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“Because Slovaks are the best people in the world and the Slovak language is the most beautiful language in the world”: Defamiliarising the Slovak “Imagined Community” in Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book

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Sriratana V.

Ars Aeterna

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2014

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vol. 6

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issue 2

39-47

EN

National identity and language have been understood to be inseparable. This claim is supported by the history of the Slovak language, notably the codification attempts made by Anton Bernolák and Ľudovít Štúr as part of the Slovak National Revival Movement. National community tends to be perceived as being defined and categorized by a unified language, or by a homogenous grammar and lexicon shared equally among the community members. This concept of speech-national communities, I propose, is deconstructed in Daniela Kapitáňová’s Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book (Kniha o cintoríne), published in Slovak in 2000 and translated into English by Julia Sherwood in 2010. Through Samko’s pedantic engagement in Aristotelian categorization of knowledge, in his obsessive attempt to illustrate his (antilogical) logic of what it means to be a Slovak and to be part of a community which has gone through dramatic changes in history, tenets and beliefs which are unquestioningly accepted as truth are mercilessly defamiliarized, or “made strange”. Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book corresponds with Benedict Anderson’s notion of human communities as imagined entities in which people “will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”.

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Transnarodowy modernizm a problem temporalnej spacjalizacji w Budowie chińskiego muru Franza Kafki

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Sriratana V.

Forum Poetyki

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2015

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issue 2

66-79

EN

It is often understood that time can only be perceived in terms of space and that spatialisation of time limits the power of the abstract, or the virtual, by making it strictly dependent on material conditions. Modernist literature, it is often understood, appropriates this conceptual paradigm while hinting at a possibility that space can also be perceived in terms of time and that temporalisation of space deconstructs the façade of fixed and codified spatial meanings. Derrida defines this spatio-temporal (inter)reaction and logical co-signification as spacing (espacement). However, analysis of time and temporality, as well as analysis of space/place and spatiality, in modernist writing often falls into the pitfall of the problem of temporal succession and, subsequently, of the misconception that space is fixed. The problem of succession lies in the notion that time passes and ceases to be instant(ly), leaving only a Derridean “trace”, which is spatial. This notion is problematic as it is based on the implications that space is firmly fixed and passive despite temporal “spacing”, or succession, and that space is passively imprinted upon with traces of time. I argue that space is far from fixed and passive. Its dynamism renders spatialisation of time problematic. I propose that Franz Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China” (written in 1917) is a fine example of a modernist writing which not only problematises the concepts of time and temporality as well as of space and spatiality, but also puts on centre stage the problem of spatialisation of time. With its physical and ideological gaps and fragments as well as traces of illusory and unfinished signification, the “piecemeal” construction of the Great Wall of China in Kafka’s short story not only exposes the process of spatialising time, but also reflects the modernist subtle re-evaluation of such a conceptual paradigm.

PL

Zazwyczaj przyjmuje się, że czas postrzegany może być tylko w kategoriach przestrzennych i że spacjalizacja czasu, uzależniając go ściśle od tego, co materialne, ogranicza moc jego abstrakcyjności lub wirtualności. Literatura modernistyczna, tak jak zwykle ją się rozumie, przyswaja ten paradygmat, sugerując jednocześnie, że również przestrzeń tłumaczyć można w kategoriach czasowych, temporalizacja przestrzeni dekonstruuje fasadę trwałych oraz skodyfikowanych znaczeń przestrzennych. Derrida definiuje tę czasoprzestrzenną (inter)reakcję i logiczną współznaczenie jako „rozsunięcie” (espacement). Niemniej jednak analizy czasu i czasowości, jak również przestrzeni/miejsca i przestrzenności w twórczości modernistycznej często wpadają w pułapkę z powodu problemu czasowego następstwa, a następnie z powodu błędnego przekonania, że przestrzeń jest nieruchoma. Problem następstwa znajduje się w przekonaniu, że czas płynie i przestaje być natychmiast(owy), pozostawiając po sobie tylko Derriański „ślad”, który jest przestrzenny. Pojęcie to jest problematyczne, ponieważ opiera się na implikacjach, że przestrzeń jest nieruchoma i pasywna, wbrew temporalnej „rozsunięcie” czy temporalnemu następstwu, i że ślady czasu są w niej biernie odciśnięte. Dowodzę, że przestrzeń daleka jest od nieruchomości i pasywności. Jej dynamika czyni spacjalizację czasu problematyczną. Opowiadanie Franza Kafki „Budowa Chińskiego Muru” (napisane w 1917 roku) jest dobrym przykładem modernistycznej twórczości, która nie tylko problematyzuje pojęcia czasu i czasowości oraz przestrzeni i przestrzenności, ale stawia w centrum problem spacjalizacji czasu.

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Translating and Transcending Censors: Modernist Appropriation and Thematisation of Censorship in the Works of Virginia Woolf, Allen Ginsberg, Czesław Miłosz and Bohumil Hrabal

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Sriratana V., Polišenská M.

Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne

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2018

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issue 14

PL

Censorship has often been regarded as the archenemy of artists, thinkers and writers. But has this always been the case? This research paper proposes that censorship is not a total evil or adversarial force which thwarts and hinders twentieth-century writers, particularly those who were part of the artistic, aesthetic, philosophical and intellectual movement known as Modernism. Though the word “censor” originally means a Roman official who, in the past, had a duty to monitor access to writing, the agents of censorship – particularly those in the modern times – are not in every case overt and easy to identify. Though Modernist writers openly condemn censorship, many of them nevertheless take on the role of censors who not only condone but also undergo self--censorship or censorship of others. In many cases in Modernist literature, readership and literary production, the binary opposition of victim and victimiser, as well as of censored and censor, is questioned and challenged. This research paper offers an analysis of the ways in which Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) and Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) lived and wrote by negotiating with many forms of censorship ranging from state censorship, social censorship, political censorship, moral censorship to self-censorship. It is a study of the ways in which these writers problematise and render ambiguity to the seemingly clear-cut and mutually exclusive division between the oppressive censor and the oppressed writer. The selected writers not only criticise and compromise with censorship, but also thematise and translate it into their works.

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“Because Slovaks are the best people in the world and the Slovak language is the most beautiful language in the world”: Defamiliarising the Slovak “Imagined Community” in Samko Tále’s Cemetery Book

Transnarodowy modernizm a problem temporalnej spacjalizacji w Budowie chińskiego muru Franza Kafki

Translating and Transcending Censors: Modernist Appropriation and Thematisation of Censorship in the Works of Virginia Woolf, Allen Ginsberg, Czesław Miłosz and Bohumil Hrabal