DISCOVERING CENTRAL EUROPE BOOKS
literature has lost its political and social accent because there is currently a cadre of professional, democratically elected politicians
But I don’t intend to remain at the level of general history here. I’d rather like to try and select a few personalities from the two decades that have just ended. The selection is partially personal – it reflects how I’ve been “reading” the post-communist period. THIS HAS BEEN MY LIFE In my bookcase, only two books have wide enough spines to accommodate a portrait photo. The Czech poet Ivan Diviš (19241999) is on one, and the writer and translator Jan Zábrana (1931-1984) is on the other. Their diaries attracted a lot of attention in the first half of the 1990s. In 1992, the Book of the Year in the Lidové noviny survey was An Entire Life (Celý život) by Jan Zábrana, and two years later the award went to The Theory of Reliability (Teorie spolehlivosti) by Ivan Diviš. Zábrana‘s and Diviš’s diaries opened the flood-gates of authenticity in Czech literature, which had been closed for four decades by Communism. We could say that diaries, memoirs and other biographical texts were dominant during the first decade of freedom. Their strong sense of subjectivity and accentuated authenticity formed the opposite pole or complement to the collective reflections of the past, which were gathered in the press. They played an irreplaceable role in the post-revolution anamnesis, when the soul of the nation was recollecting memories that had been ousted from the past. At the same time, these two diaries made it clear, right in the beginning, that biographic literature has its limits. They can turn into an egotism of distorted judgments, and their suggestiveness doesn’t necessarily relate to morality directly. Apart from their general appeal, a volcanic urgency in Diviš and a life frus-
tration in Zábrana, the two diaries have also become exemplary because they deal with two substantial experiences of Czech authors of the second half of the 20th century. Zábrana’s diary suggestively captures the existential situation of a banned man of letters (after 1968, Zábrana could only publish translations). Ivan Diviš fled to West Germany in 1969, where he worked as an editor of Radio Free Europe. His Theory of Reliability therefore captures the destiny of a Czech writer in exile. ABLE TO EARN A LIVING If the new order in Czech literature could be given a single face, it would be that of Michal Viewegh (1962). The transformations of that face are as follows. In the early 1990s, the greasy complexion was framed with a waterfall of small black curls (in those days, even Jaromír Jágr had a perm). At present, Michal Viewegh is a good-looking metrosexual – after all, as the best-selling Czech author of the past two decades, he has to look after his image. Michal Viewegh is somebody completely different from the aforementioned poets. The only thing they have in common is that he is also a child of his time. In 1992, he achieved a great success with his novel The Blissful Years of Lousy Living (Báječná léta pod psa). The contradiction in the title refers to the years of “normalisation” (regime consolidation after the Soviet invasion in 1968), which, for the main character, were also the years of his childhood. They were filled with joyful blitheness, but also of his first conflicts with Communist reality. His combination of humour, irony and hyperbole earned him critical acclaim and appealed to readers. In an essay dedicated to the author in the monthly Host (3/2011), Miroslav Balaštík puts it the following way:
“The normalisation story of Kvido’s cute family arrives in a time when the attitude to literature changes radically. After two years of the post-revolution euphoria when both readers and critics were passionately discovering the ‘hidden face of Czech literature,’ the enthusiasm cools and the interest in the work of forbidden authors tails off fast.” In other words, let the old shabby lions return to their cages, because there’s a new male in the arena. Michal Viewegh’s star soon broke in two. While the interest of readers grew, critics were no longer impressed. In the Czech literary environment, Viewegh has become the prototype for an author who is able to earn a living, but disdained because he has turned into a mere craftsman. The dramatic tone with which the reviewers return to this theme with every new book by this author, may perhaps demonstrate only one thing: that a book is still not viewed as mere goods. IN ANOTHER ORBIT Some time ago, I was sending some editorial material to Milan Kundera. It included one book: The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the Czech Republic, it was only published in 2006, twenty years after its original appearance in France. I enclosed a short note for the author, asking him not to bother with a dedication. But I couldn’t help to add that instead I would appreciate if he could tell me his three favourite words. He didn’t unveil them to me. I didn’t expect anything else. It’s well known that he’s diligently guarding his words. When The Unbearable Lightness of Being was published here, it was a literary event. The press was full of headlines like “The Unbearable Lightness of Literary Construction,” “Un(bearable) Disputes over 97