Bohumil Hrabal (1914-97): Papers from a Symposium by David s> Short (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 317 like a doctoral degree as 'LitD';and why 'LatH'ratherthan 'L4TH?').Poems by Marvell are mentioned, but there is no referenceto Michael Long's book, Marvell, Nabokov: Childhood andArcadia (Oxford, I984). And there are of course gaps in coverage. The story Venetsianka ('La Veneziana') - the prime early painterly example in Nabokov's ceuvre is treated only fleetingly (despite having received recent detailed treatmentfrom several commentators).More disconcertinglystill, though, after an initial correct mention (p. 17),it is then consistentlyreferredto, both in text and apparatus,as 'La Venezia'. Any such criticisms,however, remain footlingwhen consideredin the light of the impact made by the book as a whole. Nabokov andtheArtofPainting really has to be on the shelvesof all seriouspublic and privateNabokov collections. Department ofRussianStudies NEIL CORNWELL University ofBristol Short,David(ed.).Bohumil Hrabal (I9I4-97): Papers froma Symposium. SSEES Occasional Papers, 63. School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2004. x + 132 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Indexes. Li6.oo (paperback). BOHUMIL HRABAL (b. I9I4), who died on 3 FebruaryI997 at the age of eightytwo in a (possiblysuicidal)fallfrom a fifth-floorhospitalwindow while feeding pigeons, is one of the foremost European writers of the twentieth century. With a gift for yoking the incongruitiesof the vernacular,the grotesque, the absurd,the lyrical,the ordinaryand the forgottenmarginsof lifeinto a spirited prose that can hurtleforwardwith the exhilarationand irresistibilityof a runaway train, his work also confoundsplayfullythe traditionalbarriersbetween high and low culture,between life and art, between truthand fiction. Hrabal perhaps speaks to what is most vulgar and most lyrical in the human spirit in a manner that very few writerscome close to (but one thinks ofJoyce or Beckett, for example, and their understanding of the subterraneanbeauty of the vernacularand ordinary).In the Czech Republic there is a nineteenvolume Collected Works of Hrabal, evidence both of his prolific output and of his status there as a writer. Although his work has been translated into umpteen languages,and literarycriticssuch asJames Wood have done much to raise his profile among a broader English-speakingliterary audience in publications such as the London Reviewof Booksand the Guardian, outside the Czech Republiche probablyremainssomethingof a cultishfavouritefor those in the know. Russianistswill be more familiarwith him throughJirilMenzel's I966 film of Hrabal's novel, Ostr'e sledovane vlaky(popularlyknown as Closely Observed Trains), a cornerstoneof the Czech New Wave, than with the original work that inspiredthat film. The volume under review is the product of a symposium organizedjust over three months after Hrabal's death by SSEES's Centre for the Study of Central Europe. Unfortunately, it has obviously taken some time for the volume to come to print. The overallqualityof the contributionsis, however, commendably high, drawing from London, Oxford, Prague and Ostrava, 3I8 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 namely: David Chirico (on Hrabal and Giuseppe Ungaretti);Zuzana StolzHladk 'a (on the corporeality of the Word); Martin Pilari(on Hrabal and Boudnik);David Short (on totome'sto je vespolec'ne pecai obyvatel [this city is in the joint care of its inhabitants], supported by some engaging illustrations reproduced from this work); Tim Beasley-Murray (on the avant-garde in Obsluhovaljsem anglickiho krdle[I waited on the King of England]);Robert B. Pynsent(on Hrabal'sautobiographicaltrilogy);and PavelJanalcek(onHrabal's Listopadovy uragan[November hurricane] in the context of the 'November Revolution' as a literarytheme). A littlejuggling of the chaptersmight have made for a better thematic complementarity(Chirico with Beasley-Murray, for example, Stolz-Hladkawith Pynsent),but this is a minor quibble. There are some small infelicities(z seems to have been problematic to reproduce a couple of times; see p. i for example), but none so serious that they detract from the contents. Short's introduction is lively and informative, and the various indexes demonstrate that the reader's interests have not been shortchanged. This is Hrabal for the cognoscenti, rather than a work opening out to a broader audience. Some of the common themes and discussionsthat emerge are the influence of Surrealism, Poetism and the Avant-garde aesthetic in generalon Hrabal'searlywork;Hrabal'suse of collage and montage;Hrabal's constant reworkingand revisingof his texts, an 'endlessprocess of metamorphosis ' (p. 42); the relationshipbetween life and the word; Hrabal'sgrotesque fusion of...