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HOLT MEYER 77

been entrusted by my friend, a former Austrian officer, to inform you that you are 

his son. And this is your sister. He regrets that he was unable to marry your mother 

back then, but he was off to the battlefield in Halič, if you please, here is a photograph 

showing him as an Austrian officer in uniform. By the time the war was over your 

mother was already married, but regardless, this is your own flesh and blood, your 

own father, a former Austrian officer, he’s on in years now and deeply regrets what 

happened, but you know how it was back then, young blood for Austria. and if you 

please, here are some photographs from back then] [sic!! — see below for correc-

tion — H. M.] (Hrabal 1995a, pp. 479–480, Hrabal 2011, pp. 56–57).

It is to the voice of this representative, of this ‘comrade’ of the biological father that the 

first long passage from a single perspective is assigned (the second such extended pas-

sage is in the voice of ‘můj muž’).The representative’s underscoring of ‘blood’ (‘krev’, 

translated as flesh and blood) in combination with the naming of Hrabal’s name is 

a particularly important feature of this extended addressing of the embedded narra-

tor in the town of his birth.

It is all the more significant in combination with the vocal moderation of the 

handing over of the photographs given the central importance of photography in the 

work of Roland Barthes: ‘if you please, here is a photograph showing him as an Aus-

trian officer in uniform’, then ‘a tady prosím jsou fotografie z nynější doby’ (translated 

as ‘here are some photographs from back then…’, which is incorrect — it should be 

‘here are some current photographs [of him]’).

26

 The voice of the representative per-

forms a deictic moderation of the passing over of photographs of the ‘Austrian officer’ 

at the time of his fathering ‘můj muž’ and at the current time a half a century later, 

when ‘můj muž’ is presenting the writings he wrote, i.e. ‘fathered’ to people in the 

town where he was born. This brings two types of representation into play: standing 

in for the father and giving visual evidence of the father at the two crucial moments 

of his entering the life of ‘můj muž’: the first time and most probably the last time.

In connection with Barthes, it is the presence of photography itself which takes 

on singular importance. One necessarily returns to Derridaʼs simultaneous reading of 

Writing Degree Zero and Camera Lucida, particularly his linking of ‘blank writing’ with 

‘punctum’ as two diverse (and equally impossible) strategies of what one might call 

flight from code, i.e. as types of signification which flee from context tainted with ide-

ology, and in doing this address the recipient in the ideological context he is located 

and make this context alien (in the sense of ostranenie). In the case of photography, 

what is of key significance is the punctum which must necessarily ‘prick’ or ‘wound’ 

the viewer by giving him/her the illusion of unique addressing of him/her alone.

Let us bring this to bear on the constellation in the Hrabalʼs text. The modera-

tion of the photographs handed over to the embedded narrator calls forth a multiple 

nakedness — that of the photograph itself (punctum as bared of all context, of all 

stadium), that of the body of the newborn son of the biological father being (doubly) 

represented here, and above all that of the ‘[flesh and] blood’ which this representer 

addresses practically in the same breath as the moderation of passing over the pho-

tographs. It is parallel — this is Derrida’s point — to the paradoxical ‘blank writ-

26

  The French translation is correct in this point: ‘voici des photos récents’ (Ha516).

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78 SLOVO A SMYSL 24

ing’ which is simultaneously the salvation and the end of literature in Writing Degree 

Zero — to a writing which casts aside all masks and attempts to just be what it is (as 

opposed to a writing which embraces its own necessary masking — in this case of the 

Hrabalʼs text in the form of accepting the role as fool and clown).

The transition to the voice of this father representative is the core of the passage 

from the point of view of autophilologically addressing its own methodology. This very 

first transition of voice frames all others and also prepares most directly the Barthes 

transitions at the end of the passage.

Voice transition 2 leads to:

A předal mi paklík těch fotografií a já jsem se díval na tu moji sestru, měla ty samé 

vysedlé lícní kosti, ten samý kocouří ksicht jako já. Pak ze sálu vyšel pořadatel a volal 

[And he handed me a deck of photos and I glanced at my sister, she had the same high 

cheekbones, the same catlike face as mine. Then the emcee came out of the room call-

ing] (Hrabal 1995a, p. 480, Hrabal 2011, p. 57).

Considering all this, the transitioning back to the embedded narrator is all the more 

astounding in its reference to the physical similarities to his first-seen sister and 

the immediately registered similarity of both of their faces to those of cats. The 

reference to ‘kocouří ksicht’ (‘ksicht’ is translated neutrally as ‘face’ in English and 

‘visage’ in French, but is more colloquial). Aside from this cat reference informing 

all the extremely frequent cat references in the book (and in other books of this pe-

riod and subsequent periods), the immediate juxtaposition of the deck of photos 

and the observation of the sister’s face picks up on the blood and photo discourse 

quoted in the words of the father representative. He takes the photos and does not 

look at them, but rather looks at the face, thus creating a new equivalence. The 

same voice then reports on the invasion of the voice of officiality, calling on him 

as a ‘comrade’ to play his public role. One can speak in this case without exaggera-

tion and forced reading conclusions of an immediate collision of ‘punctum’ and 

‘studium’, of absolute bodily uniqueness beyond signification and the call to enter 

to purely social sphere with all of its ideologies, rhetorics, and context(ualization)

s. The raised volume of ‘calling’ highlights the insistence contained in the hearing 

of this voice.

It is also an official calling on of the voice we are hearing privately to speak officially 

and thus a contrast between these callings. It is the tension between those two call-

ings which forms the core of the book, bringing the private narrative constellation to 

bear on the moment of the emergence of the public Czechoslovak writer and the conse-

quences of this emergence (also for the body of that writer, whose serious illnesses, 

requiring an operation, are the subject of a long section).

Voice transition 3 leads to:

Hledá se soudruh Hrabal, za pět minut začne beseda! [We’re looking for comrade 

Hrabal, five minutes until we start!] (Hrabal 1995, pp. 480, Hrabal 2011, pp. 57).

The transition from the emphasis of the calling up of the voice and the content of the 

calling itself is again extremely self-revealing, in that it announces a search for ‘com-

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