Authors

Czech literary critics are somewhat at a loss when it comes to Linhart as the author defies conventional categorisation. He is reminiscent of a jellyfish which absorbs a variety of influences - from decadent readings to fashionable callanetics exercises - and filters them through its own unique vision to produce quasi-documentary fragments. Is it literature? Or isn’t it? When looking at this author it is useful to consider his part in the Teplice alternative scene, which – be it punk, pataphysics, happenings or poetry – has become known for a bizarre form of humour without a point, a bizarre form of imagination, an emphasis on absurdity, mystification, a fusion of high and low culture as well as a connection with a tough periphery populated by outsiders and even psychotics. At first sight it would appear that the writer Linhart lives in a different world to everyone else. It is a world shot through with mystification based on artistic “self-surrealization”. The persona of the writer often presents one centre, one vanishing point in a spider’s web of text which eliminates the genre difference between poems in prose, sketches and diary entries, etc. Despite there being a massive “Linhartisation” (the author enjoys changing masks and uses several pseudonyms) not much is learned about the author himself. It is as though Linhart is hiding his true self behind the mimicry of curious self-mystification and through his feverish, often comic and bizarre productions (only a fraction of his extensive output has been published), as though he is trying to drown out his own doubts, anxieties or simply boredom. This existential suggestion is not unsubstantiated, but it is directed too far outside the literature, for in Linhart’s universe there is no time for boredom: there is always something happening, pulsating, screeching, roaring. It is as if there was not even enough time here for morality. Not that the artist concentrates on its negation: the moral aspect of the world simply does not enter the equation, it does not interest him, it is outside this category. In keeping with his poetics, in which autobiography overlaps with fiction, many of Linhart’s texts take on the form of diary entries or travelogues, as in the story cycle Měsíční povídky, where the author imposes a regular rhythm of writing with a Kolář-like obstinacy. And what does Linhart observe? A reader’s impressions, dreams, sketches from trips, work, school, pubs, overheard conversations, extracts from letters, philosophical contemplations and pataphysical pseudo-contemplations, and he does not hesitate from inserting into the text criticisms of his style of writing. He often records events which are completely banal, which evidently have no symbolic meaning – as though he was accusing literature of lying, because in real life, with a few exceptions, there are no “symbolic subtexts”, things simply happen. In spite of the proclaimed subjectivity and fantasy, Linhart has also become a distinctive regional expert and chronicler of the area between Teplice and Duchcova. The border area becomes a source of magical inspiration for the writer, with its mixture of Czech, German, Romany, Arabic and Vietnamese elements (not only because of the number of prostitutes), with the landscape still recovering from the devastation caused by heavy industry and paths leading past abandoned churches, cemeteries and houses following the expulsion of the Germans. Therefore, the aesthetic of strangeness which can be seen throughout Linhart’s work is not merely affected, but has deep roots. What is more, although Linhart is a writer who is submerged in his decadently artistic literary world, at the same time he has his eyes open. The idiosyncratic “dandy” on a stroll between a 24-hour pub and a hypermarket often takes advantage of two diametrically opposed worlds (“Christ and Matthew are going to the Riviera”) – naturally greatly exaggerated. Finally, one important point to note: literature is not the only medium that Linhart uses to express himself. His experiments in the fields of art, music, audiovisuals and especially performance are not just casual intermezzos.  Linhart represents a type of artist who, it seems, must undertake a work with his whole body. His personal participation, emphasis on author’s readings and actual physical movement of the texts confirm the author’s choice, a bet on the “seriousness of the game”. Linhart stands up for his texts, not only in the question of idiosyncratic archaic writing, but principally in the sense of not avoiding the creative journey. Might that be his form of morality?

(jn)

This author profile was last updated in 2006.

Deutsch Patrik LINHART

En français Patrik LINHART

E staramilenka@seznam.cz

http://patriklinhart.wordpress.com/