The Increased Difficulty of Communication or, Writer in Search of Reader Cover Image

Stížená možnost komunikace aneb Spisovatel hledá čtenáře
The Increased Difficulty of Communication or, Writer in Search of Reader

Author(s): Joanna Czaplińska
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Ústav pro českou literaturu
Keywords: Czech literature 1948-1989; exile publishing; samizdat; reader; writer; literary communication

Summary/Abstract: This is an analysis of the special situation in communication, which faced writers who published their works in exile publishing houses and samizdat. In keeping with contemporary literary anthropology, the author starts from the assumption that a literary text becomes literature in the process of communication. In other words, the author and the reader of his or her texts are to some extent prerequisites for the emergence of literature. In the absence of the reader, the writer was forced to come up with a strategy for survival and for the preservation of his or her individuality. On the basis of the works of Ivan Binar (b. 1942), Václav Černý (1905–1987), Sylvie Richterová (b. 1945), Ludvík Vaculík (b. 1926), and Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997), the author demonstrates various forms of the thematization of the implied author, which became not only a means of expression that was meant to enliven the narrative or inveigle the reader in behind the scenes of the writing process, but also had the role of emphasizing the existence of the author as a human being who writes. In the difficult circumstances of their lives, writers in this period thus not only preserved their own individuality but also continuously constructed it.

  • Issue Year: 58/2010
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 509-517
  • Page Count: 9
  • Language: Czech