The Mirror Image of Josef Bašek:
The Mirror Image of Josef Bašek:

On Human Metamorphosis in Egon Hostovský’s Novel Ztracený stín (1931)

Summary/Abstract: The sphere of art, which became highly personalised after the First World War, reflects the state of fragmentation of society into individuals and their inner world. In Egon Hostovský’s novel Ztracený stín (Lost Shadow, 1931), this phenomenon appears on various textual levels, but the dominant realm, reflecting the chaos of the world as well as of the inner self, is the level of motifs in the author’s poetics. In the process of self-identification of the main protagonist Josef Bašek, the rupture in his psychological experience is encoded in the recognition of his own deformed image, the new identity of the double, in the mirror. The author thus reflects the disintegration of an integrated structure in two directions. On one hand, the external world foments an individual metamorphosis of personality, while on the other this is no longer merely a matter of the human inner self and psychological experience, but in its deformed aspect becomes a visible component of the fragmented society within which the protagonist operates. KEYWORDS (en)

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