Authors
Jan BALABÁN
Columnist, translator and author of prose fiction, Jan Balabán (born in Šumperk, on 21 January 1961) has lived in Ostrava since his childhood. He read Czech and English at Olomouc, and after completing his studies worked as a translator for the Vítkovice Ironworks. At present he makes his living as a free-lance translator. His published translations include works by H. P. Lovecraft and Terry Eagleton). Jan Balabán died April 23, 2010.
The form of a short lyricized narrative is characteristic of his fiction, which has features of autobiography and captures the atmosphere of the Ostrava area. It takes as its theme the life of a generation entering its mid-life crisis, the period of the definitive loss of illusion, when the characters reflect on their lives and become aware of everything they have failed to achieve. The existential mood of the stories is shaped by the protagonists’ effort to compensate for their present loss by living their few remaining hours to the fullest. The language Balabán employs gravitates towards minimalist expression, opening the text to interpretation through symbolic hints (including the titles of his stories), short allegorical anecdotes and not fully explained moments. The urgency of his artistic statement is increased by his use of a structure of ecclesiastical forms (litany, anathema, prayer, confession) and by sudden changes of rhythm and character of the narration (lyricism alternating with expressionism) within a short passage. Whereas the seventeen short stories of his debut Středověk (Middle Ages) are set mainly in an unrealistic world, borrowing elements of sci-fi or fantasy literature, or in a distant, irretrievable past, the composition in the story Boží lano (The Rope of God) draws its subject matter from the author’s travels in the United States of America. In the three motivationally linked sections, the real journey the hero undertakes becomes the stimulus for a symbolic, interior one; geographical distance leads to a change of perspective, which results in a settling of accounts and also to questioning one’s own beliefs. The entwined structure of these formally separate texts comes to the fore in the ensuing cycle of stories entitled Prázdniny (Holidays). The disposition of the characters, which are connected by close family ties or intimate personal relationships, creates the main link between the sixteen short narratives. The author develops his heroes gradually, in fragments, sketching their destinies through several stories, using different points of view. The life stories are reported as if incidentally and are wound up into single breaking points in the lives of his heroes, branching out into additional references that help the reader to reconstruct the characters’ pasts. The novel Černý beran (The Black Ram) takes up the subject of family, particularly the breakdown of a marriage, which is prominent in the majority of his stories. This time it is the death of an uncle that triggers a married couple’s examination of the years they have spent together. The simple plot is presented in a mosaic-like fashion, built up of a multitude of short chapters unconnected by motifs and fluctuating between past and present.
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The profile was updated in 2005.
Deutsch 
Jan BALABÁN
En français Jan BALABÁN