The poet, novelist, dramatist and essayist Petr Odillo Stradický – Stanczyk ze Strdic (real name Petr Stančík) was born on the 9th of June 1968 in Rychnov nad Kněžnou. He failed to complete his university studies at the College of Education and at DAMU. He worked as a teacher and then as a freelance television director. Since 1995 he has been making his living as an advertising writer. He lives in Prague.
Stradický’s literary debut was the collection Obojí pramen (1992), a pseudo-mythical narrative on the border between poetry and prose. The author populated this “baroque fantasy” with knights, monks and “the keeper of the labyrinth”, and suffused it with hermetism and symbolism. The use of archaic language and numerous neologisms would henceforth become a specific characteristic of the writer, as well as a strong emphasis on fantasy. If in the debut work published by Přátel duchovních nauk readers were still able to somehow grope their way around, with his second work Admirál čaje (1996) Stradický set himself firmly in the stall of postmodernism. He is a creator in the line of the demiurges whose fictional territory becomes an entire universe and his methodology is play, to which also belongs self-mystification with the author’s name and the predictions of death. In this area outwith reality Stradický plays with historical events which are interlaced with fictional phantasmagoria, the combination of which creates alternative worlds – which is why he is close to the internet. Literally with each word he demolishes reality and builds his own new one: “Afterwards he turned the horse inside out and throwing up dust galloped inside himself.” He happily attacks the creationist’s myth as “he who inhales stones and breathes out birds”. It is debatable whether the author’s various attacks on God are not in reality a battle about God, personified in the paradoxical character of “a theology of blasphemy” and even of “a celestial order”, which for Stradický might also be – chaos, a higher level of chaos. In his other novels the writer manifestly steps over the bounds of logic and rationality, whilst his writing at least outwardly calms and interiorises. As the narrator says in the collection Zlomená nadkova (1997): “The words begin to take on meaning just as a sinking boat takes on water, but they still remained under the waterline of understanding…” The orgy of fantasy and wilfulness of imagery of gluttony therefore recede slightly due to a more disciplined style of narration, though the author continues to straddle different styles and genres including the “meta” detective story (in one case God is a murderer) and short stories. He still hovers around the process of creation and invention: “The plants created man so that they could exchange inhalation with exhalation and conversely.” A constant which has remained in the author’s writings has been his humour, including black humour, and also – paradoxically – an absence of secrecy. Even though he occasionally goes along a path which joins adventure and hermetic literature, as we know from the texts of Michal Ajvaz, Stradický remains more spontaneous, poetic – the language is more than the story where the prose comes close to poetry. And he removes the secrecy. Apart from the aforementioned relationshps, the author’s poetry collections are more personal and intimate than prose, and also more traditional. Romantic themes are shared with the eternal dichotomy of the body and the soul, formally coming up to the word and rhyme and of course the author’s obsessive manipulation of language – especially the use of various neologisms. The author has also published a dramatic work (Svatá... svatá? svatá! Ludmila, 2002). He is also the editor of a controversial anthology of Czech poetry of the 20th century (Ryby katedrál, 2001).
