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Postava „idiota“ ve středoevropském románu 20. století: Josef Švejk a Piotr Niewiadomski

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Thirouinová M.-O.

Česká literatura (Czech Literature)

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2011

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vol. 59

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issue 6

812-827

EN

The idiot is a standard, apparently ‘normal’ character in the twentieth‑century central European novel. Tis naturalness is explained in part by the contemporary social organization of Europe, where many small communities neighbour large urban centres: in these small communities the idiot is a familiar character. This largely sociological explanation does not, however, provide a sufficient answer to the question of why the idiot became a literary figure, that is to say, a popular ‘cultural product’, in this place and time. According to the nineteenth‑century medical definition these beings live on the edge of the world of humans and the world of beasts, defying any attempt at precise categorization, just as they defy medical treatment. This definition offers a possibility for literature to find in the idiot – a figure of an uncertain identity oscillating between two worlds and by nature alien to the very idea of belonging anywhere – a figure ‘with qualities’ personifying the rejection or impossibility of any constant identity. Other hypotheses concern the ethics of the character and function that the author has determined for the idiot in the plot: the idiot would thus represent the absolute victim of the catastrophe of the twentieth century, which especially affected central Europe because of the absolute weakness and deprivation of the character. There is also another, opposite, yet complementary perspective – namely, that although the idiot, thanks to an undefined identity, could represent the last site of resistance to a world gone mad. It is first necessary, however, to understand why that is. A comparison of two characters, one created by Jaroslav Hašek in the Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War, 1921–23), the other by Józef Wittlin in the planned trilogy Saga of the Patient Infantryman (of which only the first part, Sól ziemi, Salt of the Earth, was published, 1935) may help us to achieve a more precise definition of these different approaches and to determine what the idiot has contributed to the literature of central Europe.

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Individuální a kolektivní paměť ve dvou středoevropských románech (Kunderova Kniha smíchu a zapomnění a Spoluviník Györgyho Konráda)

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Švéda J.

Česká literatura (Czech Literature)

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2011

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vol. 59

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issue 6

827-839

EN

This article is concerned with memory in two important central European novels, Milan Kundera’s the Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kniha smíchu a zapomnění, 1978) and György Konrád’s The Loser (A cinkos, 1980). It follows on thematically from a 1995 work by Richard Esbenshad, who devoted himself to these novels, though putting them in the wider historical contexts of the central European region. The article endeavours to interpret and comprehend collective and individual memory, which are essential to the two novels. Using different methods the same conclusion is reached: the memory of the individual and of the collective is unreliable, unstable, and manipulatable. Furthermore, it is also influenced by state institutions. Central Europe is a space in which memory was rewritten several times in the twentieth century, a process that did not of course stop with the Changes of late 1989. That is also why it pays to read these novels again and to contemplate their relevancy to the present day.

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CENTRAL EUROPEAN PATH TO WORLDLINESS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SO-CALLED SMALL LITERATURES

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Zelenková A., Janiec-Nyitrai A.

World Literature Studies

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2023

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vol. 15

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issue 1

88 – 101

EN

Although the acceptance of a text into world literature is directly related to the importance of its country and language of origin, works from so-called small literatures can also become part of the global canon. They establish their “worldliness” not on the power of extra literary moments, but on the ability to constitute the world using the aestheticization of national images. This article analyses four literary-historical examples of authors (Ivan Horváth, Karel Čapek, Sandor Márai, and Witold Gombrowicz) attempting to become world authors through their “Central Europeanism”. Horváth seeks artistic inspiration for his dreamlike visions in French culture, Čapek attracts readers with the universality of his humanistic ideas, Márai embodies intellectual the nostalgia for the vanished Habsburg Empire, and Gombrowicz intuitively anticipates the postmodern grotesque. Despite their differences in genre and theme, these authors are connected by their inclination towards the West. At the same time, they all demonstrate that in this distinctive and indigenous (in terms of values) “interspace” between the West and the East, there is no “pure” national literature that does not synthesize a diverse foreign element. It is obvious that the way of this aestheticization of local “peripherality” implies their possible paths to “worldliness”.

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2 Česká literatura (Czech Literature)

1 World Literature Studies

1 Janiec-Nyitrai A.

1 Thirouinová M.-O.

1 Zelenková A.

1 Švéda J.

1 2023

2 2011

Postava „idiota“ ve středoevropském románu 20. století: Josef Švejk a Piotr Niewiadomski

Individuální a kolektivní paměť ve dvou středoevropských románech (Kunderova Kniha smíchu a zapomnění a Spoluviník Györgyho Konráda)

CENTRAL EUROPEAN PATH TO WORLDLINESS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SO-CALLED SMALL LITERATURES