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HOLT MEYER 73 sat there and he really did remind one of the son of the rabbi from Nikolsburk, and I stood in the corner and peered out from behind a book of poetry, I hid behind the book of poetry and eyed my husband like a detective, watched that jewel of mine perform his shenanigans, but he seemed sincere, like just then he had confidence in himself and in those readers of his, for whom he wrote his Pearl of the Deep… at home when I flipped through the book it certainly was a far cry from something like Mr. Škvorecky’s Cowards or Nylon Age and I’d trade every one of those sto- ries in Pearl of the Deep for just one story by Mr. Chekhov… but what threw me were those readers who looked at that jewel of mine in awe, they even blushed and stammered in his presence, so excited were they at the chance to see and hear the famous writer… And so as the line in front of the bookstore grew, so too grew my husband’s confidence, he was all smiles now, no longer the nervous wreck… my hus- band could only be himself in those Libeň pubs of his, the moment we entered some restaurant where people were well dressed and behaved accordingly and engaged in polite conversation, my husband paled and seemed confused and stammered and blushed, and he only came to his senses once we were back outside — polite company gave him the sweats something awful… But here, during the book signing, where he was unrestrained by etiquette, where he was surrounded by well-behaved people who all felt inferior to the great writer… here my husband behaved as he would at Mr. Vaništa’s, as he would at The Old Post… And then the salesgirls locked the front doors and outside still more readers pounded on the glass, but in vain, it was six o’clock and the last signatures went to those inside… That jewel of mine got up to go, and same as when our wedding ceremony wrapped up at the Little Chateau, he reeked of beer and brandy… he had dark circles under his eyes and deep lines around his mouth, he waved and thanked the manager, even kissed her hand.] (Hrabal 1995b, pp. 431–432, Hrabal 2011, pp. 10–11). This passage is remarkable due to its setting up a confrontation of two social spheres and its presenting a moment in which ‘můj muž’ does not get an inferiority complex, i.e. does not feel intimidated by ‘people who know how to behave’, since the whole world has for one bright moment become a beer hall, a ‘hospoda’ (‘jako u pana Vaništy, tak jako na Staré poště’ (‘behaved as he would at Mr. Vanista’s, as he would at The Old Post’) in which he fears nothing and no one. It is a rare moment of empowerment in the official sphere for ‘můj muž’, who otherwise avoids all personal and bodily con- tact with officialdom. It is significant here that the word ‘hrabal’ appears as a verb: ‘tak kampak se hra-
was a far cry from something like Mr. Škvorecky’s Cowards or Nylon Age’). It appears in close proximity to the act of signing his name, which is presented as an act de- scribed with the verb ‘mazat’ (‘scribble’). It is at the same time connected with ‘můj muž’ inscribing himself with his writing into the intertextual network of world lit- erature or at least Slavic literature (Škvorecký, Čechov). This is the most extensive account of an encounter of ‘můj muž’ with readers be- fore the passage ending with the Barthes reference, and thus there is cause to see a certain equivalence between them. The key structural difference between the two passages is that the voice of the account is assigned to ‘můj muž’. As far as Czech 74 SLOVO A SMYSL 24 cultural geopolitics go, we are not in the center of the headquarters of Czechoslovak discursive hegemony, Prague, Národní, but in Brno. Thematically the key factor is less geography than biology, the issue of ‘birthplace’. It is a move from ultimate masking and costuming to ultimate ‘stripping down to the skin’. But it is precisely here that ‘Mr. Barthes’ and his mask motif are introduced. I will begin the close reading by commenting on those specifics of this particular passage which pertain to the narrative line followed by the text at this point. Barthes appears at a pivotal moment in the positioning of ‘můj muž’ within his biological family and his marriage. It is equally significant that the narrative struc- ture here is unusually intricate. We are dealing with the by far longest passage of reported speech of ‘můj muž’ in the book. This extended reported speech is, in turn, framed by a foot-washing scenery which appears to give it a particular significance for the narrator and ‘můj muž’, indeed to give the narrator a motivation to state ‘[at that moment] I knew that he was my husband and I was his wife’ 24 (Hrabal 2011, p. 57; ‘a té chvíle jsem věděla, že on je můj manžel a já jsem jeho manželka’). Since the Barthes quote addresses the issue of third person narrative, it is im- portant to underscore the fact that we are dealing with first person narrative within third person narrative which introduces a second and a third voice reported an em- bedded third person narrative: the voice of ‘this guy, pince-nez in hand’ and that of the ‘emcee’ (‘pořadatel’). In this context I would like to return to the Birdman reference from the begin- ning of my text. Keeping in mind that Roland Barthes appears in Hrabal’s text as ‘Mr. Barthes’, there is here, as in Birdman, a vision of the actual person Roland Barthes appearing on the fictional and/or theatrical stage. In the colloquy in Birdman (Barthes-man?) Barthes is ironically and absurdly a figure actually flanking a super- hero played in the past by Riggan, one of the people involved in the colloquy about Barthes (one who, like Riggan’s actress Clara who creates the absurd vision, doesn’t really know who Barthes is). In being called ‘Mr. Barthes’, Hrabal’s Roland Barthes is also part of a cast of characters operating on various levels, both systematically and narratologically. He is also part of a colloquy concerning the gods and epic sagas doing ‘cultural work’, these gods and sagas concerning biological and social father- hood. By specifically addressing the act of pointing to one’s own mask, ‘Mr. Barthes’ as a mediating figure brought into the colloquy by an expert, produces the vision not of a figure flanking the superhero Birdman, but rather of a figure who negotiates models of fatherhood. I would claim that the positioning of the biological is at the same time a distancing from bourgeois ideology’s equation of ‘History’ and ‘Nature’ which Barthes views as the role of literary écriture. It is this act which empowers the name ‘Hrabal’, which is precisely the name not provided for him by the biological father. 24 The English translation leaves out the words ‘at that moment’ (‘té chvíle’), which are im- portant since they further underscore the event as such. Yüklə 267,05 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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