The life of Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) is an orderly series of disasters (two world wars, the Sovietization of Czechoslovakia, the hopeful Prague Spring, its suppression by Russian troops, the end of the Soviet yoke and the subsequent division of the country). , four years before his death, in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic). An orderly sequence of catastrophes that can only be viewed with horror or humor, and the latter is the path that the stubborn Bohumil Hrabal has chosen for his literature. Fortunately, a large part of his work was published in Spain, which allowed us to read a master of satire who has his roots in surrealism and whose references include the impressive and flowing orality of a Louis Ferdinand Céline full of rude jargon. and The expressive boldness of Joyce reminds me of that of another very popular Irishman in the publishing house that offers us this book today, Flann O'Brien, who would certainly have fascinated Hrabal.
Yes, because his writing, particularly that manifested in the seven stories of this book, adheres to the absurdity of nonsense as a form of expression with innovative meaning. Published in 1965, the same year as his first masterpiece, Rigorously Surveillance Trains. Three years later, after the Russian tanks crushed the Prague Spring, his books were withdrawn from circulation and could only be circulated to a limited extent in the form of samizdat (secret copies of books) until after the fall of the Berlin Wall Light. Masterpieces like “I Who Have Served the King of England”, “A Solitude Too Loud” and “Tender Barbarian”.
“Mr. Kafka” is seven stories that have their roots in surrealism, which can be found in all his early works, and which unsettle the reader with their difficulty and fascinate him with their imaginative development and satirical power. In a society ruled by the experiments of Soviet communism in the search for the creation of the “new socialist man”, only humor and satire are the oxygen necessary for survival.
The writer suffered the two world wars, the Sovietization of the country, the end of this yoke and the division of Czechoslovakia
In the story entitled “Beautiful Poldi,” the narrator refers to the Poldi steelworks with this beautiful image: “When I see a big star now, I often think that it is the evening star. In reality it is a welder's tongue, a melancholy little blue flame, the descent of the Holy Spirit, whose touch makes the iron red.” Hrabal, a railway worker and metallurgist among other things, worked in this steelworks. The story entitled “Mr. Kafka”, which gives the title to this edition, is a hilarious homage by the author to Franz Kafka himself, it begins like this: “Every morning the innkeeper tiptoes into my room, I hear his footsteps. The room is so long that you could ride a bike from the door to my bed” (…) Sometimes I imagine a different kind of awakening: What if my landlord woke up and announced that I wasn’t there? “
His stories admirably demonstrate the relationship between oppression and tenderness in a world shaped by an intolerable ideological directive. Another image: In “The Angel,” the guard of the prisoners transporting war scrap cuts out a girl's guardian angel from an engraving, hides it behind her back under her shirt, and it reads: “When she went outside When he ran, to reach the prey, and as their guardian walked behind them, he felt that the wings of the image were taking root in his body (…) and that nothing would stop him from continuing to take care of the women who held it had been entrusted to him, even if it was bad and against the rules, and that in this way he himself would be redeemed. Humor and tenderness against barbarism.
Bohumil Hrabal
Translation by Patricia Gonzalo de Jesús
Nordic, 2023
160 pages. 19.50 euros
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