going to stay with you until the end of your days. It is
untreatable. I remembered: Jesus, this is the same illness Balabán’s daughter has too. But she’s
had it since she was a child. I guess since she was around seven years old.’

[‘Máte cukrovku, to je už napořád, to už je nevyléčitelné. Vzpomněl jsem si: Ježíš, to má i
Balabánova dcera, ale už od dětství, snad od sedmi let.’]

(Surůvka 2011: AH: 62);


his Canadian adventure:


‘Bohouš Čermák, whom he [Jan Balabán] visited in Toronto, was not a typical emigrant. (…) His house
used to be welcoming and open to many other people. Perhaps it was so because of his Canadian wife
Jenny.’

[‘Bohouš Čermák, ke kterému do Toronta přijel, nepatřil k typickým emigrantům. (...) Jeho dům byl
domem otevřených dveří. Snad na tom měla svým způsobem zásluhu jeho kanadská manželka Jenny.’]
(Březina 2011: AH: 78);

 his difficulties with alcohol:


‘Honza led a life full of arguments, controversies and wars. With himself and with the world around
him. Lately, I sadly observed his war with alcohol.’

[‘Honza vedl za svého života řadu pří, sporů a válek. Sám se sebou i s okolím. Já poslední dobou
intenzivně vnímal tu jeho válku s alkoholem.’]

(Šnajdr jr 2011: AH: 107);


his internal struggles:


[‘there were] moments when Honza’s life collapsed into chaos. And there wasn’t a single person able
to alleviate his misery. There was not enough love, not enough intimacy, not enough understanding
and not enough encouragement. There was not enough faith and not enough hope… That feeling of being
an outsider, a loser and an outcast prevailed over him.’

[‘Chvíle, kdy se Honzovi všechno naopak propadalo do chaosu, a nebyl člověk, který by mohl to
utrpení zmírnit. Nebylo dost lásky, dost blízkosti, dost pochopení a povzbuzení, nebylo dost víry a
naděje... Ten pocit outsidera, ztroskotance a vyděděnce nad ním vítězil.’] (Voglová 2011: AH: 91);


his fictive characters:


‘[he wrote] the stories of renamed individuals. There is a name behind the predicament of each
individual. A fictional name, a story name. And yet, it is a name which hides a real person made of
flesh and blood. A real person, whom Jenda [meaning Jan] meets. He lives his life in these names.
He lives the way he writes. He writes the way he lives. He does not give his name the meaning of an
illusion. He gives his name a story which unfolds in his mind.’

[‘Příběhy přejmenovaných osudů. Za každým údělem je jméno. Jméno románové, povídkové. A přece
jméno, v němž spočívá postava z masa a krve. Postava, kterou Jenda potkává. V těchto jménech žije
svůj život. Žije, jak píše. Píše, jak žije. Nedává svým jménům vymyšlený smysl, jen příběh, který
se odvíjí v jeho mysli.’] (Šimsa 2011: AH: 65);


 and writing:


‘Anděl [meaning his work KSA] is the turning point in my writing career because it was in this work
where I finally managed to get out and meet other people. There is still a certain hypertrophy of
the author’s ego present here, which is testimony about the difficulties I had with this step.
There I felt being addressed by other lives, other characters for the first time. This is when I
realized that I do not have to write all the time just about myself. And I think that I managed to
ask questions not only about the meaning of my own life but also about the life we live here or we
have been living here. At the same time, I have managed to keep the core far away, without putting
in any great symbolic narratives.’

[‘Anděl je pro mě přelomová kniha v tom, že se mi v ní podařilo vyjít k ostatním lidem. Je tam
ještě hypertrofie autorského ega, což je svědectví o potížích toho vykročení. Tam jsem poprvé
pocítil skutečně oslovení jinými osudy, jinými postavami. Že nemusím psát pořád o sobě. A myslím
si, že se mi podařilo položit otázku ne po smyslu mého života, ale toho, co tu žijeme, nebo jsme
žili. A přitom udržet knot hodně daleko, nedávat tam nějaké velké symbolické příběhy.’] (Chrobák
2011: AH: 119).


It is these quotations and our knowledge of Balabán’s fiction (as it will be analyzed below) which
make us consider the autobiographical inspiration of his works, look at the extent to which his
work reflects upon his experience of the ‘real’ world, think about how the ‘real’ world shapes
Balabán’s literary testimony and how it influences the reader’s perception of Balabán’s work in
relation to his or her own experience of the ‘real’ world.


1.3 Understanding the complexity of Balabán’s fictive world


     Tensions between the subjective and the objective angles and between the ‘real’ and the
‘fictive’ world cut across the whole field of Balabán’s fiction. It has been already pointed out
that the majority of Balabán’s narrators belongs to the fictive reality of Balabán’s works, that
they act there as voices as well as characters. In other words, they are both the subjects of the
narration as well as its rightful objects. In addition, some quotations regarding the author’s own
life have been selected to anticipate the influence of the author’s experience of the ‘real’ world
on the fictive reality of his texts. Bearing all this preliminary information about the
dispositions of Balabán’s texts in mind, it is now important to look in detail at the position
which the narrating and non-narrating characters occupy in the structure of these texts and how
they shape their individual narratives.

     Daniela Hodrová (b. 1946) considers the characters and their position in the world of fiction
from various perspectives. She talks about the distinction between the character-type and the
character-function, between the character-definition and the character-hypothesis, between the
character-subject and the character-object; and between the character-real and the
character-fictive. To address all four distinctions in their contradictive positions, she
emphasizes the individuality of each character:


‘[we] can talk about the character as about a certain type of subject (the other subjects are the
author and the reader), who is a textual parallel to the human being, real or fictive… in the
literary work. The character is a bearer of certain features, states and actions. But above all, he
or she is the bearer of an individual mind (even in those cases when the mind is hidden or when it
is suppressed), which is built on his or her relationship to others, to the world, to the object.’

[‘O postavě můžeme mluvit jako o určitém typu subjektu (dalšími subjekty jsou autor a čtenář),
který je v díle textovou analogií člověka, skutečného nebo smyšleného... Je nositelem určitých
vlastností, stavů a činností, především však individuálního vědomí (a to i v těch případech, kdy
nám není v textu zjeveno nebo kdy je potlačeno), konstituujícího se vztahu k druhým, ke světu,
k objektu.’] (Hodrová 2001: 545);


the fictive, defining and hypothetical nature of each individual character:


‘Characters which are presumably taken from the real world… presuppose a certain differentiation in
their interpretation. They cannot be completely real precisely because they appear in a fictive
world. The profile of a fictive character always overlaps the real model or, on the contrary, does
not cover the real model completely. In this sense, the character always remains more or less
hypothetical in spite of the fact that his or her model was a real person.’

[‘Postavy, které jsou údajně vzaty ze skutečnosti...předpokládají ve svém ztvárnění vždy určitou
diferenci, nemohou být zcela skutečné už pro svou literární zprostředkovanost, literární postava
svými obrysy vždy nějak přečnívá, nebo naopak zcela nepokrývá reálný předobraz, zůstává tedy vždy
v té či oné míře hypotetická, i když je jejím předobrazem skutečná osoba.’] (Ibid. 550-551);


the author’s contribution to the image of the multidimensional and complex world which each
hypothetical character co-creates:


‘The hypothetical approach… does not mean a deflection from the real to fiction. On the contrary,
it contributes to the creation of a more complex, multidimensional image of the real world which is
captured in all its possibilities and in a person who is the sum total of all his or her potential
‘I’s and predicaments. It is an attempt to search for a more complex truth.’

[‘Hypotetizace... neznamená odklon od reality směrem k smyšlence. Naopak namnoze přispívá
k vytvoření komplexnějšího, vícedimenzionálního obrazu reality, uchopené současně v jejích
možnostech, člověkem v souboru jeho potenciálních já a osudů, je pokusem o hledání úplnější
pravdy.’] (Ibid. 552);


 the significance of the author’s approach to each individual character:


‘In literary fiction, the conception of the character-definition and the character-hypothesis is
based on the way the author approaches the character, on the angle he applies. The
character-hypothesis is not considered as something total, as a completed whole which would have
been transferred to the literary work in the moment of its creation. The character-hypothesis is a
silhouette, a torso which appears in the work in its undefined and fragmented form and which the
author tries to reconstruct in his or her text. In spite of that, the whole of the character still
disappears somewhere in infinity. The work always refers to the world outside the text.’

[‘Pojetí postavy-definice a postavy-hypotézy se v díle opírá především o způsob, kterým autor
k postavě přistupuje, o úhel pohledu na postavu. Tam, kde se jedná o postavu-hypotézu, není postava
nahlížena jako totalita, celek ve chvíli tvorby hotový a do díla jakoby pouze přenesený, ale jako
silueta, torzo, které se v této neurčité a fragmentární podobě objevuje v díle a které se autor
pokouší... v textu rekonstruovat, celek postavy se však i na konci jakoby ztrácí v nekonečnu, dílo
odkazuje mimo text.’] (Ibid. 556);


and the significance of using the concept of the character in the creation of  literary texts:


‘Using a similar concept of the character, the author is trying to capture the process of human
thinking as a process which is unfinished, chaotic, contradictive; as a process which can be
“truthfully” (in all relativity of this word) portrayed only when it is portrayed in its process,
in its continuously escaping, undefined and incomplete totality.’

[‘Autor se snaží prostřednictvím podobného pojetí postavy uchopit proces myšlení jako nezavršený,
chaotický, protikladný, „pravdivě“ (při vší relativitě tohoto pojmu) zobrazitelný právě jen v jeho
procesuálnosti, v jeho stále unikající, neurčité a neúplné totalitě.’] (Ibid. 556-57)


     In all these examples on the nature of the literary characters, Hodrová speaks of literature
that aims to capture reality in its complexity and in its full extent and yet it fails to do so;
literature that aims to be ‘real’ and yet it is fictive; literature that aims to be whole and yet
it is fragmented. All this seems very similar to what Jan Balabán attempts to do in his work. As we
will see further below, he takes a ‘real’ person and turns him or her into a fictive character in
his writing (for instance, the above mentioned Bohouš Čermák is turned into Bogomil: CB). Balabán
uses various angles (and voices) to describe one world and yet he ends up with the image of several
fragmented worlds. He chooses certain types of characters (losers, alcoholics, sick people and
doctors) and pictures them at various moments (during an alcoholic breakdown, during an illness).
He draws individuals who are affected by various problems and whose views are uncertain.

     Balabán’s literary world contains nothing predictable and nothing fixed. It is full of
character-types and situation-types, yet it deconstructs them and makes them hypothetical and
relative – and thus multidimensional.


1.4 In between short stories and novels


     The process of construction and deconstruction of Balabán’s fictive worlds also occurs on the
level of genre distinction. It is clear from his listed literary oeuvre that the author was always
struggling between the genre of short stories and the genre of novels – he produced five
collections of short stories, three novels and one graphic novel. To address this, Balabán states:


‘I said to myself that it is perfectly fine if I keep writing short stories. The short story is
possibly the best narrative instrument for these hectic times, when we meet each other only briefly
and constantly rush somewhere else. (…) My novels disintegrate into short chapters. My short
stories merge and create larger units. I am really interested in this tension between an individual
story and the so-called grand narrative. As a novelist I cannot accept the genre of a ‘great
novel’. I am interested in its constituent elements. I am constantly speculating whether and how it
might be possible to merge single stories into a larger unit; whether and how the lives of
individuals may, when taken together, really come to constitute a really essential supra-individual
event. I want to find out whether the stories of ordinary, small, completely unknown people can be
as significant as, for example, the biblical stories, the stories of Joseph and of Samuel, or the
stories in the Icelandic sagas. I want to find out whether what a human being experiences and
achieves can transcend his individual life. Only if this is true, is it meaningful to write, to
write novels.’

[‘Říkal jsem si, že je to prima psát povídky, povídka může být tím pravým vyprávěcím nástrojem pro
tuhle uspěchanou dobu, kdy se jen na chvíli vidíme a už zase někam pospicháme. (...) Romány se mi
rozpadají do povídkových kapitol a povídky se zase scelují do větších celků. To napětí mezi
individuálním příběhem a takzvaným velkým příběhem mě hodně zajímá. Nedokážu to vzít
s romanopiseckým nadhledem jako daný žánr – velký román. Pořád jako by mě více zajímaly jeho
elementární částice a pořád přemýšlím, zda a jak je to možné, aby se jednotlivé příběhy spojovaly v
nějaký vyšší celek, zda a jak osudy jednotlivých lidí dávají dohromady nějakou skutečně podstatnou
nadindividuální událost. Jestli příběhy drobných neznámých lidí mohou být stejně nosné jako třeba
příběhy biblické, Josefovy nebo Samuelovy, nebo příběhy z islandských ság. Zdali to, co člověk
prožije a vykoná, přesahuje jeho individuální život – jedině tehdy má smysl psát román a vůbec
psát.’]

(Balabán: Balaštík: Reichel 2004: Host, vol. 8: 5-9)


According to his own words, Jan Balabán considered the possible advantages and disadvantages of
both genres well enough. He expressed the wish to write short stories because their structure gave
him an opportunity to express things in an immediate form and simply from one single perspective.
He also expressed his wish to write novels because novels made him think about the world in its
complexity and its wholeness.

     In Balabán’s works, the tension between these two genres is always present. To minimize the
genre distinction, he tries to create links between individual stories from a particular collection
- by introducing the same characters in a number of the stories, or between his short stories and
some of his novels – by re-introducing the characters from his individual short stories in the
novels. The former happens in every collection of short stories by Balabán (for instance, in the
case of Pavel Nedostál and Ivan Satinský: PR), the latter happens in three of his latest works (in
the case of Emil, Hans, Kateřina) both within the frame of a single volume and in the sequence of
all the three works. As a result of this linking effort, the narrative structure of a book of short
stories acts similar to that of a novel or a series of novels.

     The second method to blur the difference between both genres has led the author to act in the
opposite direction – to go from the novel to the short story. As we will see below, Balabán’s
novels are subject to fragmentation. They are split up into several chapters and several personal
narrations. Each narration acts individually and also behaves as if it were material related to a
larger unit. This principle is applied in all the three novels by Balabán (Černý beran, Kudy šel
anděl and Zeptej se táty). Boží lano is somewhere between a short story and a novel. Although
frequently classified as a short story, the same subjective narrator links his memories and
thoughts into a linear but fragmented flow of time.


      To sum up, Balabán’s fiction is governed by several important principles. The ambiguity of
his texts is formally and in content realized by means of tension, which arises between the
subjective and objective views, between the fictive and the ‘real’ and as a result of a consistent
fragmentation and centralization of individuals’ stories and the genres he uses. His texts show the
world as unsettled within its structural unity and in each of its individual parts. The texts
reflect upon the impossibility of anything absolute and the relativity of all. They play with the
author’s experience of his own world, yet they are completely fictive.

     How these formal principles tie in with the semantic content of Balabán’s works and how they
participate in the testimony that Balabán’s literary fiction provides about the world of today will
be the subject of the following analysis.














2. Collective (social) experience


     There are certain character-types and certain situation-types which appear in Balabán’s works
on a regular basis. The following chapters will consider them both. They will be structured around
Balabán’s most frequent themes and motifs as they come up in connection with the individuality of
each character and, at the same time, as they shape the individual’s experience with the outside
world and with their own self. In addition, these chapters will follow the development of some
particular characters, in the places where the analysis will require some expansion.


2.1 Human relationships and love


     One of the main themes which Balabán’s works explore is the concept of the human relationship.
Nearly every character finds himself or herself in a situation when he or she has to deal with his
or her own certainty and uncertainty in relation to other people. Balabán’s characters wander
somewhere in between love, tolerance, misunderstanding, total disagreement and distrust. They think
about the human relationship and what it means as they become aware of their responsibility for
their own lives and for the lives of others. They attempt to define the nature of the human
relationship from their early adolescence, from the time they start searching for their first
partners, for friends and for close human bonds. Rarely do they find any concrete answers, however.


2.1.1 Destructive: a search for love


     Erotic relationships are always complicated in the lives of Balabán’s characters. Balabán’s
characters experience many difficulties before they find love and peace. Many of them taste
disillusionment from their first real relationship. They suffer from personal frustration when they
lose everything they have built since early adulthood. Just like Hakl’s characters, they squirm
into their own solitude, become grumpy and drink. They stagger from one relationship to another or
just stand still, scared to try again. Married couples drift apart or they endure the pain their
relationship causes them and adapt, sacrificing their own individual desires and needs. Partners
split up in order to discover a new way of life. Old bonds are destroyed; new complicated bonds are
created.

     In Balabán’s works, the characters’ erotic relationships usually fail due to various
revelations, doubts or mishaps which the characters experience in their search for happiness. The
source of the characters’ problems lies in their unsettled personalities and in their individual
feelings. For every character is an individual as well as a part of the human world and he or she
acts as such – in a similar way (as a ‘type’) and yet differently (as a ‘hypothesis’). What
Balabán’s characters have in common is the situation they have to deal with (a ‘type’ of
situation). Here we are discussing love. What make the characters unique is their own mind with
which they make decisions about the situation and the world they live in (life for them is a
‘hypothesis’). Here we analyze how the individuals deal with love.


2.1.2 Destructive: lack of personal comprehension


     The search for love is one of the most explored and discussed topics in all the texts by
Balabán. Nearly all the characters go through the process of defining for themselves what love
means for them, and they try to find it. It is one of the most important experiences that
determines the way their life unfolds.

     In ‘Niagarské vodopády’ (ST), we are taken in by an unnamed woman, a toilet attendant, who
speaks her mind in order to tell us the story of her life. Her thoughts about one young male
customer she fancies but never approaches are interwoven with memories of her past, her failed love
and her lost motherhood. When doctor Satinský (‘Proměny’: PR) reaches the bottom of his own
existence, when he drowns himself in alcohol and is consumed with grief for his lost family and his
career, he meets Taťána. In his relationship with her, he slowly regains his self-confidence.
However, even this change does not bring him much happiness. As soon as he frees himself from all
his addictions and began to think positively, he is left by Taťána and once again is reduced to
loneliness. Pavel Nedostál and his wife Dana (‘V neděli’, ‘Silvestr Svinov’, ‘Prázdniny’: PR) are
experiencing a crisis of their married life. They live with each other but do not communicate, even
for the sake of their children. Later, they separate. Karel (‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR) pretends to
be asleep rather than to have sexual intercourse with his wife Pavla. František Josef (CB) is
already divorced when he tries to plan his future with a new partner Patricie, but even this
relationship is not completely without difficulties and fights. Bogomil (CB) leaves his wife, his
femme fatal Johana, forever. To escape from her power, he flees to Canada and there starts a new
life with a new partner, although quiet sorrow from his loss never disappears. Eva Topolská (KSA)
breaks off her relationship with her teenage boyfriend Martin Vrána after she realizes she wants
more from life than just dreaming about pure love and pure happiness. Eva never finds love again;
all her attempts to find someone else end up in loneliness. Roman Hradílek and his wife Uršula
(‘Uršula’: MO) struggle badly after losing their mutual understanding and trust. Edita (‘Edita’:
MO) leaves her husband for a love affair with her colleague, but that relationship does not work
out either. Hans (‘Hlas jeho pána’: MO, ZT) is divorced as is his new partner. Both have children
from previous relationships and, in their new life, they struggle to understand each other. The
same applies to Hans’s brother Emil (‘Emil’: MO, ‘Tchoř’: JT, ZT). Patricia (‘Vděčná smrt’: JT) is
not able to control her emotional life. She leaves her partner and when she is due to give birth,
she hides alone, scared of any intimacy with anyone.

      In Balabán’s works, an erotic relationship is never simple. Love that unfolds between
Balabán’s characters is always the concern of at least two different individuals and as such is
examined. All the interested parties have a chance to talk about their feelings and thoughts. They
fill the story with their subjective views and expect to be considered and judged. They make a
single truth hypothetical and relative. So we learn about Jan’s (‘Výročí svatby’: ST) increasing
frustration due to the fact that his deeply loving wife Marie denies him sex. Then we read about
Marie’s fear and disgust which every sign of sexual desire from her husband evokes in her (Ibid.).
Dr Satinský (‘Proměny’: PR) talks about his life crises and about the personal change he underwent,
partly thanks to support from his new partner Taťána. Later, it is Taťána (‘Balkán’: PR) who
expresses her feelings about Dr Satinský. Another character, Pavel Nedostál (‘V neděli’, ‘Silvestr
Svinov’: PR), considers his marriage to Dana already beyond redemption. All he is capable of is a
few unfriendly words. Dana talks of her loss and emptiness with great sorrow (‘Prázdniny’: PR).
Pavla (‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR) finds it difficult to cope with the loss of her youth and with the
fact that her children have grown up and will leave soon. She longs to be young, attractive and
once more to be loved by her husband. Instead, she finds in him a scared man who escapes into his
dreams rather than face her needs. Karel (Ibid.), on the other hand, sees himself as a person whose
behaviour Pavla could possibly only despise and hate. He recognizes his passivity and a lack of
passion for her body but still does not want to change it and so he continues in the relationship.
In Černý beran, we follow many episodes from František Josef’s life and also reflect on his
partner’s views. Their perspectives are seen as separate but sometimes they interact in a lively
manner, as the example below shows:


‘Once more I can hear that cracking, the cracking of the trees which are being bent in the middle
of their lives. Josef has become a malicious drunkard! He takes out his moods on me. Why do I have
to put up with this? Maybe he isn’t even drunk but he isn’t sober either. He carries his grudge
within himself as if it were a snake.

Why can’t that female understand that I can’t stand this world? Suddenly, it is too much for me, it
is like having to queue at some repulsive office, it all multiplies like unsolved problems,
divorces, children, the ex-wife, my drugged friends and love made light by pornographically-deviant
thoughts. A futile silence. As if I had to hide my hangover from some beastly officials, from
children, from disgusting schoolmates.

Am I not a human being? Am I just a container for slop? Yes, people say that women are vessels of
sin, but people don’t say that it is man’s sins which are poured into these vessels. His moods into
my vessel. Can I understand what he says, me, a stupid woman out of luck? I could shut up and
listen to his words like Maria did at Jesus’s feet. But he doesn’t speak like Jesus…’

[‘Už zase slyším ten praskot, praskot stromů ohýbaných v polovině života. Už je ten Josef jen
poťouchlý opilec! Vybíjí si na mně svoje nálady, a já to mám snášet? Možná ani není opilý, ale
střízlivý také není. Nosí to v sobě jako hada.

Copak ta ženská nechápe, že jenom prostě nemůžu vydržet na světě? Je toho na mě moc. Najednou se to
zřetězí jako fronta na odporném úřadě, nedotažené trable, rozvody, děti, bývalá žena, zfetovaní
kamarádi, úchylné pornograficky zlehklé podoby lásky. Marné mlčení. Jako bych musel skrývat
kocovinu před nějakými bestiálními úředníky, před dětmi, před jakýmisi odpornými spolužáky.

A já snad nejsem člověk. Jen nějaká nádoba na splašky. Ano, říká se o ženách, že jsou nádoby
hříchu, ale neříká se, že je to mužský hřích, který se do těch nádob nalévá. Do té mé nádoby ty
jeho stavy. Copak já tomu můžu rozumět, já blbá ženská, která měla smůlu? Můžu držet hubu a
poslouchat jako ta Marie u noh Ježíšových. Kdyby aspoň mluvil jako Ježíš...’] (CB: 70)


The thoughts of both František Josef and Patricie always clash or merge when something important
happens or when something important is supposed to be discussed: love, death, childhood, memories,
past and present, faith, František’s alcoholism and Patricie’s illness. Both individuals have their
own views on these matters. They constantly quarrel and make peace. Patricie cannot stand
František’s drinking and his lectures on God and she feels sad when trying to understand his
never-ending search for something lost in his past. František, on the other hand, feels that
Patricie should not be judging him for his behaviour because she does not know the reasons for his
actions. Both strive for mutual understanding and through their relationship attempt to attain it.

     The structure of Kudy šel anděl is rather more complicated. There are several characters in
this work and most of these characters act as both narrators and objects of narrations. The unity
of life is broken down into several individual views and then re-built around the story of Martin
Vrána. The text becomes open to a number of different interpretations and then settles on a single
interpretation.

     Throughout the novel Kudy šel anděl, we follow the life of Martin Vrána from his teenage years
to his adulthood. We get to know about his loves, his work, friends, habits, feelings and thoughts.
The narration of his life is linear and articulate. It is interrupted only when Martin’s personal
path crosses the path of another person. When this happens, the role of the narrator is temporarily
passed to that other person – usually to Eva Topolská, Ivan Bereza (Figura) and Monika Tomská. Love
is discussed by everyone.

     The relationship between Martin and Eva is the first to be debated. It is anchored in their
youth and from there it also develops and fails. The beginning of their love is connected to Martin
and Eva’s school years, their talk, their wine drinking sessions and anti-communist views. Young
Martin is depicted as a romantic soul with long hair and a hard-rock image. Young Eva represents
the pragmatic world. Facing the hostility of the communist regime, they both stand strong and
united. In the face of the reality of everyday life, they succumb. And it is the pragmatic Eva who
makes the final decision to leave Martin’s romantic world behind. She walks away. Their mutual
dialogue of love comes to an end but not forever. It continues in their minds over the years until
the two characters meet again. This time, Eva has already been through several relationships but
she stays on her own. Martin remains single for long, but then finds himself in personal turmoil.
He gets married, divorces and later finds a new partner in young Monika Tomská. Eva’s and Martin’s
love is unfulfilled and lost but, in spite of this, it is never forgotten.

     The story of Martin’s and Eva’s relationship has the most complete shape in the novel. It is
examined from both sides equally but also from the position of other characters – Ivan Figura
(later Eva’s lover) and Monika Tomská, Martin’s new girlfriend. From Eva’s pragmatic point of view,
her relationship with Martin was nothing more than a romantic dream that could not have continued.
From Martin’s romantic perspective, the relationship was a fatal love that was wonderful while it
lasted but hurt when it came to an end. From Ivan’s perhaps ‘jealous’ point of view, it was an
unhealthy relationship that could have never succeeded. From Monika’s loving point of view, that
relationship is only a painful memory that lies deep within Martin’s heart. Each of these
characters has his or her own subjective truth about Martin’s and Eva’s world and none of the
truths is superior to another. The views of the characters are as different as each character could
be.

     Apart from the examination of Eva’s and Martin’s relationship, the text examines a number of
other erotic relationships: between Eva and Ivan Figura, Martin Vrána and Monika, Mr Vrána and Mrs
Vránová (Martin’s parents) and Ester Tomská (Monika’s sister) and her girlfriend Pavla. All these
relationships have their own significant place and value in the structure and the reality of the
whole text. They are relationships based on sexual attraction and emotional distance (Eva, Ivan),
on salvation (Martin, Monika), on dependence (Vrána’s family) and on lesbian love (Ester, Pavla).
Apart from the last mentioned, no relationship listed above is without problems. Monika and Martin
are plagued by the burden of their past experience that complicates their way to happiness. For Eva
and Ivan, it is the lack of emotional connection that prevents them from coming near each other.
Vrána’s parents are unable to communicate after many years living beside each other. Only the love
between the two women, the two people of the same gender does not have any negative aspects.

     All the stories about relationships in Kudy šel anděl have a similar structure: apart from
Pavla, every character is given his or her own narrative voice; everyone expresses his or her
feelings, thoughts and opinions. Everyone comments on what is momentarily happening around them and
everyone reacts to it.


     Balabán’s three other works – Možná že odcházíme, Jsme tady and Zeptej se táty – deal with the
same problems that relationships bring. Again, they often use the same principle of double-sided
narration. Some relationships are thoroughly explored from several perspectives whereas others are
looked at only from one side.

     The difficulties that Balabán’s couples have to overcome if they want to save their
relationship or create a new one are again many. Once more, they arise from a lack of
understanding, from the characters’ obsession with their own personalities and their own problems
and from their incapacity to change anything. Some characters test their relationships throughout
the whole period of their mid-life crisis. They question themselves and the people around them;
they worry about themselves too much and, as a result, mess up their lives. Roman Hradílek and
Uršula (‘Uršula’: MO) reach the point when there is nothing left to discuss. Their perhaps once
contented marriage falls to pieces and survives only on the basis of a mutual passive sufferance.
The chance of the two partners re-constructing their relationship is minimal. They do not talk,
both prefer to avoid the problem and to escape, Uršula by hiding in the bathroom, crying her eyes
out and Roman by going to the pub.


2.1.3 Destructive: the fear of parenthood (the fear of adult responsibility)


     The same kind of silence surrounds the relationship of the successful photographer, Bednář,
and his partner, a singer and a rising star (‘Kolotoč’: MO). Here, the problematic situation is the
result of uncertainty and the different views held by both partners regarding their future life.
They find themselves unable to answer the most ‘basic’ question – should they have children or
should they devote themselves to their careers? Both are talented artists who give everything to
their work but no matter how successful they are their thoughts about having children keep coming
back to them. Bednář takes pictures of children and fathers and his partner cries because she is
not a mother:


‘The world will become a barren belly where there is a plenty of space for anything but there is no
place for them to snuggle up to each other. The bed is no longer a nest but an airport, an
international airport, where each of them takes off for a different destination. With wobbly knees,
each of them, now unfaithful, thinks of a little happiness, but this time with someone else.’

[‘Svět se stane jalovým břichem, kde je dost místa pro cokoli ale není koutku k přitulení. Postel
už není hnízdem, ale letištěm, a zrovna tím mezinárodním, kde každý na jiném konci startuje jiným
směrem. Každý nevěrný s rozklepanými koleny myslí na ten kousek štěstí s někým jiným.’] (MO:
37)


Bednář’s relationship is a desperate metaphor of human desolation in the world where there is no
space for pure love. The desire to have children and to found a family on the one hand and the fear
of losing their freedom and independence on the other lies between both characters as a burden and,
finally, it leads to the total destruction of their relationship.

     Concern about parenthood is also a barrier in the life of Oldřich and Betyna (‘A ptáci taky’:
MO). As soon as Oldřich realizes his wife is pregnant, he cannot come to terms with this and feels
sick every time the word ‘child’ is mentioned. In his mind, the thought of children is transformed
into a phobia about birds. However, unlike in the case of the previous couple, Oldřich eventually
chooses family life, undergoes therapy and is thus able to conquer his fear.


2.1.4 Destructive: sexual frustration (the fear of intimacy)


    Sometimes, the relationships which Balabán’s texts describe are disrupted due to sexual
dissatisfaction between partners. Jan and Marie (‘Výročí svatby’: ST) are not able to sustain their
marriage because the sexual frustration that they have both felt and not talked about for many
years becomes suddenly unbearable. It becomes too humiliating for both of them to keep the
relationship going. Whilst Jan suffers due to lack of sex, exchanging reality for dreams, Marie
resents anything sexual. Neither of them is able to cope with such tension, but it is Jan who
leaves the relationship. No matter how much he loves his wife, he cannot stand the humiliation he
feels as a man in her unsympathetic eyes – when he wakes up every day with wet bed-sheets after
dreaming of sex.

     Or elsewhere, one day Karel and Pavla (‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR), a rather contented married
couple, reach the point when they are at a loss what to do with their sexual life. Their children
are growing up and Pavla feels there is something missing in her life now. As an ageing woman, she
becomes aware of her womanhood and once more she desires to be physically loved. Her husband Karel,
lulled by the comfort and the certainty of his marriage, finds her new sexual requirements
abnormal. Rather than attempting to satisfy her, he pretends to be asleep. He refuses even to try
to reach any understanding with his wife and makes a conscious choice to escape into a world of
dreams.


2.1.5 Destructive: external circumstances which make people part their ways


     Relationships also end when external circumstances create insurmountable obstacles for the
couple. Ivo and Ema, two fictive heroes in Johana’s story (CB) are frustrated in love when Ivo is
sent to participate in a space mission to save the planet and civilisation. Their love ends up lost
in the vast space of the universe. Hana’s and Ludvík’s (‘Viadačka’: JT) young love languishes when
Hana decides to leave the country. The relationship between Monika Tomská and Martin Vrána (KSA) is
almost finished by Martin’s accident when he is hit by a passing car.

     Sometimes, it is death that destroys the relationship between two individuals. Dr Satinský’s
auntie, Natálie (‘Natálie’: PR), goes insane after losing her lover during the war. Světlana
(‘Světlana’: JT) loses her husband on holiday when he drowns in an attempt to save the life of
their daughter. Marta Nedomová (ZT) remains alone when her husband Jan dies after a long illness.


2.1.6 The history of love – revealed and unrevealed


     As it is apparent from all the above examples, in the lives of Balabán’s characters, an erotic
relationship is often shaken or breaks down. This happens for various reasons. These reasons arise
from the personality of each individual and from the fact that partners realise they are
incompatible with each other. Balabán’s women and Balabán´s men act differently from each other
(see II, 3.2) as do people who come from different backgrounds and different generations. Attempts
to reach understanding are difficult. This is a matter of concern and results in emotional turmoil.

     The majority of Balabán’s heroes, especially men, marry young. Most of them have a family and
children but, when they reach their forties or mid-forties, they divorce. In most cases, we meet
them after their marriage has failed. An exception is the story of Martin Vrána (KSA), whose
personal history we follow from its inception throughout the whole novel. The explanation of the
reasons that have led to a personal separation or divorce is fragmented. It is provided only in
connection with certain individuals. Sometimes, the author offers a single fact and uses it to
build a new narrative line. So while we know of various reasons that have led to the breakdown of
the relationship between Johana and Bogomil (CB) or Pavel Nedostál and Dana (‘V neděli’, ‘Silvestr
Svinov’, ‘Prázdniny’: PR), we can only guess at what happened in the past love life of Emil Nedoma
or in the relationship of his sister Kateřina (see Balabán’s final three works). When Emil first
appears on the scene (‘Emil’: MO), he already carries the burden of his past and struggles to cope
with it now, whereas we first meet Kateřina (‘Hořící dítě’: MO) when she is still a little girl and
is fighting with a serious medical condition. She re-appears only much later when she already has
children and has been through a marriage and its breakdown (‘Mléčná dráha’: JT).

     For some of the characters, the most significant thing that has happens in their lives in
relation to ‘love’ is their first love (Martin Vrána: KSA). For some, the most significant
experience is the first signs that indicate the end of their love (Pavel Nedostál and Dana in ‘V
neděli’, ‘Silvestr Svinov’, ‘Prázdniny’: PR, or Roman Hradílek and Uršula in ‘Uršula’: MO). Some of
the characters are trapped in thoughts of escape (Bogomil: CB, Karel in ‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR).
Others concentrate on the preservation of their love (František Josef and Patricie: CB). Some live
in remorse (Taťána in ‘Balkán’: PR, Jonáš in ‘Denatur’ and ‘Ptakoještěr’: ST) while others are in
raptures over their new love (Emil: ZT).

     As we can see, Balabán’s characters all experience different aspects or stages of love – a
love full of pain, a love filled with doubt or replaced with happiness. They all experience the
different ways in which love arrives and disappears. Sometimes love is replaced with pain (see the
relationship of Martin Vrána and Eva Topolská: KSA). Sometimes love overcomes pain (Martin Vrána
and Monika Tomská: KSA) and sometimes it is destroyed by doubt, though occasionally it has strength
to conquer doubt (see the relationship of František Josef and Patricie: CB).


2.1.7 Re-constructive: newly-found and recovered love


     Because of their emotional instability, Balabán’s characters lose many things during their
lives. They struggle for love and their relationships. Only when there is nothing left, do some of
them finally find love. Older men attain their personal happiness with younger women and younger
women find their security in relationships with older men: Pavel Nedostál meets Jeny (‘Moving into
the universe…’, ‘Lední medvěd Telecomu’: PR), Martin Vrána finds Monika Tomská (KSA), Jaromír
befriends Lenka (‘Triceratops’: MO) and Emil Nedoma starts going out with Jeny (ZT). Elsewhere, it
is not a young person but a different environment that brings characters together. Bogomil (CB)
builds a new life with a Canadian woman, Jennifer, and Johana’s fictive hero, Ivo (CB), starts a
new family on the planet he lands after the destruction of his own planet (see II, 3.2).


2.1.8 To sum up: love, relationships and society


     What kind of image of society is provided by Balabán’s work? Each character has serious
problems with relationships. People get married, divorce and find new partners. People in
relationships with persons from the same age group often experience substantial difficulties and
often decide to leave. The only relationships that seem to work are between older men and younger
women, between two people of the same sex, and between men and women from different countries. Only
a few marriages manage to overcome personal problems and survive; most collapse.

     Amongst all of Balabán’s characters, the most common reasons for the decision to divorce are
lack of personal understanding, different views on life, burnt-out feelings of love, alcoholism
(Jonáš in ‘Denatur’, ‘Ptakoještěr’: ST, Dr Satinský in ‘Proměny’, ‘Pilot’: PR, Emil in ‘Emil’: MO,
‘Tchoř’: JT). Balabán’s married couples live together until their children grow up enough to
understand what is going on (when they are ten or so). Then the parents fight and, as a result,
often separate. Marriages without children do not last either. Marriages are fatal and destructive
for both partners (Jan and Marie in ‘Výročí svatby’: ST, Johana and Bogomil: CB, Bednářs’ family in
‘Kolotoč’: MO).

     What does this tell us about Balabán’s work? What does this say about the author’s and the
reader’s perception of the Czech society it depicts? What does it say about their perception of
human relationships as these relationships unfold in the contemporary world? In Balabán’s fiction,
love is the most important emotion and yet it is never certain. People feel they have to search for
love in spite of many difficulties. They only sometimes find it. But where do these difficulties
come from? They seem to lie in the characters’ personal uncertainty. Difficulties stem from their
indifference, lack of understanding and lack of faith, alcoholism and obsession with their careers.
Relationships break down also because Balabán’s characters refuse to assume responsibility for
their own lives and for those of others.

     Finally, what does it say about the author’s perception of his world? Just like his literary
characters, he too experienced personal turmoil when he got married. He had children, got divorced
and found a new love. Should this have any bearing in our reading of his work? By way of
elucidation, I propose now to outline what Balabán’s characters feel in relationship to those
people who belong to his closest family circle.


2.2 Family relationships: given, lost and found


2.2.1 Children and their parents


     Balabán’s characters define their attitude to their environment through love – both in the
sense of an erotic relationship but also in terms of respect for family and friends. In Balabán’s
fiction, one of the most discussed relationships is the relationship between children and their
parents. People think of their parents at the time of a personal crisis or when they look for an
explanation for their lives. The uncertainty they experience today makes them go back to their past
and reassess all the landmark events in their lives that may have shaped their personalities.

     The subjective narrator of the three stories collected in Boží lano questions his religious
faith in an attempt to dispel his doubts about his father who taught him to believe in God and in
the family. Martin Vrána (KSA) thinks of his childhood in connection with the death of one of his
former schoolmates. The news of his death comes at the moment of Martin’s own personal crisis. It
becomes a burden and a symbol of his lost youth, which he has not considered so far. Death makes
him realize how many things he has lost over the past few years and how he has never really
understood the value of the things around him. Reminiscing about his childhood, he goes back to the
time when he was twelve. He thinks of one of the numerous dialogues he had with his father at that
time. They discussed Martin’s wish to have his own room and a proper space for his own life, which
his father kept denying him. Martin did not manage to get his own room until he was forty and again
living alone, separated from his wife and his children. Comparing both situations now, Martin sees
the bitter paradox of his life and expresses sadness.

     Through Martin’s reminiscing about a deceased friend we see Martin’s family as extremely
patriarchal:


‘In his parents’ flat he let his children go and play with a crowd of their cousins and went to
greet his father. Again he saw his father’s strange smile, which was full of anxiety and anger.
This is how his father mastered these patriarchal situations; he used a little spur of wrath.
Martin liked and respected this man. He respected him from the time he had stopped being afraid of
him. And he had stopped being afraid of him after he had disobeyed him.’

[‘V bytě u svých rodičů pustil děti do bratraneckého a sestřenického houfu a pozdravil se s otcem.
Zase ten jeho zláštní úzkostně zlostný úsměv, jeho způsob zvládání těchto patriarchálních situací,
drobný osten hněvu. Martin měl toho muže rád a vážil si ho, vážil si ho více od té doby, kdy se ho
přestal bát. A přestal se bát, když ho neposlech.’] (KSA: 143)


Martin’s father is described as a man with a strong personality who wields control over the whole
family. He is the head of the family table. He is well respected by all his children and his wife.
Martin depends on him but he tries to avoid him. Father loves Martin but shows disappointment when
things do not go according to his wishes. Still, it is father who keeps calm and takes care of
Martin’s health after Martin is hurt in a traffic accident.

     In Martin’s family, father is recognized as an authority, ‘mum’ (always ‘mum’, not ‘mother’)
is seen as a pure angel who gives her love to others through her hands – by preparing meals, by
tidying rooms and by ironing clothes. While father speaks, ‘mum’ does all the work and hence is
loved by Martin.

     Seeing Martin’s parents in their individual roles, we may suggest that Vrána’s family is an
example of traditional Christian upbringing. However, while the parents try to keep this tradition
going, their children do not follow it when raising their own children. Martin struggles somewhere
in between the old traditional values and the contemporary practices of today.

     Martin and both his female partners look for a key to their lives in their relationships to
their parents. In order to understand what led to her conscious decision to become a single mother,
Eva Topolská refreshes her memory of family life. She thinks of her mother who was always away at
work, of her father who left the children when they were small and did not come back until Eva was
in her twenties. It was really Eva’s grandparents who brought her up. She bestowed the warm
feelings she would normally give her parents upon her grandparents, especially upon her grandfather
who, as she remembered, was the only person who really looked after her and the only one who showed
her love. Without the parents’ authority, Eva grows up into a woman who has little trust in true
love. She has never been able to live with a man for long; she was always escaping from one man to
another, looking for something she could not recognize until she finally remained alone.

     Where Eva lacks passion, Monika (Martin’s latest partner) has had an over abundance of it. She
grew up under her mother’s overwhelming care but was always hidden from other people’s view. She
never knew anything about her father, apart from the fact that she had his eyes. She was always
hidden away because she was her mother’s ‘sin’. Monika was able to bear this kind of life only
until she became an adolescent when she ran away and for several years hid away in an underground
community searching for her own independent identity and strength.

     Martin, Eva and Monika came from different family backgrounds. While Martin was raised in a
patriarchal environment, Monika grew up under matriarchal care. While Martin’s parents represented
traditional family values, Eva suffered from lack of support. Her parents were more interested in
their professional career than in love. Martin and Monika knew what family love meant and so they
find each other in love. Eva did not trust family relationships and so sought isolation and single
motherhood.

     Elsewhere, it is Patricia and Paul, the two protagonists of the story, ‘Vděčná smrt’ (JT), who
search for an explanation of their current lives in their personal relationships with their
parents. In order to understand what has happened to their current world, Patricia goes back to her
past and recalls everything that had formed her American childhood. She talks of her mother who had
German roots and was never able to adjust to the American environment; a mother who could not cope
with her husband’s departure for the Vietnam War and so used her son, Paul, to calm herself down by
pinning her emotions to him. Patricia’s mother could not cope with her husband’s return and with
her husband’s post-war trauma and ended up committing suicide. Patricia thinks of her father who
taught his son how to shoot animals; a father who went to the Vietnam War and then returned with a
war trauma. She thinks of her father who left the family after her mother’s death, who bought a
truck and exchanged it for their real home. The memories that Patricia recalls in her mind are
examined in relation to her and her brother’s life, their loneliness, their unsuccessful
relationships, their excessive sensitivity, and their inability to love and live a ‘normal’ life.


     The relationship between children and their parents becomes a trauma for almost all of
Balabán’s characters. It turns out to be also one of the main topics of Balabán’s last work, Zeptej
se táty. In this novel, it is Emil, Hans and Kateřina, two brothers and a sister, who seek an
explanation of their life through their relationship with their father. Their observation of the
present is interwoven with various thoughts and memories of their dying father and of what followed
in the years after his death. Kateřina remembers the time when dad was standing at her bed praying
for her life after she was hospitalized with serious health problems and nearly died. She remembers
him as the only person for whom she decided to survive. So, whenever she felt vulnerable, she
thought of her dad – he was her support, he saved her. In the novel’s present time, Kateřina is
thirty-nine and she has an unsuccessful marriage behind her. And she is again ill. She is not
suffering from a physical disease, but from depression and sadness due to her current life. This is
the time when she turns her thoughts back to the past, to her father and the things they shared
together. Paradoxically, she finds out that the most of what they shared was blurred at the time of
her illness. She considers the memories of her father to be the only untouchable security of her
life.

     Kateřina accesses the memory of her father through the heart. Hans does the same through his
eyes. He is an artist and everything that happens in his life is connected to his visual and
lyrically romantic perception of the world. However, like Kateřina, he has not found happiness in
love. He cannot sleep and in the dark he thinks of his dad who also suffered from insomnia. Hans
walks in the countryside and the light that comes through the trees reminds him of the same light
he saw in his dad’s eyes shortly before he died. Hans feels lost in life without love. He calls out
for dad but is scared that there will be nothing, only his own darkness without love. His father is
the light, the tree, the poplar and God. Hans desires his father’s (God-like) help but he never
openly asks for it due to fear he cannot overcome and out of respect.

     Emil’s view of his dad is different. Emil wants to become a writer and so he tends to write
down his thoughts in a descriptive way. We follow him through his actions, his memories of dad
lying on his death bed, his numerous visits to the hospital, the last words his dad said before he
died, his feelings about his dying dad, his disgust directed towards his dad’s former friend, his
dad’s stories, his contemplations of death, his visits to dad’s grave, his memories of childhood
and his dreams of dad brought before a judge to defend his life. Unlike Hans, Emil does not desire
his father’s help. Emil observes, he talks, he thinks and, in all his actions, he looks to
understand of his dad’s life and his influence on him:


‘Emil sees his childhood as a pre-history, a mythical time, when he still lived in unity with his
gods, his mother and father and grandparents. Our human and pagan gods are always our grandparents.
(…) Emil knows that he has become the sort of a man he is just now in the moment when this unity
shattered. When he suddenly saw beyond his tribe, when he realized that he would be alone and die.’

[‘Skutečné dětství Emil vnímá jako prehistorii, mytický čas, kdy žil v jednotě se svými bohy,
s matkou a s otcem a prarodiči. Naši lidští a pohanští bohové jsou vždycky našimi prarodiči. (...)
Emil ví, že člověkem, jakým je teď, se stal ve chvíli, kdy se tato jednota otřásla. Kdy najednou
viděl mimo svůj kmen, kdy pochopil, že bude sám a umře.’] (ZT: 148-149)


In contemplation of his father, Emil realizes how important and secure it is to live within his
united family and how complicated, uncertain and painful it is to be separated from it and to live
alone as an individual man. He feels that without the support of his family he would quickly lose
his bearings, suffer from unbearable loneliness anbd die.

     The parents represent home and safety for all the three above-mentioned Nedoma characters. The
parents are their only certainty, the only thing that seemed to last whilst all the other
certainties dissolve. The parents are the only stability which Kateřina, Emil and Hans have in
their broken worlds. Nothing can destroy this stability, not even father’s death, not even accusing
letters sent by their father’s former friend. Their father is a doctor, a saviour of human lives
(as Kateřina sees him), a man of faith, ‘God’, whom it is never possible to understand fully (as
Hans sees him), a man full of doubt, grappling with unanswered questions (as Emil sees him). This
is a picture of a patriarchal, Christian society; a picture of respect and deep love. Yet Balabán’s
texts highlight individuals’ questioning of the concepts of family and home. Significantly, the
surname Nedoma means ‘not being at home’.


2.2.2 Parents and their children


     Balabán’s work analyzes the relationship between children and their parents from the
perspective of both the children, as it has been explored in the previous chapter (see II., 2.2.1),
and the parents. It has been noted that the relationship between Kateřina, Emil and Hans (ZT) and
their parents is complicated but still solid. Between the three siblings and their own children
there is also a difficult and fragile link. It does not seem to be subject to any rules – the
relationship is neither patriarchal not matriarchal – and so it struggles to survive. Kateřina
lives with her bereaved mother and shares the care for her children with her mother-in-law and her
ex-husband. Hans argues with his son about money and trust. Emil separates from his children after
his marriage disintegrates. Pavel Nedostál (‘Highlander’: PR), Dr Satinský (‘Seno’: PR) and Martin
Vrána (KSA) do the same.


     In Balabán’s texts, those men who divorce always live separately from their children, but they
never lose contact with them. Children are their only certainty in a world which has been
shattered. They are an inspiration for the men’s thoughts; they are their relief but also a source
of confusion.

     The time that the fathers spend with their children functions as their personal retreat.
During the time with their children, the fathers take a journey through their present and their
past, their negative experiences and their confusion. It is their way of looking for peace with
themselves and with others. The negative experiences include their failed relationship, arguments
and deep misunderstanding between the men and their former wives and between the men and their
children. Confusion means a search which is usually followed by recognition of the current state of
affairs and an analysis of their situation. Peace comes with the acceptance of the status quo.
Balabán’s characters find themselves at all the three stages of this complicated journey. Only some
of them reach the last stage.

     Pavel Nedostál (‘Silvestr Svinov’: PR) does not feel comfortable in his marriage anymore and
the only way he can escape this unpleasant situation is through his children. He observes them
taking them for a trip along a frozen river and to the places he knew in his past but still he is
not able to get rid of the burden of his personal guilt. Dr Satinský (‘Seno’: PR) seems to be more
advanced than his fellow character. His divorce is behind him and now he only needs to go over the
personal mess and then enjoy time spent with his son in the countryside. Roman Hradílek (‘Salámoví
koně’: MO) finds himself in the same situation as Pavel. He is still in a relationship which is
deteriorating. No matter how hard he tries to forget about his situation, the awareness of his
regrettable situation always comes back to him. Like Dr Satinský, he takes his son for a trip but
the trip does not bring him any relief. All it does is that it takes him even deeper into his
thoughts about his personal mess. The same applies to Hans (‘Kluk’: MO) and his fifteen year old
son. Their journey back from a trip to the mountains causes Hans to realise that the breakdown of
his marriage is inevitable:


‘A man cannot be a mother. A man isn’t allowed to go into the red and pink room. He can only lean
over the railings and look from the outside. He can hide his hands behind his back, dig his nails
into his palms, hold tears back. He looked into the boy’s face. His eyes were impenetrable, he
could no longer see into them the way he had been able to do in past, when that small baby’s head
raised itself towards him from a pillow with trust. (…) He felt how uncertain his son still was,
how he swung like a bean stalk. And yet he will have to push him away soon and stay alone in the
wasteland that has appeared in the middle of his own heart.’

[‘Muž nemůže být matka. Muž nesmí do červeného a růžového pokoje. Může jen viset na zábradlí,
nahlížet zvenčí. Schovat si ruce za záda, zarýt nehty do dlaní, zadržet slzy v očích. Díval se
klukovi do tváře. Jeho oči byly neproniknutelné, už do nich neviděl jako dřív, jako tehdy, když se
k němu ta malá dětská hlaa s důvěrou pozvedala z polštáře. (...) Ucítil, jak je jeho syn ještě
nepevný, jak se zakomíhal jako fazolový stonek. A přece ho bude muset už brzy od sebe odstrčit a
zůstat sám na periferii, která vznikla uprostřed jeho vlastního srdce.’] (MO: 89)


     Balabán’s men look for their personal redemption in the time shared with their children, but
mostly end up facing a bare reflection of their own deeds. Women, on the other hand, see the hope
of their life in their child totally and without a doubt. Pregnant Patricia (‘Vděčná smrt’: JT)
leaves her past behind and moves to the small hut where she plans to start a new life with a baby
on its way. Eva Topolská (KSA) is quite happy to raise her child without a man. Mrs Tomská
deliberately decides to be the single mother of her daughter Monika (KSA) and Magda becomes the
single mother of her son Jaromír (‘Magda’: MO). For Světlana (‘Světlana’: JT), her daughter is the
only person who gives her strength to survive her husband’s death. Kateřina (‘Mléčná dráha’: JT)
receives much support from their children after she suffers an attack of glycaemia. Dana
(‘Prázdniny’: PR) fights her depression from a failed marriage only with the help of her children’s
love.


2.2.3 Brothers and sisters (siblings’ rivalry and reunion)


     This discussion about family relationships would not be complete without a few important
remarks on communication between brothers and sisters. This communication is highlighted as one of
the most significant for a number of Balabán’s characters.

     When the subjective narrator of Boží lano (‘Americká elegie’) immerses himself in the memories
of his youth and recollects all that may have been significant for his future life, he thinks of
his brother Daniel. He remembers him as an artist who was always bespattered with paint and who was
always drunk. He was a brother who was both detested and loved:


‘So awfully different, so awfully unpleasant, hanging onto our parents by means of quarrels without
an end. He occupied all the rooms so ruthlessly and viciously. I could always only enter them as
the second person. There was no place in the world where my brother had not been first. I had to
look for such places outside of this world and then to seek the attention of the other people who
were so preoccupied with the painful existence of my best friend.’

[‘Tak hrozně jiný, tak hrozně protivný, zavěšen na rodičích v hádkách, které nemají konce;
bezohledně a neurvale zabydloval všechny pokoje, do kterých jsem já už mohl vstoupit jen jako
druhý, a nebylo na světě místa, kde by můj bratr už přede mnou nebyl, musel jsem ta místa hledat
mimo svět a pak se opožděně domáhat pozornosti lidí, tak zaměstnaných bolestnou existencí mého
nejlepšího přítele.’] (BL: 14)


Brother Daniel is the narrator’s best friend and he is the only ally he has in his family. But he
is also the narrator’s greatest enemy and rival on his path towards personal recognition by people
in his environment. The narrator looks up to him, for Daniel is a few years older. He is an
intelligent and talented man. The narrator despises him for all the attention his parents give
first to Daniel and only then to him. The narrator’s attitude does not change even after his
brother starts drinking and spends most of the time sitting in pubs. When the family situation
deteriorates, the family and the narrator stop admiring Daniel’s personality and start worrying
about his lifestyle. Later on, when the narrator becomes older and engaged by other matters of
personal interest, his feelings of anxiety vis-à-vis his brother subside and he finds peace within
himself.

     Emil Nedoma, one of the main characters of last three works by Balabán, experiences a very
similar relationship with his brother Hans. His feelings towards Hans follow the same pattern. They
oscillate between affection for an admirable and talented man and jealousy of his brother’s success
with women and in his career. Emil is split between gratitude for the relationship he has with his
brother, for, understanding and trust that he shares with him and between his anger at his
brother’s perceived superiority and his own despicable thoughts about him:


‘I liked you even more when we boozed together, when we went on pub crawls, when you still wasted
your time with me. That was the time when we were closest to each other; in the ditch we swore at
all and everyone and no one could understand us, the Nedoma boys. We were both in despair, no one
took us seriously. Nowadays it is only me who is in despair and I can hardly cope with it since I
do not have a mate upon whom I could lean in my grief. You could have failed just as easily as I
have done. As it is, we are brothers only in name, not in predicament.’

[‘Ale ještě radši jsem tě měl, když jsme chlastali, když jsme chodili po hospodách, když jsi se se
mnou ještě zahazoval a marnil. To jsme si byli nejblíž, v pangejtě jsme nadávali na všechny a na
každého a nikdo nám, klukům Nedomovým, nerozuměl. Byli jsme zoufalí a zneuznaní oba. Teď jsem
zoufalý jenom já a hůř se mi to nese, když nemám tovaryše svého, o kterého bych se v té lítosti
mohl opřít. Stačilo málo a nic bys nedokázal jako já. Takhle jsme bratři jenom podle jména, ale ne
osudem.’] (JT: 95)


In Emil’s memories, Hans used to take up different roles. Hans was a child who used to accuse Emil
falsely of not being his real brother; he was a drinking fellow at the time of Emil’s personal
frustration; he was an understanding companion at the time of Emil’s personal breakdown and his
ally against the enemies of his father; Hans represented someone Emil could have possibly become
had he tried or he had been lucky which he believes he was not. Next to Hans, Emil feels always to
be a second rate partner, depressed and down, but he still loves his ‘better brother’.

     Hans’s feelings towards Emil are not expressed as openly as his brother’s. When Hans talks of
Emil, he does it only in connection with the places he happens to be in at the moment of his
thoughts or in connection with his memories from his past. Hans remembers the things both brothers
used to do together when they were children, but otherwise he reflects only on his own problems.

     The third person to complete this Nedoma triangle is Kateřina. As Emil is more affectionate
about family relationships than Hans, his bond with his sister is full of love. When Kateřina falls
ill, he feels weak and sorry for himself. On the one hand, he is ashamed of being healthy; on the
other hand, he is terrified that he might also succumb to such a serious condition as she has done.
Lastly, he is embarrassed because, deep in his heart, he is glad not to be ill. He admires his
sister’s strength and blames himself for not being such a person himself. Kateřina seems to be
closer to Emil than to Hans. She observes him, listens to his thoughts and understands him. Emil
supports her when her marriage breaks down. Hans’s behaviour does not show us any specific feelings
for his sister. He is fully preoccupied by his own life.

     The relationship between Emil’s partner Jeny and her sister Johana (ZT) is very strong. This
is love redeemed from hatred and pain. Johana appears in the story at two different stages: first
as a junkie who lives in Germany amongst the same sort of people and then later as a hospital
patient on a recovery course. She swears at her sister and accuses her of collaborating with the
corruption of capitalism. She looks up to her sister as though she was the Virgin Mary or could
save her soul, and feels embarrassed about her own collapse. Jeny does not hate her sister. She is
worried about her situation. She phones Johana, listens to her complaints, persuades her to have
her baby and stands by her when she decides to undergo hospital treatment for her drug addiction.
No matter how much Johana and Jeny differ, their relationship is solid. One sister cannot live
without the other. Their mutual dependence is very strong, although each of them lives a different
life in a different country. One represents light and one the other darkness.

     The relationship of two other sisters, or rather step-sisters, Monika and Ester Tomská (KSA),
is quite different. Many years have to pass before both women are able to meet and talk. Ester, the
older sister, cannot forget that her mother, Marie Tomská, decided to abandon her and concentrated
her love on the younger sister Monika. The mother did this because Monika indulged in pre-marital
sex. Monika does not know anything about Ester. But it is Monika who decides to write a letter to
Ester and meet her. All this, however, happens only when they both grow old enough to be able to
forgive and then they both do forgive.


     The family relationships of Balabán’s characters are never smooth. They are full of various
complications each individual has to overcome if he or she wants to find stability, and many of
them never do. As a child, Emil Nedoma (in the last three works by Balabán) suffers from lack of
confidence within his own family circle (brother Hans chases Emil away  by telling him he does not
belong to their family, sick sister Kateřina gets more attention from their parents than anyone
else). This feeling is later reflected in his own love life and in his parenthood. He finds it
difficult to maintain a stable family life. He gets married, he becomes a father, he divorces, his
ability to love dissolves, he drinks, he has suicidal thoughts and suffers from depression. He
feels abandoned and so he encloses himself in his internal thoughts and in drunkenness. He thinks
of death but before he is able to commit suicide, he is saved by a mad country man, Vladek
(‘Tchoř’: JT), who wakes Emil up just in time before he dies. Only after this experience does Emil
stop drinking, finds a girlfriend, re-connects with his children and finally also with his parents.
He becomes the one who is by his father’s bedside when he dies.

     Emil’s relationship with his sister Kateřina shifts from envy and remorse to love and sympathy
with her sickness. Emil’s relationship with Hans is based on ambiguity. Emil admires Hans but he is
also angry with his success.

     Kateřina’s childhood bond to her father is so strong that she is never able to find a man who
would equal him. When she loses her husband, this only highlights the fact that she never found a
relationship based on total unity of the two souls, a total devotion of one individual to the
other. She can never find the ideal which her father instilled in her at the worst point of her
illness. The loss of her father is painful but it is never destructive.

     Hans is so wrapped up in the bubble of his own intelligence, creativity and success that, when
his life starts to fall apart, he finds himself in a state of shock. The only way he can deal with
the crisis is through his art – because art has become his life. (All that we learn about Hans’s
life is through art, his art friends and his thoughts on art.) There is an analogical feature like
this in all of Balabán’s other characters.


2.3 Relationships with friends and random people


     Balabán’s characters do not spend time only in the closest circle of their family. No matter
how much their minds are pre-occupied with relationships and with the members of their family, they
still go out and meet people, although friendships or acquaintanceships do not seem to be at the
centre of their attention, as it was in the texts by Emil Hakl. In many cases, we do not learn
anything at all about the relationships of Balabán’s characters with other people. Friends or
acquaintances are often remembered in connection with a specific occasion (e. g. a character sees a
drunk colleague in the street) and only serve to complete the image of the main character and his
life (we learn of the main character’s thoughts regarding the drunk colleague and regarding the
situation which led to his drunkenness). Nevertheless, there are still some narratives that build
their main plot from friendly discussions or random meetings of two former colleagues, love rivals
or perhaps hospital patients.

     Love and family on the one hand and friendly encounters on the other stand at the opposite
poles of the characters’ interests. Where love is discussed, everything else is forgotten. When
family, friendships or other people are discussed, there is hardly any space for thoughts about
love. Some short stories deal only with erotic relationships and the relationships within the
family; some (but not many) are based on friendly conversations or on casual encounters with
different people.

     A bond of friendship exists between Pavel Nedostál and Ivan Satinský (‘Pilot’: PR), but we
only learn about the existence of this friendship when Ivan reminiscences in the presence of his
lover. Both Nedostál and Satinský are otherwise fully pre-occupied with their families and their
erotic relationships. Elsewhere, we discover that there is a personal connection between Emil
Nedoma and Petr Zábranský (‘Tchoř’: JT) when Emil borrows Petr’s cottage in order to get drunk
there, and when Petr comes to the same place to drink and to die (‘Dona nobis pacem’: JT). Nothing
more and nothing less is said about their friendship, nor do the two men ever meet in the course of
the narration. The subjective narrator of the story, ‘Žraločí srdce’ (ST), and his friend Benda are
brought together only for the purpose of a dream, a dream about love.

     Pavel Nedostál, Ivan Satinský, Emil Nedoma and the subjective narrator of the story ‘Žraločí
srdce’ are pre-occupied with their search for love and with attempts to clarify their family
relations. We follow both Nedostál and Satinský on their way to their personal breakdown and then
up to their spiritual recovery, but we hardly get any information about the existence of other
people that surround them. We know nothing about their friends, their acquaintances or colleagues
at work. A completely different situation prevails in the case of Hans Nedoma, Emil’s brother. His
personal interest lies in the balance of all: love, family and friends. As he opens up to the
reader, we follow not only his doubts about love (his relationship breakdown) and his thoughts on
the family (after his father’s death: ZT) but also his encounters with some friends: photographer
Bednář (‘Kolotoč’: MO), with whom he discusses his art and once again his relationship, or with
artist Michal (‘Teroristka’: MO), with whom he talks about one of his paintings. Nedoma’s father,
Jan, also has some friends, although we do not learn this until after his death (ZT).

     Only two of Balabán’s stories are built on dialogues between two friends or acquaintances: the
story ‘Cedr a kladivo’ (MO) offers personal testimonies of two men who are being treated in a
rehabilitation centre for alcohol addicts. The story, ‘Viadačka’ (JT), follows the friendly
discussion between two male colleagues about illness and possible treatments.


2.4 To sum up: Balabán’s characters in relationships with other people – the image of the real and
the fictive


     The above analysis of Balabán’s work, specifically the analysis of the human ties between all
Balabán’s characters, leads to several questions that concern both the author’s fictive and his
‘real’: Is the world of Balabán’s fiction akin to Balabán’s personal perception of the  real  world
in which he lived? How close were the author’s narratives to his own reality? How similar was the
author’s memory of his father, a doctor, and his mother to the memory of the Nedoma family (see the
last three works by Balabán)? How similar was the author’s relationship to his children? How
similar was the author’s relationship to his brother, the artist Daniel? How Balabán’s personal
experience influence the world that he has created? Was it his own journey through confusion to
inner peace that has been transferred into his books, as the quotations from Honzo, ahoj! Setkání s
Janem Balabánem suggest? Is it the real journey undertaken by Czech society within the last fifty
years that Balabán’s work describes? On the basis of the knowledge we possess regarding Balabán’s
life and the life of Czech society over the past half a century or so, we may only assume what the
answer is.  But our knowledge of Balabán’s life and experiences and of the life and experiences of
Czech society over the past half a century may be an important key to our understanding of
Balabán’s fictive world. Our knowledge of Balabán’s life and the life of Czech society is
undoubtedly a tool that can be used to interpret the world that has participated in the creation of
Balabán’s fictive real.

     If we do accept that Balabán’s work is the image of the author’s self, we thereby also accept
that it is the image of Czech society that has formed the author and his work. If we agree that
Balabán’s work is an imprint of the author’s own self, we also agree that it is his perception of
the world that constructed him. By analyzing both the above aspects we analyze the world in which
Balabán has lived, which he has reconstructed in his literary work and has given to his readers to
live.

     Human relationships are one of the most discussed themes in Balabán’s works. Love is an
extremely important part of Balabán’s characters’ lives. When love disappears, it has a negative
effect on all involved. The family gives Balabán’s characters the certainty of a human bond but it
is also the source of severe problems and long-term damage if the relationship breaks down. When
love and family relationships get stuck in an awkward position, friends and their intercession can
sometimes replace the family bonds, but not indefinitely.

     In Balabán’s work, a strong human relationship is an important foundation for a satisfying
existence. If there is no one to share your life with, it becomes a wasteland with no way out but
death. Sharing or, in other words, love, is, in Balabán’s view, the only way to happiness. Love
brings faith and faith brings belief in the self and in God – in the self within God. Balabán’s
characters perceive their relationships with others through their love; how they perceive their
selves within the outside world is the subject of the following chapter.



























3. The individual experience


3.1 Life as a reflection of the self. Words and thoughts versus actions.


     Balabán’s characters live their lives in interaction with other people. When they think of
love, they do so on the basis of already existing relationships or a relationship that has ended,
not as romantic dreamers. When they talk of love, they do it briefly. Mainly they stay silent. Love
is contemplated inside the characters’ heads and only sometimes does it turn into words. Dying love
is never subject to discussion. We learn about the breakdown of relationships from separate
internal testimonies of both partners. Existing love is lived and analyzed within the minds of the
characters rather than openly.

     The majority of important matters dealing with love and family issues is communicated to the
reader in the form of the narrator’s internal monologue. As we gain access to the minds of the
characters, we discover things that have happened before the relationship broke down, the family
split up, the friendship disintegrated and before people experienced their personal crisis. We are
never directly present during the conflict between Emil Nedoma and his ex-wife (‘Tchoř’: JT),
during the conflict between Pavel Nedostál and Dana (‘V neděli’, ‘Silvestr Svinov’, ‘Prázdniny’:
PR) or Roman Hradílek and Uršula (‘Uršula’: MO). We never directly witness the friendship between
Jan Nedoma and Petr Wolf (ZT) or Pavel Nedostál and Ivan Satinský (‘Pilot’: PR). We are never
directly introduced to the upbringing of Emil’s, Hans’s and Kateřina’s siblings. We find out about
all these matters in retrospective and we track them in the characters’ minds. There are some
dialogues that unfold between Emil Nedoma and his young partner Jeny, between all the members of
the Nedoma family (in the last three works by Balabán) and between Martin Vrána and his lovers Eva
Topolská and Monika Tomská (he talks to themseparately, KSA). But, even if we follow these
dialogues, we do not learn much more than what we have already discovered from the individuals’
inner thoughts. There are only a few actions presented in Balabán’s fiction. They always consist of
spoken and unspoken words and thoughts. All we get to know is mediated through these inner
thoughts. The internal world is the place where most of the important things happen:


‘They talked for a long time. Four chimneys of the old power station rose on the other side of the
river, and behind them, grey blue clouds moved along the golden looking afternoon sky.

“You know, I am very much afraid even to touch it.”

“Touch what?”

“Our life.”

“Have we had any?”

“Exactly, the life we’ve never had; the life which has never taken place.”

“At least we couldn’t spoil it,” Martin said harshly, all of sudden.

“You have already spoiled a life, haven’t you?”

“More lives. Some of them I have spoiled, some of them I did not even allow. And I feel as though
nothing has really taken place yet.”

“I don’t believe you. I think this might apply to me, but not to you.”’

[‘Dlouho si povídali a za řekou vystupovaly čtyři komíny staré elektrárny a za nimi na zlatavém
odpoledním nebi táhly modrošedé mraky.

„Víš, bojím se toho třeba jen dotknout.“

„Čeho vlastně?“

„Toho našeho života.“

„My jsme nějaký měli?“

„Právě toho, který jsme neměli, toho, který se nestal.“

„Aspoň se nemohl pokazit,“ řekl Martin najednou tvrdě.

„Ty už jsi nějaký život pokazil, že?“

„Více životů, některé pokazil, jiné vůbec nepřipustil, a připadám si, jako by se vlastně ještě
pořád nic nestalo.“

„To ti zas nevěřím já, sobě bych to věřila, ale tobě ne.“’] (KSA: 115)


     In this example, it is Martin Vrána and Eva Topolská (KSA) who express their disappointment
and grief for the loss of their love. Actually, it is almost the only dialogue in which both
characters engage on this matter; almost the only dialogue the reader can follow directly and
without just imagining it. Everything that has happened before or after is a matter of individual
internal testimony. Even this particular dialogue does not provide any direct answers to many
questions which will arise in the reader’s mind throughout Martin’s and Eva’s story. Whatever the
partners say seems to be distant from anything that may have happened. The second example is
focused on thoughts only:


‘František Josef has been feeling in danger for several months now. Patricie and he have been
trying to save themselves by conducting long discussions at the kitchen window. They talked and
talked as if they wanted to rewrite their lives into more sensible shapes. As if it were possible.
They have wine and coffee and plenty of cigarettes and long nights. That’s probably all they have.
František Josef has also a bottle of vodka about which Patricie doesn’t know. And he fears that
Patricie is not well, her eyes, her round eyes, what has happened to her eyes? As if they belonged
to a totally different, horrible woman. As if it were a different, horrible man staring at him. The
darkness outside in the courtyard is fading. Time is running through the narrow bottleneck of an
hour-glass.’

[‘František Josef cítil ohrožení už několik měsíců. Zachraňovali se s Patricií dlouhými hovory u
kuchyňského okna. Mluvili a mluvili, jako by chtěli přepsat své životy do smysluplnějšího tvaru.
Jako by to bylo možné. Mají víno a kávu a kupu cigaret a celé noci. A to je tak všechno, co mají.
František má ještě vodku, o které Patricie neví. A obavy, že Patricie není v pořádku, její oči,
její kulaté oči, o to má s očima? Jako by se na něj dívala úplně jiná, hrozná žena. Jako by se na
ni díval úplně jiný, hrozný chlap. Tma na dvoře za okny bledne. Čas protéká úzkým hrdlem.’] (CB:
32)


     There is a relationship between František Josef and Patricie (CB). There is a problem. We do
not know who or what has created the problem. We can only assume. We do not know what František and
Patricie did to solve the problem, what actions they took or how they discussed it. We know they
did but we can only assume what they did. All we are given is their observations and their
thoughts.

     Similar things are happening throughout the whole of Balabán’s fiction. Balabán’s characters
do not like to give us their stories in full and in detail. Many things are only suggested or
mentioned without any further explanation or background. Facts are hidden behind a mass of internal
thoughts. They are kept in the secrecy of the human mind.

     Balabán’s stories are not based on physical action but on mental turmoil. The texts are built
on the self-reflection of various individuals, on the personal testimonies of women and men who
look at the world through their minds rather than through their words. Their internal world is an
important processor of the surrounding reality. The outer world is overwhelming but what effect it
has on each individual we learn only from their fragmented memories and from their conscious
decision to respond to it. Everything merely reflects their thoughts and internal feelings.


     We have noted that all the characters’ thoughts and internal feelings are delivered to the
reader by means of an internal monologue. The internal monologue gives the reader the illusion that
he or she has an unmediated access to the characters’ minds and to the reasons for their actions.
The internal monologue brings the reader in the proximity of the character and into sympathy with
his or her actions.


‘The representation of the internal world is the most effective means of controlling the reader’s
sympathies, because it unconsciously influences the reader’s affection for one of the characters.
The more the reader learns about the most internal motives of the character’s behaviour, the
greater is his or her willingness to understand the character’s behaviour, his forbearance,
tolerance etc.’ (Stanzel 1988: 161).


As Balabán uses more than one narrating character, the question of sympathy becomes the question of
balance between them. Whenever there are two characters, usually one is a man and one a woman, two
people of different genders and different individualities. Whether there is something that connects
Balabán’s characters of the same gender will be subject of the following chapters.

3.2 The difference between Balabán’s male and female characters


3.2.1 Balabán’s men and their escapes


     Balabán’s work consists of a variety of stories that mostly describe men who belong to the
same or nearly the same generation. At the time of the text’s fictive present (see below), they are
between 35 and 45 years of age. Most of them have grown-up children. Most of them have attempted to
lead a normal family life and failed. Most of them are divorced, live alone or are in a new
relationship with a much younger person. All of them find it hard to cope with their loneliness and
so they drink and get very drunk. All of them have or have had a serious problem with alcohol and
lack self-confidence. Jonáš (‘Denatur’: ST) drinks because he cannot express his feelings when
sober. Only in the state of complete drunkenness is he able to reflect upon his own life. Then he
lets his thoughts roam and he says, in sadness and irony:


‘We are not here. We are somewhere else. For example we sit in a room whose only furniture is a
cabinet filled with bottles containing colourless liquid. And we drink and drink. We drink
automatically, mechanically, like a human being breathes while sleeping. We always reach out for
the bottle when there is a danger that we might become sober. Fear of death has been replaced by
fear of sobriety. But how can we even think about this since we are totally wasted?’

[‘Nejsme tu. Jsme někde jinde. Kupříkladu sedíme v místnosti, jejímž jediným nábytkem je skříň plná
láhví s bezbarvou tekutinou. A my pijeme a pijeme. Pijeme po paměti, mechanicky, tak jako člověk ve
spánku dýchá. Sáhneme po láhvi vždy, když už bychom měli vystřízlivět. Strach ze smrti byl zaměněn
za strach z vystřízlivění. Ale copak o tom můžeme uvažovat, když jsme zpití pod obraz boží!’] (ST:
59)


Roman Hradílek (‘Uršula’: MO) escapes to a pub because he does not have the strength to face his
wife’s complaints and his presumed responsibility for being the main reason for them. Ivan Satinský
(‘Proměny’: PR) and František Josef (CB) drink in order to forget their shattered lives after
divorce and family disruption. For Martin Vrána (KSA), alcohol is the only way of coping with an
abrupt awakening from his romantic dream (love, youth and light-hearted reality) into an unfriendly
present (his sudden separation from the love of his life, his routine work and unhappy marriage).
Ivan Figura (KSA) is haunted by his own remorse for everything that happened to him after he had
lost his job, his wife, his friends and his confidence in whatever he does or did, and so he
drinks. For Emil Nedoma (‘Emil’: MO, ‘Tchoř’: JT), alcohol is the only salvation available in this
world, the only thing that helps him cope. At home, he keeps a ten-litre bottle of vodka to be sure
he always has enough to drink. When thinking of his brother, he does it through an alcoholic haze
(his brother bought him the above mentioned bottle; it was with his brother that he used to drink
in protest against conventional society. Inebriation helps him to reflect upon his family and his
position amongst its members:


‘Dad, I kept thinking of all that when, later, during bad Christmas Eves and other evenings, now
without you, without my wife, without my child, without Mark, Mark and without little Child Jesus,
I ordered a shot of rum in a half-empty non-stop bar. That’s where it had brought me. There I was.
Television broadcast the most beautiful fairytales, those Communist fairytales with Werich in the
main role of the king, which he once was. And we, the unhappy morons, were moved by the smell of
rum, which used to be kept in pantry, it was only to be used for Christmas cookies. I won’t have
time to tell you where it has brought me, what I have achieved by this. What I did with it. I know
you weren’t over the moon because of me.’

[‘Táto, na to všechno jsem vzpomínal, když jsem si potom o zlých štědrých dnech a večerech už bez
vás a bez ženy a bez dítěte, bez Marka, Marka a bez Jezulátka poroučel v poloprázdném nonstopu rum.
Tam mě to přivedlo. Tam jsem byl, a v televizi dávali nejkrásnější pohádky, ty komunistické pohádky
s Werichem králem, který jednou byl. A my, pitomci nešťastní, jsme se dojímali vůní rumu, který
druhdy stával jen v komoře, jen do cukroví. To už ti nestihnu říct, kam mě to přivedlo, co jsem tím
dokázal. Co jsem s tím udělal. Vím, že tobě radost ne.’]

(JT: 98)


     When considering his possible death, Emil again does this with the help of alcohol (in his
friend’s cottage where he goes to get drunk). Through alcohol, he tries to beat his own sadness
(due to his lost youth, lost love and lost ideals) and omnipresent feelings of his own
inappropriateness in the family and the world. Alcohol is his light and, at the time of his
personal crisis, also his only sad lover (he physically embraces the bottle). Emil’s brother, Hans,
does not drink anymore but, in the course of the story, we learn he used to when he was young and
when he separated from his wife (‘Tchoř’: MO). And so we could endlessly multiply examples of how
Balabán’s characters approach the difficulties of the world. Escape into inebriation is one of
them. The other is escape into dreams (Karel in ‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR), to the countryside (Pavel
Nedostál in ‘Silvestr Svinov’: PR, Ivan Satinský in ‘Seno’: PR or Emil Nedoma in ‘Tchoř’: JT), into
art (Hans Nedoma in ‘Kolotoč’, ‘Teroristka’: MO or painter Bednář in ‘Kolotoč’: MO), a different
environment (František Josef, Bogomil: CB), memories (Emil in ‘Tchoř’: JT, Pavel Nedostál in ‘V
neděli’, ‘Highlander’: PR), ancient history (Jaromír in ‘Triceratops’: MO), life on the road
(Patricia’s and Paul’s father in ‘Vděčná smrt’: JT), God (Štěpán Jařab in ‘Armagedon’: PR) and
death (Petr Zabranský in ‘Dona nobis pacem’: JT).

     Balabán’s male characters are antiheroic heroes. Whenever a problem arises, they break down.
They suffer from the loss of their naïve dreams and from the loss of confidence in the
possibilities of a happy life. They search for a way how to escape from the world in which they
live. They find refuge in alcohol or in their inner reality. They wait, hidden within their human
shell, until it is safe to come out and to look for another way of life. After his divorce, Emil
Nedoma (see the last three works by Balabán) spends many years in total drunkenness and in search
for his own self. He occupies himself with his memories, with his mind and with his relation to
God. František Josef (CB) tries to find a way out of his personal confusion with the help of
alcohol and a temporary stay in a foreign country. Bogomil (ibid.) runs away and for many years
wanders through the world before he regains his safe stability on a different continent in the
company of completely different people.

     Nearly all of Balabán’s key male characters follow the same path – they remember a relatively
idyllic or naïve childhood, a romantic youth before they fall in love and marry. Then follows
failure and a personal breakdown and they go wandering and reflect on their lives. At the end of
their journey, some of them receive a reward in the form of new love and strengthened family bonds.
Some of them seek death as they believe that only death can free them of any restraints. Some find
only loneliness.

     Balabán’s male characters are people with no special features and no special achievements.
Their stories are as unique as the world of each individual can be, yet there are many aspects that
connect them. From the conventional point of view, they are not heroic. They are dreamers. They are
losers, cowards and naïve believers in good until there is a crisis and they stand face to face
with the suddenly discovered cruelty of the world. Only a few of them accept responsibility for
their own lives and then they hold on to it (father Nedoma: ZT, Martin Vrána’s father in KSA). Most
of them find it extremely difficult to cope. They struggle and in this struggle they finally become
their own heroes fighting against their own personalities, their faults and their failures.
Balabán’s female characters display different qualities.


3.2.2 Women, their responsibilities and their grief


     Like Balabán’s male characters, Balabán’s women also have their own voice and they use it to
express their own feelings and thoughts. They are the narrators of their own lives as much as their
men are the narrators of their own reality. Nevertheless and contrary to men, Balabán’s female
characters are not of a similar age. Dana (‘Prázdniny’: PR), Uršula (‘Uršula’: MO), Johana (CB) and
Eva Topolská (KSA) are of the same generation as their male counterparts (Dana – Pavel Nedostál,
Uršula – Roman Hradílek, Johana – Bogomil, Eva Topolská – Martin Vrána). They are their first
partners or wives. Jeny (‘Moving into the universe…’, ‘Lední medvěd Telecomu’: PR), Jeny (ZT),
Patricie (CB), Monika Tomská (KSA), possibly Taťána (‘Proměny’, ‘Pilot’: PR) and Jennifer (CB) are
several years younger than their men. They are the men’s new partners (Jeny – Pavel Nedostál, Jeny
– Emil, Patricie – František Josef, Monika Tomská – Martin Vrána, Taťána – Ivan Satinský and
Jennifer – Bogomil). The difference is not only in the age of female characters but also in the way
they approach the world in which they live.

     When we are introduced to Dana’s and Uršula’s testimonies, we meet them on the verge of their
middle-age personal breakdown. Dana is separated from her husband. She is living alone with her
children, unable to work and to care for anyone. She suffers from sudden loneliness and depression
and all she does to forget about it is that she drinks and sleeps. She thinks of her husband, who
has left her for someone else but, instead of keeping herself active, she buries herself in the
memories of her past and in tears. Uršula is facing the same predicament. We meet her at the time
when the deteriorating relationship becomes an ongoing problem. Uršula suspects that her husband
cheats on her and, in order to escape from such thoughts, she spends hours in the bathroom crying
her eyes out. Johana does not have her own voice. For Bogomil, she represents a ‘femme fatale’,
always different and always strong in her life and in her views. She has never really accepted
reality. Eva Topolská is the only woman we are able to see in a continuous manner. We see her as a
young, determined and pragmatic person who sacrifices romantic love for personal freedom and a more
stable and practical existence (when she splits up with Martin Vrána). We see her as a woman who
pretends to be hard and strong in her attitudes and feelings. She tries not to show her weaknesses
and fears (in her relationship with Ivan Figura and afterwards). We also know about her painful
relationship with her parents, with all the men she meets and with the father of her child; we
learn about her fear of intimacy and of her strength in her struggle against adversity in life at
the expense of love.

     František’s Patricie, Bogomil’s Jennifer, Martin’s Monika, Emil’s Jeny and some other women
have a totally different position in Balabán’s texts and in the lives of his male protagonists. All
of them are new partners to their male counterparts. Their main problem is not bitter loneliness
but the uncertainty of their current relationships they experience with their new partners who are
much older than them. They are ‘in’ a relationship whilst the previously mentioned women are ‘out’
of a relationship. These women struggle with their current situation and with their youth while the
older women struggle to cope with their ageing and with things that happened in the past.

     Kateřina Nedomová has an exceptional position. She is solitary and her life is mainly a fight
against illness and all that relates to it. She fights for her health and re-gains her father. She
fights for her marriage and re-gains her children. She fights for her dying father and re-gains her
brothers’ love.


     From all that we have learnt about Balabán’s men, we can conclude that their most significant
characteristic seems to be weakness in their behaviour towards the outside world. Whenever
something important or unexpected happens, whenever they are supposed to act, change, decide or
fight, they crumble and run away (with the exception of Nedoma’s: ZT and Vrána’s father: KSA). They
drink because with the help of alcohol it is easier to face reality or forget. They go to the pub
and meet friends because with them they do not have to be responsible for anyone else. They pretend
to go to sleep because, in sleep, nothing is real, not even their failure in sexual activity,
should it happen. They move to a different country, they occupy themselves with work; they get ill
or do everything possible in order to escape from the responsibility of conquering their own fears.
They lose control over their own selves and over the lives of others.

     The burden of responsibility for the outside world is carried on women’s shoulders. Women are
caring mothers (Dana in ‘Prázdniny’: PR, Patricia in ‘Vděčná smrt’: JT), patient partners or wives
(Patricie: CB, Monika: KSA, Jeny: ZT), doctors for the men’s souls (Taťána in ‘Proměny’: PR) and
bodies (Betyna in ‘A ptáci taky’: MO). At the same time, they fight to preserve their own health
(Patricie: CB, Kateřina: ‘Mléčná dráha’: JT, Johana: CB), they fight for their family (Světlana in
‘Světlana’: JT, Mrs Tomská: KSA), to save the world (Johana’s fictive hero Ema: CB) and for the
protection of their personal dignity (Johana: CB). Women are the ones who are left to fight in
defence of their own lives and the lives of their children whilst the majority of men just wander
away until happiness finds them.

     Each of Balabán’s characters has personal issues. But, whilst men are simply afraid of any
kind of responsibility and try to avoid behaving like adults, women are different. There is no
place for fear in women’s lives. They have a very strong sense of self-preservation. They have
personal strength that guides them through all the difficulties they encounter.




3.2.3 The acceptance of ageing and its denial


     As it is apparent from the above analysis of Balabán’s characters, Balabán’s male characters
and his female protagonists apply a different attitude to the reality of their ageing. Balabán’s
men are stuck in timelessness. They grow old but they are hardly concerned about their age or at
least they do not express any fears about it. Their minds seem to be still the minds of boys,
avoiding any concept of duty. These men are much more irrational than pragmatic and they are far
more romantic than practical. Balabán’s women are the opposite. As they grow old, they are more and
more conscious of their own age. They look in the mirror and see bodies deserted by their husbands
and children. They cry because they are helpless and they cannot change the effects of time.
Whenever they experience a crisis, they turn back to their own bodies and embrace them:


‘Dana felt that something inside her broke. As if a part of her body got loose. A kidney, the
uterus, a lung. Ah. She turned onto her side. She closed her eyes in front of the scratched wall.
The children scratched it, when they were still small. With fingernails. She kept her eyes closed,
tears escaping through her nose. She turned back, burying her face in the pillow. They don’t come
to my bed anymore as they used to. Her belly was underneath, her breasts were squashed and she felt
constricted. What is the time? I don’t care. It’s not dawn yet.’

[‘Dana cítila, že se v ní cosi utrhlo. Jako by se uvolnil nějaký orgán. Ledvina, děloha, plicní
lalok. Och. Převalila se na bok. Zavřela oči před podrápanou zdí. Podrápaly ji děti, když byly
malé. Nehtama. Držela oči zavřené a slzy jí tekly nosem. Převrátila se zpátky tváří do polštáře. Už
za ní nelezou do postele jako kdysi. Pod sebou břicho, rozpláclá prsa a těsno. Kolik je hodin? Ale
kašlu na to. Beztak se teprv rozednívá.’] (PR: 60)


Dana (‘Prázdniny’: PR) embraces her own exhausted body in bed; Magda (‘Magda’: MO) takes shelter
within her body while thinking of her recent decision to leave the father of her child and stay
alone with her son:


‘Magda sits down on the plastic chair which has been left behind by the previous tenant. She lights
up a cigarette and huddles within her own intimacy bounded by her shoulders and knees, her
collarbones, her small bosoms, her womb and her arms. This is my home. Here, I will make a bed for
you, my little son. She smokes and cries a little.’

[‘Magda si sedne na plastikovou židli, kterou tu nechal předchozí nájemník. Zapálí si cigaretu a
celá se schoulí do intimního prostoru ohraničeného rameny a koleny, klíčními kostmi, malými prsy,
klínem a pažemi. Tady jsem doma. Tady ti ustelu postýlku, chlapečku. Kouří a trochu brečí.’] (MO:
22-23)


Both women hide within their bodies as they feel that their bodies are the only thing which remains
after everything else is gone. Their body is a representation of their womanhood as well as a
symbol of their motherhood.

     Nearly all Balabán’s female characters take a stance on the issue of motherhood. If they have
children, they often rely on them as on the only surviving reminder of their past, of their once
happier times as they perceive it. If they do not have children, they regret not having had them.
Children do not seem to betray their mothers; they stay even after the family disintegrates and
save their mothers from a total breakdown (this happens in the cases of Dana in ‘Prázdniny’: PR,
Uršula in ‘Uršula’: MO, Mrs Tomská: KSA, Mrs Nedomová: ZT, Eva: KSA, Kateřina in ‘Mléčná dráha’: JT
and Magda in ‘Magda’: MO). If there are no children, life becomes strange, wasted and sad (as in
the cases of the photographer Bednář’s wife in ‘Kolotoč’: MO, Marie’s in ‘Výročí svatby’: ST and
Johana’s: CB).


     In Balabán’s works, the women who are of the same age as their men represent the disrupted
family. Younger women represent an attempt of their older partners to build a new life. Men leave
their original partners in order to seek happiness elsewhere. As they grow older, they fall for
younger women and, to their surprise, younger women accept their courtship.

     In contrast to Balabán’s male characters, all of Balabán’s women seek maturity and experience
in matters of love and relationships. The older women are disappointed when their partners do not
show enough commitment to family life and to them and so they complain. The younger women see
experience in their older partners and for this they admire them. Nevertheless, even these younger
women often struggle with their male partners and their habits which have survived from their first
relationship and the chaotic years after its breakdown. Monika Tomská (KSA), František Josef’s
Patricie (CB), Emil’s Jeny (ZT), Bogomil’s Jennifer (CB) or Jaromír’s Lenka (‘Triceratops’: MO),
all go through the same experience. Jennifer knows that Bogomil’s heart has been torn out by his
mad ex-wife Johana, but still she loves him, in spite of all his loneliness and the oddity with
which  he presents himself in his new world. Jeny loves Emil Nedoma, being aware of all his
weaknesses, alcoholic excesses and the inappropriate behaviour which he sometimes displays when
dealing with others. The same applies to Monika and Patricie. Lenka is attracted by Jaromír because
she finds him an inspiring teacher and mentor for her own thoughts.


     For Balabán’s characters, age is a factor with an ambiguous value that matters to some but
does not matter to others. Age is a key issue for the ageing women whenever they think of their
physicality – their receding fertility and sex appeal (see the predicament of Dana in ‘Prázdniny’:
PR, Uršula in ‘Uršula’: MO, Eva: KSA, female toilet attendant in ‘Niagarské vodopády’: ST and Pavla
in ‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR):


‘Does she want to make love to her man? After so many stagnant years she wants a guy? She made an
angry grimace. But still! It’s like a cramp, this urge. To have him inside. To be full of him. She
can understand now why a woman can kill her husband with a kitchen knife. She used to say that no
one should be sacrificed to sex. But not any more. The police would call it a slaughter. Things
like this happen everywhere. Pah! I don’t want to be an old and closed woman yet. Don’t you see
this?’

[‘Chce se milovat s mužem? Po tolika letech nehybnosti chce chlapa? Vztekle ohnula ret. Ale přece!
Je to jako křeč. Mít ho v sobě. Být ho plná. Už chápe, že ženská může zabít manžela kuchyňským
nožem. Vždycky říkala, že za to nikdo nestojí, ale teď! Policajti tomu říkají domácí zabíjačka, je
toho všude plno. Fuj! Já nechci ještě být stará a zavřená. Copak to nevíš?’] (PR: 34)


Age is an important point also for younger women, especially if they find themselves in a
relationship with a man who belongs to an older generation (Jeny - Emil, Patricie – František
Josef, Monika – Martin Vrána) because of the age difference that lies between them. But age is not
such an important issue for men, because men’s minds do not seem to grow old, they remain juvenile
till death.

     Another difference between Balabán’s male and female characters lies in the way they approach
the reality of their own selves and in the way they balance their selves with the reality of the
outer world.


3.2.4 Men are out for themselves, women work for others


     Balabán’s male characters live their lives, they love, give, take, share, fail and survive.
They seek things, they miss things; they suffer and gain. They do not fight for themselves; they
prefer to give up, get lost and wait until new ‘happiness’, always in the form of love, or death
finds them. Their heroic side manifests itself in their internal struggle with their personal
weaknesses and in their dreams and their imagination. In reality, they fight with their inability
to comply with the responsibility of adulthood and with their habits. In dreams, on the other hand,
they fight dragons (Karel in ‘Odpoledne a večer’: PR), sharks (the subjective narrator in ‘Žraločí
srdce’: ST) or other fantastic creatures (‘Men’: ST). In their own imagination, they fight to save
the whole planet (Ivo: CB) or the civilization as a whole from hunger (Animuk: CB). In relation to
the outside world, they often give up and lose.

     The position of Balabán’s women is different. Women fight with the real because they have to
fight – for themselves and their family. They do not have any illusions, they are clear about what
they see and they call it by its true name. So Patricia (‘Vděčná smrt’: JT) unveils the truth about
the unfortunate relationship between her mother and her brother Paul, whilst he does not want to
hear about it. Uršula (‘Uršula: MO) openly talks about the infidelity of her husband while he never
mentions it. No matter how much Jeny loves her partner Emil (ZT), it does not stop her from drawing
a raw picture of his behaviour. And Kateřina’s (ZT) thoughts do not need any further comment:


‘I am thirty nine and I still remember the holidays I have not had for the last twenty years. I
have two children and I still feel as a childless person after an abortion. As if the only thing
that has come out of my whole life was the sensation of a brutal ending, everything was stopped
abdominally, my blood, my milk, my heart, my motherhood was ejected. After you have done it you
don’t even know why you are still alive, disconnected from all that good that is now running away.
(…) Who are you, Kateřina?’

[‘Je mi třicet devět a pořád si pamatuji na prázdniny, které jsem už dvacet let neměla. Mám dvě
děti a pořád si připadám jako bezdětná po potratu. Jako by mi z celého života měl zbýt jen ten
pocit brutálního ukončení, jen to hnusné zabrzdění krve, mléka, srdce, jen to vyvrácené mateřství.
Když to uděláš, ani nevíš, proč jsi ještě na světě, odpojena od všeho toho rozbíhajícího se dobra.
(...) Co jsi, Kateřino?’] (ZT: 47)


Balabán’s women are not scared of the truth. Instead, they face it, no matter how hard it is and
how much pain it can cause them and others. Men are different. In order to face the pain, they
often need their women and their help and support.


3.3 Body (time) and soul (eternity)


     In the above chapters, I have indicated the way the characters’ personalities are shaped by
the influence of their relationships with other individuals. I have discovered connections that
work on the levels of partnership and love, family and friends and gender distinctions. I have
analyzed what impact these connections have on the individual’s perception of the real. Now it is
time to have a look at how Balabán’s characters react to the material of the world and to the
spirit of the self, to God and to the universe. I will argue that Balabán’s works are built as
human reflections of body and soul, reflections of time and eternity.


3.3.1 Illnesses and mental disorders


     The previous discussion of people’s individuality within gender distinctions touched upon the
problems which Balabán’s characters have with time. This related to the ageing of individuals and
the way time functions in relationships between men and women or between them and their parents or
them and their growing children. But time works on various levels in Balabán’s narratives: on the
level of an individual’s age, on the level of an individual’s life and death and on the level of
the external world.

     Balabán’s individuals are plausible. They are not shapes, schemes or ideas with an immortal
soul. They have bodies and their bodies suffer from various illnesses, physical sicknesses and
mental disorders. Like real people, Balabán’s characters are also limited by the length of their
lives and by the experience of the physical being within the time of their existence. They
experience physical and mental pain and, as a result, they begin to think about basic human values.
Through such thoughts, they search for their place within the world they inhabit.

     In Balabán’s work, illness is random; it chooses its victims without any rationale. Death does
the same; it affects the retired as well as the young. A toilet attendant from ‘Niagarské vodopády’
(ST) has a problem with obesity. Marie (‘Výročí svatby’: ST) is repulsed by every form of sex and
she hates everything that relates to it. Daniel Nedostál fights with the sleeplessness of old
people (‘Nespavost’: PR). Dr Satinský’s aunt, Natálie, also suffers from insomnia after her lover
dies (‘Natálie’: PR). Patricie (CB) is diabetic; Johana (CB) is insane. On one of his walks, Martin
Vrána (KSA) becomes the victim of a car accident and he remains unconscious for many days. Dr Kraus
and Pavel Červenka (‘Cedr a kladivo’: MO) both spend time in a psychiatric hospital in alcohol
addiction wards. As a child, Kateřina Nedomová (‘Hořící dítě: MO) nearly dies from a combination of
leukemia and acute diabetes. Oldřich (‘A ptáci taky’: MO) tries to battle ornithophobia, and the
old doctor, Karel Chudoba (‘Ray Bradbury’: MO), does everything possible to resist a rapidly
approaching Alzheimer’s disease. Patricia’s father (‘Vděčná smrt: JT) experiences a post-war trauma
after he comes back from the Vietnam War. Ludvík Chmelnický looks for the help of a natural healer
after his asthma gets worse (‘Viadačka’: JT). Saša’s lungs fail after many years of heavy smoking
(‘Oblak’: JT). Father Jan Nedoma (ZT) is diagnosed with cancer and kidney failure and Jeny’s
sister, Johana (ZT), ends up in hospital in the department for drug addicts; she undergoes
dialysis. Many other characters fight with depression.

     As much as Balabán’s characters become their own patients, they also become their own healers.
Some face serious health conditions; others end up working in a hospital or doing a job connected
with the life sciences. Father Jan Nedoma (ZT), Karel Chudoba (‘Ray Bradbury’: MO), Monika Tomská
(KSA), Leoš’s sister Elena (‘U Komunistů’: MO), Roman Hradílek (‘Prázdniny’: PR) and Emil’s new
girlfriend (ZT) work in a hospital. Kateřina Nedomová (ZT) is a biologist. Dr Satinský (‘Proměny’:
PR) and Dr Kraus are medical doctors (‘Cedr a kladivo’: MO) and Marie Severinová (‘Viadačka’: JT)
is a natural healer.

     But Balabán’s doctors or healers are not merely seen as the people who treat human bodies.
Their impact is wider. In the eyes of some characters, they are regarded as angels, as saviours of
people’s souls from the darkness of depression or from death. So Emil Nedoma calls for them from
the depth of his alcoholic existence, using expressions such as ‘saviours in the white cloaks’
(‘Emil’: MO). The first thing that Martin Vrána (KSA) sees after he wakes up from being unconscious
is a nurse with a shining smile. Elena comes into Leoš’s life (‘U Komunistů’: MO) at the time he
thinks his world is lost in apathy. Monika Tomská (KSA) plays the same role in her relationship
with Martin Vrána. For Kateřina Nedomová (‘Hořící dítě’: MO, ZT), her father and doctor, Jan
Nedoma, is the only person who kept her in the world of the living while she was struggling with
her health problems.


3.3.2 Death


     Balabán’s doctors are able to help their patients but, as they are also mortal human beings,
they are not able to escape their own deeds and they die. Father Jan Nedoma (ZT) dies of a
combination of cancer, kidney failure and diabetes and the old doctor, Karel Chudoba (‘Ray
Bradbury’: MO), dies of the consequences of Alzheimer’s disease.

     Death becomes a harsh reality in the lives of many other Balabán characters. Světlana’s
husband, Jiří (‘Světlana’: JT), dies when he tries to save their daughter in the wild sea. Petr
Zábranský (‘Dona nobis pacem’: JT) drinks himself to death. Saša (‘Oblak’: JT) dies of lung
problems. Patricia’s mother commits suicide (‘Vděčná smrt’: JT). Bogomil (CB) meets his death in
Canada and Johana’s fictive hero, Ivo, on a new planet (ibid.). Mother, grandmother and great
grandmother of Štěpán Jařab (‘Armageddon’: PR) suffocate after their house fills with smoke.
Marie’s friend bleeds to death during labour (‘Výročí svatby’: ST).

     Death does not only befall human beings but animals too. But whilst people die and leave an
empty space in the hearts of the bereaved, an animal’s death is seen as a sacrifice for those who
suffer. A dangerous shark has to be killed in order to save the life of a human (‘Žraločí srdce’:
ST). A cat is ‘removed’ because, when alive, it reminds its owner of the dangerous effects of
sexual life (‘Výročí svatby’: ST). Killing a turkey brings its performer relief from his fear of
birds at a time when he is expecting the arrival of his first child (‘A ptáci taky’: MO). An
animal’s death is a real (and symbolic) sacrifice to what humans need. It is also yet another
biblical motif that has made its way into the literary work of Jan Balabán.

     In Balabán’s texts, death appears in many forms. During one of his post-alcoholic moments,
Emil Nedoma dreams about death (‘Emil’: MO). In the dream, he plays the role of a lighthouse
caretaker who is not able to save a man in a boat struggling in the waves at the foot of the
lighthouse. The dream is a metaphor, an image of Emil’s own unconscious in which he is the person
who knows that he must keep his 10-litre bottle of clear vodka (his own lighthouse as he calls it)
safe but who wrecks the life of anyone who tries to approach him. Emil is an alcoholic caretaker
who observes how people try to get close to him but instead of helping them, he destroys them – as
he destroyed the unity of his own family. In his thoughts, the end of his relationship with his
children and his wife resembles his death.

     Pavel Nedostál (‘Highlander’: PR) also thinks of death. On one of his regular walks with his
son, he tells his version of the story about Highlander, a famous Scottish hero, who became
immortal during the course of his life. In his son’s imagination, this story provokes a number of
questions regarding the possible immortality of human beings.

     The sudden presence of illness and death makes individuals think about their own existence
within this world and about the world itself. When hearing that his friend Tonda Góna is dead,
Martin Vrána expresses strong anger and accuses society of taking away all joy from people and
destroying them, so that they end up embracing alcohol and lose all they value and love:


‘What am I doing here, what are we all doing here? Slagheaps and housing estates in the fields,
high-rise buildings in the countryside, dormitories, barracks and garrisons. Why are you all here?
What are you all doing here? Who ordered you to come? (…) You see, Tonda Antifona, it’s a fraud,
it’s a fucking German, Austrian, Jewish, Capitalist, Russian, Communist fraud! To the Ostrava coal
mines! Leave your lassie and wains at home and catch the train, to the Přívoz railway station and
hurray to the mines! Grab the hammer and enjoy the mining! Three thousand net pay! Build the
country and sustain peace! Your children as dull as alcohol can make them! Fuck your feelings, go
to Ostrava! There you will get a factory flat, a bathroom with warm water, a bath tub, sausages and
meat, the red Communist membership book and a savings book! Then, they’ll hit you on the head with
a pipe. All of us are here, piled-up. Here, people live only piled-up. Here they are building a new
world. Everyone fucks everyone else, everyone fucks with everyone else.’

[‘Co tu vlastně hledám, co tu vlastně hledáme všichni? Haldy a sídliště na polích, na vesnicích,
paneláky, ubytovny, kasárna a garnizony. Proč sem lezete? Co tu všichni chcete? Kdo vás sem nahnal?
(...) Vidíš, Tondo Antifono, vidíš ten podvod, zasraný německý, rakouský, židovský, kapitalistický,
ruský, komunistický podvod! Banovať do Ostravy! Nech doma robu a děcka a na vlak, na hlavní nádraží
do Přívozu a vzhůru do dolů, uchop se každý kladiva a měj se k dolování. Tři tisícky čistá ruka,
buduj vlast, posílíš mír, a děti blbé od chlastu. Ser na city, jeď do Ostravy, tam dostaneš závodní
byt, koupelnu s teplou vodou, vanu, párky a bůček a červenou knížku a vkladní knížku a trubkou do
hlavy. Všichni jsme tu na jedné hromadě, tady se žije jenom na hromadě. Tady se buduje nový svět,
tady každý jebe každého, tady každý jebe s každým.’] (KSA: 62)


In the destiny of a single person, his friend Tonda, Martin Vrána sees the destiny of all those who
forget about basic human values and have agreed to become a small cog in the huge machinery of the
state. He curses the society which blinds people with false values. He curses himself because he
has fallen into the same trap as many others and he is unable to escape.

     Death dominates the minds of various Balabán characters, but this theme is explored in the
greatest detail in Balabán’s last novel, Zeptej se táty, in the novel which was coincidentally
published after the author’s own death. Here, the description of the last days of the old father,
Jan Nedoma, is interwoven with reflections and memories of all the people he left behind when he
died. His wife Marta Nedomová thinks of him but the pain of loss she experiences is so overwhelming
that she cannot even remember the last moments of his life nor can she picture her husband’s face
alive. All she can think of is her own existence fading without Jan’s presence. Hans’s memory of
his father is accompanied by images of the light (light in the eyes of his dying dad), the tree
(symbol of infirmity and strength of the family life) or beautiful young women (striving). Whenever
he recollects his father’s fatal illness, he does it in connection with his own life. He thinks
about his unsuccessful attempts to create a happy family life and a good career for himself and he
expresses pain. He thinks about his father, his family and his life and in connection with this he
looks for balance:


‘[E]very moment of happiness, not only chemical happiness, but the real one, is redeemed, I am
using this word in an inverted sense, but on purpose, is redeemed by a significantly longer moment
of pain. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to want to die.

And do we want to die?

We must want to die, otherwise we will have to want to.’

[‘[K]aždá chvíle štěstí, nejen chemického, i toho skutečného, je vykoupena, to slovo teda používám
naprosto převráceně, ale schválně, je vykoupena podstatně delší chvílí bolesti. Jinak bysme ani
nemohli chtít umřít.

A my snad chceme?

Musíme chtít, jinak budeme muset.’ ] (ZT: 46)


In the death of his father, Hans feels he has lost his bearings; when his wife leaves him, he feels
he is losing the sense of his being and his courage to fight to retain it. He hides in his own
internal thoughts and images.

     Emil’s perception of his father’s death emerges with the physical sickness he experiences
whenever he passes a hospital or a graveyard and it is also associated with painful memories of his
own past. Through the recollection of the last visit he paid to his dying father, he thinks of
particular moments which have formed his family life and his current attitude to the world. Being
hurt by the death of someone so dear to him, he becomes even more attached to God and the people
who share their most intimate thoughts with him. He spends hours and hours in discussions with his
girlfriend Jeny and his sister Kateřina and in contemplations of the time they still have left to
enjoy:


‘Do you think, Katka, that we are already old?

Well, we are not children anymore.

Hans says that you are a child as long as you still have your parents.

That sounds logical.

As does everything Hans says.’

[‘Myslíš, Katko, že už jsme staří?

No, děti už nejsme.

Hans říká, že člověk je dítě, dokud má rodiče.

To zní logicky.

Jako jsou všechny Hansovy řeči.’] (ZT: 109)


And Kateřina adds:


‘Moments do not end. Moments last forever. Only we cannot live forever within them.’

[‘Okamžiky nekončí. Okamžiky pořád trvají, to jenom my v nich nemůžeme pořád žít.’] (ZT: 177)


Face to face with their father’s death, Kateřina and Emil search for the meaning of their lives.
They question their past and all that has been left behind after their father’s death. Emil clings
to his girlfriend Jeny as much as Kateřina does to her children and her illness. Emil expresses his
sorrow in thoughts and talks with certain people. Kateřina holds her sadness inside. She recalls
everything that her father suffered and sacrificed when she was seriously ill and nearly died, and
blames herself for the fact she could not be there for him when he was dying. She remembers her
last dialogue with her dad; she recalls the places he showed her and the words he said when she was
a child. She cannot bear the thought he died without her.

     Each of the members of the Nedoma family has a different understanding of their father’s death
but one thing they have in common is their attitude to the letters they started receiving
immediately afterwards. These letters have been written by their father’s former close friend,
Wolf. In them, Wolf blames Mr Nedoma for alleged malpractice he committed as a doctor and in
respect of God. What happens to people who used to be friends (just as Wolf and Nedoma used to be)
but who later separate under the pressure of the outside world?


‘They were such bosom friends. In that godless world of their native working class housing estates
controlled by the communists and their militia men, she saw them as two witnesses or apostles of
everything she could respect, of everything that separated her from the dull materialism of their
schoolmates and neighbours, who weren’t able to see further than to their pay days, than to the
borders of their own flats and garages. These two were men who cared for the truth and the meaning
of life, life which was given to us so that we would achieve something.’

[‘Takoví byli přátelé. V tom bezvěreckém světě rodného dělnického sídliště ovládaného soudruhy a
milicionáři je vnímala jako dva svědky nebo apoštoly všeho, čeho si chtěla vážit, všeho, co ji
oddělovalo od tupého materialismu spolužáků a sousedů, kteří nevidí dál než na konec své výplatní
pásky, než za hranice svého bytu a garáže. Byli to muži, kterým šlo o pravdu a smysl života, který
nám byl propůjčen, abychom v něm něco dokázali.’] (ZT: 51)


Wolf’s unexpected reaction to their father’s death creates great doubt in the minds of all members
of the Nedoma family. When facing the written accusations, they all suddenly feel confused and
lost. They start doubting their own memories of their dad, as well as what seemed to be an
unbreakable bond of friendship between their father and Wolf. In order to find out the truth and to
understand what actually went on, Kateřina visits the hospital where her father used to work but,
instead of being given an explanation, she is told to believe her own memories of her father. In
the mind of the mother, Marta Nedomová, Wolf’s letters evoke the long evenings her husband and Wolf
spent together discussing politics, God and various moral issues. She recalls the last evening
during which both men argued viciously. Wolf’s letters confirm all her doubts and remind her of the
arguments that she had with her husband when he was still alive. Emil looks for the truth about his
father in his dreams. There he stands as a defender of his father’s life against Wolf’s
accusations. Emil’s dream replays the time-honoured dispute between a religious code of ethics
(Wolf was strongly religious) and a doctor’s loyalty to the Hippocratic Oath. Emil’s dream,
however, ends inconclusively – the matter is not resolved and the debate will not continue. In the
end, Wolf turns up at Jan’s funeral but no one ever finds out what was the source of his sudden
hatred of Dr Nedoma. No one knows whether Wolf’s attacks were motivated by envy (Wolf has never had
a proper job), jealousy (his family disintegrated), a different philosophical attitude (to accept
the communist regime and be allowed to work as a doctor, or not to accept the regime and not to be
allowed to work as a doctor) or a different understanding of religion (to forgive or not). In
Wolf’s character, the Nedoma family faces both the equity and the inequity of society and the
world.


3.4 God and the universe


     Thinking of death brings Balabán’s characters to a more persistent consideration of the
passing of time, the beginning and the end of human life, God and his influence on the human
spirit, nature and the universe.

     From the first texts that Jan Balabán published, we can observe a strong line in his work that
leads from people’s minds to God (‘a god’s rope’, as the title of Balabán’s first prose – Boží lano
– indicates). Various individuals turn to God when looking for answers regarding their doubts, when
searching for forgotten memories or when looking for a way out of confusion. God becomes the
subject of their numerous discussions, questions and thoughts.

     In Středověk, God takes the form of a light, a non-material being whose presence one can sense
but never touch; it is a voice that comes to people from above. Ena (‘Ena’) is following all the
three metamorphoses of God and hopes this will help her to find a way out of her terrible
depression, her presumed internal darkness, her solitude and her fear of emptiness. Daniel (‘Kde
jsi byl, Adame?’) is not very happy with the direction in which his life is going and so he
questions God. He sees himself as a biblical Adam, a naked man who lost his paradise (the love of
his family, his youth) and now he hides away embarrassed about what kind of human being he has
become (he is a victim of alcohol and lives in painful solitude). Jonáš (‘Denatur’), another
alcoholic, finds a similarity between himself and Noah – both loved drink and so drank their lives
away.

     The life of the subjective narrator presented in Boží lano follows the path of the wanderers.
In the first part, called ‘Americká elegie’, the narrator goes back in his memories and recalls all
the important moments that occurred in his past before he lost his faith. He remembers his
childhood and youth, the time before his family moved to a different town; he remembers the New
Year celebrations in the church, his first sexual experience and his grandfather, an evangelic
priest from Siberia. He thinks of his first kiss, of his numerous talks with his brother Daniel. He
recollects how his parents were worried about his lifestyle, he looks back at certain moments in
school; he remembers children’s fairytales and a series of historical events that he has
experienced. His memories are interwoven with reflections of his current American lifestyle and
with various philosophical and religious contemplations, but even this narrator feels pain. He is
confused and lost. His whole life is wandering; a search for the origins of his own life and for
God.

     The second part of Boží lano, called ‘Studené jaro’, takes us back to the narrator’s early
adulthood and his middle-years, but the same litany continues. Only this time, the ‘rope’ of his
thoughts is connected with his first work experience in the Czech industrial city of Ostrava and
with his unsuccessful marriage. It is spring. The narrator lives behind the ocean but thinks of his
Czech past and of God whom he left behind when he moved away. In the course of his personal
meditation, he recites the Ten Commandments and stops at each of them whilst considering his
failures, never successes. In the third part of Boží lano – ‘Znamení’ – the narrator sets out on a
journey through the labyrinth of his native town. With his girlfriend, he walks through the streets
and the quarters he remembers from his childhood. He looks for the church he lost sight of after he
had moved away; in the end he finds it. Then, he also finds his faith.

     Boží lano is a story of the narrator’s fall to earth (after he had left the realm of his
childhood), and of his wandering through a mundane chaos, a labyrinth of his world. It is a story
of the narrator’s failures and losses, and his search for a way back. ‘God’s rope’ (‘boží lano’)
helps him to find a way. It helps him to find his religious faith (on a journey which leads back to
his childhood), his love for his fellow human beings, and peace of mind. In the end, this narrator
is able to accept the world in all its shapes and forms.

     In Prázdniny, Balabán’s characters also turn their minds to God. The ageing doctor Daniel
Nedostál (‘Nespavost’) thinks of all the ‘godly’ and ‘ungodly’ people he has accompanied from the
world of the living to death, whilst he himself sends quiet prayers to heaven before his own time
to die comes. Another character, Pavel Nedostál (‘V neděli’), remembers God whenever his thoughts
touch his memories of childhood. Seeing his own children enjoying their Sunday mornings in front of
the TV, he recalls other Sundays – the time when it was still important to celebrate the seventh
day of the week, to clean and decorate the house, put on Sunday clothes, go to church and share a
festive meal. His family’s religious tradition observed in the family party seems to him superior
to everything he sees around himself today:


‘A perfectly polished shoe doesn’t really exist. But it is an ideal and you can be a step closer to
it every Saturday. An enamelled drum in the bathroom spouts out large amounts of hot water into the
bathtub. Children go first. Everyone has clean pyjamas. It takes some time to fall asleep. You can
still see shadows moving on the ceiling. You hide deep in our duvet. You are scared a bit. You
would like to pray a little longer but you fall asleep, with the grace of God.’

[‘Dokonale vyleštěná bota vlastně neexistuje. Ale je to ideál a ty se k němu můžeš každou sobotu o
chloupek přiblížit. V koupelně smaltovaný válec chrlí horkou vodu do vany. Děti jsou napřed a
všichni čistá pyžama. Dlouho se neusíná. Jen před chvílí se na stropě posunují stíny. Kutáš se do
peřin. Malinko se něčeho bojíš. Chtěl by ses ještě pomodlit, ale už usneš, v milosti Boží.’] (PR:
16)


Pavel Nedostál does not think of God only in connection with his childhood. He considers God in his
discussions with his girlfriend Jeny who believes in God but despises organized religion (‘Moving
into the universe…’), in debates with his friend Dr Satinský who does not believe in God and is a
believer in science (Ibid.), and in the story of the old man, Timoteus, whose faith was stronger
than love for his family and so it destroyed him (‘Vyznavač’).

     A large number of Balabán’s characters talk about God but their talk does not produce any
satisfactory outcomes, only more doubts. One of the main topics that are often discussed in these
talks is the contradiction between a belief in God and a belief in science. In Prázdniny, this is
the topic of various debates between Dr Satinský and Pavel Nedostál (‘Moving into the universe…’).
In the novel Černý beran, this contradiction is dealt with on different levels. Once again, the
conflict of views creates tension between two characters:


‘“Deus est circulus…” Bogomil pronounced a Latin sentence which no one sitting around the table
understood.

“What does it mean in English?”

“God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose borders are nowhere.”

“That is interesting.” Amy got suddenly excited. “It reminds me of a definition of the Universe by
Stephen Hawking. He says that the Universe is finite but has no borders.”

“But Comenius speaks of God,” Bogomil objected.

“But surely, God and the Universe must be the same thing,” Amy answered quickly.’

[‘„Deus est circulus...“ Bogomil pronesl latinskou větu, jíž nikdo u stolu nerozuměl.

„Co to znamená anglicky?“

„Bůh jest kruh, jehož střed je všude a okraje nikde.“

„To je zajímavé.“ Amy byla náhle nadšená. „Podobá se to definici kosmu od Stephena Hawkinga. Ten
říká, že vesmír je konečný, ale nemá žádné okraje.“

„Jenže Comenius mluví o Bohu,“ namítl Bogomil.

„Bůh a vesmír přece musí být jedno,“ odpověděla Amy pohotově.’] (CB: 15)


In this example, Bogomil, a Czech emigrant, proudly speaks of God using quotations from the works
by 17^th century Czech theologian, Jan Amos Komenský[36], a member of the Unity of Brethren[37],
whilst his friend, the Jewish lady Amy, refers to the scientific theories of the Universe and the
possible unity of both religion and science. Her understanding of the world derives from a
religious tradition (Christian and Jewish) and merges with modern scientific views. Debates about
God also take place between the same Bogomil and his ex-wife Johana. Bogomil talks of God and he
reads from the Bible while Johana writes a story about the outer space and a non-existent planet
Barson. Elsewhere, in the story with the significant title ‘Ray Bradbury’[38] (MO), one of the
female characters explains the origin of her son’s name, Timoteus, with reference to his father’s
evangelical tradition. She also talks about her and her husband’s shared dream they both had in the
past of an escape from Earth to another planet.

     The ever present tension between God and the universe, between religion and science and
between mind and body is also highlighted by the fact that many of Balabán’s characters have either
a religious or a scientific profession or interest, or both at the same time. Many of them work in
hospitals treating human physical illnesses and diseases (Dr Satinský in ‘Proměny’: PR, Roman
Hradílek in ‘Uršula’: MO, Bogomil: CB or Jan Nedoma: ZT). Others are involved in religious
activities. Some of them are members of the Church hierarchy (Nedoma’s grandfather was a Protestant
priest as was the grandfather of the narrator in BL). Bogomil, the protagonist of Černý beran,
represents both religion and science. He works for the ambulance services and constantly studies
the Bible. Father Jan Nedoma (ZT) does the same – he works as doctor but has a strong religious
faith.

     There is another antinomy that influences the attitude of Balabán’s characters to life and to
God:  a different cultural experience. Bogomil’s and Amy’s experience (CB) comes from two different
people from two different countries. Bogomil’s roots lie in the world of Czech Protestants. Bogomil
comes from a small Czech village called Svébohov (God’s own place). He left this place in order to
escape from his insane wife, Johana, and in order to find peace and re-gain his faith in God and in
himself in a country across the Atlantic Ocean. Despite all his efforts, though, he is frustrated
even in America. He claims that America is a country where faith in God is glorified on the surface
but it is, in fact, commuted into money, fame and freedom without any rules. Amy is presented as
the product of this environment even though she has doubts. Bogomil never accepts the
American-Canadian philosophy of life. He joins American society, gets married, makes friends and
finds a job but never gives up his memories, his doubts, his private thoughts and his Protestant
faith. Until the end of his life, Bogomil never forgets his God; he never refuses to help others
and he continues to support his first wife, Johana. He stays loyal to his Czech name which means ‘a
lover of God’ and so ‘a lover of people’, although it never brings him the forgiveness he desires
so much. At least, this is what Bogomil’s new partner Jennifer and his nephew František Josef
think.

     František Josef comes from the same Protestant-Evangelic background. His faith in God is also
very strong. Unlike Bogomil, he is not tolerant towards contemporary secular society. He is also
very critical of the United States:


‘Americans are colonizers and God supports them. They land somewhere and build a petrol station
there. Then cars arrive with men accustomed to live anywhere. (…) A lost paradise with the ghosts
of exterminated native Indians who hang around the parked cars. Everyone knows that the devil is as
beautiful as New York City, as a Hollywood night bar. A rubbishy place full of celebrities. TV
gospels for stupid children, cowardly men and women, drunks who drink martini, masturbate in front
of the TV and long for the celebrity devil. And he comes to them and gives them American freedom to
be lonely, to be independent of others, to have the right to carry arms and a cheque book, gives
them a passport, a lawyer, a psychoanalyst, a priest, Jesus, Santa Claus. The North Americans know
that Heaven meets Hell at every corner. If you want to be in Heaven you must stand with one leg in
Hell.’

[‘Američané jsou kolonisté, kterým Bůh drží palce. Přistanou a postaví benzinovou pumpu. Pak
přijedou vozy a muži uvyklí žít kdekoliv. (...) Ztracený ráj s duchy exterminovaných Indiánů, kteří
se poflakují kolem zaparkovaných aut. Každý ví, že ďábel je sličný a krásný jako New York City,
jako hollywoodský noční bar. Sajrajt plný hvězd a televizní evangelium pro blbá děcka, pro zbabělé
chlapy a ženské, alkoholičky, které pijí martini a onanují u televize a touží po hvězdnatém
ďáblovi, a on k nim přichází a dává jim americkou svobodu k samotě, dává jim nezávislost na
druhých, právo nosit zbraň a šekovou knížku, pas, právního zástupce, psychoanalytika, faráře,
Ježíše, Santa Klause. Severoameričané vědí, že nebe se potkává s peklem na každém rohu. Když chceš
být v nebi, musíš být jednou nohou taky v pekle.’] (CB: 51)


Hence, František Josef criticizes society in general, not just American society. He accentuates his
faith in God and the romantic memories of his childhood which are connected with the church. He
goes back to his past and compares what he remembers with the current times. Everything he
perceives he then projects onto his relationship with Patricie, onto his attitude to his children,
on Bogomil or on society in general. He suffers psychological pain, feels sorry for himself;
drinks, talks about God and Jesus, about people’s ignorance of his own ‘misery’, or their
‘graceless’ behaviour and of the chaos they create for themselves in this life.

     It is evident that, unlike Bogomil who found peace, František Josef has an urge to express his
problems with the world he lives in and does not really know how to deal with it. On the one hand,
he is fully aware of the naivety of his childhood memories, on the other, he still sees his
childhood as life blessed by God’s light:


‘The word of God was always hidden for František in the form of a little light in that crude
socialism, in that future scrap yard of heavy machinery and absurd mechanisms.’

[‘V tom hrubém socialismu, v budoucím vrakovišti těžkých strojů a nesmyslných mechanismů bývalo pro
Františka slovo boží vždy ukryto jako malé světlo.’]

(CB: 111)


Whilst the present is for him just:


‘A terrible confusion of a chaotic human world. A mixture of debris and discarded plans scattered
about and piled up on top of each other. All over the place.’

[‘Hrozný zmatek neuspořádaného lidského světa. Chamraď krámů a plánů poházených a složených přes
sebe, od sebe a kolem sebe.’] (CB: 112)


     František Josef’s thoughts are dark whenever he thinks about the present world. He brightens
whenever he thinks of his past and of God. Although, as time passes and as love re-appears in his
life, even František Josef changes his attitude and finds hope. He drinks less and starts to
appreciate what people around offer him. He is no less critical towards the world but embraces it
with more optimism than before. Now, his God becomes a God of human hope, a God of the ambiguity of
love (Patricie) and death, of Paradise and Hell, of purity and evil, a metaphor of fate. His God is
omnipresent: no matter what people do, they can never hide from God. Bogomil is given the peace and
strength to build a new life but he is never able to escape his destiny. No matter how hard he
tries to undo what he perceives as his ‘sins’ (running away from his destructive love to Johana),
no matter how many trees he plants to celebrate God’s creation, no matter how many people he
supports, his destiny finds him and finally strikes him down. The same thing happens to Johana’s
fictive hero Ivo. He is also struck by God’s anger when the forgotten voice of Ivo’s love sounds.
Johana, the author of the story, is entangled in her madness and creativity. She is out of touch
with a world she has never really understood. Only František Josef and Patricie are not touched by
any catastrophe. Both accept, although with difficulty, what the world brings them – to Patricie,
diabetes and to František Josef, his first failed marriage.


     In all of Balabán’s fiction, we find many references to God and many religious motifs that
relate to his characters’ everyday experiences. Almost all of his characters think about God
whether they believe in him or not. However, it is especially men who have the urge to talk about
God, to seek out God, to accept God or to deny his existence. Women mostly listen to the men’s
views, hardly ever disputing them. They follow their men to the church and to the holy places, but
almost never reveal their own faith. Women are described as primarily concerned with the stability
and health of their families rather than with anything else. They take care of what is real to
them, whilst men always have their heads full of big ideas.

     Balabán’s female characters are afraid of the passage of time when it concerns their ageing
bodies. They accept the passage of time when they fight for someone else, not for chimaeras. Their
strength is derived from the everyday practical world. Men, on the other hand, live in the world of
ideas; they analyze human existence in its intricacy, instability and finality. They do not care
about the passage of time when it relates to their age. They fear the passage of time when it
speaks of death. In these moments, they also speak of God or the universe.

     Balabán’s fictive world is a world of spiritual awareness. His characters live in the present
time, they are born and they die, but their mind expands to different spheres. It is the alliance
of nature, God and the universe that shapes them and they recognize this. They often doubt as they
lose a person they loved, home, stability or faith and sometimes they give up completely and choose
to die. The majority of Balabán’s characters find their hope and finally also the way back to life
within nature, God and the universe. They find a new life in the present and they try to enjoy it –
the same way as they enjoyed their life in past before they were swallowed by the world of
adulthood.



3.5 The present and the past: time and places


3.5.1 Memories


     Balabán’s characters spend a lot of time thinking about their own selves and, whenever they
do, they do so through personal memories of their past. In their minds and in reality, they go back
to their childhood and youth in order to recall those moments that have shaped their future life.
In replaying these memories in their minds, they seek an explanation for what happened in the past
and afterwards, and why certain things did not happen at all. Almost every important character has
the power to recollect a key experience that influenced their personality during the course of its
formation. Some have to go back to the time when they were still young and naive and enjoyed life
without any major difficulties and breakdowns. Others recall what came after they started to love,
to study, to work and to socialize.

     The characters’ childhood memories are often connected with the family and with faith. They
are wrapped in the spirit of something mysterious, something that now seems to be almost like a
fairytale rather than something from the real world. Characters recall their memories as if they
were just someone’s innocent dreams where things were still good and in their right place rather
than real. Childhood is seen to have been an Eden, a paradise; everything that happened afterwards
they consider to be a journey through Hell and Purgatory back to God’s embrace:


‘I missed being a child. But then I saw you between two trees in our courtyard, in the place where
a villa used to be. Our high rise blocks of flats were later built in its garden; only the villa
foundations remained in the ground and they are still being touched by the roots of those two
trees, the trees are wild, now every autumn shedding a whole harvest of unripe pears; pears which
then rot on the grass and on the footpaths, wasps feast on them – a hammock was stretched exactly
between those two pear-trees, and your little den in it was exactly where there used to be the
children’s bedroom in the house; a cot was made of carbide tubes and a woollen netting which
protected you from falling down onto the hard floorboards. Do you remember this? Walking away from
the window I caught sight of those women, women with massive legs, heavy knees, thighs and big
cow-like buttocks; they had breasts as big as wrists and they had big lips and beautiful eyes;
Gauguin’s women.’

[‘Stýskalo se mi po dítěti a pak jsem tě uviděl mezi dvěma stromy na našem dvoře, dříve mezi nimi
stávala vilka, naše paneláky byly postaveny na její zahradě, po vilce zbyly jen základy zasuté
v zemi, kde se jich ještě stále dotýkají kořeny těch dvou stromů, stromy jsou zplanělé a každý
podzim z nich spadne celá úroda nedozrálých hrušek, které pak hnijí na trávnících a na vyšlapaných
cestičkách, jen vosy na nich hodují a mají se dobře – síť byla natažena právě mezi těmi dvěma
hrušněmi a tvůj pelíšek  v ní byl zrovna tam, kde býval dětský pokoj, postýlka z chromovaných
trubek s přízovou síťkou, která tě chránila před pádem na tvrdou prkennou podlahu. Pamatuješ si to?
Cestou od okna jsem zase zahlédl ty ženy, ženy s velkýma nohama, těžkými koleny, stehny a zadky
jako krávy, měly prsy jako pěsti a velké rty a oči krásné, ženy Gauguinovy.’] (BL: 11)


This particular example is a single memory of the subjective narrator from Boží lano. We walk with
him through his personal interpretation of his life. We follow the self-analysis of his past and
note which experiences influenced his perception of his self and the world around him. The whole
book is basically a search for a personal understanding of the reality of one man, from the past to
the present.

     The narrator is a middle-aged man. He takes us deep into the memories of his childhood and
early adulthood. He talks about his first loves and family disruptions, his marriage, communist
Ostrava, Canada, his relationship with the woman called Donna and his belief in God. The memories
of this particular man are the memories of different colours and different shapes. His childhood is
a time of pure innocence. There is a villa, there are fruit trees, there is ripe fruit; there are
bees and bosomy women (see the example above). There are night shirts and fairytales; there are
green cockles and tiny milk-jars. There are churches. No subsequent experience could destroy the
clarity of these moments. Not until he grew up enough in order to be able to see the dark side of
things. For the narrator, it was sometime between his 10^th and 18^th birthday when his life
changed. He lost his virginity through masturbation and then his first love. The villa was replaced
by high-rise blocks of flats, and the trees growing in the former garden went wild. His brother
smoked his first cigarettes and family arguments became more intense and louder than ever before. A
decision that changed the narrator’s life was made: his family gave up the safety of their home
town and moved to the industrial city of Ostrava. This was when the narrator finally saw through
the veil of his childhood and broke down for the first time:


‘I thought about you when I was still a boy. At night I often couldn’t sleep, I was looking out for
something, anxiously waiting for something. The light from one of the street lamps behind the
window drew an ethereal pattern of the net-curtains on my duvet. It was the net which we can see
sometimes fleetingly behind our closed eyes, we see it in the stars that shine in the deep winter
sky, in the wrinkles of old people, when they smile at us sometimes at the end of a long day. In
such a net I saw you, a small child, who was trying to get the hold of the threads, spun for many
years between the point finger and the thumb of eternity. Do you remember that moment, when the net
shook as my thought of you crossed it? How old were you then? Only a little light falls on those
years now. A shadow is moving across our land. The sun still sets in the west only; the darkness
always comes from the east. The world is flat again, like a map and someone’s hands keep pushing it
away from the sun. The frost of the endless Siberian plains eats the land and we have no choice but
to keep moving away. It is the world of the evening into which we, the children of autumn, were
born. They say there will be twilight for sixty years. We have to leave our old dwelling places and
toil along the roads to follow the copper sun which is always low above the horizon. We are losing
things, you know, you cannot pack your life into a suitcase, even people are disappearing, they get
on to a different bus and God knows where they end up. If only you knew how anxious I felt once
when I stopped under the windows of our flat, breathless from my own game, and understood that
there is only a little time left before we leave the place forever, our home, our box, where we
used to have everything, even the weak bulbs in the kitchen and the loud conversations which I did
not really understand, and the soups which smelled everywhere like my brother’s first cigarettes,
whose fires floated in the darkness above his bed like the lights of a little firefly whose shirt
we both left behind forever. So we had to go through the twilight and I didn’t want to do that. I
made up stories which I inhabited myself like a primitive man living in a cave; I crouched down by
the fire whilst enemies circled around, outside in the damp and cold mist of the forests and
swamps.’

[‘Myslel jsem na tebe, když jsem byl ještě chlapec. V noci jsem často nemohl spát, něco jsem
vyhlížel, úzkostně jsem něco čekal. Světlo lampy z ulice za oknem prostíralo na moji peřinu
nehmotný vzorek záclony. Síť, kterou vídáme jen někdy v prchavých mžitkách za zavřenými víčky, ve
hvězdách na hlubokém zimním nebi, ve vráskách starých lidí, když se na nás usmějí na konci dlouhého
dne. V té síti jsem tě uviděl, malé dítě, které se ručkama chytá vláken, spřádaných po věky mezi
ukazováčkem a palcem věčnosti. Nevzpomeneš si na tu chvíli, kdy se síť zachvěla, jak po ní přeběhla
myšlenka na tebe. Kolik mi tehdy bylo let? Už jen málo světla padá na ty roky. Naší krajinou se
sune stín. Slunce zapadá stále jen na západě a z východu věčně přicház tma. Svět je zase plochý
jako mapa a čísi ruce jej stále posunují dál od slunce. Mráz nekonečných sibiřských plání žere zemi
a nám nezbývá než se pořád stěhovat. Je to svět večera, do kterého jsme se my, podzimní děti,
narodily. Šedesát let se prý bude jenom stmívat. Musíme opouštět svá stará bydliště a plahočit se
za hranatým měděným přízrakem slunce, které je vždycky nízko nad obzorem. Ztrácíme, to víš, do
kufru svůj život nenaložíš, i lidé mizí, nasednou do jiného autobusu a kde je jim konec. Kdybys jen
věděl, jak úzko mi bylo, když jsem se jednou, udýchaný svou vlastní hrou, zastavil pod okny našeho
bytu a pochopil jsem, že jen malinko a už tam nikdy nepůjdem, do našeho domova, do krabice, v níž
jsme měli všechno, i ty slabé žárovky v kuchyni a halasné hovory, kterým jsem moc nerozuměl, a
polévky, které všude voněly podobně jako první bratrovy potají zapalované cigarety, jejichž ohníčky
se vznášely ve tmě nad jeho postelí jako světélko svatojánského broučka, z jeho košilky jsme však
už oba nenávratně vyrostli. Tak jsme museli jít soumrakem a já se tomu tehdy na trávníku bránil.
Vymýšlel jsem si příběhy a sám jsem je obýval jako pračlověk jeskyni, choulil jsem se u ohně,
zatímco venku v sychravé mlze lesů a bažin obcházeli nepřátelé.’] (BL: 7-8)


The sudden awakening of the narrator in Boží lano during his teenage years was not only due to his
own momentary personal breakdown but also due to the overall political and social situation that
affected his society. Judging by the text of the narrative, we may assume that the narrator’s
childhood corresponds to a period akin to 1960s Czechoslovakia (he says that he studied at a
grammar school in 1976). It was not until ten years afterwards that he was sufficiently mature to
realize what kind of society he was living in. The narrator characterizes this time as a time close
to darkness. He uses images of decay, loss and destruction: rotten fruit, packing, leaving, death
(we know that his grandmother died), mist, cold, approaching frost and darkness, winter sky,
Siberia. In reaction to all these fatal discoveries, he experiences an anxiety attack (when he
learns about his parents’ decision to move from his childhood home to Ostrava) or just simple anger
(when crossing the road, he drops his school books in the middle of a tram track). What is the
worst for him is the realization that nothing will ever be the same again. The new town later
brought him a new life. It gave him a job (the same one he held ten years); he met (and lost) his
first wife there), this is where he fought for his brother (an alcoholic) and drank himself; there
he forgot his personal dignity and faith and eventually also was issued his passport to the West:


‘I was always a bit of a lame duck, always a little moody. I rummaged through the old corners, the
old coats, my stuff… (…) I kept running away, to pubs and abroad, to the places which allowed me to
give small things big names; I talked rubbish and pumped and kept building a precarious world which
was, they said, only all about me. And then I rolled around the floor in the hall calling myself an
imprisoned soul and my wife didn’t know how to love me; with a hangover, I rushed to catch my tram
and in sorrow I whispered the names of my children.’

[‘Vždy trochu zajíknutý, vždy trochu rozmrzelý. Prohrabával jsem staré kouty, staré kabáty, ten
svůj materiál. (...) Utíkal jsem pryč, do hospody, do ciziny, kde jsem nazýval malé věci velkými
slovy, plácal jsem a pumpoval a stavěl tak vratký svět, který prý byl jen o mně. Potom jsem se
válel v předsíni na podlaze a nazýval se vězněnou duší a moje žena nevěděla, jak mě mít ráda, a
s hlavou plnou kocoviny jsem pospíchal na tramvaj a lítostivě si šeptal jména svých dětí.’] (BL:
21)


When recalling the memories of his life in Ostrava, the narrator also recalls the atmosphere of his
hopeless wanderings through the “desert” of his soul as he felt it during these years. Everything
seemed to have broken down by then, all his youthful idealism had been swallowed by the grey
routine of everyday reality: job, wife, children and house. He realized that, as many others around
him, he lived the ‘normalized’ life of a ‘normalized’ society in ‘normalized’[39] times and he
hated it. For a long time, he kept escaping into alcohol and to foreign countries until he settled
abroad, on the American-Canadian border. There he found a new house with the view overlooking Lake
Ontario. He also met a new girlfriend, Donna. However, the move to America does not give him
happiness either. He appreciates the beauty of the environment but misses the familiarity of his
Czech home. Even when he travels, he keeps choosing places which somehow remind him of his Czech
past. He likes Pittsburgh because, in a certain way, he finds it being like Ostrava - it is also a
former steel-making city located on the junction of several rivers. He mentions Hamilton (which is
also a steel-making city), Toronto (a city with a large Czech population), and Cleveland (a city
with a large Slovak population). He visits the Carnegie museum but thinks there of the Czech girl
he first dated. In his Toronto flat, he looks in the mirror but, instead of his own reflection, he
sees the portraits of all the members of his family who remained in Czechoslovakia.

     No matter how much the narrator tries to enjoy his life overseas, his memories keep coming
back. Over and over again, he is examining his past and looks for any explanation of what happened
between his childhood and the present. He is finally giving names to memories that never had any,
for they lay hidden in his mind. However, in order to make his real and symbolic return complete,
the narrator has to make one more step – he has to go back to the Czech Republic, to the place he
had left, because there he thinks all his life’s wanderings started, and so he does go back (in the
third part of the book). Together with his girlfriend, he walks through the streets of
Ostrava-Vítkovice, passing the places he knew well. He still recognizes them. He searches for the
lost evangelic church and for his forgotten faith until he finds it. At this point, we leave both
these characters to their fate – in a fusion of the narrator’s old European Evangelic faith, his
partner’s Catholicism, her mythological dreams and the experience of a city of steel beneath the
red sky.

     Similar journeys into the past are undertaken by the majority of Balabán’s characters. Yet the
story of each of them is always different. The female narrator of the story, ‘Niagarské vodopády’
(ST), remembers how it happened that she ended up working as a public toilet attendant – she fell
in love with the ‘wrong’ person. Marie, from ‘Výročí svatby’ (ST), recalls the reasons for her
aversion to sex – her friend died during labour. One day in August, Daniel, the protagonist of the
story ‘Kde jsi byl, Adame?’ (ST), sets out for a walk with his son. The landscape to which he takes
him evokes the memories of another summer and another walk. It was his last summer before the
reality of the August 1968 Soviet occupation broke into his young life and into the lives of
others, and disrupted them. In search of his lost identity, the protagonist of ‘Men’ (ST) climbs up
a hypothetical pyramid, re-living all the levels of his previous conscious and unconscious
experiences. He goes back as far as his birth.




3.5.2 The perception of time – linear and cyclic, destroyed and re-built


     In Balabán’s works, time flows in two directions: forward as the life of individual characters
is also moving forward, and backwards as the mind of the individual characters keeps wandering back
to their past in order to seek the understanding of the present world and their own individual
position within it. In Boží lano, the narrator returns to the place where he lost his faith in
order to rediscover it and connect the future and the past in a fusion of a dual peaceful present
(his and his partner’s). It has been already mentioned that the protagonist of ‘Men’ (ST) seeks
some understanding of his current life in his travels into his subconscious mind. In Prázdniny, the
passage of time in the narrations of certain individuals is disrupted by a number of breaks. The
lives of Balabán’s characters are presented in several episodes. These episodes do not follow each
other sequentially but often overlap in both time and place. In ‘Proměny’, Dr Satinský reveals what
preceded his alcoholic breakdown and what happened after he made a decision to stop drinking. In
‘Je to jako děcko’, we are suddenly with Dr Satinský on the motorway. He is driving a car but
drifting into the memories of his journey across America. Later, Dr Satinský takes us for a visit
to his insane artistic aunt, Natálie (‘Natálie’) and, under the impact of her stagnant existence,
he uncovers another part of his childhood (the year 1966). In the story ‘Pilot’, Satinský sits in
the pub with his then girlfriend Taťána (he was dating her during his alcoholic period) and talks
to her about another memory, this time going back to his study years deep in the socialist era.
Then, we meet Dr Satinský while he is walking with his grown-up son who is now, after his parents’
divorce, living with his mother. Dr Satinský’s personal story is partly interwoven with another
character, his friend Pavel Nedostál (‘Pilot’). However, the reader gets to know Pavel Nedostál
much earlier, in some of the previous chapters, and again this is happening in several different
episodes. This time it is done in sequence which is interrupted only by minor unspecified breaks
and a few personal memories: Pavel, in the presence of his wife, comments on their ongoing
argument. He also mentions their children who are sleeping in the next room, comparing their games
with his own childhood memories (‘V neděli’); Pavel and his children set out for the New Year’s Eve
walk to Ostrava-Svinov in order to avoid his wife’s criticism (‘Silvestr Svinov’); Pavel and his
son Ludvík visit an old amphitheatre (‘Highlander’); Pavel is writing a letter but he is
interrupted by his thoughts about his new girlfriend Jenovéfa (Jeny) and about their discussion
regarding the consequences of religious belief (‘Vyznavač’); Pavel, during on one of his
night-walks with Jenovéfa, debates love, God and the Universe with her (‘Moving into the
universe…’). Finally, Pavel is sitting in a pub observing people around him and thinking of Jeny,
his future and his dreams (‘Lední medvěd Telecomu’). This is all we learn about Dr Satinský’s and
Pavel’s lives, the rest stays hidden in the memories of both.

     Time is formally disrupted in the novel, Kudy šel anděl. The story opens with chapter 19 and
with a description of Martin’s solitude in his empty flat. Only then do we go back to the beginning
and learn about the time when all Martin’s troubles started.


3.5.3 Time and place – the external reality


     In the world of Balabán’s fiction, time is a category of an ambiguous – external and internal
– quality, as it is in the real world. It is linear when it follows events in the external world;
it is disrupted, cyclic or spiral when it depends on what happens in people’s minds. Moreover, the
place interacts with both the external and the internal levels of perception. It is real when
people inhabit it in a particular moment in their lives; it becomes a reflection of their mind when
people think about it through recollections of their past. Balabán’s people relate to both the
external and the internal reality regardless of whether they talk about it or keep silent.

     In Prázdniny, the two frequently mentioned protagonists (Pavel Nedostál and Dr Satinský)
hardly ever make any comments on the reality of the place and the time that defines them. They seem
to be fully preoccupied with their own individual existence within the world. Dr Satinský
(‘Proměny’), a doctor of the life sciences who first works at an institute of microbiology, loses
his job as a result of personal failure (due to an extramarital affair, family quarrels, alcoholism
and divorce). His dismissal, however, is not a direct consequence of adversity in the external
world, of the fact that Satinský lives under an authoritarian regime. He does not blame the
external world for the loss of his job and his overall failures. He hardly connects anything that
has been happening in his life with the policies of the Czechoslovak communist regime. Only once
does Satinský really look back at the communist era:


‘Students Ivan Satinský and Pavel Nedostál and their girl-friends were sharing a table. Satinský
and Nedostál swore at the Communists. They wore loose jumpers. They had second-hand books and ideas
which then seemed to matter to them. They were enjoying the pleasant, cosy feeling that they were
outcasts – this feeling will never come back – and the two pretty girls were somehow naturally on
their side.’

[‘Studenti Ivan Satinský a Pavel Nedostál seděli u stolu se svými kamarádkami a nadávali na
komunisty. Měli vytahané svetry a knihy z antikvariátu a ideje, na kterých jim tehdy nějak
záleželo. Bavili se v útulném vyvrženeckém pocitu, který se už nevrátí, a dvě pěkné dívky byly
jaksi samozřejmě na jejich straně.’] (PR: 57)


However, this scene does not expand into anything more than what it is: it serves the narrator as a
point of departure for another story, this time a story about an awkward meeting with a drunken war
pilot (‘Pilot’) that took place in a similar pub several years ago. Only now it is not the pilot
who babbles alcoholic nonsense but Dr Satinský just shortly before his breakdown. At another time,
Satinský gives his views about American society (‘Je to jako děcko’), but once again these views
only serve as a vehicle for his own thoughts about life (a car is like a kid, it cries but does not
die – life is painful but it does not necessarily mean fatally). Pavel Nedostál seems to be a
slightly more concerned about the reality outside his head when he describes the unsatisfactory
behaviour of his children and compares it to what he sees as the purity of his own childhood (‘V
neděli’). Even so, Nedostál is not interested in pointing out the current problems in society
either. His remarks about contemporary society serve him as a vehicle to express his own doubts
about the human self:


‘Can a person feel both good and bad at the same time? God knows.’

[‘Může být člověku zároveň dobře i špatně? Bůh ví.’] (CB: 17)


     The majority of Balabán’s characters display similar attitudes to reality in which they live.
They do not deny that they are influenced by the time in which they live but, instead of perceiving
themselves as victims of a particular era (the period akin to normalization and the fall of
communism in Czechoslovakia), they consider their lives in more general terms and as a never-ending
struggle between two contrary forces: good and evil. It is these forces which, as they believe,
shape their lives in the first instance; only afterwards it is the external world which they
experience in a particular moment of their existence. The present is where the powers of good and
evil meet and materialize.

     Yet the same does not hold true for all of Balabán’s characters. There are others who sense
the impact of the external world on their internal selves to a certain degree. This applies to some
of the characters in the novel, Černý beran: Bogomil, Johana, František Josef and Patricie. It is
these characters whose lives are influenced by the external and the internal worlds most visibly.

     One of the main narrative lines of the novel follows a relationship between two very different
individuals, Bogomil and Johana, and their fatal love. Johana is the daughter of a famous Czech
legionnaire who fought against the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Russia during the First World War.
The legionnaire brought a large Russian girlfriend back from Siberia. Their marriage was never
approved by the father’s family, not even after both of them were thrown into prison under the
communists. Johana, who was born when Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany, was placed into
the care of her brutal and hateful uncle after the Second World War. She did not know her parents
well and the only ‘care’ she experienced in childhood was the aggressive behaviour of this uncle, a
former guerrilla fighter, who himself was traumatized because his wife had eloped with an American
soldier. When Johana grew up, she fell in love with Bogomil, a strong man from the neighbourhood,
but their relationship was too complicated for them to survive as a couple. Johana’s traumatising
experiences made her ill with schizophrenia. She became an original artist, but also came to
believe that she was being pursued by secret agents. Bogomil could not stand this and ran away,
first to Europe, then to Canada.

     Johana’s personality was shaped by many forces, political forces included. Without the impact
of external political pressure, she would hardly have become the person she was, with all her
complications and illnesses. She is a victim of her past and all the changes which Czech society
went through during the course of the twentieth century. She is a product of two different cultures
which clashed in her society. Their clash crushed her. She is a victim of violence which people
practised for the sake of their own sanity and this made her go insane. Furthermore, Johana thinks
she lives in a society of spies that follow her and her partner. She does not believe anyone who
approaches her; she despises anything that comes from the West; she does not accept anything except
her own thoughts. She locks herself away in a cottage far from civilization and there she paints
out her memories, over and over again. She hides herself in a world of timelessness which is filled
only with the images from her own mind. And in this world, she writes a story of universal love
between two fictive heroes, Ivo and Ema, a love story that never ends. While Johana escapes into
her own fantasy, Bogomil runs away from his past. While Johana is unable to overcome her trauma
and, instead of moving forward, she looks back, Bogomil sets out for a new life in America.
However, his mind stays at home. He keeps helping Czech immigrants in the US in spite of the fact
that they take him for granted. He takes many pictures by Johana with him to the US and keeps
sending her the best paints he can find as well as money. She never accepts them. Their common
experience of the world keeps them connected and hardly allows anyone else to come near. In this
sense, their experience becomes universal; it crosses the frontiers of time and place. Yet, it is
individual too. Johana’s vision of society is full of suspicion; Bogomil’s is modest and full of
hope and faith.

     František Josef is another character whose personal story we follow in the novel Černý beran.
František Josef is Bogomil’s nephew and so he is a generation younger than Bogomil. He grew up in
communist Czechoslovakia, living and working in Ostrava. He is divorced but in a relationship with
Patricie who is younger than him. We do not really know much about his family and about his
childhood, his focus is basically on the present time.

     František Josef does not present himself as a happy character. The reader meets him at the
stage when his thoughts are preoccupied with his personal failure and his inability to recover. His
view of the world and society around him reflects the negativity of his thoughts and is full of
anger and hatred. František Josef feels he lives in a cruel world. This is how he presents it to
his readers:


‘Such a murder. Such a woman. A porous face, bulky earlobes, a perm. She stares like someone who
has just been slapped and who wants to slap. She stretches her nostrils and curves her lips. What
has happened to her, that cow? She holds her handbag tightly on her knees, so rudely apart. She
does not care. Her head is full of problems. Broken nerves. (…) Children scream here and that girl
over there, everything she wears seems to be a little too big or too small for her, as if someone
had touched her figure, created by God, with messy hands. Look at that awful pimple below her
bottom lip, she keeps touching all the time. Well, if you ever find a husband! You will. There is
one. He had his head shaved and is proud of it. Fat nasal bone. He wants to look brutal but at the
same time he keeps fidgeting, as if he forgot to wipe his bum in the morning. And here there is a
young mum, we should look up to her as if she was Virgin Mary, with dyed hair and elastic topic,
necklaces, bracelets and rings and a baby wrapped in something that reminds you of a crimped yarn.
He is teasing her messing around with a lollipop and the mum, the mum’s face reflects her wish to
switch him off, like she would do with a walkman, with chicken tamagochi, which dies after nine
days and its spirit flies to the digital heaven, then you can turn it on again, people say you need
a small slip of paper to do it. Slip of paper! And who will pay for that? A chap in a waistcoat
asks. He is on the way home from the doctor who made him able to work again. He is so angry that a
single look of his eyes gives you a blow. Do not stare at me, you fucking bastard! Do you get it?’

[‘Taková vražda. Ženská. Pórovité líce, tlusté boltce, trvalá. Dívá se, jako by byla právě
zfackovaná a sama chtěla fackovat. Roztahuje chřípí, křiví rty, co se jí stalo, babě? Drží kabelu
na kolenou, tak vulgárně jí jdou od sebe. Je jí to jedno. Starostí nad hlavu a nervy v prdeli.
(...) Děti tady řvou a támhleta holka, všechno je na ní trochu velké nebo trochu malé, jako by její
bohem stvořenou formu někdo tak nějak pošahal. A ještě ten strašný uher pod spodním rtem. Pořád si
na něj musí sahat. No, ty jestli se vdáš! Ale vdáš. Támhle máš ženicha. Nechal se ostříhat dohola a
je na to hrdý. Tlustý kořen nosu. Snaží se vypadat brutálně, a přitom se tak podivně kroutí, jako
by si ráno špatně vytřel zadek. A mladá maminka, k té bychom měli všichni vzhlížet jako k madoně,
s odbarvenou kšticí a v lesklé elastice, řetízky, náramky, prsteny a děcko v čemsi z umělé příze.
Otravuje a patlá lízátko a mamka, mamka se tváří, že by ho nejradši vypnula jako walkmana, jako
kuře tamagoči, které po devíti dnech zdechne a jeho dušička odletí do digitálního nebe, pak si ho
můžeš pustit znovu, strká se tam prý nějaký papírek. Papírek! A kdo to zaplatí! Ptá se chlap
v bundě do pasu. Jde od doktorky uschopněný do práce, naštvaný tak, že ještě jeden pohled a už ji
máš, pěstí mezi oči. Nečum na mě, kurva! Rozumíš?’] (CB: 20-21)


František Josef describes Czech society with a sarcastic eye. He applies his scathing criticism to
everyone who happens to be around. In his momentary state of mind, people are pictured as ugly,
pretentious, rude and faithless. Places are dirty and dull. However, this criticism is directed
solely at the present world. His memories are mostly bright and so he keeps going back to them. He
sees his past as bright, sincere and full of faith. It was the time when the adults’ problems were
still far away from his childish mind, churches were welcoming for human souls. But current society
is seen as a wasteland, it is a society without direction, the churches are deserted, and
individuals are left on their own, unprepared for the difficulties that life brings and human
relationships reflect. František Josef feels angry thinking about his own personal failure, about
the failure of Bogomil’s and Johana’s relationship, about his relative, Vlastimil, who was
destroyed by his family, about the Czech immigrants who befriend Bogomil only to get some benefit
from him. František’s resentment sweeps the world; it does not embrace only Czech society but
society in general:


‘Ontario, Ostrava, Bystřice, where exactly do people live? Where is that home? Is it possible they
took it away from us a long time before we were born? Or is this just one of those bad days when
something has happened with the optic lens? Everywhere you look there are ugly people. Where did
all the beautiful people go?’

[‘Ontario, Ostrava, Bystřice, kde vlastně lidé žijí? Kde je ten domov? Nevzali nám ho už dávno před
narozením? Anebo je jen špatný den, kdy se něco stalo s optikou. Všude jen samí hnusácí. Kam se
poděli ti krásní?’] (CB: 21)


     In order to find himself at peace with the world, František Josef returns to the places where
his life journey started. He takes his partner Patricie with him. But the reality seems to be much
different from what he remembers and definitely different from what he has described to Patricie:


‘If only I knew what he is looking for, Patricie sighed. A crazy walk around the old slag heaps and
Josef’s reminiscences of a world that has disappeared. On the asphalt highway, he speaks about
country cottages and weeping willows. He argues that a river in which he used to bathe now runs in
the pipes buried under the surface of the road. At the foot of the slag heaps cows used to feed and
people camped. There were ponds and green fisherman’s huts, summer houses, groves were strawberries
blossomed, and gardens full of beetroots and rhubarb. And there, where there is nothing now, there
was a gymnasium and a cinema. (…) He is tormenting her with his disappeared world of which he sees
only grey, dusty, grim slag heaps. Everything is hidden behind it, behind the old heap that reminds
you of a rusty saw before which people must retreat because it moves slowly but surely towards
them, like a Russian tank. This is how Patricie sees it. She faces the approaching nothingness with
her back to an uncertain future.’

[‘Kdybych tak věděla, co vlastně hledá, povzdechla si Patricie. Bláznivá procházka kolem staré
haldy a Josefovo vyprávění o zmizelém světě. Na asfaltové dálnici povídá něco o venkovských domcích
a smutečních vrbách. Tvrdí, že v trubkách pod silnicí teče říčka, ve které se kdysi koupal. Pod
hromadami strusky se prý pásly krávy a tábořili nějací lidé. Byly tam rybníky a zelené rybářské
boudy, letohrádky, háje, ve kterých kvetly jahody a zahrady s řepou a rebarborou. A tam, kde teď
není nic, byla sokolovna a kino. (...) Tak ji trápí svým ztraceným světem, z něhož ona vidí jen
šedivou, prašnou, nahoře zubatou haldu. Všechno je schováno za ní, za starou haldou připomínající
rezavou pilu, před níž musí dva lidičkové ustupovat, protože se k nim sune pomalu, ale jistě jako
ruský tank. Tak to vidí ona, Patricie. Čelem k postupující nicotě a zády k nejisté budoucnosti.’]
(CB: 97)


However, neither František Josef nor Patricie lose their faith completely and, at the end of their
long journey marked by various question marks and doubts, both of them do find reassurance in the
timelessness of their love.


     The world described in Balabán’s novel, Kudy šel anděl, is very similar to the world featured
in his previous works. The story is set in Ostrava, where all the main characters live and work.
The novel touches their lives at the beginning of their adulthood and henceforth it explores their
personal narratives. The work follows their experience of communist Czechoslovakia, of the fall of
communism and the years afterwards; it comments on the state of the past and the current society,
and on the environment in which people live when searching for happiness. Ostrava is a place of
grey slag heaps, destroyed forests, high-rise housing estates and steelworks; it is a place where
people moved to because they had been promised a job, money, a flat and presumed freedom. Instead,
they had to squeeze in the buses transporting masses of steelworkers and miners in and out of work,
they had to look for places of intimacy between industrial pipes and dust from the coal waste; they
had to live within small flats in identical square houses called Stage 4. Such was communist
Ostrava in the eyes of Martin Vrána, the main character of the book. However, democratic Ostrava
after the fall of communism does not seem to be any better; quite the contrary. The prefab houses
remain the same and, instead of nurseries and schools from the times of communism, people opened
casinos, second hand shops, pawnbrokers, pubs and shops selling wine from the barrel. The
steelworks and the coal mines were closed down. People were made redundant and have ended up on
social benefits. Young graduates frequent the local job centres. Everyone drinks and everyone has
the latest mobile phone. Where is the place for Balabán’s characters amongst them? Martin Vrána has
a job which he does not particularly enjoy. He is divorced, living alone on the housing estate. He
is unhappy and he drinks. His new partner, Monika, whose family has disintegrated, has problems
with self-confidence. Martin’s ex-partner, Eva, suffers from lack of family life. She avoids
everyone who could become more intimate with her than she could bear until she ends up as a single
mother with a successful job. Her lover, Ivan, is a victim of the post-communist regime change. So
is his father. Martin’s ex-schoolmate, Tonda Góna, just drinks in the local pubs.

     In Kudy šel anděl, Balabán’s reality is once again seen as destructive. No one can hide from
it. People can find refuge only in love. The only people who eventually experience happiness are
people in love – Martin and Monika, and Ester and her partner Pavla. The world Balabán describes in
this novel is as hostile and cruel as people allowed it to be. The individuals succumb to its
chaos. They get lost and often break down. Those few of them who find within themselves the
strength to accept it gain confidence and are eventually able to appreciate the diversity of life.
However, not everyone is given an opportunity to change, not everyone has love. Not everyone is
capable of believing in love and those who are not survive only with extreme difficulties (like
Ivan, like his father and Tonda Góna) or not at all.


     Balabán’s last three works draw the same picture of Czech society. Again, in these works,
individuals find themselves in a struggle between the romantic memories of their childhood and the
ferocity of the adult years that followed. The present is seen hostile and is bitterly criticised.
In the view of Balabán’s characters, contemporary Czech society is under pressure of imposed
political and economic changes and it is unhappy. There is no enthusiasm and there is hardly any
hope. Balabán’s people are tired from living in the cages of the prefab housing estates and from
ideological pressure. They are exhausted from life in the city of Ostrava full of remnants of the
coal and iron industries, heaps of waste and industrial pipes which cross the last remaining
patches of greenery. They bend to the gravity of their own existence and they repeatedly escape
from it to the timelessness of their childhood memories, to alcohol, to dreams or to other fictive
stories they have created from their personal misery. They hold on to their own inner world in
which they keep losing themselves in the moments of their worst crisis. Existence is questioned,
faith, life and death too.




3.5.4 Places discovered and re-discovered – universal and real


     The role that particular places play in the lives of Balabán’s characters has considerable
significance for our understanding of the characters. Of primary importance in Balabán’s texts is
Ostrava, a city agglomeration in the Moravian-Silesian region in the north-eastern part of the
Czech Republic. This is where the vast majority of Balabán’s characters live. From an historical
point of view, we know that Ostrava was the city that attracted many people from all around the
country by its fast developing heavy industry, by an extensive construction programme and by
providing a large number of people with work.[40] People from agriculture based regions moved to
Ostrava looking for a better life and Balabán’s heroes did the same. However, the prosperity of the
town was closely connected with the communist regime. As soon as it collapsed, the city lost its
industrial importance and the quality of life of the local residents deteriorated. Balabán’s texts
assume a highly critical attitude to these developments. According to Štolba,


‘Ostrava was always affected by being exceptional. The period of communism, which chased records in
mining output, while “taking care” of “the workers”, disfigured it greatly. Balabán describes a
city of “brutally sharp-edged housing estates built on mud”, of cheap bars and pubs, stinking
rivers and inhuman teachers. He writes about a place marked by hard labour, alcohol and animal-like
pettiness, a city which under its surface hides a damaged pride, exiled human warmth and a kind of
imploring, inhospitable magic.’

[‘Ostrava byla výjimečností postižena asi odevždy. Doba komunismu ji však honbou za důlními rekordy
a péčí o své pracující stačila docela znetvořit. Balabán popisuje město brutálně ostrohranných,
z bahna vyrostlých sídlišť, laciných barů a knajp, páchnoucích říček a nelidských učitelek. Líčí
místo poznamenané ubíjející tvrdou prací, chlastem a živočišnou malostí, jež však pod povrchem
skrývá i poničenou stavovskou hrdost, vyhoštěnou lidskou vřelost, jakési úpěnlivé nehostinné
kouzlo.’]  (Balabán: Štolba 2003: Host, vol.7: 17-20).


     Disappointment with their lives in Ostrava, their uncertainty about the place and their
personal crises leads Balabán’s characters back to the places where they spent their childhood, or
at least a part of it – to the countryside. This is mostly Vysočina, the Czech-Moravian Highlands;
a region that consists of small towns and villages, large forests and hills. This is regarded by
many of Balabán’s characters as their real home, a place nearest to nature, to the heart and so to
God. Ostrava is seen as if it was only its necessary but almost unavoidable substitute:


‘Hans and his siblings loved this dying landscape. A long time after its total destruction they
still searched for the remains of the disappeared world and their memories of all those buried
places only confirmed their feeling of exile which they felt in this city. They did not treat this
place as their home. And their parents, driven to work here by communist bullying, kept promising
to each other for thirty years that in a year or two at the latest they would move back to
Vysočina, the region they left young in order to study and work in this hostile world. Distant
Vysočina and the lost villages, these were the unattainable horizons of people who were stuck like
flies onto the flycatcher named Ostrava.’

[‘Hans a jeho sourozenci tuhle zanikající krajinu milovali. Ještě dlouho po totálním zplanýrování
slídili po zbytcích ztraceného světa a vzpomínky na všechna ta pohřbená místa jen utvrzovaly jejich
pocit exilu, který ve městě zakoušeli. Nepovažovali to město za své, a jejich rodiče, zahnaní sem
komunistickou šikanou za prací, si třicet let slibovali, že se za rok, nejpozději za dva odstěhují
zpátky na Vysočinu, do kraje, z něhož jako mladí odešli studovat a pracovat do nepřátelského světa.
Vzdálená Vysočina a ztracené vesnice, to byly nedosažitelné horizonty lidí nalepených jako mouchy
na mucholapce jménem Ostrava.’] (JT: 36)


     For those who were born there, Vysočina is the place where romantic ideas meet the reality of
contemporary times (Kateřina, Hans and Emil Nedoma in the last three Balabán’s works, Bogomil and
Johana: CB). Balabán’s characters travel there to look for answers to their personal confusion.
They look there for their peace of mind which, they believe, is probably hidden only in that place
where the memories of their childhood survive.

     Sometimes, the Moravian-Silesian Beskydy Mountains play a similarly purifying role as
Vysočina. If they do not do so, at least they give Balabán’s heroes an opportunity to escape and
relax in their hills and woods. In addition, the territory along the river Odra, a river that flows
through the Moravian-Silesian region, and the surroundings of the Ostravice river, offer Balabán’s
characters a momentary distraction from the urban reality of their lives. In general, any
countryside is perceived to be a good place for contemplation, a place for healing when one has
painful thoughts; the countryside is also seen as a good place to die (Petr Zábranský in ‘Dona
nobis pacem’: JT, Emil’s attempted death in ‘Tchoř’: JT). Any countryside is perceived to be at
peace with the self, with nature and with God. A city is confusion and is an everyday struggle for
survival.


     An urban-rural dichotomy is being played out in Balabán’s works.[41] According to Daniela
Hodrová who dedicated a whole study to her exploration of the human perception of the city and the
countryside,


‘In the countryside, in the “wilderness”, the sense of communion of a being and the surrounding
world, the sense of one’s blending with the world of nature is quite a common experience. One
hardly experiences the same feeling in the city. Perhaps, because one finds it hard to accept the
city, an ambiguous world which is mostly based on camouflage, pretence, expulsion, false idols,
lack of communication and lack of understanding. Despite of this and first of all, the city is
still a flow. An inhabitant who is trying to find a way through the stream of the city and drifts
along or allows himself or herself to be carried away is a contribution to that flow – by his or
her life, his or her thoughts, his or her dreams and his or her transformations. He or she feels,
tries, thinks, dreams and transforms this flowing city into his or her own consciousness, but also
to his or her unconscious, a communion of one and the other – a stream of these spheres and a
stream of the city are the one.’

[‘Zatímco v přírodě, v „divočině“ je pocit splývání bytosti s jejím okolím, vplývání do proudu
přírodních dějů zážitkem poměrně běžným, ve městě ho člověk zakouší spíš výjimečně, snad že není
snadné přijmout město, tento ambivalentní svět založený namnoze na zastírání, předstírání,
vytěsňování, na nepravých modlách, nedostatku komunikace a porozumění. A přece je město plynutím
povýtce a obyvatel, který se proudem města pokouší plout nebo se jím nechává unášet, se na tomto
proudu plynutí zároveň podílí – svým prožíváním, myšlením, sněním, svými proměnami. Vnímá, zakouší,
myslí, sní, proměňuje plynoucí město ve svém vědomí, ale také v nevědomí, vplývajících jedno do
druhého – proud těchto sfér a proud města jsou vlastně proudem jediným.’] (Hodrová 2006: 63)


Balabán’s characters seem to be flowing in the same stream. For them, the countryside is a place
where things are happening in communion with nature and in harmony with a cycle of life. There they
feel in the centre of things and at peace with themselves. They feel understood and this is the
reason why they keep returning. On the other hand, the city – Ostrava – is seen as a place of both
– the human structures and their destruction, structured industry and human wilderness. The city
attracts them, yet they suffer there. The countryside is their place of heart: they dwell there.
The city is their place of participation: they act there.

     Yet, the journey to the countryside and to the core of their selves does not seem to be for
everyone. Some of Balabán’s characters leave the countryside in order to save their own sanity and
life (Emil in the last three works), some hide in the town (also Emil), others hide in another
country: Bogomil (CB) escapes to Sweden and then to Canada in order to get away from the madness of
his wife, Johana. František Josef travels across America and Canada not only to visit his uncle
Bogomil but to find clarity of thought on his momentary existence (ibid.). The subjective narrator
of Boží lano also moves overseas to seek freedom from the machinery of the industrial society that
Ostrava represents. Dr Satinský (‘Je to jako děcko’: PR) goes to America to learn English and to
see the world. It is something he has decided to do as a part of his therapy when he was trying to
free himself of alcoholism.

     Despite the characters’ expectations, the experience from a different country is not always
positive. For Světlana and her family (‘Světlana’: JT), the journey abroad ends up in disaster and
death. Bogomil, Johana’s fictive hero, Ivo, and František Josef’s fictive character, Animuk (CB),
also meet their death far away from their homeland.

     In Balabán’s works, places play an important role on both the level of facts (Ostrava –
industry) and on the level of abstraction (the city versus the countryside). Ostrava and its
attributes (factories, trams, coal-miners and gypsies) become essential participants in the life of
many of Balabán’s characters. Yet, it is only one of many factors that influence their cycle of
life.




















4. Summary: the gradual separation and the re-union with the writer’s personality: part II.


     Having analyzed the interaction of motifs in the structure of Balabán’s works, it is well
worthwhile to consider again the relationship between the reality which Balabán’s works describe
and the reality the author himself has experienced in his own life. Looking at the stories he tells
and the information we have about his world, we see quite a few common elements. Real people become
fictive heroes of Balabán’s narrations (Bogomil) or they serve as inspiration for the creation of
Balabán’s characters (the author himself – Emil, the author’s brother Daniel – Hans). Real memories
appear transformed into the memories of Balabán’s characters; real places provide the settings for
the narrative.

     Putting this in a larger context, Balabán’s work is inspired by the author’s own world and of
the world the author observed and lived in during different stages of his life. His work is a study
of people from different generations who meet at the end of the 20^th century and at the beginning
of the 21^st century in Ostrava or are somehow connected to the city. Balabán’s fiction shows Czech
society constantly moving in between the personal turmoil of individuals and their journey seeking
peace with themselves. His protagonists are ordinary individuals who experience their individual
love and misery, family life and loneliness. They are people who have spiritual awareness but keep
losing it. They experience emotional breakdowns and personal comebacks. Each of them has a
different way of coping with these, but they are strongest when they share. They are weak if they
fight alone.

     Balabán’s fictive world is full of individuals who go through years of confusion and through
years of a desperate questioning of their identity within the external world. We meet them when
they are emotionally weak and tired from the life they have experienced so far, when they are
exhausted from the current world and uncertain of their future. Through repeated recollections of
their past, they seek an explanation of their momentary condition. They search for the reasons that
brought along the end of their relationships, their divorces, their loneliness and their
inclination to drink or to want to commit suicide. Over and over again, they delve into their
thoughts about their past. They explore their relationship with their parents, their partners and
children, with Ostrava, with society and God. Using what they discovered about themselves, they
re-define themselves. Balabán’s men lack confidence in relationships and love. They break down when
things fall apart. They escape whenever the situation turns out less favourable and more
complicated than they expected. It is their own personal weakness that makes them behave as cowards
when facing accusations and unpleasant surprises. In order to protect their own sanity, they hide
themselves in their inner thoughts, in memories or in the worlds which they have created through
their imagination. They drink because drink gives them strength to fight. They dream because a
dream takes them away from any demands the contemporary world may throw at them. They search for
their lost selves, but only some of them find it.

     Balabán’s men and women come in three categories: they are grandparents, parents and daughters
and sons. The grandparents appear only on a few occasions and often only as a subject of other
people’s thoughts. But the parent-child relationships are highly discussed topics on all possible
levels. No less important are the erotic relationships between men and women.

     Love, passion, marriage, partnership, divorce, separation and personal loneliness are matters
in which all Balabán’s characters are deeply interested. For both men and women, there is never an
easy way to reach understanding in matters of love. The majority of Balabán’s characters experience
separation or divorce and many years of undesired loneliness before they find another love and
another reason to live. Men, exhausted by the collapse of their first relationships or marriages,
retrieve their personal confidence when they strike up relationships with much younger women. Women
do not seek new relationships; they are content with their motherhood. Disappointed by their
partner’s behaviour towards them, they devote themselves to their children and that keeps them
going. The family and love become the only ties that bring individuals together.

     Balabán’s society consists of people who are desperate and weak in their never-ending struggle
for peace of mind but they become stronger whenever their wandering involves two of them or more.
The notions of family and of love give many of them the strength they need to overcome the
obstacles life has laid in front of them, and obstacles there are many: lack of personal
understanding, conflicts with their partners, intolerance, different attitudes to life, different
expectations, age, illness, death, place of residence as well as the social and political changes
that have been affecting their life all the way through. Balabán’s characters are lost in the
diversity of their own internal thoughts; they are not heroes accomplishing great deeds, but they
are heroes of everyday battles for their own sanity and for personal happiness.

     The world which Balabán describes is full of many individuals who struggle to regain a lost
unity with people and society, with God and spirituality, and with the Earth. They find this unity
through love. This seems a rather mythological, religious way of thinking.


     Balabán’s fiction shows a world of constant creation, destruction and recovery. It reflects
upon the reality known by the writer himself, upon Czech society which went through political,
social and cultural turmoil during the 20^th century. Like many Czech citizens, Balabán’s
characters live in a world affected by both World Wars and by the forty years of communist rule,
followed by the regime change in 1989. The majority of these people have experienced the Soviet
invasion. Some of them experienced it directly, some were affected by the consequences of the
invasion. Balabán’s characters became the witnesses and the victims of the country’s
industrialization within its centralized economy and socialism and then of a suddenly de-regulated
and highly individualistic regime. Many of them had to leave their village homes behind in order to
join the industrial world of socialism and the post-industrial world of capitalism. Under communism
and as a result of their move to the industrial city, they lost faith in God and in themselves, in
the stability of family life and in society in general. After the arrival of capitalism, Balabán’s
characters found themselves in chaos. The only way out of chaos is through an examination of their
past. This takes them back to the times before all the problems started, to their childhood and to
the countryside, to a Christian unity of the world. Only in reunion with their past do they reach
satisfaction and happiness in their present lives.

     In contemplating their individual predicament, its beginnings, breaking points and its
finality, Balabán’s characters try to capture the sense of their existence in a world that offers
more confusion than stability and more introversion than openness. Such seems to be the view of the
author himself. Such seems to be Balabán’s own experience of Czech society at the time of regime
change from communist ‘normalization’ to capitalist ‘democracy’. Balabán’s characters stand
somewhere between ‘maybe we are leaving’ (‘možná že odcházíme’) and ‘we are here’ (‘jsme tady’).
They are standing somewhere between their grief over the passage of time and their hope for the
future. They live in the real world but with an awareness of the universe and eternity. They live
in Balabán’s world and Balabán himself describes this world with the following words:


‘Life is constantly and tirelessly surviving in the inhospitable environment. And now someone will
tell you that it is all futile, that such growth does not make any sense! I would say that because
it is so persistent, it has to make sense. I am interested in this persistence of human spirit – it
moves me that we keep trying to re-inhabit this inhospitable radioactive plate over and over again
and still consider it to be beautiful. I am trying to find some traces upon which I can hang my
belief that all this is not futile, whether it occurs in the life of an individual or in the whole
Universe.’

[‘Život se pořád neúnavně chytá v nehostinném prostředí. A teď vám někdo řekne, že je to celé
zbytečné, že takovýto růst nemá smysl! Já bych řekl, že když je to tak urputné, tak to právě smysl
mít musí, už skoro nic jiného než smysl. Tahle urputnost mě v lidských osudech zajímá a dojímá, že
tu nehostinnou radioaktivní desku pořád znovu zabydlujeme a považujeme za krásnou. Snažím se najít
nějaké stopy, o které by se dala opřít víra, že to všechno není marné, v individuálním životě i ve
vesmíru.’ (Balabán: Balaštík: Reichel 2004. Host, vol. 8: 5-9)






























Conclusion


1. The constructed world of Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction – comparisons being made


     Detailed analysis of Hakl’s and Balabán’s works reveals certain patterns and certain
differences in ‘the image of reality’ these works construct and in the way they construct this
image. The literary testimony of both writers creates a world of Czech society as seen by several
narrating individuals (in the case of Balabán’s fiction) or one person (in the case of Hakl’s
fiction). We explore various urban territories (Balabán’s Ostrava and Hakl’s Prague) in which most
of the stories unfold and we learn about how the texts see the post-communist times during which
Hakl’s and Balabán’s characters live.

     In the works of both writers, we see the world through the eyes of people who struggle to cope
with the reality in which they live. They are the people who do not seek material wealth but,
instead, they look for peace within their internal selves. They are the people who care for their
families and their friends but do not know what to do with their feelings for them and often end up
disrupting their closest relationships. They are the people who suffer from depression when they
are alone but who find it difficult to be happy in relationships with others. They are the people
who search for the opportunity to improve their material wellbeing within the new regime but who
give up on any effort as soon as they realize that each success would have to be paid for by
serious encroachment into their personal freedom and with personal sacrifice of which they do not
seem capable.

     In Hakl’s and Balabán’s works, we see men who lose their self-confidence because they have
experienced broken relationships, seen missed opportunities and lost jobs. We see men who have
become loners, alcoholics, losers and wasters of their own time. They do not know how to behave as
proactive individuals, responsible husbands and partners at work. In the majority of cases, Hakl’s
and Balabán’s characters are men who struggle to find a stable job and to keep it. These are men
who are unable to carry the burden of responsibility for the lives of others and end up escaping
from the real world to a world of fiction, of dreams, of games and alcoholic or marihuana visions.
We follow the predicament of men who find themselves on the verge of their mid-life crises and in
the situations when they are trying to re-examine their lives, all their past losses and mishaps,
their confusions and their hope for the future.

     Hakl’s and Balabán’s men do not seem to be heroic, yet they are heroes. They do not possess
any supernatural powers and they do not accomplish any exceptional tasks. They struggle, escape,
fight and fail, gain and lose. Their youth is romantic and naïve; their middle age makes other
people show them respect but they never have full authority in the eyes of others. Nor are their
characters spotless. They are vain individuals who have their own views about the world but end up
entangled in words and thoughts rather than taking action. Their thoughts and their talks are
self-defensive and self-centred. Their actions are confused. They often get lost in the chaos of
their everyday reality.

     Hakl’s and Balabán’s men are the philosophers of their own lives; they speak but they rarely
act. Yet their actions are not without significance. While words lead them only to more and more
doubts, their actions give them a chance to move on. In this sense, Hakl’s and Balabán’s men are
heroes of everyday reality. They are forced to cope with a chaotic mixture of life.

     In many ways, Hakl’s and Balabán’s male characters are alike. The major difference between
them lies in their level of adaptation and in the extent of their faith which influences their
perception of the world around them and their hope for the future. Balabán’s men believe in God, in
the power of nature and in love. Since they usually have faith, they are able to overcome their
often painful past, accept the changing world and find a way to be happy. Those who lack faith,
however, break down or die. Hakl’s men do not have faith. Their lives are a mixture of impulses.
Their personalities are shattered. They are almost totally unable to connect with other people.
They are unable to adapt their old habits for the exploration of the new world around them. Thus
they live in permanent uncertainty. Either they live alone, or they quickly start up relationships
and just as quickly break them. They cannot hold down a job. They live partially among friends but
they cannot stand this and so they opt out of society and live like outcasts for the time being.
Balabán’s male characters consider life with great emotions. They struggle with it. They are filled
with nostalgia and with sorrow about the world and the human existence within it. Hakl’s male
characters also look at the world with a critical eye, but they know how to be ironic, sarcastic
and how to laugh at themselves.

     The image of women is not so clear cut in Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction. Generally speaking,
Hakl’s and Balabán’s women are more proactive than their men. Just like men, these women experience
much destructive confusion, many failures, breakdowns and losses but the attitude they employ to
overcome all their difficulties is different. Their minds are firmly anchored in the present.
Unlike men, they do not repeatedly mull over their past actions but they do act, now. Young women
are full of energy. They are eager to discover what the world is about. They travel abroad. They
explore the hidden nooks and crannies in the souls of older men. Older women live to care for their
children and their men.

     Hakl’s and Balabán’s women are passionate and loving. If men do not reciprocate their love,
they move on or turn into their internal selves. They concentrate on their children or on their
careers. Hakl’s and Balabán’s female characters are much more mature and realistic individuals than
men. They know what they want, what they need and what their families require, and then set out
about securing it. In Hakl’s fiction, however, we observe female characters only through the eyes
of a male, the main subjective narrator. This is why the image of women in Hakl’s fiction is often
shallow and biased. Balabán’s female characters have their own voices. Thus we learn more about
them.


     The world which Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction constructs is a world of broken relationships and
individual failures. It is a world where communication between men and women, between family
members and between friends has been temporarily lost. It is a world which people find to be
hostile to their individual needs and desires. It is a world which they struggle to accept and to
understand. It is a world where people fear losing their private existence and their intimate
contact with others. It is a world in which people are afraid of losing control over their affairs.
It is a world in which people struggle to find a balance between their own individuality and
outside reality. They yearn for a settled, relaxed and contented existence, yet they do not know
how to achieve it.

     Is it the nature of the human beings that makes Hakl’s and Balabán’s characters constantly
struggle for their desires and their needs? Is it the life in the city that makes Hakl’s and
Balabán’s characters question their individuality within the crowd? Is it life in the new
market-orientated society that gives Hakl’s and Balabán’s characters the feeling of insecurity
within a world which places profit above social values? Is it the mores of Czech post-communist
society that have made Hakl’s and Balabán’s characters re-examine their pre-1989 lives in an
attempt to find a way to live peacefully in the new chaotic society? Is it life under
post-communist capitalism in the digital age, dominated by advertising and the celebrity culture
that makes Hakl’s and Balabán’s characters worry that it is no longer possible to reach out to
human beings and to live one’s own, authentic existence? These are the main questions I have
examined in this work.

     Finally, it would be interesting to consider the relation between the world which Hakl’s and
Balabán’s fiction constructs and the reality which I, the reader living at the present time,
perceive on the basis of my own subjective experience.

2. The image of history and the image of society


     Poststructuralist theory of literature argues that the meaning of a text cannot be stabilized.
However, representatives of New Historicism have reconsidered this statement. They argue that ‘[a]t
the same time, writing and reading are always historically and socially determinate events,
performed in the world and upon the world by gendered individual and collective human agents’
(Montrose 1989: 23). According to Montrose, ‘our analyses and our understandings necessarily
proceed from our own historically, socially and institutionally shaped vantage points; that the
histories we reconstruct are the textual constructs of critics who are, ourselves, historical
objects’ (Ibid. 23). In other words, they argue that the writing and the reading of texts is a form
of momentary construction and reconstruction of one’s history and one’s present life. Writing is a
form of reconstruction of the reality in which the writer’s (conscious and unconscious) experience
merges with his or her perception of ‘now’ and results in a single act of the construction of a
fictive real. The process of reading is then a form of reconstruction of the fictive reality of
another text in which the reader’s (conscious and unconscious) experience merges with his or her
perception of ‘now’ and results in a single act of construction of another fictive real. From this
point of view, the reality which Hakl and Balabán have constructed in their works is the result of
their personal (conscious and unconscious) experience and their perception of the contemporary
world. It is a reality that reflects their personal, historically and socially determined values –
their individual histories (their upbringing) and their collective background (human and Czech). It
also includes their perception of ‘now’. To sum up, their writing is their personal testimony about
the life they live. The question is how we, the readers, understand this testimony and how we, the
readers, relate to it. It is because we construct our own subjective image of it.

     At this point we have to go back to the beginning of this thesis. The task this thesis set
itself was to examine the construction of the contemporary reality in selected works of Czech
fiction, by Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán.  In order to complete the task, this thesis analyzed both
Hakl’s and Balabán’s literary work using a variety of different theoretical approaches to the text.
But in relation to what has been said above about the act of reading, it needs to be pointed out
that it was the reader (in this case me), who has reconstructed the fictive reality of Hakl’s and
Balabán’s works with regard to his or her own personal (conscious and unconscious) experience of
the world and in line with his or her perception of ‘now’. According to the poststructuralist
theory of multiple meanings, this thesis has provided a reader’s understanding of Hakl’s and
Balabán’s works and therefore it has created another fictive reality. According to the
theoreticians of New Historicism, this thesis has also created a reader’s reconstruction of history
– the history that Emil Hakl and Jan Balabán have constructed in their fiction. By trying to
analyze it, this thesis has re-constructed it. It is a history of human beings, middle-aged men and
women of different age, Czech nationals living in Czech post-communist society of recent times,
Czech nationals residing in the city of Prague and in the city of Ostrava, journalists, translators
and writers, lost individuals, sensitive and careful observers of the world around them, Emil
Hakl-Jan Beneš and Jan Balabán. Nevertheless, it is also a history of the reader’s perception of
contemporary life and the reality it creates.

     This thesis sees the world of Hakl’s fiction in terms of loneliness, indecisiveness,
wandering, loss, confusion and chaos, but it also sees a world that it is worthwhile to recognize
and to accept. It reads the world of Balabán’s fiction as a journey of lonely people who have lost
their confidence in confusion. Their own world is broken. They struggle to regain stability and
happiness. In the end, either they find it in love or they are lost forever. It sees Hakl’s and
Balabán’s fiction as bearing witness to the present, which they perceive as insecure in its
relativity and chaotic in its diversity, but interesting to be observed and worthwhile to be
written about. It reads Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction as testimony about life of contemporary Czech
society which, over the last fifty years, has experienced major political, economic, social and
cultural upheavals and which is now struggling hard to regain its lost identity and to come to
terms with new realities of today.

     This thesis considers Hakl’s and Balabán’s fiction as an attempt to understand the confusion
and anxiety around them. It sees that these writers are rather sceptical about what is going on in
their society, but they have not lost hope. Otherwise, they would not have been writing.












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________________________________

[1]              In Czechoslovak history, ‘normalization’ is a commonly used term denoting the
period between 1969 and 1987. Following the Warsaw Pact-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August
1968, this period was characterized by an attempt to restore the political principles that
prevailed in Czechoslovak society before the rise the reformist movement of the 1960s and to give
the ruling Czechoslovak Communist Party back all of its authoritarian power.

[2]              Vladimir Khlebnikov was a Russian poet and playwright, a representative of the
Russian Futurist movement. In his poetry, he experimented with the Russian language and with the
possibilities of the Cyrillic alphabet. He also wrote futurological essays.

[3]              Boris Vian was a French poet, writer, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor,
inventor and engineer. Under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan, he published bizarre parodies of
criminal fiction. Under his real name, he published fiction written in a highly individual writing
style with surrealistic plots and made-up words. He also had a major influence on the French jazz
scene with his work.

[4]              The founding members of the literary group Moderní analfabet were Vítězslav Čížek,
Emil Hakl, Markéta Hrbková, Jaroslav Jablonský and Jan Kment. In the following years, the
composition of the group changed, some other writers joined it, such as Václav Kahuda and Petr
Motýl. In 1992, Moderní analfabet changed into a civic association and started to specialize in
reading performances at various clubs. In 1990-1993, the publishing house Artforum in cooperation
with the group Moderní analfabet produced a literary review of the same title. The review brought
out mainly the work of those writers who did not publish their work in official publishing houses
during the previous regime; some of them because they were not allowed to, others because they did
not want to cooperate with the communist establishment. These authors were not connected by any
literary program. See http://slovnikceskeliteratury.cz.

[5]              Jiří Surůvka (b. 1961) is an Ostrava painter, performer and experimentator with
multimedia; Jaroslav Žila (b. 1961) is an Ostrava poet; Petr Hruška (b. 1964) is an Ostrava poet,
scriptwriter, literary historian and theorist; Ivan Motýl (1967) is a poet, playwriter and
journalist.

[6]              The National Revival was a cultural movement which began in the Czech lands at the
end of the 18th and lasted well into the 19th century. The leading representatives of this movement
aimed to revive what they saw as the characteristic national identity of the Czech lands and Czech
culture. They did it mostly by starting to re-use the Czech language as a vehicle of intellectual,
scholarly and artistic discourse.

[7]              The ‘Velvet revolution’ is a term which denotes the non-violent regime change
which took place in Czechoslovakia from 17^th to 29^th November 1989. It resulted in the collapse
of the communist regime and in the introduction of democracy to Czechoslovakia.

[8]              Magnesia Litera is an annual book award held in the Czech Republic. It is awarded
by an independent association called Litera, which includes members of all the Czech literary and
book market organizations. It covers all literary genres in eight categories (prose, poetry,
children‘s book, non-fiction, essay/journalism, translation, publishing achievement, book debut and
also a main prize,  The Czech Book of the Year).

[9]              The reference is to Jules Verne’s (1828-1905) novel The Begum’s Fortune (1879).

[10]             These are patterns that are more usually imposed on women. It was Mark Simpson
(1968), an English journalist, writer and broadcaster specializing in popular culture, media and
masculinity, who first pointed out the increasing popularity of featuring masculinity on the pages
of popular ‘glossy’ magazines published in the 1990s. To describe this phenomenon, Simpson invented
the term ‘the metrosexual man’. According to him, ‘the typical metrosexual is a young man with
money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis -- because that's where all the best
shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are’.  Working as a journalist and in the advertising industry,
Hakl’s narrator is fully aware of the rising popularity of masculine imagery in the media. Hence he
reflects on it.

                See more, http://www.marksimpson.com/pages/journalism/metrosexual_beckham.html

[11]             For more comparisons, see the Introduction chapter.

[12]             See some articles on Emil Hakl and the interviews with him which are listed in the
bibliographical section of this thesis.

[13]             Chitnis 2005: 11-12.

[14]             See the work of Jáchym Topol (b. 1962), Michal Ajvaz (b. 1949), Alexandra Berková
(1949-2008), Daniela Hodrová (b. 1946), Zuzana Brabcová (b. 1959) and Martin Komárek (b. 1961).

[15]             See the work of Jan Zábrana (1931-1984). His diary from 1970-1984, published after
his death in 1992, called Celý život (The Whole Life) is a lively testimony of his era, his
personal experiences and views. See the work of Eva Kantůrková (b. 1930). In 1984 Kantůrková
published Přítelkyně z domu smutku (My Companions in the Bleak House) inspired by her experience
from prison.

[16]             For example in works of Jan Vrak (Tomáš Koudela, b. 1967), Václav Kahuda (b.
1965), Jan Balabán or Pavel Brycz (b. 1968).

[17]             For example in works of Ludvík Vaculík (b. 1926), Lenka Procházková (b. 1951),
Martin C. Putna (b. 1968), Patrik Ouředník (b. 1957).

[18]             It must be also mentioned that, as a reaction to increased eruptions of
authenticity, some writers resort to total mystification of authenticity: Miloš Urban (b. 1967),
Bohuslav Vaněk-Úvalský (b. 1970)

[19]             ‘Underground’ is a term used to identify culture outside the mainstream.
‘Underground is a spiritual position of those intellectuals and artists who see themselves as being
critical towards the world in which they live. [U]nderground is the activity of those artists and
intellectuals whose work is unacceptable for the establishment; those artists and intellectuals who
are not in passive in their activity and their attitudes but who create such work as attempts to
destroy the establishment.’ [‘Underground je duchovní pozice intelektuálů a umělců, kteří se vědomě
kriticky vymezují vůči světu, ve kterém žijí. [U]nderground je aktivita umělců a intelektuálů,
jejichž dílo je nepřijatelné pro establishment, a kteří v této nepřijatelnosti nejsou trpní a
pasivní, ale snaží se svým dílem a svým postojem o destrukci establishmentu.’] JIROUS, Martin
(2008): “Zpráva o třetím českém hudebním obrození“ in Šulc, Jan: Pravdivý příběh Plastic People.
Prague: Torst. The underground movement was quite substantial within the culture of communist
Czechoslovakia. For more details, see Pilař 1999.

[20]             The narrator’s relationship with Petruše will be explored later when I analyze
Hakl’s novel Intimní stránka Sabriny Black (The Intimate Mailbox of Sabrina Black).

[21]             In addition see also Kafka, Franz (1961): ‘Investigations of a Dog’, Metamorphosis
and Other Stories, Harmondsworth: Penguin books.

[22]            Furthermore to the previous image: In one of Kafka’s visions a room is crumbling
away and an angel is falling down through the open ceiling – “it is practically only a painted
wooden figure from the fore ship (Hodrová 2006: 276).

[23]             Heimann 2009: 1-47.

[24]            Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1931) is a former Soviet statesman.In 1985-1991 he
held the post of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was the last
head of state of the Soviet Union.


[25]             The members of Skupina 42 were writers Ivan Blatný (1919-1990), Josef Kainar
(1917-1971), Jiří Kolář (1914-2002), Jiřina Hauková (1919-2005) and Jan Hanč (116-1963), artists
Kamil Lhoták (1912-1990), František Gross (1909-1985), František Hudeček (1909-1990) and others.

[26]             The poetics of Skupina 42 was influenced by the work of Walt Whitman (1819-1892),
Carl Sandburg 1878-1967) and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965).

[27]               See also: Pilař, Martin (1999): Underground (Kapitoly o českém literárním
undergroundu).  Brno: Host.

[28]             The following is an adaptation from M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th
ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1993) as cited by Dr. Robert P. Fletcher of West
Chester University: The term magic realism, originally applied in the 1920s to a school of
painters, is used to describe the prose fiction of Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina, as well as the
work of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez in Colombia, Gunter Grass in Germany, and John
Fowles in England.  These writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism
in representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike
elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and fairy tales. See,
http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_mr.html.

[29]             Fantasy is a genre of fiction which builds its plot, theme and settings on the
basis of magic. Fantasy literature creates imaginary worlds where magic is common.

[30]             Science fiction (sci-fi) is a genre of fiction which works with imaginary content
such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, parallel universes,
aliens and paranormal abilities. Various writers and filmmakers used sci-fi as a device to explore
variety of philosophical subjects, for instance identity, desire, morality and social structure.

[31]             Umberto Eco: Apocalittici e integrati (1964).

[32]             Novotný refers to Michal Viewegh, Pavel Kohout, Martin Nezval, Alexandra Berková,
Sylvia Richterová etc. when talking about „comforters“.

[33]             Novotný thinks about Michal Ajvaz, Lubomír Martínek, Jáchym Topol, Iva Pekárková.

[34]             Socio-realistic literature is interested in the life of people who experience
economic hardship and who struggle to cope with the idealism official propaganda, which creates an
image of overall prosperity. Socio-realistic literature describes social and racial injustice often
choosing a member of the working class as its hero and as a hero of everyday life.

[35]             See Večerník 2009.

[36]             J. A. Komenský (Comenius). (1592-1670), the last Bishop of the Unity of Brethren,
theologian, philosopher, teacher and educator, writer. He became a religious refugee and one of the
earliest champions of universal education (Didactica Magna, Orbis Pictus).

[37]             One of the Christian Protestant (Evangelic) denominations with roots going back to
the pre-reformation work of priest and philosopher Jan Hus who was martyred in 1415.

[38]             Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was an American science fiction, fantasy, horror and
mystery fiction writer.

[39]             See note 1.

[40]             After 1945 and through the 1950s, Czechoslovakia concentrated on the development
of mining, the steel industry and other areas of heavy industry. Ostrava became its centre,
becoming that period’s ‘city of coal and iron’ and also the ‘steel heart of the republic’. In 1949,
construction was started on the vast Nová Huť industrial complex in Ostrava-Kunčice. A massive
support of heavy industry meant an influx of new workers to Ostrava and its vicinity. Many new
neighbourhoods grew up in the peripheral quarters of the town at that time. See
http://www.ostrava.cz/jahia/Jahia/site/ostrava/lang/en/ostrava/o-meste/historie-mesta-ostravy.

[41]             Post-communist Czech feature film also consistently sees the Czech countryside as
a healing place. See ČULÍK, Jan (2013): A Society in Distress: The Image of the Czech Republic in
Contemporary Czech Feature Film. Brighton and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, p. 9.