Hranice, možnosti a úlohy komentáře (Jiří Kratochvil, Ludvík Vaculík)

Na obecné úrovni se článek zabývá fungováním komentáře či metakomentáře v postmoderních prozaických textech. K doložení a rozpracování teoretických východisek využívá článek texty Jiřího Kratochvila a Ludvíka Vaculíka. Z pohledu hermeneutiky je struktura, která se odhaluje uvnitř literárních textů právě prostřednictvím komentáře, nazvána posthermeneutickou. Článek ukazuje, že tato posthermeneutická struktura je pevně spojena s perverzní situací ineditního publikování v Československu 70. let jak ji zachycuje Vaculíkův Český snář, stejně jako se situací ženského subjektu zobrazené v Kratochvilově povídce Příběh krále Kandaula. Článek dochází k závěru, že postmoderna staví čtenáře či recipienta před etickou volbu co se role literatury a obecně umění týče.

The Guinea Pigs by Ludvík Vaculík: Codes, Metaphors, and Compositional Devices

In this article I propose to undertake a semiotic analysis of a novel by a contemporary Czech underground writer, Ludvík Vaculík's Morčata (The Guinea Pigs). A semiotic reading of the relation between the semantic and formal levels of the text is particularly rewarding because this novel combines features of several genres ranging from children's literature to the realistic novel and the surrealistic novel. This study is intended as a contribution to the analysis of the multileveled novel in general.The Guinea Pigs is a unique modern blend reminiscent of the Latin American current of magic realism that we find in the works of Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Marquez. It is a highly experimental novel in which the author has reached the peak of his literary efforts thus far and includes himself in the tradition of the absurd, showing traces of dadaism and elements of surrealism and continuing the introspective existentialist line of Dostoevskii and Kafka, refreshed with a light touch of humor and an unpretentiously naive point of view reminiscent of Hašek's Good Soldier Švejk.

Heroes Old and New

In the more ‘liberal’ sixties, Josef Škvorecký; became one of Czechoslovakia's top novelists and short story writers, having made his name with his first novel, The Cowards, which was banned shortly after publication in 1956. Now a leading emigrè publisher in Canada, he reflects here on the quality of some of the officially sanctioned prose that gets published in Prague while the works of Milan Kundera, Vàclav Havel, Ludvìk Vaculìk, Škvorecký; himself, and indeed most of the country's finest authors, are banned.