CESTY ZA ZTRACENOU JEDNOTOU. PŘÍSPĚVEK K AUTORSKÉ POETICE MICHALA AJVAZE

• Authors: Gilk Erik

Title variants

EN

Journeys to a lost unity. A reflection on the authorial poetics of Michal Ajvaz

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The study deals with the poetics of all the prose fiction written by Michal Ajvaz (born 1949), who among contemporary Czech authors shows the greatest affinity towards magical realism, and, what is more, has even commented repeatedly on the connection between his works and this genre. We consider the metaphor of the “other city”, which we borrowed from the title of his best-known novel, to be the key to the interpretation of the ideological framework of his texts. Having been obviously inspired by phenomenology, Ajvaz, in his work, draws attention to the over-accustomed and indolent ways in which people perceive reality that has been reduced to a perspective from which one can see very little. Modified in various forms, Ajvaz’s stories ask the readers to start a journey towards the other, the different, and unknown, hereby emancipating themselves from the slavishly accepted schemes of acting and behaving prearranged by the European Cartesian tradition. However, the journey towards admitting the “other world” alone could be a challenging pilgrimage which is itself meaningful and does not follow any particular aim.

Keywords

EN

CZECH FICTION; AJVAZ MICHAL; POETICS

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 76 – 88

Contributors

author

Gilk Erik

• Katedra bohemistiky, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci, Třída Svobody 26, 771 80 Olomouc, Czech Republic