Czech Short Fiction

Introduction

The peaceful split of Czechoslovakia in 1993 ended the forty-eight-year history of the country and resulted in the creation of two separate republics: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. During the existence of Czechoslovakia, there were two official languages—Czech and Slovak. Czech was spoken by about ten million people, primarily in Bohemia and Moravia. In comparison, Slovak was the language of about five million people, primarily in the territory of Slovakia. Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible languages, and during the existence of Czechoslovakia, both were used in the media. However, the Czechoslovak publishing industry favored Czech, presumably because the country's capital, Prague, is situated in Bohemia, a predominantly Czech-speaking region.

Czech Language over the Centuries

The Czech language developed from Proto-Slavic. It went through its first stage of separate development as Proto-Czech in the tenth to twelfth centuries. The oldest documents written in Czech date back to the eleventh century. In the fourteenth century, the most critical changes in the history of the Czech language took place—both phonetic and morphological. During the Hussite period, these changes were unified with the adoption of orthographic reform, and most of them are still observed in contemporary Czech.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Czech language was practically dead. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) affected Bohemia like no other European country—it technically disappeared from the map of Europe. After the defeat in the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, Bohemia became an appendage of Austria. As a result, the Czech language was repressed: German became the official language in Bohemia, and many German words were introduced in everyday Czech. These phenomena naturally took their toll on the literature written in Czech.

The Czech National Revival

It was not until the nineteenth century that Czech language was codified, and the development of a common literary language was possible. The first short stories written in Czech date back to the end of the Czech National Revival of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a period of rebirth for Czech language, culture, and national identity. The idealistic works of two women writers, Božena Němcová and Karolina Světlá, proved essential to forging the national identity; these writers depicted the life of Bohemian peasants. Jan Neruda, on the other hand, presented the picturesque facets of the petty bourgeois life in Prague in his collection of short stories Povídky malostranské (1877; Prague Tales, 1993), which was translated into many languages and also became popular outside the country. Světlá and Neruda were part of the Májovci (May Literary School), which was inspired by the work of the poet Karel Hynek Mácha and named after his poem Máj (1836; May, 1949). Unlike Czech poets and novelists who wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the May school writers did not try to promote Czech culture in its pure form but rather looked at it within a larger European context. They were also determined to revive Czech as a literary language, and their works laid the foundation for that.

In the late nineteenth century, some Czech writers focused on the village as a vehicle for preserving moral values; others directed their work at the social problems in the country. However, all of them were already interested in everyday contemporary life rather than the country's historical past. Karel Václav Rais continued to depict the impoverished countryside and its people in the vein of Němcová. In his short stories, through masterfully composed dialogue, he primarily tackles the moral-value frictions between different generations in the Czech mountain village. A journalist and a prolific short-story writer, Ignát Herrmann presented the life of ordinary people in Prague and the Podhorská area of southern Bohemia. Inspired by Neruda, he created memorable characters, like Otec Kondelík (Papa Kondelík), an epitome of the cautious philistine Czech petty bourgeois at the turn of the century—the Czech Sancho Panza. Herrmann told his characters’ stories with a remarkable sense of humor. M. A. Šimáček was also interested in depicting the life of people from the lower classes, mostly proletarian types and workers; even though not the highest form of art, his works reveal that the Czech bourgeoisie in the late nineteenth century respected the lower classes, believing that they might bring social rebirth. Šimáček gathered around himself a group of Czech writers who called themselves realists and who published in the weekly Světozor. Other authors who examined the social problems of the time in their short fiction were the brothers Josef and Karel Čapek, Karel Matěj Čapek-Chod, and František Xaver Svoboda.

The Beginning of the Twentieth Century

After the changing guard of literary trends in the late nineteenth century, from Romanticism to realism and naturalism, it was time for the generation of modernists to take over the Czech literary scene. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the image and function of literature changed dramatically: Czech writers did not feel compelled to educate and promote national culture; they could write simply for the sake of literature and art. The author gained the reputation of an artist. In short fiction, a series of impressionists emerged on the scene. Authors like Růžena Svobodová, Ivan Oblracht, and Marie Majerová introduced new vitality and sensuality to the genre of the short story. In the collection of stories O zlých samotářich (1913; Of Evil Loners), Olbracht demonstrates his skills to create a gripping psychological narrative. He looks into the existence of people living on society's margins; his heroes are circus performers, wanderers, and outlaws who turn to evil in their struggle for freedom. Olbracht achieved the peak of his literary success with stories about people from sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, with Golet v údolí (1937; Valley of Exile, 1964) being his most famous collection. Both Svobodová and Majerová wrote about women. While Svobodová addressed the struggle of women to become emancipated and live a normal life in a society that alienates them (Přetížený klas, 1896; The Overburdened Stalk), Majerová explored in her writing the essence of being a woman—the female sensuality, psychology, and ethics (Mučenky, 1924; Passionflowers).

In contrast to these writers who celebrated the triumph of life and nature, a group of authors belonged to the literary circle published in Moderní revue (Modern Review), a periodical established in the last decade of the nineteenth century. These writers condemned any positivist art and, in the case of literature, vitalistic prose. The main focus of this circle was decadent symbolism; its goal was to overcome what it considered the main problem of Bohemian culture—its European isolation and bourgeois provincialism. With the rejection of impressionism and decorative Romanticism, the Moderní revue authors began to renounce the genre of the novel, so popular in the late nineteenth century, and preferred shorter forms, such as poetry and short prose. The short story came to the forefront in the works of the decadents. The beginning of the twentieth century marked a significant change in the aesthetics of authors in the decadent circle, as neoclassicist and neo-romantic tendencies replaced the subversive character of their work.

Neoclassicism in Czech literature was an aesthetic tendency trying to rehabilitate the elaborate dramatic story with a solid narrative structure. Neoclassical authors were primarily concerned with the past but did not try to hyperbolize it; their main goal was to render the timeless characteristics of human fate. They strove for gripping and impersonal storytelling. František Khol wrote stories about the Renaissance and modern big-city life in neoclassical style (Rozmary lásky, 1915; The Whims of Love). František Xaver Šalda, considered a father of the Czech critical school and one of the authors of the Czech Modernist Manifesto, published a neoclassical collection of short stories, Život ironický a jiné povídky (1912; Life is Ironic, and Other Stories). Antonín Sova, a prolific and renowned Czech poet and member of the Moderní revue circle, wrote a novella about a village teacher and musician in the eighteenth century, Pankrác Budecius, kantor (1916). Viktor Dyk (1877-1931) wove an old German legend into his novella Krysař (1915; The Rat Catcher).

The Interwar Period

World War I suppressed the interest of Czech authors in participating in discussions about form and genre for some time. In the early interwar years, writers were more concerned about the recent events, their inhumanity, and the stellar performance of the Czech soldier in Austrian uniform. The most renowned and famous worldwide writer from this period is undoubtedly Jaroslav Hašek. The author of the novel Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (1921-1923; The Good Soldier: Švejk, 1930), Hašek also wrote about 1,500 short stories in which, just like in his renowned novel, he proved to be a master at using satire to depict the social and political situation of the country and Europe. In a more serious and psychologically profound style, Richard Weiner, Jaroslav Bednář, and Čestmír Jeřábek described the intense experience of the Czech military in their short stories.

The founding of the First Republic in 1918 gradually created a climate that favored exploration and experimentation in art and literature. The most daring experiments were conducted primarily in poetry. In prose, the interwar generation tried to distance itself as much as possible from the authors of the nineteenth century, writing short fiction with neonaturalist, utopian, and fantastic tendencies.

The interwar years saw a wave of neonaturalism, whose proponents focused on village and rural life. Jan Čep, a masterful and prolific storyteller, glorified the splendor of Moravia, where he grew up. His characters—from simple country folk to resigned intellectuals—had a spiritual relationship with the land, an aspect that few of the other neonaturalistic authors developed. Examples of his works include Zeměžluč (1931; The Cornflower), Letnice (1933; Pentecost), and Modrá a zlatá (1938; Blue and Gold). LikeČep, Jan Vrba wrote a series of naturalistic stories about peasants from various corners of Czechoslovakia, as exemplified by his book Divoženky (1926; Wild Women). Jaroslav Durych was a prolific and versatile author who initially wrote in the neonaturalist tradition. His most notable short fiction achievement was Rekviem (1930), a trilogy of historical stories taking place during the Thirty Years’ War, a sequence of his famous novel trilogy Bloudění (1929; The Descent of the Idol, 1936).

Karel Čapek, one of the most famous Czech authors of all time, was a writer of many genres. His short-story collections Povídky z druhé kapsy and Povídky z jedné kapsy (1929; Tales from Two Pockets, 1932), featuring stories with many twists and turns, can be placed in the detective-story category. A man of strong intellectuality, Čapek wrote stories about literary and historical characters in Kniha apokryfů (1946; Apocryphal Stories, 1949). He also introduced the utopian theme to Czech literature, particularly in his novels, and he became known as a science-fiction writer and one of the founders of classical science fiction.

The Communist Years

At the end of World War II, the Communists took over the government of Czechoslovakia. The social and cultural situation changed alongside the political system. During the Communist regime, which lasted from 1945 until the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, authors in Czechoslovakia fell into one of three categories: those who wrote in the vein of Socialist Realism and thus met the expectations of the Communist Party; the dissidents whose works were found subversive by the government; and the authors in exile who published outside Czechoslovakia. In the first years after the war, the Czech literary scene saw mostly writers from the first camp—those who conformed with the government. Authors who wrote short fiction that was in line with the ideological views of the leading literary Marxist critic Ladislav Štoll, a director of the Institute of Czech Literature, were the journalist and playwright Jiří Marek with his Z cihel a úsměvů (1953; With Bricks and Smiles) and the prose writer and playwright Jan Drda with his Krásná Tortiza (1952). Drda also created the first Czech collection of short stories about World War II—Němá barikáda (1946; Silent Barricade).

At one point, the government pardoned some writers who did not conform to its ideology, but these were better-known authors from the older generation. These writers, including Bohumil Hrabal, Ladislav Fuks, and Vladimír Páral, were allowed to publish some of their works at the price of self-censorship. Hrabal, the most-translated Czech author of the twentieth century and a prose writer who became famous primarily for his novels, such as Ostře sledované vlaky (1965; Closely Watched Trains, 1968), wrote some notable collections of short stories that were published before 1968, including Perlička na dně (1963; Pearl on the Bottom) and Pábitelé (1964).

The year 1968 marked a watershed in the history of Czechoslovakia. The failed democratization reforms of the Prague Spring, followed by the passive resistance to Soviet occupation and the consequent persecution of intellectuals, affected every aspect of life in the country. The Communists made drastic changes in the literary establishment by installing government agents in all cultural organizations to prevent writers from defying the mainstream ideology and from promoting dissident ideas. Czech authors reacted to this imposed censorship by initiating their own secret publishing; works were disseminated in typewritten copies that were often bound by hand and sold through personal contacts. This form of publishing, called samizdat, enabled dissident authors to freely express their disillusionment with the Czech Communist system and reach their audience.

Ludvík Vaculík, author of the Two Thousand Words Manifesto of 1968, and Ivan Klíma were the main figures involved in establishing samizdat publishing in Czechoslovakia. The samizdat editions included short prose, both fiction and nonfiction, written by a series of dissident authors, including Lenka Reinerová, Eva Kantůrková, Vladimír Škutina, Josef Škvorecký, Milan Kundera, Pavel Kohout, Karel Pecka, and Arnošt Lustig. Some of these writers were imprisoned for political dissent, while others were expelled from the country or emigrated and began publishing their works abroad. Reinerová (who wrote in German), Kantůrková, Škutina, and Pecka spent some time in Czech prison, and their writing described their experiences behind bars.

Undoubtedly, the most famous émigré writer of the dissident Czech generation is Milan Kundera. His achievements in prose, in both the novel and short fiction, have popularized Czech literature in Europe. At the same time, Kundera’s fiction is liberated from the Czech cultural and linguistic baggage; he writes in both Czech and French and considers himself a novelist rather than a dissident writer. Kundera, who is most famous for his novel L’Insoutenable légèreté de l’être (1984; The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984; in Czech as Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, (1985), also writes short fiction. His collection of short stories Směšné lásky, 1970 (partial translation as Laughable Loves, 1974), the last book written in Czech and published under the Communist government, became quite popular with its ironic stories pivoting on sex. Most of Kundera’s works were banned by the Czech regime and were not officially published in Czech until after the fall of Communism.

JosefŠkvorecký, another émigré writer, has contributed equally, if not more, to the popularization of Czech literature abroad. A prolific author of novels, short stories, screenplays, and essays, he is the founder of the most successful Czech émigré publishing house, Sixty-Eight Publishers in Toronto. At the beginning of his career, Škvorecký wrote detective stories, such as Smutek poručíka Borůvky (1966; The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka, 1973). As an émigré in Canada, he published the short-story collections Povídky tenorsaxofonisty (1993; The Tenor Saxophonist’s Story, 1997) and an English-language selection of his stories When Eve Was Naked: A Journey Through Life (2000).

After the Velvet Revolution

The Velvet Revolution November 1989 marked the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia. Finally, the samizdat and émigré Czech authors could publish their works legally at home. The expected “new wave” of serious literature faced stiff competition from the more commercial literature now being published. The privatization of the publishing industry also influenced the literary market. It was difficult for new authors of serious literature to establish themselves in the post-Communist environment.

Despite the difficulties, a few writers succeeded in creating serious and worthwhile literature in the 1990s and 2000s. Some of the short-story writers of this period were Jiří Kratochvil, author of Orfeus z Kénigu (1994; Orfeus from Koenig); Jáchym Topol, author of Zlatá hlava (2005; Golden Head); Daniela Fischerová, author of Prst, který se nikdy nedotkne (1995; Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else, 2000); and Petr Šabach, author of Jak potopit Austrálii (1986; How to Submerge Australia). A self-proclaimed apostle of postmodernism, Kratochvil wrote an allegorical short story, “Má lásko, postmoderno” (1994; "O Postmodern, My Love"), in which he reflects on the state of literature after the collapse of Communism, concluding that literature is now free from its social and political obligations.

The best-selling author Michal Viewegh also writes short fiction, and Povídky o manželství a o sexu (1999; Short Stories about Marriage and Sex) is his most famous collection. In the early 2000s, Květa Legátová became popular with Želary (2001), a cycle of short stories that take place in a Moravian mountain village. Other notable writers of Czech short fiction who have emerged in the twenty-first century include Michal Ajvaz, Jan Balabán, Josef Formánek, Ivan Martin Jirous, Jiří Hájíček, and Petra Hůlová. 

Bibliography

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