Musíte vymalovat nebo se hodláte přestěhovat? Pak narazíte na knihy, které máte léta v knihovně, ale na které jste zapomněli. Smíte je vyhodit, nebo naopak právě teď přečíst? A co s těmi novými, jež se vám vrší na stole? Zařadit je, nebo je lepší se jich zbavit? Také v tom by vám chtěla každý týden pomáhat tato rubrika. Stručně a rychle.
Robert Musil: Zmatky chovance Törlesse
(Argo 2011/ překlad Radovan Charvát)
„Malá zastávka na trati, která vede do Ruska.“ To jsou Hranice na Moravě s konventem, kde se vychovávají budoucí c. a k. rakouští důstojníci. Nad novým překladem klasické knížky jsem si znovu a znovu uvědomoval, proč ji tak miloval Ladislav Fuks. Mladičký přecitlivělý hrdina na kolotoči iracionálního násilí. Sto let stará aktualita o tom, jak vzniká závislost na brutalitě. Nenápadně.
Joseph Roth: Filiálka pekla na zemi. Spisy z emigrace (Academia 2011/ překlad Ondřej Sekal)
Zběsile přehánějící, zoufalý opilec. Tak mohli současníci číst Rothovy články a dopisy ze třicátých let minulého století. Jenže on viděl nacismus střízlivě a nedělal si iluze. Po anšlusu Rakouska napsal: „Jeden svět zemřel, a svět přeživších mu neposkytne ani důstojný pohřeb.“ Nad autorovým pařížským hrobem se v roce 1939 sešli katolický kněz a rabín. Paradox asimilovaného evropského židovství.
Stephen Weeks: Daniela (Kniha Zlín 2011/ překlad Dagmar Štěpánková)
Po Simonu Mawerovi (Mendelův trpaslík, Skleněný pokoj) další Angličan, který stopuje příběhy v našich končinách. Ale pozor! Nesrovnávat! Je druhá světová válka a jsme na Hradčanech: „Kosti českých králů v hrobkách přímo pode mnou se znepokojeně obracely v prachu slz.“ Příznačná stylová perla. S ukrajinským Židem Nikolajem podnikáme pikareskní pouť od válečného deníku přes růžové čtení, soft porno až k bedekru. Uf! Román pro služky.
BY PETR BILEK IN LITERANI NOVINY 27-1-12
It will take perhaps another fifteen years before the first judges are appointed here who were born after the Velvet Revolution, but perhaps not too many years from now before the first literary critics start to appear, free of the taint of the bankrupt tyranny that distorted values and manipulated the truth.
As soon as Mr Bilek’s ‘review’ opens he mentions the fact that I – as well as other writers interested in the Czech lands and their recent history – am English. The only comment of interest I managed to Google up on him was that he was ‘an old communist snake’, hence all foreigners are by nature both suspicious – and at the same time couldn’t possibly know anything about the innermost secrets of the mysterious character of the Czechs. I immediately smelt the whiff of the greasy hostinec with its smoke-laden air, and the man expounding to his friends from ‘the old days’ how he will dispatch this alien writer who has the audacity to carefully research a long historical novel which aims, amongst other things, to present an objective view of Prague and its inhabitants during the Nazi occupation.
In my year of research for DANIELA I met with a man who knew Mrs Heydrich (who appears as a character in the second part of the novel, to be published within the year); one of the slave workers on the Heydrich Estate, who for his hard work was rewarded by being sent to Auschwitz; an SS soldier who spent time in Prague; a Barrandov actress who – being Jewish – was dismissed (and who, still in her teens, found herself first at Terezin and then also at Auschwitz); and, of course, assorted civilian survivors of the terror of the war years here. I managed to find in England the diary of a German soldier who was sent from Prague to Siberia for 10 years by the Russians, which led me to Siberia also, simply to experience the cold and the bitter landscape. In Prague I met the man who was probably the last survivor of Vlasov’s Army, and in Germany I consulted several archives which contain masses of material on the general who liberated Prague, well ahead of the Soviets.
The novel is narrated by Nikolei, a Polish-Ukrainian Jew, in a picaresque manner, as Mr Bilek points out. He does not hold back anything, and he describes the horrors of war – which includes his part in the battle of Stalingrad – in some detail. A man who mentions wounded soldiers holding in their intestines is hardly likely to be coy about also mentioning a vagina or two. Yet Mr Bilek seems to find the violence of war unnoteworthy, and yet any sexual references to be ‘porn’. This says quite a lot about his unreformed and unfortunate attitudes towards women!
His way of criticism is to take one half of one sentence from 450 pages, and use one of the very rare examples of when Nikolei (in whose voice the book is written) turns to a poetic image. In this case he was standing looking over the Castle from the tower of St Vitus Cathedral, and contemplating the appalling catastrophe which had befallen Prague. The whole sentence, with the one before, is this:
I peered down at the Castle directly below us. The swastika fluttered over the palace apartments. Somewhere down in that complex of roofs the ‘puppet president’ Hácha was having his strings pulled as normal and in the tombs of countless proud Bohemian kings right below me, bones shifted uneasily and tears of dust were being shed.
Twisting the truth around by quoting very selectively is on page one of the Communist Party Indoctrination Handbook. So perhaps Socialism feathered his nest more than he lets on: he is king of his panelak penthouse, waited on by servants – hence his well-informed remark that DANIELA is a novel for maids. But more likely Bilek’s maid is that least-paid of the breed: his wife. Yet the remark was also attempting to despise maids, who were, after all, from 1948-1989 ‘class enemies’, along with their masters. So his attitude to women is quite clear. It wouldn’t surprise me that as well as being a book-basher, Mr Bilek is also a wife-beater! ‘Reviewer’ – get a life!
Stephen Weeks,
Prague 1 - Stare Mesto 27-2-1