This article cousiders the last novel of Jan Balabán Zeptej se táty. It is suggested that the author contructed his work around the themes of death and dream, which determine the whole interpretation of his novel. Death receives here both metaphisycal, as well as physiological meaning;social and individual. Protagonist of the novel look for an antidote to death. They find it in religion, sex and dream. None of them, however, brings them acomplete rescue from the fear of death. Dream turns out to be only asubstitute to death, its another form of being. In their quest to be freed from death the protagonists move through three dimensions: dream, illness and death. A motif of bed plays an important role here. It is apregnent with meaning symbolic space where neverending battle between life and death takes place. This is underlined by the overflow of biblical language relating to falling asleep, dreaming and waking up and themes of light, flame, morning, darkness, shadow and dark.
The vast majority of Jan Balabán’s works are short stories. They are regarded by many as dark and obscure, which led some to discover symbolic dimension of his prose. The form of writing applied by the author could have been influnced on the one hand by American literature and on other hand by evangelical way of education he got at home. Typical for protestants was teaching children biblical stories, especially New Testament parables. The analysis of Jan Balabán’ works lead to discover many biblical quotes and motives in his books. He creates some of his stories in the image of New Testament parables and describes some of the characters as if they were biblical heroes. He also name some of them in the biblical way by giving them prefix „no” at the begining of their names. There are many differences between the form of parable used by New Testament and the stories of Jan Balabán. However, some similarities can also be seen. This seems to give his prose some existential dimension.
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