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Příběhy Nerudových lásek. Životopis jako kulturní konstrukt

100%

Mocná D.

Česká literatura (Czech Literature)

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2011

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vol. 59

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issue 2

149-175

EN

This article takes issue with the opinion that a biography is a collection of verifiable facts with clear causal links. Drawing upon current research on the historical narrative, the article sees biography as a product of collective interpretation, which changes over time. The article illustrates these processes using the example of the biographical treatment of the love affairs of the writer Jan Neruda (1834–1891). In particular it considers how social norms and cultural models of the period were employed in the writing of biography and then its variation. The first part of the article analyzes the mechanisms of the selection of real-life facts. The second part analyzes how these facts are treated, both diachronically and synchronically. In the first, on the basis of critiques of primary sources, it considers strategies that the individual figures (future characters) use to fight for their positions in the story of Neruda’s life, and how the people close to them worked on their inclusion in the Neruda myth. The author argues that although this ‘lobbying’ by the participants was important, it was equally important, if not more so, that the stories which they offered to the public were in keeping with contemporaneous aesthetic priorities and norms. In Neruda’s early work on the biography his relations with his ‘eternal betrothed’, Anna Holinová, were particularly important. He saw these relations as something between a Biedermeier idyll and a Neo-omantic fairy tale about his love for the terminally ill and unattainable Terezie Macháčková. Twenty years later the time was ripe for his ‘romance of love and honour’ with the writer Karolina Světlá (1830–1899). Because his other romantic relations tended to be considered unacceptable (for example, his love affair with Božena Vlachová), they made their way into his biography only with difficulty or have not yet been included (his affairs with actresses like Emilie Bekovská). The second part of the article considers the perspective from which these constructed ‘stories’ were read by members of various generations, that is to say, literary historians and biographers. The adaptation of the story to changing times is considered here, using the example of shifts in the interpretation of Neruda’s love affair with Holinová. This part of the article also points out the tendency of the genre to be standardized; the individual, sometimes unconventional, form of the author’s attitudes and experiences is smoothed out to make it acceptable to the majority of recipients. The author argues this using the example of Neruda and Světlá’s affair, which was, as is evident in the surviving sources, hardly an ordinary love story, though it became ordinary in its biographical treatment. This standardization is, however, clearly the price that has to be paid for the immortality of important individuals, as Milan Kundera points out in his novel Nesmrtelnost (immortality).

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Podivuhodný labyrint každodennosti. Fikční svět Povídek malostranských.

88%

Mocna D.

Česká literatura (Czech Literature)

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2007

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vol. 55

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issue 2

145-166

EN

This article is concerned with narrative approaches that Jan Neruda (1834-1891) employed to construct the ambiguous, disorganized fictional world of his 'Povidky malostranské' (Tales of the Lesser Town). First, they are his preference for non-authoritarian narrators, particularly the personal narrator-observer. At many points throughout the text, this narrator changes into a medium through which 'flow' foreign opinions on elements of the fictional world. To this he then also adds his own insights and observations. Second, the implicit nature of the communication is extremely intensified here. Important information is usually provided in the form of vague hints, hidden behind a great quantity of insubstantial detail, in which both kinds of information is presented in the text mostly in the same manner. The connections among the individual items of information are similarly hidden: an explicit expression of causality rarely appears here, and when it does it is usually related to marginal matters. Third, compared to the traditional mode of narration, which organizes information about the fictional world along the axis of the story, here the initial narration branches out in several sides: the basic organizing principle of the narrative text ceases to be the linearity of time, and thus becomes the complexity of space. This special mode of narration is of fundamental consequence to the nature of the story and the characters. The story does not become visible; submerged in the over-sized 'skin' on the surface of the fiction, it makes its presence known only by sparse, not particularly clear signals. The characters comprise heterogeneous, often outright contradictory information of various provenance, making them also ambiguous and sometimes inconsistent. The narrative approaches have much in common with the principles of 20th c. experimental fiction. Unlike the latter, however, they retain the stable outer framework of the fictional world, which the chaotic, ambivalent interior action make understandable. There thus arises a considerable tension between the static macrostructure of the fictional world and its dynamic microstructures, which can be interpreted as a reflection of a world on the borderline between two periods of civilization.

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TRANSFORMACE BALADICKÉHO ŽÁNRU V BÁSNICKÉ TVORBĚ JANA NERUDY

75%

Mocná D.

Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)

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2012

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vol. 59

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issue 4

312 – 323

EN

The goal of the article is to examine the transformation of the ballad as a genre in Jan Neruda´s poetry, especially in his mature collection of poems called Balady a romance (Ballads and romances) - year 1883. The study builds on the existing, quite extensive scientific literature dealing with the making of the book, the models and the sources of inspiration for individual poems and Neruda´s distinction between the ballad and the romance, and then first critical feedback on the collection. The ballad was one of the favourite genres of the May School members, who filled it with new, especially social-critical contents. This is the way young Jan Neruda went, too, nevertheless, in his mature production, he seems to have come back to the traditional form of the genre. In fact, it was only a partial comeback as despite all the admiration for his powerful poetry, he transformed it so as to able to express a modern man´s experience. First of all, he extended the scope of the genre by overlapping it with the legend, the genre in the atmosphere of which he had spent his childhood. His stories of saints´ lives are of humorously mocking nature (in this respect he cannot conceal his inclination for Heinesque provocations) however, they are also just as serious. This particularly applies to the subjects related to Jesus, who became the central character of the collection. He appears there in many forms: as a baby in a crib, as a political revolutionary, as a crucified son of God and as a kind humanist as based on the modern concept of Renan´s. The list of the forms makes it clear that the ballad was considerably politicized by Neruda. Besides the biblical subjects he used for that purpose the motifs related to national history as well as the contemporary political events. While the political aspect in the romances is very often obvious (including explicit revolutionary appeals), the ballads call for deeper contemplation about the social processes and the fate of the nation. Despite the fact that there is available evidence Neruda was inspired by folklore, his ballads and romances are only seemingly simple; the presented folksiness is the result of sophisticated artistic pretence. The writer did not abandon the old forms, he filled them with modern contents expressing how complicated the contemporary world is.

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Příběhy Nerudových lásek. Životopis jako kulturní konstrukt

Podivuhodný labyrint každodennosti. Fikční svět Povídek malostranských.

TRANSFORMACE BALADICKÉHO ŽÁNRU V BÁSNICKÉ TVORBĚ JANA NERUDY